CaratThe $21,650 lemon: Monica Rich Kosann's fruit that opens
Three pendants in the Enchanted Garden series — a cherry at $10,985, a pear at $14,500 and a lemon at $21,650 — each a hinged locket concealing garnets or diamond ‘seeds’ inside 18-karat gold and pavé.
§1A lemon, by special order.
The most talked-about lemon in American jewelry costs $21,650 and is available by special order only. It is the top of Monica Rich Kosann's three-piece Enchanted Garden fruit series, pendants that debuted at Couture and carry the designer's signature mechanic: they open. The lemon wears 0.46 carats of yellow diamonds and 0.48 carats of yellow sapphires over 18-karat yellow gold, with tsavorite leaves and a white-diamond stem, and splits on its hinge to reveal white-diamond seeds.
§2The cheaper branches.
The cherry, at $10,985, is the entry point: 2.65 carats of ruby pavé with diamond accents, opening to a 0.75-carat cabochon garnet, a stone-in-fruit conceit executed with a straight face. The pear, at $14,500, is the colorist's piece, layering a 3.50-carat yellow sapphire with orange sapphire, peridot and 1.36 carats of tsavorite, and concealing five pear-shaped garnets totaling 1.72 carats. Kosann, a house built on lockets and the things people hide in them, calls the series an exercise in surprise, "a piece of fine jewelry that's a tad bit cheeky".
Graff's twelve butterfly jabot pins, Pomellato's mandala capsule and the general brooch-and-objet revival this page has tracked all season point the same direction: at the top of the market, jewelry is drifting from adornment toward miniature sculpture, and houses are competing on mechanics, hinges, tremblant wings, hidden compartments, as much as on carats.
§3Sculpture is the season.
The fruits arrive into a market that has been rewarding exactly this kind of object. Graff's twelve butterfly jabot pins, Pomellato's mandala capsule and the general brooch-and-objet revival this page has tracked all season point the same direction: at the top of the market, jewelry is drifting from adornment toward miniature sculpture, and houses are competing on mechanics, hinges, tremblant wings, hidden compartments, as much as on carats.
Whimsy holds its value when the engineering is real, and a locket house doing trompe-l'oeil fruit is playing squarely to its own strength rather than chasing a trend. The lemon's special-order status is the tell: this is couture logic applied to the pendant case, made when wanted, never stocked.
The desk's only quibble is arithmetic; at $21,650, the seeds had better be the sweetest part.
The trade, filed to your inbox before the New York open.
Prices, tenders and the one story that moved the industry overnight — read in ninety seconds.
Subscribe free →Graff pins the butterfly: twelve brooches built to tremble
The season's other moving objects: twelve butterflies, en tremblant