For people who like to believe in bad luck and gemstones, it wasn't a hard stretch to say,

well, look at all these terrible things that happened to this wealthy lady. Clearly it was

this diamond. And so the stories of the curse, the stories of the bad luck diamond got built

one upon the other. And of course,

every time a story about a curse is retold, it gets just a little bit better. I had a client years

ago and I was living in California and she came to me for an amethyst because she said she'd been

sleeping with this amethyst and she slept with it under her pillow and then she needed something

to wear during the day because it was too cumbersome to carry it around in her purse. So we made

an amethyst stone quite typical of that kind of story. She wouldn't never go out without that

stone anymore. If she was without it, she probably would go back home

and get it. Welcome to If Jewels Could Talk. I'm Carol Walton, the voice of jewelry, an author,

broadcaster, and the woman who initiated the role of Jewelry editor at magazines like Tattler

and British Vogue. This is a podcast for everyone.

For people who do like jewellery,

for people who don't realise they like jewellery,

and anyone intrigued by fascinating facts,

new ideas and forgotten histories.

So please join me as I tell sparkly tales,

meeting all sorts of people

delving into four centuries of jewellery culture

and investigate what's happening now.

Jewelry has answered the human need for self-adornment from the beginning,

...