The head of the Buccellati(see previous) jewelry family, Gianmaria Buccellati has died after a period of sickness. It wasn't until reading the notice that I realized that his brother is is Georgio, who has published one of the best modern Akkadian grammars, A Structural Grammar of Babylonian.
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From Chopard's (previously mentioned) 2013 Red Carpet collection comes this oak-themed necklace with a diamond and sapphire spider hiding within. The leaves are Tsavorite and most of the rest of the color accents come from fancy-colored diamonds
And a closeup of the spider photographed by Jamie Beck. Unrelated to the jewelry, when people talk about camera lenses having "confusing" or unpleasent bokeh, the background blur of the branch is a good example of what they mean
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30 years ago François Paul Journe(see Previous) created his first tourbillon, a key-wound double-barrel pocket watch timed by a detente escapement. The aesthetic is a clear homage to early 19th Century watches by Breguet (the man, not the brand).
In commemoration of this anniversary, he's released a limited edition of 99 watches driven by a brand-new movement. The Caliber 1412 matches the dual barrels and finely-grained gold-plated brass of the original. It features a 19 jewels, 56 hour power-reserve, the more-common lever escapement, and a bunch of more specific and arcane specs:
The case is a combination of 18kt rose gold and sterling silver and, like the original, engine-turned(previously mentioned) in a barleycorn pattern. The dial is finely-grained silver with the large subsecond circle and off-center hours and minutes engraved and filled with paint. The hands are blued-steel Breguet 'pomme' style.
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It's an interesting state of affairs when the MSRP of $99,000 has caused comments that can be summarized as "that's surprisingly reasonable"
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The nile crocodile is said to be the inspiration for the new Hermes (see previous) necklace and ring set. It's at least clearly the origin of the name, Niloticus, for Pierre Hardy's newest design. The necklace consists of 112 rose-gold scales, and is set with diamonds, iolites, peridots and tourmalines and has a suggested retail price of $299,500 (clearly that $500 less than $300k makes it much more affordable). There's a matching bracelet and ring (MSRP of $30,000) as well.
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Dressing for the big horse races, like the Kentucky Derby, has always been an exercise in eyecatching horror, but almost always limited to womens' wear, i.e. hats. Finally someone is starting to tap the market of hippocentric men and their lack of sense, in this case Theo Fennell (see previous) with this pair of white gold cufflinks. The inside of the binocular-shaped pieces are hand-painted enamels of the winning moment of a race, or something. £7,500 if you're asking
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Michelle Ong, who works under the brand name Carnet (see previous), apparently had an exhibit of her jewelry at the Asia House in London in 2011. I'm clearly a bit late to this, but the pieces were striking enough to warrent it. Particularly of note is her use of usually cut stones, like the briolette yellow diamond in the pendent and her ability to blend stones within a single field, for example the pomegranate seeds.
| Pink Cloud pendent: Tourmaline, white diamond, blue sapphire, pink sapphire and amethyst set in platinum, white gold and titanium. | Yellow teardrop pendent: Pale yellow diamonds and white diamonds set in gold and platinum |
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| Precious Plume: White Diamonds and Coloured Precious Stones "Feather" Brooch in Platinum and Titanium. | 'Supernova' broach. Light Brown Diamond and White Diamond set in Rose Gold. |
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| Pear Clip: White, fancy vivid and intense yellow and brown diamonds set in platinum and gold. | Pomegranate broach: White, fancy yellow and brown diamonds set in platinum and yellow gold. |
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With one obvious exception, Easter isn't thought of as a holiday for jewelry. That hasn't prevented some companies from releasing some Paschal pieces. First up is Lydia Courteille(see previous) and her Lapin Rose. These are set with pink Tourmaline and sapphires.
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With Chinese New Years at hand, all of the jewelry houses are tripping over themselves to release Snake-themed pieces. First off is Damiani (be careful, their website is a nightmare of auto-playing movies and weird custom scroll-bars), who released their "Eden" collection on February 1st, checking the boxes for both East and West. These are not aiming for naturalism, but the distilled idea of a snake. The bracelet below is over 2 meters long, stretched out, and set with over 900 diamonds with a total weight of 94.45 ct.
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Here are more bits of ancient jewelry remounted by Auclert (previously mentioned). Sadly this press release has much less detail on the pieces, but I'll provide what I have.
