A Jewelmaker\'s History

1. An Offshore Enterprise
Dennis Smith was born in Vancouver Canada in 1948 and raised in the Northern Rockies
of Alberta, not far from Canada’s now famous diamond fields. After being frost bitten in
Grand Cache he moved to the Cayman Islands in 1967 where he established a gemcutting
and jewellery making business.
The Cayman Islands were still “the Islands that Time Forgot.” Caymanians were mostly
seafarers and turtle fishermen who often spent years away at sea. Their industrious
womenfolk raised the children and ran local businesses. But the quite islands were
stirring with the promise of economic expansion driven by tax-free offshore banking and
free port trading. Dennis was about to catch a very big wave.
In 1968 he made the first deep water Black Coral dive down the forbidding Cayman
Wall. This precious gemstone accelerated his jewellery business. By the mid 70s he was
the 4th largest employer in Cayman. He stopped coral diving in 1976 but his diving
friends had been selling him their shipwreck treasures since 1969. These previously
unknown and exciting lost rarities added another unique dimension of adventure to his
collections that soon expanded to include carefully researched archeologically recovered
Roman and Greek antiquities.
His diamond store caught the economic recovery of 1976 and the ensuing demand for
private hard assets investments opened up an opportunity for offshore brokerage trading
in loose and certificate diamonds. Dennis quickly added bullion dealing, exceptional
gemstones and museum quality antiquities to his package of offshore private client
portfolio services.
In addition to his 2 active retail stores, jewellery manufacturing and brokerage business
Dennis had numerous jewellery and diamond subcontractors in the US and Europe. He
spent almost as much time traveling as he did in Cayman. By the 1980s not only were his
businesses thriving but also a coterie of Smith trained alumni had opened a slew of
vibrant retail designer stores and creative workshops. Caymans creative jewellery cluster
employing about 25% of the working population had reached its critical mass.
In 1982 the government imposed a 10% duty on loose goods and semi-manufactured
jewellery. Dennis closed his brokerage business, redesigned his collections to feature the
still duty free doubloons and antiquities and moved his jewellery manufacturing business
to the Miami jewellery district. There he discovered a gold mine of talented master
jewellers who elevated his creative concepts to a world-class level.
With this talent pool at his back his developed the world famous Smiths of Cayman
collections that were featured prominently in European society magazines. His ultra-
exclusive Metamorphosis collection emerged in 1992, he took that collection private in
1996.