Description
A necklace built around a single blue sapphire, oval and rub-over set, weighing approximately six carats. The stone sits at the lowest point of the piece, where a necklace is looked at first, and everything above it is arranged to deliver the eye there.
The chain is a braided curb link in 18K yellow gold — heavier than it first appears at a hundred grams, and worked so the links interlace rather than simply hang in sequence. It runs as a plain gold line for most of its length and then opens, at the front, into a pair of shaped volutes that curl outward from the centre like the scrolled ends of a ribbon. Those volutes are bordered with brilliant-cut diamonds, which trace their outline and leave the polished gold inside them untouched.
The effect is a piece that reads as two things at once. Worn, the gold chain is what is seen from a distance — solid, unbroken, a collar rather than a pendant. Close to, the front resolves into ornament: diamond-edged scrollwork with a blue stone held at its centre, the only colour in an object otherwise made entirely of gold and white light.
The necklace measures approximately 38.5 centimetres and is signed Christoffel.
