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Our picks of the top five pieces of jewelry that were on show at the 27th edition of the invitation-only Biennale des Antiquaires art and antiques fair, which took place at the Grand Palais in Paris from September 11 to 21, 2014.
- Gold being Piaget’s metal of reference, this €409,000 18-carat pink gold necklace with imposing turquoise beads and marquise-cut diamonds featuring the “palace” motif (a traditional technique used by Piaget since 1966, where the upper part resembles an iridescent ribbon comparable to wild silk and the bottom is made from hundreds of interwoven links providing suppleness) required 400 work hours, testifying to the brand’s exquisite quality of gold craftsmanship and dedication to preserving this unique skill within the Manufacture.
- Cartier’s panther medallion on a magnificent platinum necklace set with blue sapphires, onyx and diamonds illustrates the meticulous art of micro-mosaics, a centuries-old tradition born in Italy, which was carried out by master glyptician, Philippe Nicolas. Here, tiny squares of agate are assembled as the spotted skin of the feline. The stones are first ground down to obtain plates less than half a millimeter thick, then cut as tesserae, assembled on the platinum structure and polished to render the surface smooth. To create the micro-mosaic in volume was a major challenge requiring thousands of work hours, much more than a very complex necklace.
- Chanel’s €1.3 million Café Society necklace with an association of blue and yellow sapphires, orange garnets, tsavorites, spessartites, red spinels and diamonds shines in an interlacing of primary colors like light, airy mobiles. Featuring an extremely light setting so the metal disappears and a lot of volume as there are curved lines that pass all around the central stone, it evokes a stained-glass window or a sort of flower and represents a new vocabulary at Chanel in terms of color and design. The parure, which includes earrings and a ring, required the most work hours out of the entire collection, almost 2,000 hours.
(Photo courtesy of Chanel)
- These emerald earrings in an unusual flat, geometrical shape, recalling the legendary gems set on sumptuous jewels from the Persian Empire, are composed of four large emeralds of more than 140 carats set in a very contemporary, clean Bulgari design.
- This brooch in the shape of a dragonfly with thin transparent wings set with multicolored pink sapphires illustrates Van Cleef & Arpels’ brand-new innovative Mystery Setting technique, where see-through rather than opaque stones may be used. President and CEO, Nicolas Bos, says, “We’re continually trying to improve the Mystery Setting, which has been a very important technique for the house since the 1930s, bringing it to a different dimension where we create elements that you can look at from both sides. The whole purpose of Mystery Setting is to make the metal disappear and only see the stones. Usually you have the stones on top and the structure behind, but here for certain elements like the wings, we wanted to be sure that it would be as light and delicate as real wings, while of course being made of precious stones.”
