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.

About
Upcoming Exhibitions
BGC Gallery will resume its exhibition programming this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.
Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

About
28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell