Tubogas, Bows and a Diamond Without Facets: Five Jewellery Stories That Caught My Eye This Week
As autumn gathers pace, the jewellery calendar is becoming noticeably busier. New collections are arriving, but several houses are also returning to ideas already embedded in their histories and finding new ways to interpret them. Bvlgari is pushing Tubogas into fresh proportions, Buccellati has taken its Caviar texture from silver into jewellery, and Jessica McCormack has reworked the bow without its usual sweetness. Elsewhere, De Beers London is experimenting with a cabochon cut diamond, while Chaumet is opening 12 Vendôme to show how its tiaras are actually made.
This week’s edit of jewellery news is only a glimpse of what is happening in the industry right now. For the daily picture, the Katarina Perez Club brings together new launches, collections, exhibitions and appointments, alongside original stories from editors with different voices and perspectives. Updated every day, it is the place to follow the latest jewellery news in one place, as it happens.
De Beers London’s Undulation cocktail ring and transformable earrings pair rare green rough diamonds with brilliant, baguette and cabochon cut diamonds in sculptural white gold designs inspired by Botswana’s Okavango Delta.
Bvlgari: Tubogas Gets a New Shape
Bvlgari has added five new creations to its Tubogas collection, crafted using the flexible gold technique that has appeared in the Maison’s jewellery since the 1940s. At the centre of the launch is an asymmetric yellow gold and diamond parure inspired by a 1974 Serpenti Tubogas bracelet watch.
Its flared ends presented a particular challenge. Bvlgari developed a specially graduated internal framework so the coils could widen and narrow while retaining the suppleness that gives Tubogas its character. That construction allows the necklace to sit close to the body while breaking away from the even tubular line we normally associate with the technique. A necklace worked in yellow, white and rose gold and a pair of softly rounded half hoop earrings complete the group, but the asymmetric parure is the piece that pushes the familiar design furthest.
Bvlgari opens a new chapter for Tubogas with five new creations that revisit one of the Maison’s most recognisable signatures through fresh proportions and forms.
The new asymmetric pieces take inspiration from a Serpenti Tubogas bracelet watch from around 1974, reworked with sculptural flared ends and pavé diamonds.
Alongside the asymmetric designs, a three gold necklace introduces yellow, white and rose gold into the flat mesh, while new rounded earrings soften the collection’s profile.
A bespoke graduated framework allows the Tubogas mesh to taper progressively, bringing a new level of technical complexity to the core collection.
Bvlgari’s Tubogas earrings draw on a technique that interlocks gold strips without soldering, creating the collection’s signature flexible form.
The name derives from the coiled gas pipes of the 1920s, reworked here in polished yellow gold.
Yellow gold gives the latest Bvlgari creations a warm, unified finish.
Jessica McCormack: The Bow Without the Froufrou
Jessica McCormack has turned to one of jewellery’s oldest motifs for Bows, a 21-piece collection of rings, earrings and necklaces. Instead of neat, symmetrical ribbons, the bows twist, loop and fall unevenly, with several designs articulated so they move with the wearer. Her usual Georgian and Victorian references appear through cut-down diamond settings and milgrain detailing, but the collection feels looser than those historical cues might suggest.
Some of the smallest details give it personality. Pearls in the Diamond and Pearl Bunched Bow Earrings are strung on denim blue thread, while pink conch pearls hang beneath asymmetric diamond bows. Elsewhere, a 35.52 carat Diamond Ribbon Bow Necklace twists like rope and a new engagement ring places a 6.56-carat diamond between two looped bows. The denim thread is probably my favourite detail. It is unexpected enough to stop the collection from becoming too polished or precious.
Jessica McCormack’s Bows collection strips the motif of its usual sweetness, recasting it as something sharper, bolder and more irreverent.
Across 21 pieces, bows are pulled apart, stretched, looped and sculpted into forms that feel far removed from the traditional ribbon.
Georgian cut down settings give the diamonds a stronger presence, bringing old world technique to a distinctly modern collection.
Designed with Jessica McCormack’s Day Diamonds philosophy in mind, the collection is made to be stacked, layered and worn well beyond formal occasions.
Some pieces are articulated to move with the wearer, giving the ribbon inspired designs an almost animated quality.
The Round Brilliant Cut Diamond & Pearl Gypset Hoop Earrings use intricate millegrain detailing to add texture and definition to the setting.
The collection plays with contrast, setting the softness of pearls against architectural diamond bows and graphic gold forms.
Diamond & Pearl Bunched Bow Earrings.
Diamond Bow & Ribbon Ball n’ Chain Pendant.
Diamond & Emerald Bow Ring.
De Beers London: A Diamond Without Facets
De Beers London has unveiled its Vibrations high jewellery collection, adding three new suites to the Echo designs first revealed in January. Taking inland water in Namibia, South Africa, Canada and Botswana as its starting point, the most unusual development appears in the Undulation suite: cabochon cut diamonds, introduced into the house’s High Jewellery for the first time. Instead of facets, the diamonds are polished into smooth domes, creating a softer, almost liquid glow.
