Prounis Jewelry was founded by designer Jean Prounis in homage to her ancestry. Her great-grandfather, Otto Prounis, was the co-proprietor of the Versailles, a celebrated 1940s nightclub across from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Versailles was known for its fashionable crowd—Texas Guinan, Perry Como, and Dean Martin among them—and performers like chanteuse Edith Piaf, who made her US debut there in 1949. The club was resplendent with the era’s finery of custom silver, sage green silk, embroidered linens, and hand-gouched menus.
A legacy of fine objects and art deco artifacts made its way into the Prounis family home where Jean, as a child, grew up among them. In addition to the Versailles archive, Jean’s grandfather, an ardent bibliophile, kept a collection of tomes on ancient Greco-Roman art and antiquities. Even before she could read, Jean shared in her grandfather’s passion for beauty in objects.
To carry on the family tradition, Prounis made its debut in 2017 with a collection of hand-wrought jewelry made from recycled 22-karat gold set with precious and semi-precious gems. Each piece is produced using ancient goldsmithing techniques and responsibly-sourced materials. Through a signature aesthetic, Prounis Jewelry combines Jean’s love of antiquities and a family legacy of creating treasured memories and objects.
