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Stand out and rock the raw look via jewellery set with partially polished stones, writes Charlene Co

L’dezen Jewellery Suzanne Syz Art Jewels Ornella Iannuzzi Boghossian Roberto Coin Niin

e’re easily drawn to immaculately cut, unblemished gemstones set on jewellery with clean lines and perfect symmetry—it’s just the way we’re naturally wired. There are pieces, however, that pique our interest for their raw, visceral appearance, featuring stones that are hardly polished or cut (if at all) and set in irregular, unevenly shaped jewellery.

A designer who has embraced this organic approach is Ornella Iannuzzi. Her fascination with minerals and precious stones in their natural, untouched form translates beautifully in her jewellery. For her, it’s about highlighting the peculiarities of the stone, such as its unique crystallisation and even its inclusions, as seen in a ring from her L’exceptionnel collection, which features an unpolished Madagascar demantoid garnet on 22K gold.

Payal Shah, the founder and chief designer of Hong Kong-based L’dezen Jewellery, uses her background in furniture design to create her pieces. With a predilection for curves and free-flowing structures, she presents the Puri di Cuore collection, in which pieces are raw, using diamonds that are not completely cut and polished.

Roberto Coin’s Etruscan cuff from the Tanaquilla collection renders an intriguing, unstructured look using unpolished brown diamonds speckled around the cuff ’s rugged structure, while the titanium Ali Baba’s Trove ring from Suzanne Syz Art Jewels is topped with a 55-carat Mozambique paraiba featuring a dune-like texture and elegantly embellished with reverse-set diamonds. Appreciated specifically for their imperfections, baroque abalone pearls are used by Boghossian in a pair of earrings with tassels, which are made from smaller pink and blue pearls and diamond beads. The jagged, uneven shell and mother-of-pearl slices, meanwhile, offer Niin the ideal materials for its imperfectly perfect statement necklace.