Objects of Desire: The Most Spectacular Jewellery to See at PAD London 2026
Every October, London’s art and design world becomes its own version of fashion week. Frieze and PAD arrive almost in tandem, and for a few days the city becomes a circuit of collectors, artists, dinners, viewings and serious acquisitions. Inside PAD’s pavilion in Berkeley Square this year, the range is particularly seductive, with sculptural furniture, rare objects, contemporary art, vintage design, one-of-a-kind jewellery and a Yayoi Kusama painting all vying for attention. The fair’s intimate scale and softly lit interiors heighten those encounters, with the trees of Berkeley Square rising straight through the temporary pavilion tent.
The jewellery showcases are one of PAD London’s great pleasures. This year, Buccellati, Nikos Koulis and Durazzo x Georges Lenfant join returning names including Hemmerle, Glenn Spiro, Fernando Jorge and Elie Top, alongside jewellery galleries Second Petale and Carpenters Workshop Jewellery. An opportunity to encounter exceptional stones, unusual materials, historic pieces and contemporary makers under one roof, PAD London continues until 18 October, so there is still time to visit this weekend. These are my 10 highlights from this year’s fair.
The PAD London pavilion in Berkeley Square and Bianca Blanari, as seen in British Vogue
1. Hemmerle’s Harmony Bangle
Hemmerle’s Harmony bangle is one of the German jewellery house’s signatures, and this version is among its most extravagant. Displayed right at the front of Hemmerle’s bamboo-clad stand, it is set in silver, iron and white gold with 1,799 old-cut diamonds totalling 65.64 carats. Fine straps of iron wind tightly around the diamond-set form, appearing to bind the stones in place. More than 500 hours went into its making, with the dark iron cutting through the brilliance.
2. Glenn Spiro’s Carnelian Flowers
Glenn Spiro is one of the most distinctive jewellers working today, known for an exceptional eye for gemstones, allowing the stone to dictate the design and pairing unexpected materials in ways that bring the old world into conversation with the new. This carnelian, red agate and diamond suite is a thoroughly modern parure. Two substantial cuffs are joined by 8.1cm earrings, each crafted around four-petalled flowers in deep red agate and polished carnelian. The colour is intense and glowing, interrupted by trillion-cut diamonds and fine pavé borders that send white light shooting across the hardstones. Oversized and glamorous, the set has a sleek, unapologetically feminine presence.
3. Fernando Jorge’s New Armour Collection
Brazilian jewellery designer Fernando Jorge, today based in London, is debuting the Armour collection at PAD, which takes the shield as its central form and divides it into segments of contrasting materials. In the Crest Sectioned earrings, pale, hand-carved tagua, a South American seed known as vegetable ivory, meets black ebony, separated by fine veins of 18K yellow gold and marquise-cut diamonds. The Armour Large bracelet switches the pairing up, bringing smoky quartz together with Brazilian Preciosa wood and 7.39 carats of brown diamonds. The shield shape gives these demarcations of colour and texture a strong geometry, as though different sections have been cut apart and carefully joined back together.
4. Second Petale Gallery:Salima Thakker, VAK Jewels & R Kheni
Founded by curator Arina Pouzoullic, Second Petale Gallery brings together contemporary jewellers working across art, design and one-of-a-kind jewellery. One of them is Antwerp-based designer Salima Thakker, whose new Grid ring takes the familiar circle of a band and pulls it into a rounded, pyramidal silhouette, with a marquise-cut diamond that echoes the ring’s tapering shape.
Architecture and the natural beauty of gemstones inform the sculptural creations of VAK, whose jewellery is handcrafted in his Mumbai atelier. The blood agates in his Rosace earrings are like miniature landscapes, their surfaces alive with swirling reds, greens, ochres and blues. Emeralds and rose-cut diamonds pick up the colours within the stones, while a vivid green emerald at the centre of each earring completes the rosette design.