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| Earring with a gold Bactrian horn. The horn is from the 1st millenium BCE and decorated with granulations. | Large Phoenix pendent |
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| Bracelet with a Lapis Lazulli seal | Earrings set with 19th century menuki in the form of celestial Lions (called "Shishi"). They're set with dangling rubies of about 1.35ct each. |
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| Pendent in 18kt gold set with a long purple pearl with a dangling 1ct orange sapphire. The pearl is Akkadian, from 2200-2100 BCE |
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I'm not sure why, but the New York Times Magazine Blog decided we needed a selection of Emerald rings.
| Stephen Russell | Aspry |
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| Kwait | Fred Leighton (see previous) |
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| Solange Azagury-Partridge (previously mentioned), $18,200 | Graff (previously mentioned) 22.93-carat emerald cushion cabochon ring |
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| Ralph Lauren fine jewelry ring, $5,100 | Van Cleef & Arpels (just search for them) ring with 15-carat carved emerald, circa 1962 |
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The background for all the pictures is Shagreen (see previous), which apparently Ralph Lauren sells at $166 a yard as wall-covering.
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The watch industry, like any large industry, has it's own internal awards. These include the the Aguille d'Or(golden hand), given at the annual Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève, a "for us, by us" type of award, like the Oscars. Also given are "press" awards by the various magazines, more like the Golden Globes, including the Watch of the Year, given by Montres Passion, the TimeZone Watch of the Year and even the Couture Design Awards, given by a Jewelry industry publication, has a watch category.
So there are plenty of awards for watches, for the best, the newest, the most complex or the most blinged-out watch, but there are no awards for the worst, the most derivative or the least inspired attempt to get a bite of the apple. There is no watch industry analogue to the Golden Raspberry or the Bulwar-Lytton Award for bad fiction. Since we're nearing the end of the 2012 watch model year, by October we'll start hearing pre-release "buzz" for the 2013 Baselworld and SIHH releases, I present my picks for the 2012 Watch Industry Razzies (I was going to come up with some sort of bad acronym to spell out WRIST, but that will have to wait). Note that these are my opinions only and only reflect the high-end of the watch industry.
Words, Names and Press Releases
First, in the realm of letters, we have 3 awards, two for Press-Release rediculousness and one for a product name.
X for Experimental
T for Time
R for Research
E for Engineering
M for Mechanism
Watches and Movements
Now onto the technical awards, from cases to watches and onto things kinda like watches, but not really.
| Press Pic (source) | Side by side (source). Since it's nearly impossibly to tell, the one on the right is the old one, with clear bridges. The one on the left has the new blue bridges. |
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As an aside, why is there a "Spitfire Perpetual Calendar" model in the Top Gun Collection?
Special Raspberry of the year, 2012
This year, the Raspberry of the Year goes to the entire industry as an award for pandering, specifically the the Year of the Dragon special editions. Several of these are actually quite fantastic, for example Piaget's sculptural dragon or Jaquet Droz's playful one, but the overall effect of nearly every watch brand (excluding Patek Philippe and Rolex, bien sur) having one, some as minimally "special" as just to have a different engraving, is overwhelmingly mercenary.
(all brand names link to the image source)
| Piaget | Grieb & Benzinger | AP | Cartier |
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| Angular Momentum | Parmigiani | Vulcain | IWC 7-day dragon rotor |
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| Kudoke | Jaquet Droz | Chopard | Paul Picot |
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| Tissot | |||
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(All the images are from the manufacturer except the AP Dragon, from PuristsPro user Allen and several images by PuristsPro user Z3, the Piaget caseback, the Parmigiani Dragon and the GP Tourbillon comparison)
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Titanium bracelets this time from the prolific Lorenz Baumier (mentioned frequently before). Apparently he likes the beach, or likes it enough to put together this little, consisting of only three pieces, surf-themed collection of bangles.
| Mediterranee, bluish anodized Titanium with a white-gold and diamond decoration | Ocean, in dark purplish blue anodized Titanium set with diamonds in white gold |
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| Sable(sand or beach), golden anodized Titanium set with sapphires and black diamonds in rose and white gold |
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Prices range from 16 300 € to 22 200 €
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As acts of veneration, Hindu temples frequently adorn their idols with gold jewelry. For obvious reasons, it is extremely rare for these sorts of pieces to make it to the market, but Bonhams is currently selling a 28-piece private collection of 17th-19th Century pieces.
| Gold Pendents | Gold Kevacham. The word kevacham (kavacham) means armor, and refers to decorative armor worn by the god or goddess. |
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| Wrought silver necklace | Gold braid in the form of a snake. " On festive occasions, women in South India sometimes wear long linked ornaments (jadai nagam) over the lengths of their braids depicting cobras symbolizing fertility and sexuality"* |
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A closeup of the snake-braid
The finest piece of the collection, at least from photos in the press-release, is a large gold necklace
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Since it's the diamond-jubilee year of Queen Elizabeth, some of the jewelry brands, particularly those with some, no matter how tangental, connection are putting out themed collections. To be fair, we've seen much sillier reasons for a themed collections!
