our teAm
Hector SnoWman
Chairman
Hector became chairman of Wartski in 2023, following the sudden passing of his father Nicholas. Like his late father, Hector Snowman continues to support the firm’s academic projects and the individual areas of expertise of its specialists, continuing the tradition set by his grandfather Kenneth Snowman and great grandfather Emanuel.
Katherine PuRcell
Managing Director
Katherine is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and Chairman of the Society of Jewellery Historians. She specialises in French nineteenth century jewellery and works of art. Her definitive study Falize: A Dynasty of Jewellers was published in 1999 by Thames & Hudson, followed shortly after by her translation of Henri Vever’s three-volume French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century in 2001. She has also written articles on subjects including the work of René Lalique and the influence of Japanese art on Western jewellery and goldsmiths’ work, as well as providing chapters for Master Jewellers (1990), the Dictionnaire International du Bijou (1998) and Bejewelled by Tiffany, 1837-1989 (2006). Amongst the exhibitions Katherine has curated for Wartski are ‘French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century’ (2001), ‘Fabergé and the Russian Jewellers’ (2006), ‘Japonisme from Falize to Fabergé’ (2011) and the most recent ‘From Function to Fantasy, The Brooch’ (2025), which celebrated our 160th anniversary.
Kieran McCarthy
Managing Director
Kieran is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Gemmological Association. He is a member of the advisory board of the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg and has widely published and lectured on the Imperial Russian Goldsmith’s work. In 2010, he curated the exhibition The Last Flowering of Court Art: A Russian Private Collection of Fabergé. Kieran was also instrumental in the republication of Dame Joan-Evans, English Posies and Posy Rings by Wartski in 2012. In 2014, he revealed the existence of the lost Third Imperial Fabergé Easter Egg and exhibited it for the first time in 112 years. In 2017 he authored Fabergé in London, an in-depth study of Fabergé’s London branch and its customers. This led to his appointment as curator of the hugely successful exhibition devoted to the same subject entitled Fabergé, from Romance to Revolution, held at the Victoria & Albert Museum from November 2021 until April 2022, and coinciding with H.M. Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee.
Thomas HoLman
Director
Thomas is a specialist in engraved gems and jewellery design from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He curated the inaugural exhibition at 60 St James’s Street in 2019, entitled ‘Multum in Parvo: A Collection of Engraved Gems.’ It was our first dedicated selling exhibition and saw one collector queue for three days and nights to secure certain pieces. In 2022, he provided a chapter on the Arts and Crafts silversmith Frederick Partridge (1877-1945) to the catalogue published by the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon entitled ‘The Partridge Family of Barnstaple: Ethel Mairet, Fred Partridge and the Arts and Crafts Movement.’ He has lectured at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire and The Society of Jewellery Historians in London and will soon be delivering a paper for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford as part of their symposium, ‘Other Worlds: Symbolist Art in Europe and Beyond.’
GioVanni Massa
Gallery Assistant
Giovanni is a graduate gemmologist of the Gemmological Institute of America (GIA) and is responsible for overseeing our bespoke orders and customer repairs. He is interested in Italian goldsmithing of the nineteenth century, especially the work of Neapolitan master jeweller Giacinto Melillo. He holds an MSc from University College London in the technology and analysis of archaeological materials, writing his dissertation on metallic artefacts from Samdzong, Upper Mustang, Nepal from 450-650 CE. His study was subsequently published in the academic journal Archaeological Research in Asia (June 2019, Volume 18).