Greek Jewelry Shop creations now available at the Louvre

It a great honor and pleasure for us, the proprietors at Greek Jewelry Shop, to announce that our Greek jewelry designs are now available to the public in Paris via the official gift shop at the Louvre! The family tradition of Vaphiadis Jewelry) dates back 4 generations to 1928 in Asia Minor, previously a highly populated area by Greeks quite acclaimed in the fields of artisanship and commerce.

Our history and tradition

In the last half century the Vaphiadis family have pioneered in developing prototypes and inspired adaptations of numerous ancient ancient works of art and museum pieces related to classical Greek, Minoan, Mycenean, Etruscan and Byzantine periods. The efforts and consistency in creating fine reproductions of this ancient treasures with due respect to the cultural domains involved have led to numerous successes and to establishing the Vaphiadis family name as one of the pioneers in the field of ancient jewelry reproductions.

Amongst the most well known designs are the 1964 dolphin ring, originally a Minoan symbol, adapted from Minoan wall-paintings by Lefteris Vaphiadis, becoming one of the most recognized and most copied ring designs of this century world-wide.

Clients

Amongst our clientèle, we have been very proud over the years to have served esteemed customers such as several heads of State on official visits to Greece, a long list of European and American movie-stars and a recent Whitehouse first lady. (We would rather not mention names - as such an endorsement is a little tacky without their expressed consent)

Associations

Since 2005, 'Greek Jewelry Shop' collection by Vaphiadis has been proudly featured by organisations and institutes around world such as the city of Luxembourg museum, the Getty Villa museum (California) and has associated itself via sponsorship with various Hellenic artistic causes such as the L.A. Greek Film festival.

From April 2010, part of our collection will also be available at the The Louvre museum in Paris, France via the highly esteemed government-run establishment RMN (The association of National [French] Museums). Such an association and partnership has been a great honor for a family business such as ours that has been developed with much love and commitment to the beauty of ancient works of art, which has now found a new home under what is considered as Europe's most important historical museum.

The collection featured at the Louvre constitutes a 'time-capsule' for several almost extinct ancient aesthetics and processes in jewelry-making which are still manufactured today with many of the same methods used by our ancestors. The selection of designs are mainly of the Hellenistic and Minoan epocs.