A Letter from Germany

It’s been an exciting few weeks in Germany for Naomi Sarna. She exhibited at the Gemworld Munich Fair (aka. the Munich Show) in late October, visited gem carvers in Idar-Oberstein and is generally enjoying her time in Europe.

“From the minute Christoph Keilmann, the Munich show organizer, invited me to attend Gemworld, I was thrilled to be heading to Germany to showcase my jewelry and art,” says Naomi Sarna. “Christoph was a wonderful support before and during the show assisting with the booth and introducing us to Birgit Kuhn who does marketing for the show.”

Thanks to Kuhn’s efforts a few of Sarna’s pieces were featured on the show’s Instagram page and her jewelry was also featured in Blickpunkt Juwelier, a German publication about jewelry.

It was a tremendous amount of work to get ready for Gemworld, but the results were worth it. “The booth was fabulous. When I first saw it, all I could say was ‘wow’,” comments Sarna. “The booth was custom designed by Tom Boser, Higher-Visions, and it was sensational. They took an image of my jewelry and blew it up so that it took over the entire back wall of the booth.”

Sarna’s booth was next door to world-renowned carver Michael Peuster and acclaimed stone faceter Viktor Tuzlukov was also nearby. “It was thrilling to be in a show with people of such magnitude in the industry,” Sarna remarks.

Sarna was joined in the booth by Sarah Schechter, Lisa Elser, and Francesca Gatterburg. They welcomed many interested buyers at the booth as well as the numerous bloggers and influencers who stopped by. There was even a visit from Bettina Reiter, German Gemstone Queen 2018/2021. “They loved my work and posted pictures of my pieces. It was very gratifying,” says Sarna.

> Story continues below the photo gallery.

Fifth-generation master gem carver Patrick Dreher was also at the show and invited Sarna to visit him in Idar-Oberstein, an important and innovative global center of gemstone faceting and carving. When she got to Idar-Oberstein, Dreher introduced Sarna to Erwin Pauly, touted as the world’s greatest living cameo carver, he carves cameos from layered agate. Sarna had a marvelous lunch with Pauly and his wife, Erna, who cooked up a batch of potato dumplings with mustard for the occasion.

Sarna met with a number of other carvers and faceters and plans to return to Idar-Oberstein to meet more of the greats in the field, before coming back to New York. And she’s already looking forward to her next trip to Germany in the very near future.

By Amber Michelle

Photo credits: Lisa Elser and Sarah Schechter