From Wooden Orchids to Precious Armour: Five Jewellery Stories This Week
It’s been quite a week for jewellery news in London. With PAD and Frieze drawing collectors from around the globe, there’s been plenty to see, admire and talk about in my part of the world. But jewellery knows no borders, and while three of this week’s stories made their debut at PAD, the designers and inspirations behind them take us much further afield, from Brazil and Lebanon to Paris and Belgium.
For more news, as it happens, the Katerina Perez Club is your daily window into the jewellery world, with launches, exhibitions, appointments, industry news and original stories from editors with different voices and areas of interest. Updated every day, it is where everything happening in jewellery comes together in one place.
La Rose Dior: A Fresh Bouquet of Flowers from Victoire de Castellane
Christian Dior’s love of flowers, and roses in particular, has been a recurring source of inspiration for Victoire de Castellane’s jewellery designs. Now, the Artistic Director of Dior Fine Jewellery has returned to the House founder’s favourite bloom, introducing new creations across three collections: Rose Dior Couture, Rose Dior Bagatelle and Bois de Rose.
For the first time, Akoya pearls appear in Rose Dior Couture, paired with rose gold to evoke delicate rosebuds, with a semi-pavé version also available. In Rose Dior Bagatelle, the flower takes on a more sculptural form, with a new white gold necklace, ring and earrings featuring layered petals and pavé diamonds. Meanwhile, Bois de Rose offers a more abstract interpretation of this Dior emblem, with a rose gold necklace whose thorny, diamond-set stems form an ingenious clasp at the front.
Natasha d’Arenberg: From Dior to Her Own Jewellery Maison
After years spent sourcing exceptional gemstones for Dior Fine Jewellery, Natasha d’Arenberg is putting her expertise to work under her own name. The Belgian gemmologist, who founded her jewellery house in Brussels in 2025, has unveiled Orbita, her first high jewellery necklace – a platinum creation set with 1,443 emeralds and diamonds.
The design has an intriguing starting point: a bespoke ring inspired by a horse’s snaffle bit. Reworking the motif on a much grander scale, d’Arenberg has created a necklace of 22 circular links, alternating emeralds and diamonds, with a detachable 3.70ct pear-shaped Zambian emerald pendant. Each of the 1,442 smaller stones has been carefully positioned to conceal the platinum beneath, while the removable pendant allows the necklace to be worn in two ways. Crafted predominantly by hand in Belgian workshops, Orbita marks an exciting new chapter for a designer who has spent much of her career working with exceptional gemstones.
Asprey x Silvia Furmanovich: When Jadeite Meets the Jungle
Silvia Furmanovich has never been one to limit herself to conventional jewellery-making materials. This October, the Brazilian designer has brought her extraordinary imagination to Asprey, creating a collection that pairs rare jadeite from the British house’s own holdings with her signature wood marquetry and traditional crafts discovered on her travels.
The resulting one-of-a-kind jewels include Wild Orchid earrings with remarkably lifelike petals made entirely from vibrant wood veneers, and Cascade earrings featuring orange jadeite framed by miniature purple flowers woven from horsehair by artisans in rural Chile. A broad cuff carved from dark Brazilian braúna wood, meanwhile, provides a dramatic setting for a green jadeite cabochon. Bringing traditional crafts into the world of High Jewellery, the collaboration reunites Asprey and Furmanovich four years after their first partnership on a collection of decorative objects
Nada Ghazal: ECHOES at PAD London
PAD London marked an important milestone for Lebanese designer Nada Ghazal, who unveiled her first complete High Jewellery collection at the fair. Presented by Second Petale Jewellery Gallery, ECHOES explores the themes of light, dreams, freedom, grace and memory through sculptural gold jewels set with multicoloured sapphires, emeralds and champagne diamonds. Every piece has been handcrafted by the goldsmiths in her Beirut atelier.
For Ghazal, the collection is also an opportunity to revisit some of her earlier designs on a grander scale. Among them are her Fuse earrings, first created in 2016 to give the impression that her ears had been dipped in gold and diamonds. A decade later, she has reimagined the design with larger champagne diamonds, bringing new life to a personal favourite. Each design will be produced in a limited edition of 10.
Fernando Jorge: Armour Makes Its Debut
A shield, a leaf, an almond and the point at which two circles overlap might seem unlikely starting points for a jewellery collection, but all four shapes find their way into Armour, Fernando Jorge’s new collection, unveiled at PAD London last week. Exploring the idea of jewellery as a form of protection, the Brazilian-born designer combines precious gemstones with natural materials, pairing brown diamonds and smoky quartz with ebony, Brazilian Preciosa wood and tagua seed.
The shield-inspired designs take on a bolder, more graphic appearance in High Armour, the collection’s High Jewellery creations. Taking inspiration from the geometry of ancient Egyptian and African artefacts, Jorge juxtaposes black ebony with carved white opal, framing elongated emerald-cut diamonds in striking compositions of light and dark. The designs build on the sculptural forms of his earlier Vertex and Deep Vertex collections, balancing symmetry with the fluidity for which his jewellery is known.
Until Next Week
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back next Monday with more jewellery news from inside the industry.
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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