Style Edit: Boghossian takes craftsmanship to the next level with its Palace Voyages collection

Jul 12 , 2024

Ms. Regine Ngan with the Taman Sari Flowing Droplets set, exhibited in the Boghossian Hong Kong store at Landmark, Central. Photos: Boghossian

Regine Ngan, Managing Director of Asia, shares her passion for the brand’s new collection inspired by the Palaces of the Silk Road

The Swiss jewellery house Boghossian has been making jewellery for six generations – around 150 years of craftsmanship, rooted in the traditions of the Silk Road, that ancient web of trading routes connecting East and West.

For Regine Ngan, Boghossian’s managing director for Asia, such a romantic and exotic backstory made a love affair with its high jewellery almost inevitable. Working with the house for almost a decade now, Ngan is driving its development in the region.

“I did not expect myself to still be so passionate about this field after 20 years,” she jokes. “I still remember the very first moment when I looked at a Boghossian stone and thought, ‘OK, this is it. I need to get into this industry.’ It’s what I love.”

Asked which piece she could choose to keep for herself, Ngan names the Crimson Flame ring, centred on a pigeon’s blood Burmese ruby that the Boghossian family came across back in 2000. Not a surprising choice, given it’s still the most valuable ruby per carat ever sold.

The Crimson Flame ring, with a 15-carat Burmese pigeon’s blood ruby at its centre

In gemmology, “pigeon’s blood” is used to describe some of the highest-order rubies to have ever been found. Descriptive of a rich, vivid red, the moniker is only granted to stones that meet strict requirements of colour, hue and vibrancy.

Boghossian set the Crimson Flame in a white gold ring, engirdled by cushion-cut diamonds. It was in this form that it was sold by Christie’s Hong Kong in 2015 for a whopping US$18 million.

Ngan got to handle the stone when it was displayed at Boghossian’s Hong Kong boutique in The Landmark, Central, the brand’s only store in Asia.

“Every morning, I would take it out, and just look at it,” she recalls, eyes sparkling. “I would just appreciate how my eyes could travel through the colour.”

Regine Ngan with creative director Edmond Chin. Photo: @reginejewels/Instagram

Boghossian’s pieces are the brainchild of CEO Albert Boghossian along with creative director Edmond Chin. The Bamboo Blossom cuff, for example, from the maison’s new Palace Voyages collection, took an entire year to perfect. Like much of Boghossian’s work, it shows that the love affair between Eastern artistic motifs and Western lapidary innovation continues to this day.