The Abbey is not a luxury jeweler, in fact the Abbey doesn't even exist to sell jewelry.
For some reason, the greatest aspiration of many jewelry stores is to become a 'Luxury' jeweler; a jeweler of the stars, the rich and famous, people who know people. I see it everywhere. In store ads, brands, magazines, even the type of jewelry products being pushed to be consumed. There are all sorts of ranges of luxury jewelry out there: in watches you have a range from Gigantto to Rolex to Patek Philippe, and everything in between from every 'Luxury' purveyor in the world out there: Louis Vuitton, Prada, Mont Blanc, even Juicy Couture. I see the term popping up in the mall jewelers, big jewelers, even the small mom and pop jewelers. Luxury has become all consuming in our culture, and quite frankly it makes me feel queasy.
Our society has placed such a high level of importance on luxury that life for many have transferred the focus of their lives from living to acquiring, the more the luxurious the better. No longer is luxury the icing on the cake of life, the people who market and profit from it want a bowl of icing to be eaten three times a day, and they have the audacity to call it a balanced meal.
The Abbey is not a luxury jeweler. I did not create the Abbey to sell jewelry. That's right, I will repeat that again so it will echo forever and be ingrained within the very foundation of the soul of the Abbey: We are not a luxury jeweler and we are not here to sell jewelry.
The Abbey exists to give life. To create, to love, to capture within metal and stones the essence life. Love taught me the greatest virtue achievable in this life is compassion: in which the suffering of others drives and gives an active desire to alleviate it.
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