PROUNIS Jewelry: A Family Legacy in 22K Gold

I see PROUNIS jewelry as a family story carried through objects. I trace the brand to designer Jean Prounis and the memory of Jean’s great-grandfather Otto Prounis, co-owner of New York’s Palace of Versailles club in the 1940s. I read the club’s visual language through its fashionable crowd, including Texas Guinan, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Edith Piaf, whose American debut took place there in 1949. I also see the same glittering era in the club’s custom silverware, sage-green silk, embroidered linen, and handmade menus.

I also find the family home important to the story. I understand Jean’s childhood as one surrounded by decorative art and objects, with a grandfather who collected books on Greek and Roman art and antiquities. I picture that early attraction to beautiful things continuing in the brand’s antiquity-inspired jewelry.

I place PROUNIS’s first appearance in 2017, with handmade pieces in recycled 22K gold set with precious and semiprecious stones. I understand every piece as made with ancient goldsmithing techniques and responsibly sourced materials. I read the signature aesthetic as a meeting point between Jean’s love of antiquities and a family tradition of creating treasured memories and objects. I explore the PROUNIS jewelry collections through the materials and forms behind that language.