Stephen Webster: the outlaw rock star of Britain’s fine jewellery industry

Wednesday lunchtime at The Colony Grill Room in Mayfair’s Beaumont hotel and Stephen Webster MBE, 59, is holding court in a leather booth. His short-sleeve polo knit exposes half of a tattoo that says ‘Bez Sozhaleniy’ (‘no regrets’ in Russian), and he wears a Japanese kabuki mask ring on his finger. Webster has a reputation for being the outlaw rock star of Britain’s fine jewellery industry and his blue ear studs, perma-tanned skin and pearly whites make him every inch the rugged maverick — just as capable of taking you down a gem mine as entertaining royalty.

And he has done plenty of both during his illustrious career, which started at Medway College of Design in Kent, grafting his way through Hatton Garden before being offered a unique job opportunity in Canada’s Rocky Mountain resort town of Banff (more on which later) that would bring him creative independence. As Webster’s star rose he would take on celebrity clients as diverse as jewellery doyenne Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, Ozzy Osbourne, Steven Tyler, Sir Elton John, and Pink and Christina Aguilera at the height of ‘Lady Marmalade’ fame — his technical prowess paired with a fusion of the baroque, rock ’n’ roll and punk. And yet in spite of his anti-establishment oeuvre, Webster would also become creative director and later chairman of Garrard & Co, warrant holder to the Prince of Wales.

‘A client once said, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space,”’ chuckles Webster in his estuary accent as his plate of pork belly hits the table. ‘I said, “That is the best mantra I’ve ever heard,” because that’s exactly how I feel.’ He has racked up five million BA air miles and has homes in London and Miami in addition to his refuge on the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover. ‘You couldn’t get more near the edge,’ he chuckles. ‘You don’t really need to travel to be a jeweller but if you’re interested in the materials and meeting with clients then you’ve got to get up off the bench and go somewhere.’

This pioneering spirit is what initially spirited him to the wilds of Alberta with his first wife-to-be, Kathy, to work for the non-conformist ‘rock hound’ Mike Ridding. ‘He was an adventurer, but his real passion was minerals,’ Webster says of his boss, who instilled his love of gemstones. ‘He would go off to Afghanistan, Pakistan, all over Brazil, Africa… and was basically selling rocks and crude bits of jewellery, so he wanted to find a really good jeweller.’ By this stage Webster had his full British apprenticeship training and made a good go of it for three-plus years in Canada in spite of the mental and physical fallout he would suffer from the isolation.

‘I had a homesickness that became so extreme it went into a depression, which led to an eating disorder,’ he says of his time in Canada. He weighed eight stone at his leanest. ‘In the Eighties in Canada, anorexia was a word that was sort of a bit like Aids. No one really knew what it was. A guy who didn’t eat was a bit weird. But for me it was awful because basically you build up to a panic attack three times a day. I used to get antidepressant tablets and they were crap — they made my eyeballs shake. So you sort of spiral. But you can also learn to live with an eating disorder. Which I did.’

Looking around the dining room he adds: ‘You can spot [sufferers] a mile off, and I feel for them because it’s such a lonely, difficult thing to share. But nowadays there’s a lot more openness about it.’ As for his own recovery? ‘I think I was getting bored. I’d done it so long. I’d been back in England and I had no real reason other than an eating disorder to be depressed any more. My business was on the verge of taking off, and I think I found that bigger than the problem.’

At this time he met his second wife, Anastasia (Assia), a beautiful, blonde Russian who had worked for Christie’s and is now PR director of Stephen Webster. One night she cooked Webster, a 14-year vegetarian, beef stroganoff: ‘I thought, “Oh, f***! I really fancy this woman. I can’t tell her I’m fussy with food, that’s going to be shit.” Russians had no concept then of being fussy with food. Anorexia almost did not exist in Russia. Food was such a basic thing.’ Taking a sip of his latte he adds: ‘I was ready to give up, and then what happens is you gradually eat normally.’

Webster’s next stop with Ridding was California and his first celebrity client, Elizabeth Taylor. One day she stopped by their Silverhorn store in Santa Barbara and left with a lavender chalcedony ring, later commissioning a pair of matching earrings and a bracelet, although Webster laments that he never met her.

