Kazumi Arikawa is considered to be the world’s foremost collector of historic jewellery. To coincide with the publication of his book Divins Joyaux, à la recherche de la beauté, we take a look back at the career of an undisputed master of jewellery.
His name is unknown to the general public. Yet the reputation of this discreet collector is well established. For some forty years, Kazumi Arikawa has been collecting precious objects of jewellery. Around 800 to be precise. However, this lover of precious stones could have had an entirely different destiny…
From monk to collector of fine jewellery
While Kazumi Arikawa’s mother ran a jewellery resale business, the young Japanese man was predestined to become a monk. His library consisted more of sacred texts than books on the history of jewellery. In 1982, he took over the shop with his sister, while continuing to explore the spiritual world in his Buddhist monastery.
It was while browsing through a London museum that Kazumi Arikawa had a revelation when confronted with a tiara by the great Russian goldsmith Pierre-Karl Fabergé. This piece, made of diamonds and pale blue guilloché enamel, touched his heart. All the more so because the jewel echoes a sutra that had a particular impact on him, describing paradise ‘as a world sparkling with precious stones’. It all makes sense.
Over a period of some forty years, Kazumi Arikawa has amassed a collection of some 800 pieces of jewellery, of inestimable monetary and heritage value. From Antiquity to the mid-twentieth century, his collection bears witness to the jewellery arts of various eras. The collector acquires pieces that evoke emotion and stir the depths of his being. For him, jewellery represents universal beauty, something intangible that transports us.
In his brand new book, Divins Joyaux, à la recherche de la beauté, the founder and president of the Albion Art Jewelry Institute in Tokyo explains: ‘For me, who has been collecting and studying jewellery for over forty years like a pilgrim guided by beauty, there could be no greater pleasure than for these jewels […] to be an occasion for contemplation, a source of emotion, a divine ode to their splendour’.
A symbolic work on the history of jewellery
Co-written with Diana Scarisbrick, an art historian specialising in jewellery, and published by Flammarion in September 2024, Divins Joyaux, à la recherche de la beauté is a compendium of the collector’s experience and the history of jewellery. The book is structured into ten thematic chapters, bringing together Diana Scarisbrick’s historical expertise and Kazumi Arikawa’s pieces, with her emotional vision of this art form.
Kazumi Arikawa takes us on a journey of beauty and sparkle, in which each piece of jewellery is described in terms of its provenance, stones, assembly techniques and cultural significance.
To celebrate the launch of this new book, L’École des Arts Joailliers, under the aegis of the Van Cleef & Arpels brand, organised an exhibition in Paris from 19 to 26 September, featuring some twenty pieces of jewellery from Kazumi Arikawa’s Albion Art collection. Visitors were treated to an 18th-century Giardinetti necklace, René Lalique’s Dancing Nymphs pendant dating from 1902-1903, and a ballerina brooch by Van Cleef & Arpels dating from 1951.
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Featured photo: © Louis Teran – Flammarion
