Katherine Purcell, joint managing director of Wartski, is
a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, a
fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and chairman of the
Society of Jewellery Historians. She specializes in French
nineteenth-century jewelry and works of art. She has written a number of articles for The Antique Collector, Apollo, and The Magazine Antiques on subjects
including the Parisian jewelry firm Falize, the master of Art Nouveau René
Lalique, and the influence of Japanese art on Western jewelry and goldsmiths’
work. She has contributed to the books Master Jewellers (Thames and Hudson,
1990), Dictionnaire International du Bijou (Regard, 1998), and Bejewelled by
Tiffany, 1837–1987 (Yale, 2006), focusing on Tiffany and Paris. Her definitive
study Falize: A Dynasty of Jewelers was published in 1999 by Thames and
Hudson and her translation of Henri Vever’s three-volume French Jewelry of
the Nineteenth Century was printed in 2001. Among the exhibitions Purcell
has curated for Wartski are French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century (2001),
Fabergé and the Russian Jewellers (2006), Japonisme from Falize to Fabergé
(2011), and Fabergé—A Private Collection (2012). She is currently organizing an
exhibition entitled From Function to Fantasy: The Brooch, which will take place
at Wartski in October 2025 and marks the firm’s 160th anniversary.

Katherine Purcell
Outstanding Dealer