Rare stones of Ceylon, sourced and set for a small circle of clients — the way the trade has always worked at its best. By eye, at the source, in confidence.
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The fourth generation of a Ratnapura gem family, trained at the source over more than twenty years. Nothing enters the house without passing his judgment — he would rather you had it in his own words.
“I would rather show you one stone I would keep for myself than a tray I am trying to sell.”
My great-grandfather bought his first stone in Ratnapura with money he did not have. He held it to the window, turned it once, and paid. The family learned the trade the way it is still learned, by being wrong in front of better men until the eye is trained.
Four generations on, the window has not changed. I take a stone to daylight before I take it anywhere else. What I look for cannot be written on a certificate, though the certificate must agree with it. It is the thing a stone does when the light moves, the depth a camera flattens and only the eye keeps.
I see thousands of stones a year and bring home a few. The ones I turn away are the work.
If a stone reaches you through this house, it has been read by the same eye that has judged them for four generations, and it is what we say it is. That is the whole of it.
Ratnapura, the City of Gems, lies in the alluvial plains of southern Sri Lanka, where time and water have produced the finest sapphires on earth, alongside padparadscha, alexandrite, spinel, chrysoberyl, and moonstone. Ceylon is the standard the rest of the world is measured against, and every stone in the house is a Ceylon stone, bought at the cutting houses and from a few long-standing partners on the island.
Three principles, held without exception.
We begin with the stone. The design is drawn around it, and serves it.
Origin, treatment, and certification, documented and shown. No euphemisms, no omissions. A collector should be able to verify everything we say.
The same eye reads every stone, at every price. Nothing is graded gently because it is small.
The house is opened by appointment, to a few clients at a time.
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