Precious Objects

Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family, and a Way of Life by Alicia Oltuski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I used to go to NY City often I would sometimes cross from 5th to 6th Avenues on 47th Street. In the late 1960s and early 70s that block was crowded with Hasidim, heads together, mumbling, passing manila envelopes to one another, shaking hands, and saying, “Mazel.” I had stumbled onto the NY City Diamond district.

Alicia Oltuski’s grandfather bought and sold his first diamonds immediately after the end of World War II when he was AWOL from the Russian army and hiding out in the American sector of Germany. Her father is still a diamond merchant on 47th Street. She worked with him for a few years and realized that the diamond business wasn’t her thing. But she spent enough time there to become enchanted with the sparkling stones, with the history of diamonds, and with the people who buy and sell them.

She has written a book full of colorful characters, exciting stories, fascinating information, and an obvious love of diamonds, whether they are rare blue stones from the famed Golconda mines in India, or diamonds grown in a pressure chamber and destined to be used in laboratory experiments. She knows all about blood diamonds and the horrors they have financed and the history of De Beers and their famous advertisement: “A diamond is forever.” She has interviewed specialists in gemstone security and detectives who chase down jewel thieves. She has been to the gem and jewelry shows in Tucson and Las Vegas and hung out at Sotheby’s during an auction of “significant” jewelry.

You don’t have to be interested in gems or jewelry to enjoy this book. Alicia Oltuski may not want to be a diamond merchant but she has a love of diamonds that seems inherited and with it she captures the excitement and romance of the jewelry trade in this wonderful book.

2011 No 117