What defines something as precious? For some people, it’s a clutch of coloured stones, each rare and exquisite in themselves, combined to make the most dazzling piece of fine jewellery. The Incas venerated gold – great shiny hoards of which they would accumulate and worship. A small child might see things otherwise: what could be more precious than a comfort blanket, well-worn over the years but considered more dear with every passing day?
For The Art of Fashion’s second jewellery special, I wanted to take that theme of the precious and explore it from many points of view. For the artists working with jewellery houses to create new work, there is value in the beauty of the hand-crafted. The Paris-based Elie Top makes jewellery that has a talismanic quality – combining astrological signs, mystical themes and mechanical innovation to shield the wearer in an armour of good vibes. Judy Blame, the fashion stylist, jewellery designer and artist who died earlier this year, created treasures from the ephemera of the everyday – bottle tops, safety pins and discarded bits of plastic featured often in his work. The pieces are materially inexpensive, but his work, especially since his death, is now invested with another value altogether – that of being priceless.
And then there are the heirloom pieces, the sparklers and gemstones that simply dazzle with their beauty. The issue closes with a look at the celebrities who have fallen under the spell of certain jewellers, first as friends, and then as clients. As our pal Gollum would remind us in The Lord of the Rings, sometimes precious means that you just have to get your hands on it.
Jo Ellison, Fashion Editor, FT
‘It’s like painting with light,’ says 59-year-old Albert Boghossian, chief executive of his namesake family-owned (and now sixth-generation) jewellery company. The piece he holds is an exquisitely intricate cuff, more than an inch wide, covered in 442 tiny cabochon pearls and 2,042 white and rare coloured diamonds. Boghossian bends the cuff to show its surprising flexibility and the stones twinkle under the light. Like many of their creations, this is no ordinary piece of jewellery: the Boghossian Manuscript Coloured Diamond Bracelet represents a 17-year journey – 15 years to source the stones, and two to assemble it in Boghossian workshops around the globe.
“I started to buy these coloured diamonds with no clear idea in mind, I just knew I wanted to build something,” says Boghossian who works closely with the design team. “I was collecting smaller stones for their beauty and rarity in colour – they are of very fine hues, almost 80 per cent on the cuff are extremely rare. Then we fell across a collection of coloured diamonds good enough for us to create a truly special piece.”
Boghossian’s designers originally intended to create a necklace, but after the first few sketches there was a unanimous decision to use the stones for a bracelet. “We are inspired by many unusual things,” says Boghossian, “and one such things is miniatures. Our creative director Edmond Chin came across an old prayer book.”
The prayer book in question is a 15th-century German text, the Waldburg-Gebetbuch, housed in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. “Edmond thought how can we bring this into the future with a modern interpretation? We started to assemble the coloured diamonds into tiny flower motifs.” Boghossian shows one of the original sketches. “The base of the bracelet is drawn as white diamonds. We used them like a mesh to carry the coloured stones, grouping it all together, searching for the perfect balance with the colours to create harmony.”
An image of the book shows colourful florals and twisted green vines interweaving on the page. “Those tiny tendrils of vine you see,” Boghossian points, “we reinterpreted them and recreated them with these diamonds. But what makes this bracelet special is the double layer.” Turning the cuff over he reveals an underside covered in white diamonds, an effect not dissimilar to seeing the underskirts of a couture gown. “The diamonds soften the touch to the hand,” Boghossian explains. “Because here we have this mesh and assemblage, we needed to weave diamonds underneath to make it soft. You can see barely any metal at all.”
Boghossian is renowned for innovating ways to set stones, being masters of the “inlay” where one stone is set into another and, now, “kissing”, where stones are held by a counterweight to give a metal-free setting. “We often have to wait for technology to catch up with us to create what we want,” says Boghossian.
The finished result includes pearls. “We thought the contrast between the coloured and white diamonds was not showing enough, so we disassembled the entire piece and used antique cabochon pearls. The pearls were a nightmare, incredibly difficult to set. It set us back another six months before we came to this final result. But we really just wanted to play with contrast, the shining of the cut stones and the matte of the pearls.”
The Boghossian Manuscript Coloured Diamond Bracelet will be auctioned at Christie’s in Hong Kong on the 29 May, with a guide price of £1.5m to £2.5m. The cuff is going on its own journey, being shown around Asia, before its sale. “At the end of the day I call it magic, that’s what it is all about, making magic,” says Boghossian as he places the cuff back in its velvet-lined box. FMJ
In recent months jewellery designers have turned the mirror on themselves as the face becomes the artist’s muse. Perhaps the interweaving lines of Maison Margiela’s minimalist profile cuff will hold your gaze? Those seeking designs of a more experimental nature may prefer the brushed yellow gold earrings from JW Anderson, or a Surrealist “portrait” ring – with ruby lips and bug-like peridot eyes – by Delfina Delettrez.
