Phoenix Rhapsody Earrings

Almost every culture has imagined this bird. The Greeks and Egyptians told of a creature that gathers itself into flame and rises again from the ashes; in China the fenghuang appears at moments of great peace and presides over the empress herself; in Persia the simurgh is said to be so ancient it has watched the world destroyed and made anew three times over. Japan, India, Russia and Arabia each hold a version. It is the one animal that never existed and yet belongs to everybody — the emblem of renewal, of splendour, and of beginning again.

Eve’s phoenix is built from fire itself, and in the order that fire burns.

Three metals carry three parts of the bird. The head and neck are yellow gold, pavé-set in yellow sapphire, with a crown of diamond across the skull and three fine crest pins each tipped with a bezelled diamond. The beak is polished gold, left bare — the single smooth surface in the upper half of the piece, and the place the eye settles first.

The wing is carved mother of pearl: six pieces cut individually to shape and fitted between banded ribs of yellow sapphire pavé, so the feathers curl and interleave. Shell against pavé gives the wing its whole texture, one material returning light in a soft continuous sheet, the other in points, alternated so the feathers read as layered rather than drawn.

Then the metal changes. Rose gold takes over at the tail, pavé-set in pink sapphire, falling in loose ribbons that cross and part and finish in marquise and pear rubies hung free at the ends. Yellow at the ear, white shell through the wing, pink and then deep red at the base: the colour of flame from its hottest heart outward, carried down the full length of the drop.

Within the tail hangs a pear citrine of 36.54 carats, 25 by 14 millimetres — by a wide margin the largest stone in the piece. It sits inside the ribbons rather than below them, so the tail appears to be cradling the flame.

The citrine is detachable, releasing from the base of the tail. Worn complete, the earring is a phoenix in full display at 82 millimetres. With the citrine taken away, the tail opens out and the drop becomes narrower and lighter — the bird alone, and perfectly resolved on its own terms. Two distinct earrings rather than one design and a diminished version of it.

At 20 millimetres wide, it stays a bird rather than a fan.

In 14-karat rose and yellow gold.

Please enquire for certification and viewing.