Amongst all the glitz and sparkle of Couture Week back in January, one piece stood out. A striking white gold open bangle with a chevron design picked out in custom-cut diamonds was topped with an extraordinarily deep blue sapphire, which glinted in the weak light of late winter inside the Graff flagship just off Place Vendôme.
The jewel was part of a collection of 19 pieces using major stones, including supple diamond knot earrings finished with swinging fancy and rare Mozambican rubies set in a modern geometric setting. But the cuff, with its magnificent 118.7 unheated cushion-cut sapphire, was breathtaking.
One of the few independent high jewelry houses, London-based Graff is still owned by its founder, Laurence Graff, who started the business in 1960. The house specialises in yellow diamonds and has a long history of cutting significant and fancy stones, including the $12.4 million Lesotho Promise in 2006 and the 23ct Graff Pink diamond in 2010. The D-grade (colorless) , acquired by Graff in 2017 and cut into a 302.37 emerald-cut in 2019, has been described as “the largest, highest clarity, highest color diamond ever graded by the GIA.”
“We call this approach ‘stone-led design’, and it often guides our visual journey. For this particular high jewellery piece, we spent a great deal of time contemplating the stone,” says Anne-Eva Geffroy, Design Director at Graff. “Sapphires of this magnitude are extremely rare, and this, in itself, presented a unique set of challenges.” Geffroy’s design team considered the stone’s depth, clarity and naunces, studying it “from every angle to understand its individual personality, while also observing how it caught and reflected the light,” before deciding on how to use it.
Starting from scratch, rather than attempting to fit the stone into an existing design brief, produces ideas in which the gem is truly king. The concepts were discussed within the design studio, before being presented to the Graff family for approval. Through the whole process, according to Sam Sherry, Workshop General Manager, “from initial design to the final polish, many hundreds of hours were devoted to the creation of this magnificent sapphire and diamond high jewelry bangle.”
The house, which only uses ethically sourced gems, is also known for the deceptive simplicity of its settings, which are often raised from the body and incorporate negative space to allow maximum light to traverse the stones. Elsewhere in the collection, was a startling Colombian emerald which appeared to float across the finger, on its diamond and white gold setting.
According to Geffrey, what makes the house’s jewelry distinctive is the balance of “proportion and feminine sensuality in our designs,” which draw on “the world around us, from nature to art, architecture, historical jewels and contexts — which includes the Art Deco era — as well as new tendencies.” That distinctive geometric chevron pattern, which feels so timeless, was designed to frame the central sapphire and create symmetry and equilibrium.
“We mirrored this design on either side to draw the eye around the piece and ensure balance. The Graff Icon motif, appears on the reverse of the metalwork and can only be seen by the wearer,” she finishes, describing a secret stamp of quality which elevates an already special piece.