Dragonfly Brooch/Pendant

The tail is where the colour lives. Ruby and pink sapphire are laid along it in a graduated run, square-cut and invisibly set, the deepest red gathered at the body and lifting through every intermediate degree of pink as the tail tapers away — the colour drawn out along the length of the creature exactly as a dragonfly wears it.

Invisible setting is what makes that run possible. Each small stone is grooved along its girdle and locked from beneath to a channelled framework, stone meeting stone, so the tail carries one continuous surface of colour with the metal held entirely out of sight. On a straight run it is demanding work; here it is carried along a taper, which means every stone in the sequence differs in size from the one before it and each has to be cut and fitted to its own place. The graduation is read as colour rather than as a row of stones, and that is the whole achievement of the piece.

Nearly twenty carats of Mexican fire opal make the wings and the body. Fire opal is bought for the colour of the stone itself — that transparent, saturated orange, judged on how deep and how clean it runs — and Eve has selected ovals that hold warmth right through the body of the material. Opal carries water within its own structure, between three and ten per cent of it, and that water is what gives the orange its particular depth. It also makes the stone far more sensitive to heat than the corundum set beside it, so every operation on this piece has to be taken at temperatures the opal will accept. Setting these two materials in a single plane is a decision most houses would avoid.

At the base hangs a pear-shaped unheated ruby of 3.03 carats. The overwhelming majority of ruby entering the trade has passed through a furnace to lift its colour; a stone that has never seen one is rare, documented, and holds a red that is entirely its own. It is placed at the very tip of the tail, the final and deepest note in the colour that has been building all the way down.

Diamond of 0.69 carats picks out the structure, and the whole is worked in 14-karat yellow and white gold.

The piece is made to be worn two ways: as a pendant, or as a brooch.

At 110 by 70 millimetres it is a commanding scale, and the openwork is what allows it — the dragonfly is drawn in line and colour rather than filled, so it carries its span lightly.

Please enquire for certification and viewing.