Rock solid
Against a backdrop of uncertainty, and against the odds, oversized show-stopper gems are enjoying a moment. Tiffany & Co. draws on its pedigree to lead the way. By Alice Birrell.
Against a backdrop of uncertainty, showstopper gems are enjoying a moment. Tiffany & Co. draws on its pedigree to lead the way.
Gorgeous shoulders”, “elegant”, “perfect proportions” – you’d be forgiven for thinking that Victoria Reynolds, Tiffany & Co.’s chief gemmologist and vice president of global merchandising, high jewellery, is describing a supermodel. Rather, she’s speaking about being in the presence of another otherworldly beauty, and Tiffany’s latest major acquisition, the colossal Empire Diamond, weighing more than 80 carats. “It’s sort of difficult to put into words how special it is,” she says from New York, the city that the Botswana-discovered, internally flawless, D-colour stone was named after. “We felt that a diamond that was this important, with this much energy, should have a name befitting of it.”
On tour in Asia at time of writing, where it’s been met with great fanfare, it is the second biggest diamond ever acquired by the 184-year-old American jeweller, after the Tiffany Diamond itself, which weighs 128.54 carats. It tells a curious tale during a time of great challenge: the growing appeal of outsized, outré precious gemstones, the kind that would make an Aga Khan green with envy.
Last year, auction house Sotheby’s cited jewellery as one of its highest performing categories online since the beginning of the pandemic with demand for big stones continuing this year, the house selling the largest Kashmir sapphire ever on offer at auction at 55.19 carats in May. In that same month, Christie’s set a worldrecord price at auction for the largest purple pink fancy diamond at 15.81 carats, fetching $39 million.
While dripping in glittering baubles might feel at odds with the stark realities of this time, Reynolds says the appeal is beyond dollar value. “I often say they really are miracles of nature; they’re formed miles and miles below the Earth’s surface, taking billions of years, heat and pressure to form,” she says. “More than ever, I think it’s these types of vibrant gemstones that lift us up and give people a bit of a sense of awe and wonder. And, I think they transport us, especially during Covid.”
It is fashion lore that times of difficulty and economic slump fuel an urge for decadence, a bit of cheering colour – buoying moments of escape and optimism (see: Lauder’s lipstick index, or the current demand for nail polish). With strong jewellery sales, there’s a sense people are placing value in a concrete asset that not only transcends trends, but offers a feeling of permanence and continuity – stability when there is little. A reminder of the grand scheme, perched on our fingers and wrists.
It’s why the jeweller has chosen exceptional diamonds and coloured stones as the centrepieces for Colours of Nature, this year’s Blue Book collection and Tiffany’s annual high jewellery offering. The 128-piece collection has four categories: land, sea, earth and sky, and each puts the stone at the forefront, be it the near invisible
setting on a choker or a marquise-cut diamond pendant. One glittering string of lozenges carrying on the legacy of the single-stone Tiffany setting – made famous in engagement rings – is a rainbow of colours totalling 280 carats of aquamarines, tanzanites, tourmalines, as well as a rubellite and a morganite.
The latter is a precious gem Tiffany had a hand in naming, and, like tanzanite, tsavorite and kunzite, were brought into the design vernacular by Dr George Frederick Kunz (kunzite’s namesake) who looked beyond the traditional suite of rubies, sapphires and diamonds. Tiffany & Co. was one of the first major jewellers to employ an in-house gemmologist and in his inaugural position, Kunz sourced stones like a tourmaline from Maine in the late 1800s; alexandrite, an enigmatic stone that changes colour from green in daylight to red at night; and Morganite, named after banker and patron to Kunz, John Pierpoint – or JP – Morgan.
“He was a pioneer of incredible magnitude, and has really left an indelible mark in the world of gemmology,” says Reynolds, who is humbled to follow in his footsteps, having been with the jeweller for 34 years.
These legacy stones were artfully arranged in combinations that mimic the colours of a botanic grassy green, a burnished sky at dusk, or the glassy waters of the sea, like a choker of aquamarines and a particular shade of yellow-green pastel beryl that hums. “We’ve really used gemstones, like a painter uses paints and a canvas,” explains Reynolds. Like a watercolourist’s wash, the hues of the two stones were achieved in a painstaking cutting process: each gem was cut very thin to achieve a translucence, but not so thin as to lose their delicate colour. They didn’t stop there.
“Then we juxtaposed it next to these rock crystal frames that were meant to be like the frame of a painting,” she outlays. They took individual diamonds and placed them within the crystal with delicate gold screws on the back to hold it all in place so “the diamonds appear to float, so that you would have this very surreal thing where you couldn’t see any of the settings”.
Reynolds says this exceptional craftsmanship from the Tiffany workshops and design team is spurred on by the rarity, scarcity and beauty of the gems. “When you have something that special, you know you really have to rise to the occasion and build something extraordinary around it.” If the right design doesn’t materialise, the stones are kept locked in the vault until the time is right, with less rush in a slower-paced high jewellery world that is engineered to produce keepsakes.
Not that Reynolds pictures pieces of this calibre sitting in jewellery boxes. “It can’t be gathering dust. That’s not allowed,” she says with mock seriousness. “I love when I see women wearing expensive, or just beautiful, jewellery during the day, wearing it with a T-shirt and jeans. It’s one of my favourite things. My husband always said to me: ‘Please don’t go on the subway with what you’re wearing,’ because I wear [late jewellery designers for Tiffany] Jean Schlumberger and Elsa Peretti. And you walk around the streets of New York and people don’t think it’s real, but I love it because … you put on a great piece of jewellery and it completely transforms [a look].”
As for the new jewel in the mega-stones crown, the Empire Diamond, the house has laid grand plans for it: a reimagining of the 1939 World’s Fair necklace, an Art Deco design from the archives, to be unveiled alongside its refreshed Fifth Avenue New York flagship boutique early next year. “When it will be done, it will truly be, I think, one of the next iconic Tiffany pieces.”
But, as Reynolds knows, it’s not all about the size. “You’re presented [with] many large gemstones but, you know, large doesn’t mean it’s beautiful,” she says. “It really has to be about rarity, scarcity and beauty. Every single one of these gemstones that we select has to have that. And if you have that, then it’s going to be something that you’ll covet for the rest of your life. For something you love that much, you can’t live without it – it brings you such inner peace and beauty.”