Kutchinsky’s Egg: A Family’s Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss

When Paul Kutchinsky, heir to a London jewelry dynasty, risked his fortune to create a massive bejeweled egg, the price of failure was his business, marriage, and legacy, according to this spellbinding debut investigation by his eldest daughter, journalist Serena Kutchinsky. The author’s great-great-grandfather Hersh, a watchmaker, fled antisemitic violence in Poland for London in 1893 and taught his trade to his son Moshe, who opened the first Kutchinsky jewelry shop. By 1986, Paul was helming the company. After his first collections “fell flat,” he sought to dream up “something spectacular” enough to “upstage” European competitors like Cartier and Bulgari and landed on “jeweled artworks” to rival Fabergé’s. The author traces the challenging, intricate construction of the first of these artworks, an egg the size of “a small child” that was encrusted with pink diamonds and encased in a gold shell that opened to reveal a diamond clock. The demanding process of making and attempting to profit off the egg—whose sky-high price (initially, £7 million) and persistent mechanical problems made it unsellable—sent Paul into a tailspin of drinking and drugging that broke up his marriage. Eventually, the company and the egg were seized by creditors. The author unearths the story with a journalist’s doggedness and a novelist’s flair for detail, bravely seeking answers to childhood mysteries many would leave unsolved. This is riveting. (Mar.)