Description
Five hundred sapphires, 21.64 carats in total, worked into a single necklace in blackened gold. The chain alternates circular pavé links with sapphires set one to a collet, so the line running around the neck is not continuous pavé but a rhythm — a disc of massed stones, then a single stone standing alone, then another disc.
It descends to a pear-shaped pendant, openwork and framed in pavé, hung with eight drop-cut sapphires. These are the pampilles the model is named for: drops left free to swing, so the lowest part of the necklace moves independently of the chain above it and catches light from angles the fixed stones cannot.
The choice of blackened gold is what holds the design together. On white or yellow metal, five hundred small sapphires would compete with their own setting; against a darkened ground, each stone is isolated by contrast and the blue is the only colour present. Boucheron used this treatment across a group of pieces in the period, and it remains the most effective way the maison has found to show massed coloured stones without dilution.
The necklace is Boucheron reference JCLT6PIC01 and carries the engraved number E04132. It comes with its original Boucheron box, the maison’s certificate of authenticity — with the stone counts and weights entered by hand
