She is caught at the height of the movement: one arm lifted, one leg extended behind her, the whole of her poised on the very tip of a single satin shoe. The skirt carries the piece. Ruby laid across it in four cuts — oval, round, square and a single pear — some nine carats in all, gathering weight and…
The bill of a swan is orange. It is the one colour the bird carries, and Eve has built the entire piece from it. A hundred oval orange sapphires, close to twenty-five carats, carry the form. Orange is an uncommon colour in sapphire and a demanding one to gather in quantity: bringing a hundred stones to a single hue means…