“The stone chooses you.” That’s what Jerry Dahlberg told me in Ibiza in 2012. Jerry was a gem dealer and a friend, which was equally the best and worst combination when you’re buying a stone. On the table in his living room he’d laid out about 600 gems of every hue and colour. And together we sifted through them until there was a choice of just two. I’d chosen a Ceylon sapphire and a deep green garnet cabochon. Jerry told me to take them both away, sleep on it and “you’ll know in the morning which one you want”. I did exactly that, but the final affirmation was that the sapphire was triple the price. I chose the green, a green tsavorite garnet.
Jerry looked at me and smiled. “The stone chooses you,” he said. Jerry’s gone now. But some of the things people say stay with you longer than they do. And we’ll come back to that.
I took the stone and had it set in a gold ring and I’ve been wearing it ever since, on my left pinky finger. Fourteen years on the same finger, through Summers and Winters, every day, from Ibiza to London, LA, New York and Geneva and everywhere in between, until I actually stopped noticing it was there. It was like a part of my hand. You stop noticing things like that. Until one afternoon at Grands Montets, high above Chamonix, I very suddenly did notice. Because it was gone.
I should give some context here, because the circumstances say something about the state I was in. I’d just come straight from the Watches and Wonders show in Geneva. For anyone who hasn’t been, it’s one of the most intense weeks in the watch and jewellery calendar. Back to back launches, dinners, briefings, meetings with every major watch brand from morning until late at night. By the time I got to Chamonix I was exhausted.
I’m a hardcore skier. I don’t do après-ski, it’s just not my thing. And I certainly don’t sleep in deckchairs in the snow. But that afternoon at Le Spot, a sandwich shop and snack bar sitting at 1,975 metres on the slopes of Grands Montets, with one of the best views in the Alps, I sat down, closed my eyes, and I was gone. As my hand had become cold the ring must have slipped off my finger, the way things do when you’re not paying attention. Additionally, the book I was reading at the time was The Lord of the Rings. I know. I swear I’m not making this up.
The Search
I took a phone call on the gondola and realised immediately the ring was missing. From there I went into a frenzy, but I was organised. I retraced every step, turned the sandwich bar inside out, asked every member of staff I could find. I even got down on my hands and knees and I raked the snow. This does feel slightly deranged in retrospect. I alerted the gondola station and they checked every gondola, the lost property. I checked that my insurance covered me and what to do next. Bizarrely I realised that there is a lot of lost property and they’re used to it, we even found a missing engagement ring on the gondola, but not my ring. But I wasn’t ready to accept that it had gone.
The Faith
Here’s the part of the story I wasn’t sure whether to include. But it’s true, so I will. Before the ring was found, I told Charles, the driver at the Hôtel Jeu de Paume something. Standing in the hotel, in that weird devastated state that follows a real loss, I told him that stone chose me, and it will come back to me. Charles said “Yes, my bro, I believe that ring is coming back to you.” I’m fairly sure the rest of the hotel staff thought we were both completely mad. On Saturday I flew home without the ring.
Happy Birthday
On Sunday morning I woke up to a message from a number I didn’t recognise. “Hello my name is Céline, I work at Le Spot and I have your bague please phone me.” Bague is French for ring. It was my birthday. It was the best birthday present.
For those who haven’t read Tolkien recently, or ever, there is a famous moment in The Lord of the Rings where Gollum finds the ring. It’s on his birthday. He’s fishing in a river when it comes to him. “A present,” he says. “For my birthday.” I was reading The Lord of the Rings when I lost the ring. It came back on my birthday. I mean it sounds ridiculous, but I swear it’s true.
Céline
Céline works at Le Spot. Not a fancy restaurant or jewellery shop, but a low-key mountain sandwich shop at nearly two kilometres above sea level with a customer base of exhausted skiers. As it turns out, she’s one of the best people you could hope to encounter on a bad day.
She told me she had found the ring not dramatically buried in powder but quietly sitting behind a door, how it got there I have no idea. She could have kept it. She could have handed it in to the lost property without a second thought. Instead she looked at it properly, a ring worn smooth by years. The garnet is scratched, the ring had been bent out of shape, but she realised it was clearly personal, clearly chosen. She decided it belonged to someone who would want it back.
The Return
What followed next was a chain of various handovers that said more about the character of a place than any brochure could. I’ve always liked Chamonix, but the people I’ve encountered there are so warm and helpful, like nothing I’ve experienced anywhere else.
Céline passed the ring to Charles and from Charles to Kelly, the manager at the Hôtel Jeu de Paume, Chamonix’s quietly brilliant four-star chalet hotel. Kelly wrapped and sealed the ring in newspaper and looked after it with real care. Kelly was going to Geneva and handed it to his friend Eric at the Gucci store. I flew into Geneva for the day to collect it.
Outside the Gare de Chamonix Mont-Blanc, in front of the Jeu de Paume’s transfer van, Kelly and Charles had marked the moment. The return of the ring. A handshake photograph, with Charles and Kelly crouching at bumper height, holding the ring between them like a long lost treasure. It’s a slightly ridiculous image. But I love it.
That’s the great picture, but I actually collected it in Geneva from the Gucci store. Which feels, on reflection, exactly right for a story about jewellery.
What the Ring Actually Is
After all this happened I decided to look at the stone properly for the first time in years. It’s a tsavorite garnet, a vivid green cabochon, first discovered in the Tsavo region of Kenya and Tanzania in the late 1960s. It’s not as exciting as an emerald, but for me it’s more interesting. It was set in 18K gold with a fluid, architectural band. Current replacement value somewhere between £2,000 and £3,500. It’s not a fortune, but it was personal, and couldn’t easily be replaced. Not with that stone anyway.
Jerry Dahlberg knew that when we were sitting on a table in Ibiza in 2012. He’s gone now but the line stayed. Céline seemed to understand it on a mountain without ever being told the story. Charles and Kelly held it like they understood it, too. And Eric at Gucci handed it over like he knew exactly what it meant. The ring is back where it belongs. It looks almost exactly as it did before. After having given it a good look over it does need some TLC, so I’ll be giving it to my jeweller for a reshape, restore and a polish.
Some stones choose you. And if Jerry was right they might come back to you.
With thanks to Céline and everyone at Le Spot, Grands Montets. The best sandwich shop in the Alps, and now officially the most important one. To Charles, Kelly and the team at the Hôtel Jeu de Paume, Chamonix. To Eric at Gucci Geneva. And to Jerry Dahlberg, one of the great Ibiza characters, greatly missed.
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