The house

It traded as Joyería y Relojería Roberto Ramírez R., at Avenida Caracas No. 59-60 in Chapinero: gold work in 18 karat set with emeralds, repairs to jewellery and watches, and fine watches sold over the counter — the whole trade printed in red on the paper bags the shop wrapped its work in.

That bag is where this house takes its colours from: red ink on bone paper, and most of the sheet left empty.

Emeralds — a Ramírez tradition. Founded by Roberto Ramírez Rendón · Bogotá, 1942

Several of the emerald dealers working in Bogotá today came out of that business. The original shops are gone. What remains is the part that took longest to build: four generations of relationships with the cutters, dealers and gemologists working in and around the Emerald Trade Center district.

That is what this house runs on. The business is run from Medellín today, but the buying has not moved: stones are still selected in person, in Bogotá, one at a time, through the same relationships — looked at against the brief they were sought for, rather than bought as a parcel and sorted afterwards. When a piece is to be made, it is made by the family workshop in Bogotá.

What we have added is documentation. A stone bought over a counter in Bogotá typically travels with nothing: no report, no measurements, no record of where it came from or what it cost. We describe what a stone is, name the laboratory that examined it, photograph it without retouching, and let the buyer inspect it before deciding. That gap is the reason this exists.