The exceptional allure of the emerald
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
As co-president and artistic director of Chopard, Caroline Scheufele has seen and handled a king’s ransom’s worth of fabulously rare and ravishing gemstones. Yet when she first set eyes on the 6,225-carat rough emerald now named Insofu, she was left speechless. “For reasons that escape any form of rationale, some gemstones blow you away immediately,” she says. “It is profoundly moving to be confronted with the beauty and mystery of such a treasure, collected from the depths of the Earth, formed millions of years ago.”
Scheufele was determined to create something remarkable from the stone, which was found in 2010 in the Gemfields-owned Kagem mine in Zambia and acquired by Chopard in 2018. She brought expert emerald cutters from India to Chopard’s atelier in Geneva and, after weeks studying the rough, they began the cutting process, which took nine months.
During this time, Scheufele invited Julia Roberts, Chopard’s global ambassador, to co-design a high-jewellery capsule using the polished gems yielded by Insofu. Roberts took inspiration from India’s floral necklaces, mixing the emeralds with cherry-hued rubellites and turquoise in a suite comprising a ring, necklace and chandelier earrings.
Boodles gold, diamond and emerald Florentine ring, POA
Lily Gabriella rose-gold and emerald Spira ring, £10,600
The collection points to a new emerald frenzy. Miuccia Prada took a bow at her AW24 show in an impressive emerald set, if proof was ever needed of the stone’s new cool. Like Chopard’s, Gucci’s new Allegoria high-jewellery collection features a necklace centred on a 10-carat hexagonal emerald, and theatrical earrings are set with a fan-shaped emerald fringed with diamonds and tipped with coloured tourmalines.
Jody Wainwright, Boodles’ director of diamonds and precious gemstones, sees emeralds gaining momentum. “We have always looked at sapphires, rubies and emeralds in that order of importance for many years. But we now have more emeralds than rubies in Boodles.”
Brazilian-born, London-based designer-jeweller Fernando Jorge attributes the upsurge in popularity to the versatility of emeralds, adding that they’re favourites of his “super-young” clients. When he found a source of emeralds in Brazil’s Belmont mine, he stepped up his efforts to create an ultra-modern setting for this traditional gemstone, framing the archetypal, emerald-cut emerald in malachite. “I wanted to embrace the inner imperfections that give each emerald its unique character. At a time of synthetic stones, the inclusions show that the emerald is unquestionably natural.”
For the 10th anniversary of Repossi’s Serti sur Vide collection, creative director Gaia Repossi focused only on emeralds and diamonds, with each single centre stone set in its “Eiffel Tower” structure so that it appears to float in space. Designer-jeweller Lily Gabriella paves the rose-gold curves of her signature Spira ring with emeralds, the architectural yet sensual contours emphasising the emerald’s hypnotic intensity. “They are a colour that symbolises envy, danger and mystery, which is infinitely compelling,” says designer Solange Azagury-Partridge, who spills lines of emeralds down the sides of a ring, as if overflowing from the central cabochon.
Moussaieff white-gold, green-titanium, diamond and emerald earrings, POA
Solange gold, emerald and lacquer Scribbles ring, POA
In her new Dior Délicat high-jewellery collection, Victoire de Castellane trails ribbon-like threads of emeralds and diamonds from a central emerald in a matching necklace, bracelet, ring and earrings. At Graff, which is famed for its spectacular gemstones, design director Anne-Eva Geffroy uses three rare lozenge-shape Colombian emeralds as the starting point for a necklace, with asymmetric pendants tipped with diamonds that resemble arrowheads.
Alisa Moussaieff understands that movement, energy and fluidity are key to the emerald’s rejuvenation. The designer’s suite of draped necklace and cascading fringed drop earrings is lavished with more than 60 carats of Colombian emeralds and set in green titanium and white gold. Designer-jeweller Karina Choudhrie – who wears a simple emerald pendant most days – also uses titanium to contemporise and lighten emerald-set creations, as in the Ocean Kelp ring, which has a spectacular square-cut emerald around which flare diamonds set in titanium.
Louis Vuitton white-gold, diamond and emerald earrings, POA
Karina Choudhrie gold, diamond and emerald Stingray ring, POA
Ananya gold, diamond, emerald and sapphire Chakra bracelet, POA
Intensifying the beauty and impact of gems through innovative materials and techniques is also a speciality of Lugano, the Newport Beach-based jeweller opening a London salon next month. It sets spectacular emeralds in green titanium to maximise the metal’s monochrome effect, as on a sensational single-strand necklace, or on hoop earrings, set on the outside with cushion‑cut emeralds and on the inside with diamonds.
Ananya, founder of the fine-jewellery brand that bears her name, draws on her Indian heritage and the Mughal reverence for emeralds, which are known as being the colour of paradise and said to be associated with the “small yet powerful” planet of Mercury. She plays with shapes, cuts and different tones and shades of emeralds to create jewels that she describes as “versatile and edgy”, using carved emerald beads for her signature Chakra bracelet and calibré-cut emeralds for the half-moon form of her Scatter Moonlight earrings.
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