Brand history

She opens the plush box and… her cheeks flush with surprise and unhidden delight: sparkling inside are gemstones woven into a gold necklace of indescribable beauty. On her delicate neck, this jewellery symbolises more than just attention: it is the love of her chosen one and a vow of devotion…

When the Belgrade jeweller Andreja Andrejević had a son, Kosta, he rejoiced at the thought that one day he would have someone to pass his art and jewellery workshop onto. Before the Second World War, he himself had been introduced to the secrets of jewellery-making by the famous Stojan Oreščanin, one of the most prominent jewellers in the Balkans at the time. Kosta's first questions and his father's answers were: how love for the craft and honesty are more important than profit, how beauty is forged and cut, and how it demands the whole person, the whole family and an entire life. Kosta's first attempts, followed by several decades of total dedication, meant the craft was mastered. "To make my father proud! So the honour of our name is never erased!" At number 130 in Belgrade's famous street, Bulevar kralja Aleksandra, stands the jewellery shop above which the name "Andrejević" has been shining for 80 years.

Its current owner, the jeweller Kosta Andrejević, is both a traditionalist and a modern man: into the "Andrejević art" he brought his own inventiveness, following global creative trends and new technologies, as well as the knowledge gained in the Italian city of Vicenza, the European branch of the world's most prestigious school at the Gemological Institute of America, GIA. The tradition continues so that the third generation, grandchildren Andreja and Aleksandar, both GIA gem and diamond graduate experts, are now involved in the family jewellery business. We would know little of our past were it not for man's need to forge jewellery and present it to a woman. Jewellery was used to address the gods; over gemstones, kisses were given and heads were lost… There is no fairy tale in which goodness and love are not rewarded with jewels… Those who pass by the display window bearing the "AK" sign on Belgrade's largest boulevard pause, drawn into a sparkling fairy world, hardly aware of the magic. 



Text by Lidija Kovač