The CEO of Boghossian talks to Luxury Endless about rare gemstones, near-invisible settings and a collection inspired by four of history’s most powerful women.
Joséphine Necklace
Queens of Time is the new high jewellery collection from Boghossian, the Geneva-based Maison led by CEO Albert Boghossian. The collection is a tribute to legendary female rulers, from Cleopatra and Theodora to Catherine the Great and Atossa. After its unveiling, Luxury Endless sat down with Albert Boghossian for an exclusive conversation about the craftsmanship, innovation and vision behind it.
Founded by a family of gemstone experts whose history spans six generations, sitting behind the Boghossian name. Over that time, the family has built a reputation as one of the boldest houses in contemporary high jewellery. Its signature techniques, Kissing, Inlay and Merveilles, all share one aim: let the gemstone speak. By using as little metal as possible, the Maison puts colour and light first, and craftsmanship does the rest.
The newly unveiled ‘Queens of Time’ takes that philosophy to its most ambitious point yet. Each jewel is devoted to one queen and a legacy that outlived her era. Rare stones, inventive cutting and meticulous setting come together in pieces about power, intelligence and timeless elegance.
In our conversation, Albert Boghossian talks about the technical mastery behind the Maison’s signature creations and what it takes to work with exceptional gemstones. He also explains why storytelling matters in high jewellery. Along the way he touches on record-breaking rubies and revolutionary settings, offering a rare look inside a house where heritage and daring meet.
The Interview
Your Kissing setting suspends one stone above another with almost no metal a technique most houses would call structurally unwise. Can you talk us through the technical challenges, please?
Our heritage drives us to keep reinventing ourselves, and that restlessness starts with the craftsmanship. We always look for ways to better liberate the gem, reduce the metal, and let the light do the work. Kissing is one of our signature techniques. We see it as an embrace between two gems: one stone rests on another, and the first becomes a canvas for the second. The challenge is to make the setting almost invisible, so the eye sees two stones that have become one. With minimal gold, light flows freely, bringing out colour, radiance and emotion.
Have you ever encountered a stone that was particularly difficult to work with, one that refused to be inlaid, paired, or kissed?
Some gemstones are far more challenging than others, and they push our craftsmanship further. The Catherine the Great jewellery set, in our latest high jewellery collection, Queens of Time, is a recent example. A moonstone is usually cut as a cabochon, so for the first time we inlaid diamonds into it, which meant faceting the stone to receive them. Edmond Chin, our creative director, and our ateliers worked through the precision this required. We do not look for ease. Rather than maintain the status quo, we push ourselves to create something with a twist.
Inlay means carving into a gemstone that took the earth millions of years to make. How do you make that first cut, and how does a stone “earn” it?
Inlay is really about enhancing nature’s greatest treasures. Early in my career, in India, the marble of the Taj Mahal showed me how far beauty and precision could go, and it has shaped our approach ever since. Every stone has its own character, and we carve to bring it out: one gemstone is set within another, creating a seamless dialogue of colour, texture and light. It is a technique that defies traditional codes, and it never loses the essence of the stone while elevating it.
Your clients in the Gulf grew up with jewellery seen as inheritance, not an accessory. How does designing for a woman who will pass a piece to her granddaughter change the brief?
Our jewellery is designed with a contemporary eye, but with a timeless ambition. A piece meant to be passed on has to keep its meaning long after the moment that gave it birth. That starts with the gems: we choose them for their high quality and rarity, because they will still be admired in a generation’s time. It also means a design with its own identity, one that speaks beyond the trend. The collectors in the Gulf are true connoisseurs of rare gems, and they are drawn to jewels that carry a story.
High jewellery is leaning hard into storytelling – whether it be palaces, queens, silk roads. At what point does narrative become a crutch for stones that should speak for themselves?
Our high jewellery collections and their inspirations come directly from our heritage. From Silk to Palace Voyages and now Queens of Time, our journey from East to West goes on. For each collection, the gems support the design. As an example, Theodora loved gold, as was typical of her era, but her true obsession was pearls and flawless gemstones. Her necklace reflects that, with textured yellow gold framing sapphires, emeralds, spinels and natural saltwater pearls. For Atossa, bold colour comes through in lapis, carnelian and imperial morganite, the palette of her own era in Persia.
What’s the most beautiful stone you have ever let go of, and do you know where it is now?
It was the Crimson Flame, a Burmese ruby I bought from a private collector. The stone had a beautiful red, but it lacked life, and that made it difficult to sell. After studying it with our cutter, we decided to take the risk of recutting it. Something magical happened: the luster and life of the ruby came alive, bringing out its red up to the pigeon blood category. In 2015, we sold it at Christie’s in Hong Kong for a world-record price per carat for a ruby, a record we still hold today.
Finish the sentence: people think Boghossian is about colour, but really it’s about…
....audacity. We are always pushing the boundaries of jewellery design, and that drive has led us to patented techniques and to world-record prices at auction. Each piece is built around gems of singular beauty and rarity, set into designs that surprise and astonish. But behind all of it lies something more fundamental: six generations of expertise and passion.
If one of the Queens of Time visited your atelier today, which queen would be the most fun to design for and why?
Cleopatra, because she was the queen we most enjoyed bringing to life, and she asked the most of us. Greek by heritage, yet depicted as a pharaoh, she lived between two worlds, and the Hercules knot, the design of this necklace, holds both. Finding matching golden mother-of-pearl was challenging, but the greatest complexity lay in cutting each piece individually and shaping them into a twisted rope that curves around the neck. It took many revisions to reach that luminous cohesion, and every revision brought us closer to a queen of remarkable intelligence.
If jewellery could speak, which piece from the Queens of Time collection would have the most dramatic personality?
The Paraiba suite for Indradevi, without hesitation. Built around a 10-carat pear-shaped Paraiba from Mozambique, it speaks in the luminous blue of Cambodia after the monsoon rains. Matching Paraibas of this quality are extremely rare, which makes this set the most important of the collection. Its personality comes from the contrast: diamonds that contrast in colour with tanzanites and hauyne define the character of the jewel, and hauyne’s exceptional brittleness demanded true technical mastery.
When you design, what music, scent, or atmosphere helps you enter the creative mindset?
What helps me enter that mindset is beauty, and the freedom to go looking for it. Anything that catches my eye can start a design. Each journey brings back a colour or a material that stays with me. Then I bring those ideas to Edmond Chin, our creative director, and we push them together until the piece feels right.
Every era has its own “Queen”. Which modern woman shaping culture today would you crown as the muse for a future Boghossian collection?
It is the woman who wears our jewellery today: leaders and entrepreneurs who use jewellery as a language of influence, and who carry the same sense of power and influence as the queens we celebrate. Many of our clients are women shaping their cultures, and that is who I think of when I design.
The process and creation ‘Queens - Joséphine’ Necklace and Earrings