Ravi Kehni natural pearl bracelet
5. Elie Top’s Avalon Star Pendant
Paris-based jeweller Elie Top began his career in fashion, working with Yves Saint Laurent, Loulou de la Falaise and Lanvin before establishing his own jewellery house in 2015, and that couture background still runs through his work. Layers of patinated silver and yellow gold radiate outwards beneath coral, amethyst, garnets, rubies and diamonds in his Avalon Star pendant, creating a rich starburst of scarlet, wine, violet and white. The jewel belongs to La Dame du Lac, Top’s neo-medieval world of shields, daggers and blazons, imagined as protective jewellery for women. Turn it over and the back is as considered as the front. The colour is unusually exuberant for Top, but the heraldic inspiration and talismanic character are unmistakably his.
6. Karry Berreby’s Vintage Bvlgari Necklace
Karry Berreby has brought a beautifully judged selection of vintage jewels to PAD, including pieces you are unlikely to encounter anywhere else. Bvlgari’s 1990 Naturalia necklace dates from a period when the Roman house was embracing bold volume, yellow gold and increasingly organic forms. Weighing more than 180 grams, its polished gold elements form a dense, tactile fringe around the neck. Beside it, an Ilias Lalaounis shell pendant-necklace reflects the Greek jeweller’s fascination with archaeology and ancient goldsmithing. Its spiralling shell is crafted in yellow gold and set with six carats of diamonds.
7. Georges Lenfant’s Optical Bracelet
Founded in Paris in 1899, Georges Lenfant was a major French jewellery house, with leading luxury brands visiting its workshop to purchase its creations. In 2026, the historic house returned to a wider audience in collaboration with Parisian gallery Durazzo, revisiting Jacques Lenfant’s late-1960s Optical collection through newly made limited editions rather than exact reproductions of the originals.
The Sinusoidale bracelet weighs more than 140 grams, yet it bends around the wrist with remarkable softness as hundreds of tiny gold strands come together in long waves. The surface resembles reptile skin, with each ridge catching the light differently. The diamond-set clasp sits at the front and opens through a smooth rotating action. Only 12 will be made, each fitted to its wearer.
8. Carpenters Workshop Jewellery’s Dragon Ring
Carpenters Workshop Jewellery has brought together such a varied group of designers for PAD London that choosing a single piece proved difficult. In the end, I opted for the HunRod Gold Dragon Ring, created by avant-garde fashion figure Michèle Lamy and American jewellery designer Loree Rodkin. Their collaborative jewellery project, available exclusively through Carpenters Workshop Jewellery, centres on sculptural pieces inspired by the animals of the Chinese zodiac. The Dragon Ring turns that idea into something armour-like: yellow and white gold form the creature’s head, grey diamonds cover its face, and vivid ruby eyes stare out above another ruby set inside the open mouth. In Chinese symbolism, the dragon represents strength and power, and here that character is given real weight on the hand.
9. Nikos Koulis’ Whisper Necklace
The Whisper necklace by Greek designer Nikos Koulis is quietly dramatic, playing with the contrast between jet-black enamel, brilliant white diamonds and transparent rock crystal. Long sections of crystal are punctuated by black enamel links and diamond-set connectors, with brilliant and cushion-cut diamonds scattered throughout. At the centre, the necklace gives way to a cascading tassel. With its Art Deco influences, the combination of black enamel, white diamonds and rock crystal is pure Nikos Koulis.
10. Buccellati’s Cocktail Earrings
The Italian jewellery house Buccellati makes intricately worked gold appear remarkably light. In these Diamond Cocktail Pendant earrings, a honeycomb-like centre allows light to pass through the jewel, while engraved petals, pierced edges and diamonds build outwards around it. Almost every visible section has been cut, textured or opened by hand, turning the metal into something closer to Venetian lace. It is only at close range that the sheer amount of work becomes fully apparent, particularly in the tiny transitions between the gold, openwork and diamond-set edges.
This is only a very small selection of the pieces that caught my eye. Go to Pad London for the one-of-a-kind jewels, stay for the rare objects you had no intention of falling in love with, and consider it the perfect way to close art week in the capital.
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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