Emilie Jean is a dealer of antique ethnic jewelry and textiles. The East became her lodestar at age eleven on her first trip to Morocco with her father who had lived there in the late sixties and early seventies. It was on this trip that she acquired her first tribal piece—a silver Berber bangle she traded for a Swatch watch in a tent in the Sahara desert. She studied history of art and anthropology at university but left before completing her degree to work for Sotheby’s in the African & Oceanic, Pre-Columbian and Native American Art departments. While she was working there a collection of Navajo and Zuni jewelry belonging to Millicent Rogers was consigned to auction, inspiring her to move to Florence, Italy to formally apprentice with a metal-smith. She then returned to New York to work as a bench-jeweler for cult jewelry designer and sculptress Gabriella Kiss who encouraged her passion for ethnographica and her eventual move to India. Emilie lived in India for two years working for the Kasliwal family at The Gem Palace in Jaipur and spending the rest of the time in Delhi, traveling around the country and to Nepal. While there she began to seriously collect vintage and antique ethnic jewelry and textiles from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Nagaland, Sindh, and Waziristan. Today her collection includes jewelry and textiles from the Indian subcontinent as well as Central Asia, West Africa, East Africa and the Middle East. Emilie dealt privatly for the past three years until recently opening a shop at 206 East Sixth Street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue in New York City.