Set in Memory

Ann Beatriz Chadour-Sampson
Curator, author and cataloguer, most recently of engraved gems and jewels in the British Royal Collection, London

"I was a young researcher in 1984 when I began working with the Alice and Louis Koch collection of rings, in Switzerland. It was started in 1900 and now has 2,500 pieces, none of them on public view. Four generations of the family have been involved; when I started there, it was Richard Dreyfus, from the third generation. He was extremely modest and discreet. Although fascinated by rings—the most personal of jewels—he didn’t believe in the value or importance of what he had, which I told him equaled that of the entire collection of rings in the British Museum. He had to be convinced that the Koch holdings should be catalogued, and I worked for him exclusively for the next nine years. The catalogue was finally published in 1991. Since 1994 the latest-generation Koches, who collect contemporary art, have given me a free hand to select contemporary rings for them (acquisitions had stopped after the deaths of Alice and Louis, the originators of the collection). Today there are 400 or more that I’ve acquired—I’ve lost count. Unusual designs and materials are what I am after. The last piece acquired in the old collection is a Lalique matte white-glass female figure framed by a gold serpent, from around 1900. That was when rings became really sculptural."

Courtesy the Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland