Before Lisa Bridge became president and CEO of Ben Bridge Jeweler, she created an eponymous collection of accessibly priced colored stone jewels for the Seattle-based retailer.
Introduced in 2015, the collection, which was intended for self-purchasing women, seemed to meet an unspoken need in the marketplace.
“I was looking at my friends, and the jewelry they were wearing was lovely but not necessarily real,” Bridge tells JCK. “They didn’t realize they could come in and buy fine jewelry for themselves. Fine jewelry had to be this really heavy, important purchase.”
To convince her friends that jewelry made of precious metals and gems was within reach, Bridge knew she had to set her sights on the world of color.
“I’m a nerdy gemologist at heart, and I love to play with gemstones,” she says. “So we introduced some colored gems we hadn’t had in our stores previously.” Specifically: rhodochrosite, fossilized coral, moss agate, and charoite. The collection also reintroduced malachite and lapis to the Ben Bridge inventory.
A few years later, at the JCK show in Tucson, Bridge met Puja Bordia, the Miami-based designer of Trésor, a jewelry manufacturer based in Jaipur, India. As the 15th generation to run her family’s colored stone business, Bordia comes from a long line of gemstone aficionados. She and Bridge hit it off immediately.
The 2023 holiday season marked the first time Ben Bridge and Trésor partnered on the Lisa Bridge collection, which now features a range of colorful styles (featured throughout this story) that retail between $99 and $700. Previously, the collection was produced mostly in Thailand, where some of the pieces are still made.
“Lisa’s collection has always been for self-purchase and gifting,” Angela Hope, Ben Bridge’s vice president of merchandise, says. “We wanted to do something more bridal-focused, with softer tones, that will be in stores later this year.”
Cabochons in pastel hues are a hallmark of the line.
“They were the pieces I had originally intended for the collection,” Bridge says. “They’re really juicy and gemmy.”
In mid-May, on my trip across India with Ben Bridge, we visited the Trésor factory in Jaipur, a hub of the global gemstone trade, to see the building blocks of the collection—quite literally.
The temperature hovered around 110 degrees Fahrenheit when we walked into the company’s air-conditioned main office on the outskirts of the city center. Bordia’s father, Pushpendra Mookim, slipped into the back room and emerged carrying plastic bins and bags filled with raw gems including giant slabs of pale blue aquamarine, smooth hunks of royal blue lapis, and small boulders of pale green prehnite, Peruvian pink opal, and rust-colored citrine.
Dusty, heavy, and pale, the rocks would eventually be faceted upstairs by Trésor’s team of lapidaries. As we toured the upper floors of the building, we witnessed the cutters in action: three men sitting cross-legged on the floor in silence, each tackling a different aspect of the process.
“Our family have been jewelers for generations,” Bordia told our group. “My dad travels and buys raw materials, and everything is cut in-house. Every piece is made with heart. My dad hand-selects every stone. He’s passionate about jewelry; it’s all he thinks about.”
Bordia’s brother Chandram Mookim chimed in: “I call our dad CNN,” he joked. “Colored Stone News Network.”
It seemed fitting that of all the factories Lisa Bridge could have chosen to produce the collection that carries her name, she went with the “most trusted name” in colored stones. Like attracts like, as they say.
Top: Lisa Bridge round green tourmaline pendant necklace with star overlay in 14k yellow gold, $450; Ben Bridge Jeweler (all photos courtesy of Ben Bridge Jeweler)
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