Kentshire

Kentshire

Benson Imberman opened the United States Silver Company in midtown Manhattan in 1940, and three generations of his family have run what is now Kentshire ever since. The business pivoted from silver to English and European antique furniture and, by the 1980s, to the fine antique and estate jewelry that eventually became its focus, sold through a standing boutique inside Bergdorf Goodman since 1988.

Jewelry

Kentshire spent decades as a furniture dealer before jewelry became the core of the business, and that dealer's eye for authenticity carries over directly: these are pieces chosen the way you would vet a piece of period furniture, for maker, era and condition. The house's Bergdorf Goodman salon has anchored that jewelry business since 1988.

More Jewelry

Siblings Carrie and Matthew Imberman took over as the family's third generation in 2004, arriving from fashion and the contemporary art world respectively rather than from the antiques trade itself. That outside perspective shows up in how this second group is edited, still period jewelry but read with a more current eye than a typical estate case.

Our honest take

What makes Kentshire worth paying attention to is the paper trail: a family business that has been vetting antique and estate pieces since 1940 has seen enough real versus fake to make its edit trustworthy in a category full of vague provenance claims. It is not the place to go for anything new, but it was never trying to be.