Collector and Dealer Kazumi Arikawa on ‘Divine Jewels’ and New Book

Forget wearing gloves when handling fine jewelry.

When Japanese jewelry dealer and collector Kazumi Arikawa handles a piece, he does it with uncovered hands and encourages others to do so too. As far as he is concerned, that’s the only way to get the feeling that has been guiding his hand in selecting the jewels he’s acquired over the past four decades.

“If you touch important pieces with your hand, not just [see them] through a window, you don’t need words, just [to feel] your heart shaking,” he says.

Some might have glanced the name of Albion Art on exhibits showcased over the years in shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tokyo National Museum or Paris’ Arts Décoratifs. But few outside the jewelry world are familiar with Tokyo-based Arikawa, a discreet figure considered one of the most important jewelry collectors of our time.  

So impactful is his contribution to the preservation of jewelry arts that he was awarded the medal of the Order of Arts and Letters by France’s ministry of culture in 2007.

In “Divine Jewels: The Pursuit of Beauty,” a 520-page volume published on Sept. 18 by Flammarion, some 250 pieces chronicle not only the history of jewelry and capture items of historical importance but also are symbols of Arikawa’s philosophy.

“My construction of the world from a philosophical standpoint is that the divine is connected to the ultimate truths of the universe and so is beauty,” he explains.

Part reasoned catalogue of pieces in the Albion Art collection, part history of jewelry compendium, entries offer a contextualized description by jewelry expert Diana Scarisbrick.

Entries also indicate when an item has been referenced in literature or featured in exhibitions, an enticing invitation for further dives into the subject.

There’s a dancer draped in a translucent veil on a brooch by René Lalique; cameos offering portraits of the powerful, from Byzantine emperors to Napoléon Bonaparte; ornaments of royal pageantry, and, of course, tiaras.

Arikawa is famous for his interest in them, which began with a Fabergé design known as the “Blue Bandeau” tiara, purchased in the early days of Albion Art. He currently has around 60 in his possession but had accrued up to 170 by the early 2000s.

The Call of Jewelry

Jewelry has always been part of the life of this native of Fukuoka, Japan, a city on the northern coast of the country’s third-largest island of Kyushu.

Widowed early on, his mother was a jewelry retailer who traveled extensively. At age 8 or 9, Arikawa recalls being struck by the chatoyancy of the stones that adorned her rings, particularly a chrysoberyl cat-eye gem that she brought back from Myanmar, then known as Burma.

“I can remember feeling impressed and that was maybe my first contact with the beauty of jewelry,” he tells WWD Weekend. 

But he didn’t answer its call at first. It was his time as a Buddhist monk in his mid-20s that would truly pave the way for his future vocation. Over the course of two years, he studied the religion’s philosophy and spirituality.

According to Buddhist lore, paradise is a landscape of gold and silver set with glittering gemstones. “That’s the image I brought back when I came back to the [lay] world,” he says. Leaving education behind, he joined his mother’s business, buoyed by the memory of how jewelry made him feel.

The final “eureka” moment came in the early 1980s. During a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, he was struck by the exhibits from its collection, which is considered among the most comprehensive in the world.

His calling finally clear, he returned to Japan, giving up fine art dealing to focus solely on jewels. Albion Art was born in 1985, just before he turned 40.

What’s in a Jewel?

To Arikawa, jewelry is more than the gemstones and precious metals that are brought together by human crafting they appear to be at first glance.

“Gemstones [contain] the beauty of the universe, of nature, of the earth and from ancient times, they have been treasured not just as decoration,” he says.

He went on to explain that among the earliest traces of human activity were piles of rock crystals assembled more than 150,000 years ago in a cave in Singi Takata, in India’s Rajasthan state. “That’s the first evidence of what human beings called beauty — much earlier than cave paintings,” he stresses.

After all, imagine being a prehistoric human faced with a shining object that you didn’t have the means to break or transform in any way and didn’t wither away once plucked from the ground.

Arikawa is convinced early humans must have felt those were evidence of a higher power and rues that in recent times, gemstones — and by extension jewelry — have become at best a decorative art, at worst a conveniently small vehicle for investment.

“But in some pieces, I can catch when jewelry was more essential, more spiritual. It has a vibration because a gemstone itself is the beauty of the universe, the beauty of the earth,” he says. “To consider such a treasure as just a commodity shows low understanding.”

You’d almost forget that Albion Art is a for-profit company, with a salon in his hometown and another in The Okura Tokyo, an upscale hotel in the Japanese capital.

How Arikawa Chooses Pieces

For a piece to join Arikawa’s glittering array, there’s only one criterion. “My only standard for collecting is whether I am impressed or not,” he says.

Craftsmanship, a provenance and history, the preciousness and rareness of the gems are of course important, but what the collector is looking for above all is the emotion telegraphed by the object itself.

Take his most recent find, a sizable Maltese cross. Made between the 16th and mid-17th centuries, the jewel-encrusted piece with more than 80 carats of Golconda diamonds and featuring an enameled back was given by the King of Spain to the head of the Knights of Malta.

When an agent representing the descendants of the knight presented the cross to Arikawa, he immediately sensed how “very, very important” it was. “And the world will know someday,” he says.

So the cross joined the 800-plus museum-worthy jewelry objects — and thousands of books on the subject — in his collection, which meanders from the early days of Mesopotamia to the Art Deco period and later.

But unlike other collectors, the Japanese expert doesn’t always keep everything he finds or even express regret at letting go of important pieces, many of which have gone to museums.

In fact, he builds his collection with the very dream of opening museum entirely dedicated to jewelry. This will mostly likely be in Japan, although plans are in the very early stages.

In the meantime, his collection will continue to be glimpsed here and there. To mark the book’s release, 20 pieces are at the Hôtel Mercy-Argenteau campus of L’École School of Jewelry Arts in Paris until Sept. 28. He is also working on an exhibition of his collection in Seoul for November.

And there’s another reason why a museum is his end-game.

“The value of the Louvre Museum isn’t in the building or even in its collection of art. It’s in the [emotion] of the visitors when they stand in front of the artwork,” he says, likening the experience of visiting a museum to a purification ritual, where everyday worries or passing annoyances fall away.

So don’t assume he only puts stock in the rare or that his definition of something precious requires gold and gems.

“Whether it’s jewelry, paintings, human beings or daily goods, everything for me is the same,” he says. “I am trying to feel the brilliance of existence in this world.”