Evening Primrose – Emerald Earrings

The evening primrose (Oenothera) is a flower with a habit rather than a shape. It opens after sunset, over the course of a few minutes, and by the following morning it has finished. Eve has designed to the habit: petals held open around a centre that keeps its colour.

The centre of each earring is an octagonal step-cut Colombian emerald, 1.88 carats across the pair. Colombia gives emerald its particular green — warm, slightly blue, saturated — and the step cut, with its long flat planes and open table, holds that colour in depth.

Around it, mother of pearl cut into pears, the sheen travelling across the shell as the wearer moves while the emerald holds steady at the middle. The two materials play against one another all day: one shifting, one fixed.

Round brilliant diamonds follow the contour of every petal, so the outline of each flower is drawn in light.

20 by 20 millimetres.

This pair has been sold to a private collector.