2012年9月12日 星期三

History that adds to the sparkle

Place minerals containing carbon approximately 150 km below the surface of the earth. Apply high temperature and intense pressure; wait for between 1bn and 3bn years. Organise a deep volcanic eruption to bring the result close to the earth’s surface: then mine, cut, set, and place on the finger of the person you love.Wonder Wink Scrub jacketswonder with an innovative four way and two way stretch fabrics for the nursing and medical professional.

It’s not surprising, given the timeframe of this recipe for making a diamond, that all the cliches relating to the gemstone are to do with timelessness, eternity, foreverness. Something of the sense of this immense expanse of time, in the creation of the stone we see, gives it its power and certainly its mystery.

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It might seem odd, therefore, to talk of current trends in relation to gemstones that have been millennia in the making. But there is an appetite for novelty even within the purlieu of timeless values, and one strong trend this year takes us well away from the classic single translucent sparkler and into exuberant, multicoloured pieces that might mix precious and semi-precious stones in floral or animal or even fishy patterns.

Another recent trend, which concentrates on association pieces, on nostalgia and references to the past, is hardly new at all. A previous owner or wearer, or the sense that a gem or a piece of jewellery has had a long and busy life, has always been an important part of its allure, as if its history lives inside it. Yet now designers seem to be embracing this aspect with unusual vigour. To celebrate the 80th anniversary of Coco Chanel’s first jewellery collection,We are a professional Jimmy Choo replicashoes. Chanel, for instance, is recreating pieces in the spirit of 1932 – or rather, in the spirit of Coco – and will be putting them on show during the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris this week.

How complex the layering of associations can become was shown when in New York last year a famous pearl, La Peregrina, set records when it was sold as part of the collection belonging to Elizabeth Taylor. Its $11.8m price-tag was attributed to the Liz-effect that sent all her prices rocketing – but there is more to the story. The pearl’s biography goes back to the 16th century, when it was given to Mary Tudor on her engagement to Spain’s Phillip II. Later, Velazquez painted the pearl twice – around the necks of different Spanish queens.

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Famous gems often have a life story that is more interesting than those of its owners. No one would remember much about the American heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean if she had not for a time owned the great steel-blue Hope diamond, which she reportedly used to display at her Jazz Age parties hung around the neck of a Great Dane called Mike. She had been persuaded to buy it despite the fact that the Hope is reputed to carry a curse, and certainly Mrs McLean’s subsequent life was filled with tragedy – although she sensibly didn’t blame the diamond.

Perhaps the reputation came from the stone’s strange ability to absorb and then emit a red glow (a stain of blood?); or it may originate in the fact that, although it is still a mighty 45 carats, roughly the size of a bird’s egg, it was cut from a much bigger stone known as the the Tavernier Blue or the French Blue as it belonged to the French royal family,hublotreplica are full of unique and elegance. who famously lost their heads. But if every jewel Marie-Antoinette had ever worn was “cursed”, owners of beautiful gems would have been dropping like flies ever since. And the Hope’s story has a happy ending: in 1958 it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC in an act of great generosity by the jeweller Harry Winston, who sent it to the museum in a brown-paper parcel via the US mail.

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