The first pieces were all designed by Wendy Yue for Annoushka, all are 18kt white gold and set with diamonds, rubies, garnets and sapphires. The collection ranges in price from 11,000£ to 16500£.
| Serpent Ring | Lizard Ring |
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| Lion Ring. The coral-colored part of the crown is, in fact, cut and polished coral. | |
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From Stephen Webster (previously mentioned) and Garrard comes a more obviously-connected collection. Garrard, apart from being the oldest jewelry house in the world, has a long-standing connection with the House of Windsor, including being the maker of most of the currently used crowns. There are 12 items in the Diamond Jubilee collection, each including the eponymous birthstone. June has an additional pearl in the orb set atop the crown.
| January pendent, set with Garnet | September pendent set with blue sapphire |
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| Yellow gold and amethyst } White gold and blue sapphire | |
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| Chandelier Earrings, set with rubies and pearls | Necklace set with a large, heart-shaped briolette-cut amethyst. |
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Finally a collection from Solange Azagury-Partridge(previously mentioned), the Regalia. It's an interesing melding of a couple of traditional elements, the ribbon from the "Order of the Garter" (the highest current order of chivalry) done in guilloche enamel and surrounded with rose-cut diamonds(an antique, low-facet-count cut rarely seen since the early 20th century). In the context of enameling, guilloche refers to the engine-work done under the surface of translucent enamel. It was perfected by, and most commonly seen, Fabergé's workshops.
| Regalia Ring in white gold and blue enamel, set with brilliant-cut diamonds | Cushion ring, white-gold and blue enamel set with a large cushion-cut diamond, with brilliant-cut diamonds as accent |
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| Regalia earrings, in the usual white gold, blue enamel and diamond | |
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A second part of this collection has a series of "titled" rings, all in enamel, gold and diamonds. The Duchess is my favorite, with the deep purple-blue and the central rose-cut stone.
| Countess | Duchess |
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| Princess | |
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There are a few other brands with Jubilee-themed pieces, Backes & Strauss (the oldest diamond house still in business), Georg Jensen and even the rejuvinated East India Company(previously mentioned), but they'll have to wait
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In the middle of May, Sotheby's auctioned off 60 lots, part of a collection of jewelry by Suzanne Belperron (1900-1983). This is one of the largest collections of her designs in private hands. She worked continuously from 1930 until about 1970, a rare female designer in a predominantly male business, selling to all the usual celebrities of the day, from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Colette, Jean Cocteau and Gary Cooper.
| Rock-crystal ring set with a diamond in a thin gold chaton | Rock-crystal broach set with small brilliant-cut diamonds |
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| Yellow-gold ring set with an emerald-cut diamond. This was her personal engagement ring, made in 1923 | Platinum broach in the form of a branch, set with diamonds and both cut and cabuchoned sapphires. |
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Paris has a new boutique in the heart of the jewelry quarter (the area around Place Vendome and Blvd. St Honere) with the opening of Maison Auclert on Rue de Castiglione Before opening his store Marc Auclert, the son of an antique dealer, worked in the jewelry department of Chanel (previously mentioned) and Sotheby's, and for DeBeers in Japan.
His speciality is something about which I have quite mixed feelings, incorporating antique, and sometimes ancient, elements into modern jewelry. The outcome is surprisingly good, considering the technique, but some of the original material deserved better then to be raw material for a Place Vendome jeweler. That said, here are the pieces, in no particular order. Unless specifically mentioned, assume that the modern work is in 18kt yellow gold.
Oh and a personal note to Auclert, or their PR firm: Thanks for the actual pictures of the actual pieces, so much better the the CGI that is sometimes used
| Cufflinks Set with neolithic carved carnelian beads | Pendents The decorative elements are gold plaques that originally decorated Chinese perfume flasks, dating from the 10th-13th century. They are set on silver-blackened leather with platinum fittings |
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| Bracelet The 18kt gold bangle is set with a pair of Menuki in the form of tigers. They were made by Teiji Goto (1603-1671). | Necklace The chain is modern, but the pendent is a 1st Century CE gold roman spoon with a handle in the form of a goose (duck?). I can find no information if the bending of the spoon is modern or not. |
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| Earrings The artifacts are a pair of Menuki from the 17th century representing male and female dragons. They are from the Mino school of the 17th Century. | Necklace The pendent is a pair of deer Menuki made in the workshop of Nagagawa Isho at the beginning of the 19th C. |
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| Pendent The main piece is a “cameo” done in Berlin Iron, circa 1805-1810. Berlin Iron was a side-effect of the Napoleonic wars, women would donate their gold to the Prussian state to fund the war and receive an iron piece in return. The dangles are polished ruby crystals. | Ring Set with both a 1st C. BCE Roman carnelian intaglio and its impression, this piece is probably one of my favorites for the way it uses the original piece. |
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If you have to ask, the prices range from 9,000-45,000 Euro.
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