By Sarah Royce-Greensill
On that very day of January 1, 1973, as I was well stricken in years, I felt the desire to write my memories. My children and grandchildren and their children will thus know what I have lived and experienced… They will know the suffering, the labour, the doubt, the desperation… and above all how I have always risen and stood firm in order to reach the goal I set for myself.'
It sounds like the opening soliloquy of a Hollywood epic. But Ohannes Boghossian, from whose memoirs these words are taken, lived a life so full of adversity and upheaval that it would be too far-fetched for even the most Oscar-hungry director.
His is a story of poverty, persecution, imprisonment and torture; of war and genocide, loyalty and betrayal; of riches sought and lost many times over. But he also celebrated the beauty in life, whether it be marriages, lavish banquets, travels to far-flung lands or – the one constant thread – his obsession with gold and jewels.
"The thing I remember about my grandfather was his wonderful sense of optimism and belief in life, no matter how devastating the circumstances," says Albert Boghossian, CEO of the jewellery house that bears the family name, over the phone from the company's Geneva HQ. "He had a very rich journey, in terms of ups and downs, yet he made the best of it."
Born in 1890 in what he described as 'Turkish Armenia', Ohannes was the fifth of 10 children; his father and grandfather were both jewellers. His formative years were marked by tragedy: the death of a sister and his mother when he was 17, followed by his eldest brother and father a short while later.
The outbreak of the First World War saw the start of the Armenian genocide, when the Ottoman government deported the Armenian Christian population on death marches to the Syrian desert. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred – and a 25-year-old Ohannes was witness to some of the atrocities.
'Those heartbreaking scenes shall remain forever engraved in my memory,' he wrote, describing what he saw with bone-chilling detail. 'I discovered that Man could be cruel, brutal, sadistic, and that life was not easy.'
When the Boghossian family fled to Syria, Ohannes escaped a Damascus-bound refugee train and found work in a café in Aleppo.
A chance meeting with a friend of his father's saw him join a local jewellery workshop. By night, he worked on private commissions, eventually saving enough money to rent a house to accommodate family members who had been scattered across the region. 'I had been alone for too long and [was] anchorless,' he wrote. 'Now that I had the means, my duty was to reunite the remaining family members.'
When the war ended in 1918, Ohannes set up his own jewellery workshop in Aleppo, later travelling to Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt to buy and sell jewels and gems. In 1931 he embarked on a voyage to Europe for Paris's enormous annual retail fair, the Foire de Paris.
It was a golden age of eastern-inspired jewellery design: three years after the maharaja of Patiala brought his boxes full of gemstones to Boucheron on Place Vendôme, and while Cartier's Indian-inspired Tutti Frutti design was in its infancy. Ohannes returned the favour, buying fashionable pearls in Paris and modern brilliant-cut diamonds in Belgium to take back to his Middle Eastern clientele.
This east-meets-west ethos runs throughout the Boghossian jewellery house. "Armenians have voyage in our blood," says Albert Boghossian. "There's always been a search for riches and inspirations from other lands and cultures."
His family's history has inspired the house's new high-jewellery collection, Silk, which traces a path through the cities, colours and cultures of the Silk Road trading route.
The ancient Chinese city Xi'an, the route's easternmost starting point, is represented by a tactile tassel of pearls, strung from a necklace of pearl mesh beneath sculpted mother-of-pearl 'auspicious clouds' – a traditional Chinese motif symbolising good luck and fortune.
The turquoise cupolas typical of 15th-century Persian architecture are recalled in the Samarkand bracelet, where a mosaic of turquoise is inlaid with creeping tendrils of coral and lapis lazuli, topped with diamond lotus-flower motifs. Despite the heft of all that hardstone, the bracelet feels as fluid as the richly embroidered textiles that Chinese envoys would present to the Persian city's Mogul rulers.
"The collection reflects our family's story but it's also the story of civilisations. The Silk Road is a wonderful crossroads: an exchange of cultures, ideas, riches and techniques," says Albert, who worked alongside historians on the research for the collection, which was two years in the making.
Ten aesthetically diverse suites evoke the sights, sounds and smells of ancient trading ports – from the spice markets of Alexandria to Venice's bustling canals.
The regal Nishapur sautoir features medallions of Colombian emerald set within white jade and interspersed with button-like pearls. Its precisely engineered geometric motifs recall both the seal of the Iranian city after which it is named and the rosette patterns typical of fourth century BC Sasanian textiles, which were made using Chinese silk.
Ancient symbols abound, but the craftsmanship is entirely 21st century. Boghossian's goldsmiths and lapidaries used traditional techniques alongside modern technology to recreate the fluidity of silk in solid metal and gemstones.
"The collection merges the intricacies of the East with the modernity, innovation and audacity of the West," says Albert. "If we didn't have the technology of today they would be almost impossible to make."
Innovation and audacity are calling cards of the modern-day house of Boghossian. Ohannes's memoirs finished in 1973 with his building a home for his family in Beirut, where they had settled after fleeing Syria for good in 1950.
By this time, he'd survived bombings, imprisonment and torture by Gaullist security forces (when he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator), and come back from the brink of bankruptcy several times over. By opening a dispensary for the poor, he fulfilled the promise he'd made earlier in life: 'The pact I have with [God] is simple: He had to help me, and in return I would help other poor people.' But the family's suffering wasn't over.
In 1975, civil war tore through Lebanon. Beirut's city centre, including the jewellery souk, was burnt to the ground. The family packed up its gemstones and moved west once more; Albert's brother Jean settled in Antwerp and Albert set up an office in Geneva.
Ohannes and his son Robert (Albert and Jean's father) had already established themselves as important gem dealers in Europe; Jean and Albert grew the family's reputation by manufacturing one-of-a-kind jewellery for high-end houses and private clients. In 2007, after the next generation, Jean's sons Ralph and Roberto, had joined the business, the house of Boghossian – or Bogh-Art, as it was originally named – was born.
With stores in London, Geneva and Hong Kong, Boghossian is renowned for its almost sacrilegious approach to precious gems: carving the innards out of a sizable stone in order to place another flush within it, in its signature 'art of inlay' technique; and setting diamonds one on top of the other, as if held in place by an invisible force, in its 'kissing diamonds' designs.
Singaporean creative director Edmond Chin isn't constrained by historical codes (the 'archive' was destroyed in Beirut), and the Silk collection is the embodiment of Boghossian's exuberant approach – realised with a very Swiss precision.
Ohannes's philanthropic legacy (he died in 1987 aged 97) lives on in the form of the Boghossian Foundation, a humanitarian organisation established in 1992 to help improve living conditions for young people in Lebanon and Armenia.
High Jewellery from Paris Couture Week
Today it is headquartered in the beautifully restored art deco Villa Empain in Brussels, where it hosts art exhibitions and events designed to bring together western and eastern cultures.
"It felt natural that we should continue on the path started by our father and grandfather," says Albert. "Art is important in building bridges and linking together societies that have brought so much to each other. It's even more important nowadays, when civilisations in the east and west are in such violent confrontation."
From the Foundation to the latest high- jewellery creations, the Boghossian family's fifth- and sixth-generation jewellers continue to celebrate the art world's ability to transport us, however fleetingly, to a place far away from daily concerns – something of which Ohannes Boghossian was only too aware.
"My grandfather had a powerful connection to the magic of gems and jewellery," says Albert. "They would take him to more beautiful shores than the present offered. And we are still dreamers – we're explorers of new shores, new techniques, new dimensions in the field of jewellery."