Lord of the Rings

Photo by Jason Fulford

Benjamin Zucker examines an antique ring.

Photo by Jason Fulford

Clockwise from top right: a 16th-century pyramid-cut diamond set in gold; an early 17th-century poison ring with table-cut stone; and two rings from 1680 with table-cut diamonds.

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On the foyer walls of Benjamin Zucker’s Manhattan apartment, his professional and collecting interests are immediately apparent. Near the front door hangs a 1740 painting of the Venetian diamond exchange. Opposite this is a portrait of a diamond dealer at home in Mechlin, not far from Antwerp, Belgium—then and now one of the world’s diamond-cutting capitals. Nearby is an arresting sepia photograph of Gutman Gutwirth, Zucker’s maternal grandfather, revered in Antwerp as a rabbi but also as a diamond-cutting genius.

Zucker is a third-generation gem merchant. He has also put together the Zucker Family Collection, which many consider to be the best private collection of antique rings in America. At times, most recently in the 1990s, his work and his collecting have overlapped, and he has sold sets of antique rings that he assembled. But, he says, there is little crossover between his business and the Zucker Family Collection, whose examples are wide-ranging in period, technique and geographical origin. Because the rings are not easy to display at home—and for reasons of security—Zucker and his wife, Barbara, don’t live with their treasures. Most are on loan to a museum; others are in vaults.  

“You take a stone that is uncut, and with the hand of man it is fashioned into a gem,” says the 67-year-old Zucker. “Then with the great skill of the goldsmith, it is transformed into a jewel—a gift of love between individuals. It is one of the most passionate parts of human experience that I can think of.”

Passion, in turn, has fueled Zucker’s acquisition of the 126 antique rings that constitute the family collection, which is on long-term loan to the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore. One of the earliest examples is an ancient Egyptian circlet, from between the 6th and the 1st century B.C., of glowing gold incised with a figure seated on a throne. “I like looking at pieces and imagining them being worn,” says Zucker. “But ultimately, if they aren’t going to be worn, it’s good to have them in a museum, where you can share them with people and scholars can look at them.”

One of the most intricate and beautifully made pieces is a 1631 German ruby and diamond enameled gimmel—from the Latin gemellus, meaning “twin”—consisting of two interlocking bands that, when swiveled, reveal a tiny skeleton and a baby nestled in the bezel (the bit that holds the gems). Also engaging is a mid 18th-century ring celebrating the masquerades that were popular at the time in Italy and France: Looking up at the wearer is a round face with rosebud lips and diamond eyes, sporting a white enamel mask and surrounded by a ruby and diamond halo. Among the 20th-century stunners is a crisply designed 1925 Art Deco ring set with triangles of diamonds and sapphires—just the sort of ornament an elegantly gowned woman might have worn to the Stork Club.

“When I first saw Ben’s collection, in 1985, it was a revelation to me,” says Gary Vikan, the director of the Walters and a student of ancient and medieval rings. “I didn’t think there was a collection of such quality still in private hands. It was astounding.” The show “Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry,” opening at the Walters on October 19 and on view through January 4, features 21 of Zucker’s pieces. (Because of space constraints, only 21 other rings from the collection are currently on public display.)

The ring-collecting bug bit Zucker in 1970, when he was a struggling 30-year-old novelist in Greenwich Village. He saw a notice about part five of the Sotheby’s auction of the legendary Melvin Gutman jewelry collection. The sale had attracted the attention of such major collectors as the Dutch-born industrialist Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. What drew Zucker was a memory from his student days.

While at Harvard Law School (Zucker studied Japanese at Yale and has a master’s degree in English literature from New York University), he’d come upon a catalogue listing some of the objects owned by Gutman that had been on loan to the Walters in 1948. A Baltimore businessman who’d also attended Harvard Law, Gutman got out of the stock market before the 1929 crash and had used some of his fortune to buy antique jewels. “I thought, ‘Wow, that was great timing! And he must have had a lot of pleasure collecting,’ ” Zucker recalls.