Jewelry has always been deeply connected to human emotions, with worn or gifted creations expressing everything from romance and friendship to fidelity and engagement. A category known as sentimental jewelry is crafted to convey personal messages or evoke memories, using a language of codes and hidden meanings. Drawn from cultural and artistic traditions, these symbols add personal significance to creations harboring secret stories.
This year, High Jewelry designers have continued this tradition by creating modern adornments that reinterpret well-known symbols, many inspired by Nature, to convey secret messages. Their collections feature designs inspired by magical gardens filled with enchanting creatures and flora, each item telling its own unique story.
A tribute to fauna
The delicate, colorful butterfly has long been a cherished symbol among sentimental jewelry designers. Often referencing Psyche, the Greek goddess entwined in a mythical love story with Cupid, the wings of the butterfly are thought to symbolize the union of spiritual and physical love, the immortality of the soul, as well as the promise of new beginnings.
Cartier’s new “Nature Sauvage” High Jewelry collection celebrates the Maison’s repertoire of precious creatures through exquisite craftsmanship. This year, the butterfly motif reappears in the Chryseis necklace, capturing the essence of this colorful insect in an abstract representation. Onyx-speckled wings form a striking black-and-white pattern, contrasted with green chalcedony beads and a vibrant 63.76-carat rubellite pendant at its center.
An enchanted universe
In her “Diorama & Diorigami” collection for Dior Joaillerie, Victoire de Castellane brings to life a secret garden filled with miniature, three-dimensional fauna and flora. Within her fairytale universe, she recreates bucolic scenes inspired by Toile de Jouy prints, where forest deities and water spirits dwell among squirrels, fawns, rabbits and swans gliding on a mother-of-pearl lake, surrounded by engraved gold branches, turquoise thickets and pearl bushes.
A Diorama necklace in varying shades of red animates miniature owls hiding in the magical garden. This enchanting piece is adorned with a 7.02-carat Mozambique ruby, surrounded by oval-cut rubies, sapphires and diamonds, all contoured with lacquer.
Life’s labyrinthian journey
Gucci proposes a stroll through a lush Italian garden with the Labirinti collection, a sentimental reference to life’s journey and spiritual paths.
An intricately designed necklace recreates a flowery maze, blending floral and geometric patterns. It is adorned with 180 emerald beads, a pear-shaped tsavorite, Paraiba tourmalines, mandarin garnets and an exquisite kite-cut diamond. In this verdant garden, dragonflies flutter about, symbolizing new beginnings and transformation. Crafted in white gold and set with Paraiba tourmalines, spinels, or tanzanites, their message is clear: “Life is brief; embrace opportunities and make the most of our time.”
The flutter of wings
The “Vibrant Wings” collection showcases Gübelin’s unique interpretation of the butterfly in a transformable creation that can be worn as a cocktail ring or brooch, embodying the butterfly’s metamorphosis. This piece captures the dainty insect’s multifaceted beauty and lightness, adorned with a Burmese sapphire and a cabochon-cut ruby amidst some 260 gemstones, totaling over 22 carats. The meticulous arrangement creates spectacular color gradients and shimmering effects, evoking the beauty and weightlessness of the butterfly.
The dawn of spring
Van Cleef & Arpels’s secret garden is adorned with primroses, the first spring flowers to bloom, symbolizing innocence, youth, and new beginnings. This year, Van Cleef & Arpels has celebrated the primrose in a variety of creations, using a palette of multi-colored gemstones set on three-dimensional forms. Crafted from rose gold and speckled with emeralds or pink sapphires, two brooches showcase the jeweler’s masterful artistry in capturing the essence of the primrose.
Red carpet fairytales
Chopard brings the magic of fairytales to the red carpet. A long, multicolored sautoir necklace features a rose composed of rubies, tsavorite and diamond beads, blooming inside a rock crystal. A ring showcases two titanium frogs with pear-shaped emeralds, holding up a crown made from ethical yellow gold and set with rubellites as well as white and yellow diamonds, around a magnificent 17.7-carat round-cut rubellite. It is a masterful demonstration that in the universe of sentimental jewelry, a rose may always be a rose, but a frog can become a prince.
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