Ten years later, back in London, he almost missed his second date with diva destiny. A friend of his who manages Radiohead took his catalogue over to Madonna’s house with his details attached. The next day Webster left for the States for three weeks. His mobile phone, as it turns out, was not chargeable overseas. He returned to missed calls from Madonna’s assistant. He apologised profusely and made a date for the following day.

‘I had two gin and tonics before I went round because I was going to meet what was definitely the most famous woman on the planet,’ he recalls. ‘I was waiting in the entrance hallway and I could smell burning and see wisps of smoke coming up from downstairs and out of that walked Madonna. I thought, “Wow! That’s how Madonna enters a room!” And she went, “I’ve just burnt the toast.” That was an icebreaker.’ The Material Girl bought one of his now signature Crystal Haze rings.

‘Then some time later I was in a Chinese takeaway in Deal,’ he says. ‘I ordered a number 28 and opened the Daily Mirror. First page inside was a picture of Madonna and Guy Ritchie. The first picture of these two ever taken together.’ She was holding a champagne glass, wearing his ring. ‘It sort of changed my life because everybody wanted to know who made that ring,’ he adds of the calls from American Vogue and Tory Burch that followed. He later made the famous couple’s wedding rings.

So just how did a rogue figure known for skull and snake motifs end up at the creative helm of a 283-year-old jeweller? ‘The first British shop that ever gave me a show was Garrard in 1996 and that was huge because I never felt part of an establishment because my path had gone differently. But the guy who was then running Garrard [Richard Jarvis] loved what I did: that it was beautifully made in England but was not traditional. Back then it was about understanding what Garrard needed to remain relevant.’

In fact his current business partner at Stephen Webster, billionaire Ron Burkle, now also owns Garrard, where Webster sits on the board and shares its Albemarle Street workshop with his own staff of 45. And when it comes to future-proofing his business, Webster has a two-pronged approach. His eldest daughter, Amy, who has recently returned to London from an advertising agency in Berlin, is his latest recruit. ‘Millennials are going to drive luxury, and my 27-year-old is super creative; although not a jeweller, she already knows how to talk to them. His youngest with Assia, Nika, 19, is studying Mandarin in Edinburgh. ‘She’s got English, Russian, Mandarin and Spanish,’ he smiles proudly. ‘We’ll find a use for her.’

As for the industry at large? In 2012 he teamed up with the British Fashion Council to establish the Rock Vault jewellery design mentoring programme that has nurtured the likes of Fernando Jorge and Jordan Askill. He took British duo Yunus & Eliza to the Couture jewellery show in Las Vegas where they met an HBO contact and subsequently became the licence holders for Game of Thrones jewellery. Proving he has an eye on the next generation, he also collaborated with skater Blondey McCoy, having known him through his father since he was 14. And each January Webster still makes the pilgrimage to Tucson, Arizona, to the world’s biggest raw-materials show to haggle over oil drums of Peruvian pink opal or dinosaur fossils. ‘It’s a bit like buying a whole fish as opposed to the fillet,’ he smiles.

What Webster is currently most excited about is moving into a luxury lifestyle sphere. ‘Tools for the home,’ he beams, scrolling through pictures of his Beasts series of knives and calving instruments along with bespoke enamel and engraved silver water jugs designed for one client’s Florida home. ‘Most of the really old jewellery houses like Cartier and Fabergé did things for the table: sometimes it’s difficult for people to keep buying jewellery. And now everybody is a chef.’

He isn’t out of his element: Webster also has his hands in the hospitality industry as an investor in April Bloomfield’s (of NY’s Spotted Pig fame) LA restaurant Hearth & the Hound with DJ friend Pete Tong. And this is not Webster’s first foray into food: for seven years he was in business with his mate Mark Hix. ‘We were really drunk one night and he asked me to invest in this new restaurant venture. I said yes, and my wife went crazy,’ he says of Assia’s reaction. ‘She says, and this is such a great line: “You don’t even like f***ing food.”’ Webster’s response: ‘Well, he does!’