Cockatoo Crest Brooch

The cockatoo announces itself with its crest. Raised when the bird is alert, curious or displaying, folded away when it is at ease — it is the whole of the creature’s expression, and Eve has caught it at the moment it opens, carved in mother of pearl above a pavé head.

The wing is where the finest work lies. Square-cut rubies are laid edge to edge and invisibly set, each stone grooved along the girdle and locked to a channelled framework beneath, stone meeting stone across the entire surface. The wing therefore reads as one unbroken plane of red rather than as a run of separate stones.

What makes that plane possible is the uniformity of the colour. Every ruby in the wing has been selected to a single hue — matched for tone, for saturation, for how the light returns from it — so that no stone sits paler or warmer than its neighbour and the field holds absolutely even from tip to shoulder. Invisible setting shows up any variation immediately, which is why stones of this consistency in this quantity are gathered rather than bought: sorted from far greater numbers until a run agrees with itself completely.

Against that even red, the body moves. More than twenty carats of pink sapphire are pavé-set in stones under a millimetre and a half, graded so the colour runs deepest along the back and lifts gradually through the flanks towards the breast, where it gives way to diamond and finishes in white. Deep pink to pale pink to clear white, one continuous progression across the curve of the bird — one half of the piece matched to perfection, the other half changing continuously, and each making the other legible.

Nothing about the pavé is flat. It follows the round of the body, which is what allows the bird to read as a living form rather than an outline filled with stone.

Behind, the tail runs longer than the cockatoo itself, and it moves. Oval rubies are claw-set into open white gold ribs alternating with lines of graduated diamond, and those ribs are articulated rather than fixed, so the tail sways and settles as the wearer moves and never hangs stiff below the bird. The ribs are cut away between the stones, so the tail is seen through as much as looked at — the openwork is what keeps a piece of this scale light on a lapel, occupying a great deal of space and very little weight.

The bird stands on a branch of natural coral, left in its own irregular form, one foot closed around it. Coral is the single warm, opaque, matte material here among transparent stone and polished metal, and it is what makes the cockatoo look perched rather than pinned.

Carved mother of pearl forms the crest and the pale feather details.

This piece has been sold to a private collector.