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On the foyer walls of Benjamin Zuckers 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.

Among the Gutman items being auctioned at Sotheby’s were five ornate Jewish marriage rings. At the viewing, Zucker was knocked out by one of these, an 18th-century example topped by a tiny gold house with a hinged gable roof tiled in rich blue enamel. It opened to reveal a plaque engraved with letters standing for  mazel tov, or “good fortune.” “It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen,” he says.

The piece was estimated at $500, and Zucker was determined to have it. Not taking any chances, he cashed in his entire stock portfolio, which was worth $15,000. When the lot came up, he raised his paddle and kept thrashing it in the air until the bidding reached $1,700 and the auctioneer told him he could lower it; he’d won. That day Zucker bought four Jewish marriage rings for a total of $5,300. He was launched as a collector.

Alas, his success in the salesroom wasn’t matched at his writing desk. The novel wasn’t progressing well, and when Charles Zucker asked his son to join him in the business not long after the auction, Benjamin agreed—a failed book was no match for filial piety. Charles also assured Benjamin that he could continue writing (indeed, Zucker has produced several books, both fiction and nonfiction, with jewelry as their theme). Soon Benjamin was studying gemology and accompanying his father on buying trips to the Far East. The skills honed by Zucker the gem merchant proved a great help to Zucker the collector, as he kept an eye out for antique rings to purchase—Greek and Roman, Etruscan, Islamic, Renaissance, Art Deco.  

As with the best Old Master paintings, the number of very fine antique rings for sale has declined since Zucker started buying. “They have become rarer and the prices have gone up, but I still think that these rings are undervalued works of art,” says the collector, who has paid as little as $120 and as much as $200,000 for his treasures, acquired most frequently from the London dealer S. J. Phillips, on Bond Street; the gemologist and jewelry historian Jack Ogden; and Derek Content, a private dealer in ancient jewels. Because the market is small, prices have not skyrocketed and, even at the top, remain relatively reasonable. When Zucker bought his gimmel ring from S. J. Phillips, in 1980, it cost him £10,000 ($23,000). A comparable example today, according to top dealers, including S. J. Phillips, might command from the low five figures to as much as £75,000 ($150,000).

Last year Zucker purchased an 18th-century yellow diamond from the London dealer Sandra Cronan. It has become part of his current project to illustrate the history of gem cutting and the story of Elihu Yale, the American-born British trader and politician who made a fortune dealing in diamonds and used part of it to help fund the university that, in gratitude, took his name. “One of the most exciting moments in my collecting came 10 years ago when I read the biography of Elihu Yale,” recalls Zucker. “The idea that the university I loved was built on a diamond fortune was so interesting.” He also learned that Yale was a prodigious collector of art, objects, textiles and jewels and that after his death, an auction of 10,000 lots was held that lasted 40 days.

Zucker found the man’s life so gripping that he has suggested an exhibition on Elihu Yale, diamond trader, to the university’s art museum and has put together a book proposal on the subject for which he is seeking a publisher. With the future show in mind, he has acquired 20 diamond rings, brooches and necklaces illustrating different styles of cutting. These, plus eight rough sapphires from the Zucker Family Collection, will be displayed at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History when phase two of its Hall of Minerals, Earth and Space opens November 15.

The earliest of the 20 diamond pieces is a 15th-century ring containing a single small, uncut octahedral crystal. “Diamonds were so rare at this time,” says Zucker, taking a last look at the gems in his 47th Street office, on New York’s Diamond Row, before sending them off to New Haven on long-term loan. Another jewel in the group is a pretty 17th-century Dutch table-cut diamond pendant set in yellow gold with delicate pale pink and white enameled flowers on the reverse. The star of the group, though, is the 5.8-carat yellow hobnail-cut diamond (lacking its original setting) that he bought from Cronan last year. Rocking gently on Zucker’s desktop, it shoots off chartreuse lights.

Zucker may not live with his treasures, but he still gets enormous pleasure from them during his visits to the museums. “It’s like seeing relatives you haven’t seen for years—and in a different country,” he says. The rings commemorate births and deaths, engagements and marriages. “There is so much emotion in rings. Of all jewelry, they are the most personal.”

"Lord of the Rings" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.