"I grew up in a house by the Black Sea where my grandfather collected books, my father collected knives, and my mother collected jewelry. When we left Odessa behind for good, my mother hid her jewels in a transistor radio that she entrusted to me, all of ten years old, during the long train ride to Italy. We spent the next year living in Ostia, a coastal town outside of Rome, in a dilapidated villa on the beach.

"A year later we settled in Melbourne, Australia, in a seaside neighborhood called St. Kilda. St. Kilda was populated with artists, aborigines, junkies, holocaust survivors, intellectuals, and émigrés. Victorian mansions, Art Deco apartment buildings, palm trees and the beach made a surreal backdrop.

"As a young adult I spent almost ten years living abroad, mostly throughout Europe and Japan. At 30, I went to study at a yeshiva in Tsfat — one of the four holy cities of Israel, known for its artist colony and as the birthplace of Kabbalah. Two local jewelers became my friends and mentors. Sitting at a jeweler's bench for the first time, I knew I needed to study jewelry seriously.

"I don't believe you can design something without an intimate understanding of how it's constructed. I studied goldsmithing at Northern Melbourne Institute of Technology and then took an apprenticeship in Melbourne."

New York is rich with generations of highly skilled artisans. I can't imagine producing our pieces anywhere else. We strive for authenticity in every part of our business and we maintain close relationships with everyone who works with us.

Every piece is made by hand, in New York, for one person.