Hi, I'm Tim Bidermis, and you're listening to NPR's Book of the Day. Today, how a bejeweled egg led to the downfall of a successful family business. In the 1980s, Paul Kaczynski led his family's famed jewelry business. And during that time, he became obsessed with making the world's largest jeweled egg. Which he did, but it came at great expense to him and his family. The story of how it all came together and then unraveled is the subject of a new book, Kaczynski's Egg, a family story of love, loss, and obsession. It's by Serena Kaczynski, Paul's daughter, and she spoke about it with weekend edition guest host, Don Gagne. This message comes from WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive an up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart. Get WISE. You can download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. Tease and seize apply. This is iRootGlass. On This American Life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy, David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant turn. And it did take me a while to realize that it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right, because the monkey pressed the button. Rising stories every week. Wherever you get your podcasts. A famous jeweler in London had a wild dream to create the world's largest jeweled egg. Paul Kaczynski was already rich and successful when he became obsessed with one upping the legendary Fabergé eggs. He showed it off on a BBC talk show in 1990. The world's biggest golden egg. Paul brags that British craftsmanship can now compete on the world stage. There are great craftsmen here and what we're trying to do here is to show that they're still alive and kicking. The show host Terry Wooghan is dazzled by the egg along with the entire audience. Don't sell it in all that much of a hurry because it really is a beautiful piece of work. Thank you Paul. Paul Kaczynski. Paul Kaczynski's daughter Serena Kaczynski witnessed all of this as a child. She has written a memoir about how this fabulous golden egg brought about her family's downfall. She joins us from London. Serena, thank you for being here. Hi Don, great to be here. Okay, so first Serena, we need some background. The house of Kaczynski was this very high-end jewelry shop in London. Could you start your story among the watch and clockmakers of rural Poland? Yes, so I discovered that my great-great grandparents had in 1893 left their hometown of Grubow in Poland and traveled, made a pilgrimage I suppose, that many Eastern European Jews were making at that time to flee the pogroms. The plan was to go to America, but they stopped in London and that's where they got involved in the jewelry trade. Exactly, yes. My great-great-grandmother Leia had sewn a few heirlooms of jewelry into her skirts and that allowed them to buy the tools that was needed for Hirsch to begin working as a watchmaker and clockmaker. There's a passage early in the book where you call your ancestors. We figures from my family's past whose ingenuity, creativity and persistence carried them to this country and helped them succeed. Can you pick it up from there? Those traits were fossilized down the generations, but by the time it reached my father, the first generation born into wealth, it mutated into a corrosive ambition that consumed him. It's quite a realization for a daughter to have about her own father. It is indeed done. In the 80s and 90s, the House of Kaczynski was one of the premier jewelers in London. Can you just describe the kind of things they were making and selling? My grandfather, Joe, had really built the business up in the 60s and 70s and built a really strong name for the House of Kaczynski, making very almost avant-garde, chunky gold coral onyx. By the time my father took it over, he wanted to move into a different era. He wanted to outdo his father because by this point, his father, Joe Kaczynski, was a legend in the jewelry trade. He decided to go into making more elegant and dainty and feminine jewelry. That sort of did all right, but it wasn't ever going to rival the likes of Cartier or Bulgari. So, he realized he had to do something on a scale that no one else had ever attempted. He became obsessed with creating this egg. He was always obsessed with Faberge. Faberge had turned his family business into the world's first luxury brand. I think that's what my father saw as well as an opportunity to elevate the Kaczynski name, to make it not just renowned in Britain, but around the world. I need you to describe the egg. I understand you actually saw it once. I did, Don. I got into trouble, actually. The egg was obviously absolutely stunning. It's breathtaking. Not only is it actually officially the world's largest jeweled egg, it's also the world's largest collection of pink diamonds. So, I always sort of focus on the vital statistics, if you like, which is 15 kilograms of the finest 18-carat gold, about 20,000 of the world's rarest pink diamonds. It took 7,000 hours to assemble by a team of master jewelers. And in the case of your father's egg, doors would open to reveal an entire world inside the egg. Yes. It was like a miniature doll's house inside. And then that rotated and it turned into a sort of jeweled portrait library with beautiful blue enamel frames of all different sizes. But yes, so it made its debut in April 1990 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which I was allowed to stay up for the party, which was incredibly exciting. And I got a new frock and everything. How old were you at that time? At that point, 10. Okay. And there were lots of paparazzi outside because there was a minor royal in attendance. It was just so beautiful. And I sort of felt like I wanted to touch it. And then the security guard obviously saw me just as my sister was about to copy me. And it was all a bit dramatic. But I didn't really care because I touched the egg. He travels the world after that looking for a buyer. Yes. I mean, it had a very meteoric rise, the egg. It was everywhere, like a pop star kind of thing. And then all over the papers and the magazines, and then it went on tour. So it had to be strapped into a first class seat with its bodyguards on either side. So really it took up three seats in first class and its ticket was booked under the name Mr. Egg. It went to Tokyo, but no buyer was found there. And then it traveled on to New York actually, where my father sort of had it in mind that maybe Donald Trump might be the one to buy it. But no one was coming forward. And the sort of pressure from the bank was mounting because obviously, you know, my father had very much overreached himself in the making of it. What was the price tag? The price tag that was official was seven million. British pounds? Seven million pounds, yes. Amid this search for a buyer, the house of Kaczynski collapsed. Yes, exactly. A year later, the business was sold. A hundred years of jewelry heritage gone. And then obviously, you know, he had his affair with someone who was the sales assistant of the Pink Diamond dealers. So also someone connected to the egg. So, you know, very much in my mother's eyes, the egg was the source of all ill and evil and suffering and sorrow that our family went through. And then my dad died a decade later in March, 2002 days after his fiftieth birthday tragically in a car crash in Spain. The egg disappeared without spoiling the end of the book. Give us a sense of what happened to this object. My father's Australian business partner is the Argyle Diamond Mine, who had provided all the incredible amount of Pink Diamonds. I think Argyle had accepted that maybe it would never be sold. You know, no one really knew what to do with it. It was so overexposed. They basically locked it away in a bonded warehouse on the other side of the world. And then there was a billionaire in Japan who decided that he wanted something that there was only one of in the whole world. So, you know, Mr. Egg was back on a plane again and it sold. The unsellable egg had sold. It has an owner. The chapter is closed. Not the egg. Indeed. Serena Kaczynski's memoir, Kaczynski's Egg is out this week. Thank you. Thank you, Don.
