GemGenève and the Geneva Spring Sales

A week with the trade, the auction houses, and the stones

Geneva in May moves on a single rhythm. The week opens with GemGenève at Palexpo — this year the 8th edition, 9 to 12 May — and rolls straight into the spring sales: Christie’s and Sotheby’s back-to-back Magnificent Jewels auctions at the Four Seasons des Bergues and the Mandarin Oriental. The fair organisers call this collision Geneva Luxury Week; for those who work with stones, it is simply the busiest week of the spring.

The fair and the auction previews sit at a useful intersection of trade and inspection. The fair is where dealers bring stones and signed pieces; the previews are where one inspects, in person and at length, the pieces that catalogues only describe. Hours go on examination — loupe, micro-camera, the right kind of light — and on the slow conversations that follow.

GemGenève, for its part, is the part of the week that most pleases Kehan. The fair is small enough to read carefully, large enough to surprise; one is shown stones in the open hand of the cutter, looked at across a table, returned without ceremony if they are not the right thing. The auctions, with their longer catalogues and louder evenings, sit at the other end of the spectrum — useful, necessary, but quieter work in the previews than at the rostrum.