Monarch’s Flight Brooch/Pendant

A butterfly opened wide, and the wings laid entirely in green.

Chrome diopside carries them. The green comes from chromium, the same element behind emerald and tsavorite, and chrome diopside is among the small handful of gemstones that reach the market exactly as they leave the ground: no heat, no oil, no filling of any kind. What the wearer sees is what the earth made.

That green holds its brilliance best in small stones, so a wing of this scale is composed of many little ones, each cut and set individually. Chrome diopside also sits softer than the diamond and corundum beside it, which means every stone is held in a mount built to protect it. Across a span this wide, the setting is a quiet feat, and it is why the wings read as one continuous field of green rather than a scatter of stones.

Against all that green, the warm colour is deliberately slight — orange sapphire and ruby placed precisely where a monarch carries its markings — with diamond tracing the structure.

The piece belongs to Flutter.

This piece has been sold to a private collector.