De Beers London’s Shimmer necklace and ring draw on the frost flowers of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, with rare Fancy Pink diamonds capturing the pink light of the Arctic.
The cut took five years to develop and leaves the stone unusually exposed because there are no facets to disguise inclusions. Fewer than 0.5 per cent of diamonds have the colour and clarity needed for this type of cut. The collection also uses alluvial diamonds from Sierra Leone through GemFair, appearing in both rough and polished form for the first time in De Beers London High Jewellery. Placed beside the smooth cabochons, the rough stones show two very different treatments of the same precious material.
De Beers London’s Vibrations collection takes its cue from inland water, translating rivers, waterfalls, ice and deltas into high jewellery.
Vibrations traces a line between the force of water shaping the landscape and the extraordinary journey of a diamond forming deep within the Earth.
The collection brings together four landscapes across Namibia, South Africa, Canada and Botswana, each reinterpreted through diamonds and movement.
Rare diamonds sit at the heart of Vibrations, including Fancy Pink, Fancy Blue and green stones selected for their exceptional character.
Several pieces are designed to transform, with technical settings that allow one jewel to be worn in multiple ways.
Fluid articulation runs throughout the collection, giving the jewellery a sense of movement inspired by ripples, currents and falling water.
De Beers introduces cabochon cut diamonds to its High Jewellery for the first time, creating a softer glow inspired by droplets resting at the river’s edge.
De Beers London’s Echo transformable necklace becomes a tiara, centred on a 1.12 carat Fancy Intense Blue diamond inspired by the waters of Namibia’s Fish River.
De Beers London’s Shimmer bracelet uses marquise, trilliant and brilliant cut diamonds to echo the crystalline forms of Arctic frost flowers.
A 0.81 carat Fancy Intense Purplish Pink diamond, chosen for its remarkable saturation and clarity.
Buccellati: Caviar Moves into Jewellery
Buccellati’s new Muse collection features one of the Italian house’s most recognisable textures. Caviar is formed from tiny spheres of metal packed closely together, creating the granular surface that has long appeared across Buccellati’s silverware. One of its most important earlier expressions is the Cratere delle Muse, created in 1981 by Gianmaria Buccellati, son of founder Mario Buccellati, combining silver, gold, jade and sapphires.
His son Andrea Buccellati, the house’s current Creative Director, has now carried that texture into pendants, bracelets, cufflinks, earrings and a ring, setting rubies, sapphires and tsavorites into the same closely clustered structure. The stones are arranged tightly enough to preserve the original Caviar effect, so colour is added without losing the texture underneath. Seen up close, the connection to the silver pieces is still immediately there.
The Muse ring marks a new chapter for Buccellati’s Caviar motif, which had previously appeared primarily in the Maison’s silver collections.
Buccellati’s Muse bracelet reworks the house’s Caviar motif in rubies, sapphires and tsavorites, turning its signature granulated texture into a vivid field of colour.
A single cluster of rubies, sapphires and tsavorites brings Buccellati’s historic Caviar motif into the world of fine jewellery.
Buccellati’s Muse cufflinks translate the Caviar motif into compact discs of colour, set with rubies, sapphires and tsavorites.
Buccellati treats gold almost like fabric in the Muse collection, using texture and light to give the metal a softer, more tactile character.
The collection takes its name from Gianmaria Buccellati’s 1981 Cratere delle Muse, a historic work now held by the Fondazione Gianmaria Buccellati.
Chaumet: Watching a Tiara Take Shape at 12 Vendôme
From 16 to 18 October, Chaumet will open 12 Vendôme for LVMH’s Les Journées Particulières, giving visitors access to the salons, archives and workshops behind one of the Maison’s defining forms: the tiara. The visit begins with archival material in the Salon des Perles before moving into the Salon des Dessins, which will become an immersive mini cinema. In the Salon des Diadèmes, three historic tiaras will be shown alongside a trio of contemporary examples, bringing different periods of Chaumet’s close-to-250-year history into the same room.
The final stop is the Salon Chopin, where Chaumet artisans will work live at specially installed benches, taking visitors through the process from maquette to final polish. Even the boutique windows continue the story: resin High Jewellery maquettes, originally made to refine the volume of individual jewels, will be reused as part of the installation.
From the first setting to the final polish, Chaumet’s tiaras are built through a meticulous sequence of traditional jewellery techniques.
Until Next Week
Jewellery innovation often comes down to the smallest details, as this week’s stories show. From a diamond without facets to pearls strung on denim thread, some of the most interesting developments were found in the details. With the autumn calendar now in full swing, there should be plenty more to discover in the weeks ahead.
WORDS
Bianca Blanari approaches jewellery as architecture in miniature, where form, structure, balance and elevation are distilled into objects of intimate scale. Bianca joined Katerina Perez as Club Editor and contributing writer in March.
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