Some of the most covetable profile pieces on the market are by the Berlin-based jeweller Nina Kastens. Having launched her synonymous label in 2014, the designer has since had to expand and restock her cute and quirky “face collection” made from 18k gold and opal pearl. “Someone just told me that my face earrings look like they are blowing kisses. I guess we like this trend because everybody can see someone or something different,” says Kastens. “Museums are always a great source of inspiration for me and the paintings and sculptures of Picasso and Jean Arp.” However it’s not just art that is hidden within the interiors of museums that gives Kastens her creative flair: “This time I was inspired also by young artists from Instagram.”
London-based Anissa Kermiche, who also makes a feature of faces, finds her ideas in the most unusual of places. Her gold Paniers Dorés earrings were inspired by a dinner table strewn with leftover fortune cookies. For her new collection she paired up with Korean-born, London-based fashion designer Rejina Pyo, known for her playful take on shape and volume, to help draw inspiration from sculptures by the likes of Alexander Calder. “Faces surround us everyday and yet we hardly ever register them,” says Kermiche of her Grande Tête-à-Tête earrings. “This particular face motif I designed after seeing a sculpture in the window of a gallery in Place des Vosges, in Paris; I just couldn’t get the image out of my head and felt the need to design a piece to remember it.” Kermiche recognises a mischievous streak within her work, “It is a beautiful mirror image, a mise en abyme of sorts which I love to play with in my designs.”
Brazilian designer and artist Paula Vilas launched her namesake brand in 2016. “I want my designs to be a conversation starter between people,” she says of her art-inspired pieces. “I find inspiration in the feminine forms and the art scene of the Modernists, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. I am interested in building and then deconstructing the female forms.”
Her new collection, Vilas, which incorporates faces in many forms, focuses on the artists André Breton and Paul Klee. “What I like the most about the Surrealism touch in everyday adornment is that you can subvert it to create a peculiar scene that will arouse curiosity. Also, it’s a reminder that life is not supposed to be boring or follow a straight path. I thought a lot about how to simplify bold and organic forms when I started designing the face motifs,” adds Vilas. “It was a search for deconstruction and my goal was to be able to create strong pieces only with lines…”
For Northern Ireland-based Grainne Morton, a self-proclaimed jewellery “collector”, the Surrealists were the perfect pairing for her mismatch aesthetic: her wonky-eyed and melting faces are created from found objects and antique precious metals. “I started using antique glass eyes a few years back when I came across my first miniature pair and then the designs grew from there.”
Of her inspiration Morton says: “I have had an affinity with the Surrealists since studying the period in art class back at school.” Recently she looked through the archive of Schiaparelli for inspiration. “It was bittersweet,” says Morton. “I have major regret not seeing Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli which was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2003.”
For the jeweller Satta Matturi, who lives between Botswana and London, creativity is born from the studies of her rich cultural heritage. Matturi’s new collection “artful indulgence” drew upon graphic African masks: “African masks and masquerades are both distinctive and synonymous with West Africa. Specific mask designs, such as the ‘Nomoli’ and ‘Bundu’ are unique to Sierra Leone, while the tribal Ogoni masks, are similarly well known in Nigeria.”
Says Matturi: “I have always found them fascinating having had the opportunity to see them worn in action as part of a masquerade as a little girl growing up in West Africa. Many people would think of them as ugly and with strong, harsh features, but I’ve always found beauty in them, maybe due to their deep spiritual and divine importance within the culture and people. Designing a mask which incorporated precious stones was very special for me; putting a modern twist to a traditional, spiritual and ceremonial piece.” Matturi’s signature “Nomoli Totem” earrings are made with 338 small, round brilliant cut diamonds with a total weight of 2 carats.
It seems we can’t get enough of faces, Natalie Kingham buying director at Matchesfashion.com says: “JW Anderson’s ‘Moon Face’ earrings have been very popular with the customer we call ‘the curator’. This woman is very engaged with craftsmanship and the arts and enjoys the aesthetics of design. Faces have also been present across ready-to-wear collections, from Acne and La DoubleJ to Isabel Marant. Our customers like a point of difference and styles that uplift your mood.”
For Matturi our obsession with the face motif is a little closer to home, “increasingly in jewellery we are seeing a huge depiction of ‘what makes you and/or me’ … possibly driven by the huge changes we have seen in the world. My mother always used to say to us, ‘You must strive to learn, you must work hard, you must enrich your lives, you must travel the world and conquer it too; but never forget where you came from!’”