Irregular Cuts that are Re-Shaping the Jewellery Trends

Among the sumptuously sparkling jewellery on display at the most recent haute couture week in Paris – jewels are as much of a catwalk show today as the extravagant, handmade gowns that the event is really about – were pieces in the vanguard  of a new, or perhaps resurrected, movement  in high jewellery design.

For over a decade, design has been ruled by geometry, with complex, closely repeated patterns that can be aided by computer drawing but demand superlative skill from the craftspeople who must cut every angle of the setting with complete precision and set each tiny stone at exactly the right height and distance from its fellows, creating a modern, tougher version of the Art Deco style that is one of jewellery’s classic inspirations. The newest look is the aesthetic opposite.

It’s all about shape and the more irregular the better. Wine-gum-sized or larger stones with hummocky surfaces but excellent clarity are mixed together and framed in golden bezels that mirror their odd shapes, or mixed sizes  of the same stone are arranged into a surface that resembles a slightly crazy, cobbled road.

Some gems are softer-looking, like wonky cabochons with outlines far from the conventional oval – see the extraordinary half-moon Colombian emerald cabochon that David Morris has set in the contrasting geometric Manta ring – and look as if they might have been tumbled in the ocean for aeons; others are layered and sharply cubic like rough gem crystals skilfully polished to bring out their luminosity. Most are what were once called semiprecious gems, now with wholly precious price tags, and on the lips of the brands using them are the terms “fantasy cut” or “Baroque cut”, as if these were something quite new.

I didn’t appreciate the significance until discussing the look with Francesca Grima. The daughter of the late, pre-eminent 1960s and 1970s designer Andrew, Francesca today runs the family firm, making bespoke pieces in her own style but influenced by her father’s work that majored in large, rough crystals or unconventionally cut gems. Andrew’s abstract designs reflected the bold artistic movement of the time and influenced other designers and collector clients, including Royal family members. Sharing how her father developed his distinctive style, Francesca mentioned a German lapidary called Bernd Munsteiner who, she said, “believed that gems should be cut without rules, not with conventional facets but cut from the back to let as much light through as possible”.

He had been trying to sell these avant-garde stones to jewellers with no luck, but when Andrew saw them, he bought the lot, and the rest is history. Munsteiner’s name for these odd rocks? Fantasy cuts. With interior and industrial design now awash with mid-century style, jewellery has understandably jumped on the bandwagon, rightly so for brands which can mine their own archive, like Piaget. They set up their  own goldsmith workshop in the 1950s, to make both jewellery and watches, and their revolutionary policy of marketing to celebrities, including Andy Warhol and Jacqueline Kennedy, in the places they loved to go, paid handsome dividends with the international jet set.

Many of them sported finely worked, gem-set, yellow gold cuffs, or pendants in a soft-cornered trapezoid shape, which fell out of favour in the 1990s and could be bought for a comparative song but are now star items in any auction lucky enough to house one. Happily, Piaget does a few new versions each year, plus smaller items. Italian goldsmithing brands have an honourable history in this area too. Pomellato was founded in Milan in the late 1960s, when the first wave of irregular stones hit and which, linked to their signature gem-set chains, became their bread and butter.

Now they are back, with some of the biggest, boldest current designs: necklaces featuring a mix of Paraiba tourmaline, rubellite, tsavorite, aquamarine and mandarin garnet simply set  in gold or with a broad “halo” of toning pavé for extra glitter. Huge tanzanites stud a chain of blue and violet sapphire pavé that captures the shades of the main stones which are, the brand explains, “roughened to achieve their shape, not simply polished, to try to leave the stones as close as possible to their original appearance. The cutter can quickly replicate what happens in nature when rocks and water polish stones over thousands of years”.

Fellow Italian goldsmith Damiani is celebrating its centenary so has witnessed many jewellery movements and the fantasy cuts in its latest collection are right on target – a cuff entirely paved with multi-sized, rounded but irregular Mozambique paraibatype tourmalines, centred with a rectangular pink-brown diamond, or limpid Australian opals set in an all-diamond cuff. Opals often come in organic shapes and large sizes and are a favourite of Parisian jeweller Lydia Courteille, who puts them in the centre of ornate cuffs and rings of carved gold, featuring nature and culture motifs from the remote places where she loves to travel. Meanwhile, some of the hand-carved gemstones that Cartier has traditionally used are now created with a softer, more naturalistic profile. Across the Pond, Tiffany has one of the greatest heritages of unusual stones and their best-known gemmologist, George Kunz, gave his name to the beautiful pink kunzite gem.

Though equally known for stunning formalcut gems, a timely allusion to that history of unearthing natural wonders appears in the richly hued but distinctly fantasy aquamarines which adorn their new Iconic Star suite. Fellow industry giant Gemfields produces angular slices of Mozambique ruby and irregular cabochons of Zambian emerald that attract independent designers including Bina Goenka and Shachee. And the recently opened Fuli peridot mine in China has processed very clear, uniform stones into irregular cabochons that catch the imagination of designers as diverse as Sun Chin and Britain’s Pippa Small. Pippa’s work is founded on a love of natural stones.

Her latest collection includes rutile quartz with its shining interior of golden needles. These cuts, points out Gemfields’ product and sales analyst, Michael Hing, “go back to Medieval times before anyone knew how to cut facets, but faded out once they knew how. They became fashionable again in the late 20th century and have benefitted from technical advances, including synthetic diamond polishing grit and tumbling with a vibrating ultrasonic motor that is quicker than traditional methods”.

It also produces clear, bright stones, unlike the frosted appearance of most naturally tumbled gems. De Beers works only with diamonds and kick-started a now-popular style almost 20 years ago with its Talisman range, using rough diamonds with their natural octahedral structure, in colours more associated with industrial diamonds, to create relatively affordable pieces in textured gold which referenced the 1970s but has now reached the highest levels with the new Forces of Nature high jewellery collection. An array of large roughs in rich, earthy and even green shades are deep, translucently mysterious and surprisingly smooth.

The revival of rough gems runs parallel with a trend towards large, sculptural crystals as collectables sought as much for their spiritual properties as aesthetics. Francesca Grima still sets beautiful pieces of natural crystal in simple torques or rings, including some that her father collected such as forest green dioptase, while light, aqueous crystals like frozen waves adorn Massimo Izzo’s rings carved with mythical sea creatures. Closest to nature are Ruth Tomlinson’s rings encrusted with gold and Scottish agate, gleaned as tiny pebbles from beaches around Dundee by the London-based designer. These unique, miniature masterpieces mix  the roughly natural with partial smoothing into shiny facets, a subtle blend of nature and artifice just as astonishing as those big, glowing cabochons.