Citrus Bloom Earrings

At the ear, a rose carved in blue topaz. Twelve millimetres across, the flower is worked from above — petals spiralling inward to a closed heart — and cut deep, so that light travelling through the stone finds the spiral from within and lifts it. The colour gathers where the petals fold over one another and runs clear where they lie open, which gives the bloom its sense of depth. Carving in relief on a stone of this character calls for a very particular hand, and it is the most accomplished work in the piece.

Beneath it, a pear of lemon quartz — 30 by 15 millimetres, nearly forty carats across the pair, set point-up in eight claws and faceted throughout. Lemon quartz carries a strong greenish-yellow, transparent enough that a stone of this scale stays bright at the foot of a long drop. Elongated and narrow, it reads as a single confident stroke of colour.

Between the two sits the smallest element in the earring, and the one that governs everything: an octagonal Colombian emerald, claw-set in yellow gold. Blue and yellow sit close to opposite on the colour wheel, and green falls precisely between them. The emerald is the hinge on which the whole sequence turns.

Yellow gold takes its cue from the quartz. Against the lemon it vanishes into the colour; against the blue topaz it draws the one warm line across a cool stone; against the emerald it deepens the green — three colours held in a single family by the metal that carries them.

A drop of 52 by 14 millimetres, in 14-karat yellow gold.

Flos Vitae — the flower of life — is Eve’s flower-led line in Fine Jewellery, and carving is its signature.

Please enquire for certification and viewing.