Gems gain worth thanks to painstaking craftsmanship from Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Nirav Modi, Graff and Piaget

Gemstones are the visible face of high jewellery, displaying their natural beauty to dazzling effect. These gems hold intrinsic value, but painstaking techniques and extraordinary craftsmanship give them heightened worth.

Cartier’s Paris workshop is a hotbed of artisanal craftsmanship where gem cutting, glyptics and figurative artworks are exquisitely applied. Such skills are driven by an innovative and creative team, and they are instrumental in audacious high-jewellery collections, says image, style and heritage director Pierre Rainero.

At the forefront of this innovation is the manipulation of platinum, which Cartier began experimenting with at the turn of the 20th century. Platinum is lighter but stronger than gold and gives jewellery more fluidity and greater respect for gemstones, he says. “But there is another challenge that is very much linked to the use of platinum. It’s also the idea that people demand more of their jewellery in terms of solidity because they wear it in different ways,” Rainero says.

Cartier’s manipulation of platinum was in line with changes taking place in the early 20th century when jewellery became more liberated as women advanced in society. “Jewellery was worn in a very peculiar circumstance and in the context where women couldn’t move freely because they were constrained by dresses and corsets and moral considerations,” Rainero says.
“But, very quickly, women liberated themselves and their movement was also liberated. Jewellery then moved differently on their bodies. In terms of construction and craftsmanship, we at Cartier had to reinvent the way we wore and made the pieces.”

“It was conceived in such a way that is quite complex, but also it had to be easy and solid. The technical constraints might be invisible,” Rainero says.

Van Cleef & Arpels’ Mystery Set technique has become as iconic as the creations it grips. The manipulation of gold rails to hold gems in a tongue-and groove technique was developed to create an unbroken field of gemstones that forms the heart of the maison’s creations.

These include such famous examples as the 1950 couture Zip necklace inspired by the Duchess of Windsor, where the necklace zipper closes to become a bracelet, to the more recent high jewellery, Seven Seas collection where Mystery Set gems imagine the colours and shapes of the ocean world.