30 Years In Palm Beach February 18, 2001 – Posted in: Press
By STEPHANIE MURPHY
Published: February 18, 2001
Palm Beach Daily News
Peruvian Avenue didn’t exactly sparkle 30 years ago, a time when most of the island’s jewelers had strongholds on the more famous Worth Avenue. That didn’t stop Adele and Edward Kahn from buying a modest stucco building at 231 Peruvian Ave. for the House of Kahn, the oldest family-owned jewelry establishment in town.
Now their daughter, gemologist Tobina Kahn, runs the company, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in January. Reflecting recently on the couple’s prime retail gem – they also bought the building next door and have retail and professional tenants – Adele Kahn says the stories behind the stones have been as interesting as the diamonds, rubies and sapphires that crossed their threshold and departed again, sometimes on famous flesh.
As relayed to Kahn, an Arab sheik who gambled recklessly in Monte Carlo lost $3 million in a short evening. The sultan had given three of his wives elaborate diamond bracelets with a detachable starburst that could be worn separately as a brooch – each bangle worth a million bucks.
“He had to pull the bracelets off his wives’ arms to pay the debt, because no one would buy the wives,” joked Kahn, who later acquired one of the bracelets through a dealer.
Two dinner rings that had belonged to former Palm Beacher Jackie Levitz, each about 20 carats of yellow and white emerald-cut diamonds, entered the store’s inventory several months ago – but indicated nothing behind the dramatic disappearance of the widow of furniture magnate Ralph Levitz, who was reported missing in 1995, about a month after moving from the island to Vicksburg, Miss.
The House of Kahn’s most recent coup of intriguing estate jewelry dates to 1868, when Queen Isabel II of Spain handed down her jewels to her son, King Alfonso XII. He presented them to his daughter, Princess Maria Teresa Infanta de Espana, who married Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria. Their daughter, Princess Maria Baviera Bordon, married Prince Iraki-de Bagration of Georgia.
The youngest descendants of Queen Isabel II decided to sell some pieces, but not in Spain. Through a dealer in Europe, the Kahns acquired a $50,000 bracelet and a $22,000 ring, both featuring old-mine-cut Burmese rubies and cushion-cut diamonds set in gold.
A more contemporary piece stirs plenty of interest: a $300,000 copy of the Heart of the Ocean pendant that Asprey & Garrard made for Titanic singer Celine Dion, featuring 22.52 carats of diamonds and a 16-carat Kashmir sapphire.
Also Hollywood-inspired is an 18-karat gold manicure set that belonged to silver-screen siren Gloria Swanson.
House of Kahn has sold and auctioned gems from many notable estates, including those of actors Raymond Burr and Myrna Loy, broadcasting heiress Gloria Storer, and Corrine Warren, a regular at Mar-a-Lago when her friend, Marjorie Meriweather Post, hosted square dances.
This time last year, a California collector commissioned the sale of a ring featuring a 37-carat, cushion-cut yellow diamond set in platinum with several smaller diamonds – a $250,000 bauble that Kahn called “the largest diamond we’ve seen in Palm Beach for several years.” Naturally, she was mum on the name of the buyer.
Highlights of this season have included a Bulgari 50-carat, heart-shaped, carved emerald necklace, about $175,000, and a strand of 13- to 17-millimeter South Sea pearls, tagged at $28,000.
Adele Kahn enjoys designing jewelry, and her husband assists with sales at the main salon on Peruvian Avenue and their West Palm Beach salesroom, 625 S. Olive Ave.
Tobina Kahn does the buying through her office in Chicago, where she has been interviewed by CNN and The Wall Street Journal on jewels and investments. She returns to Palm Beach every other week.
“We’re really known for our signed pieces from the most coveted eras – Edwardian, Art Deco, Modern and Georgian,” Tobina Kahn said.
At their champagne anniversary party for clients and dealers, the shop was brilliantly ablaze with jewels by renowned makers such as Tiffany & Co., Boucheron and Van Cleef & Arpels, featuring designs from each jeweler’s most distinctive period.
“Even the wealthy want value, and many people buy diamonds as an investment, to keep in a safety deposit box, not to flaunt them,” Adele Kahn said. “Most of our business is confidential. People want discretion, so if someone here needs to sell their jewels, we take it out of town. In 30 years, we’ve done business on a handshake and our word; millions of dollars on a handshake.”
Gem dealer Donald Kaufman of Charles Kaufman Enterprises in Miami echoed her sentiments as he prepared to leave the salon after a meeting:
“A handshake is all you need with the right people,” said Kaufman, who has known the Kahns since boyhood and attended their wedding in Toronto more than 45 years ago. His father, Charles, began trading gems with Edward Kahn in Europe in the 1950s. Charles Kaufman had opened shop in the 1940s on 47th Street in New York, and his father, Abraham, began the family jewelry business in 1900 in the Bowery.
“Eddie was born in Europe and seemed to have an eye for rare and historic pieces,” Kaufman said. “He had knowledge and a gift for knowing style and antiquities – not just diamonds, but Alexandrites, rubies, tiaras and icons. A lot of what he bought had belonged to earls and dukes and duchesses.”
The Kahns and their daughter are unusually intuitive about the goods they buy, Kaufman said.
“House of Kahn is House of Kahn . . . I’ve been in Palm Beach 20 years, and they’ve been here longer than that . . . like an institution,” said designer Nelson Hernandez of Nelson Fine Jewels. He recently opened a new salon on the third floor of the Gucci Courtyard building at 256 Worth Ave.
Owning their own building for so long has paid off, Adele Kahn said, “because we don’t have the same overhead that some of the other merchants do.
“Peruvian was a desert when we bought here, but I fell in love with this building,” Adele Kahn said. “I would never sell this property; I’m much more sentimental than I was over our house.”
The Kahns sold their three-story oceanfront home at 224 S. Ocean Blvd. in spring 2000 for $3.75 million to Down By The Sea principal Gary Ross. The house is across Seaspray Avenue from the lot where Ross has moved sections of his 1928 Mizner mansion, L’Encantada.
The Kahns bought the Dutch Colonial house in 1978, but it already had a colorful past – originally built in 1924 for cough-drop heir William Luden, who traveled to Palm Beach for the winter by private railroad car from Pennsylvania. Tom McGinty, who once owned the Stardust and Desert Inn hotels in Las Vegas, and the Hotel Nacionale in Havana, owned the 10,000-square-foot home during the 1950s.