Blood And Stone

Jing Zhang learns about the mystique and symbolism of rubies and Van Cleef & Arpels’s love affair with the sensuous stone, which stars in its latest high-jewellery collection

The colour of love, passion, royalty, blood and burning embers, the red of precious rubies has been prized around the world for millennia. In the 1980s, Jacques Arpels of Van Cleef & Arpels even told a journalist that the ruby was his favourite stone. Indeed, the jewellery house has had a love affair with it for more than a century, crafting stunning creations around it. The 1937 Peony Clip, for instance, was once owned by Princess Faiza of Egypt and is a riot of bright rubies depicting the peony flower, surrounded by diamond foliage.

Fast forward some 80 years and we’re in Thailand, known in the world of stones as ruby capital – a centre of trade, cutting and treatment – for the unveiling of the Treasure Of Rubies collection. It took the Van Cleef house around 10 years to gather stones that total more than 3,000cts – all to create 60 unique pieces in a corpus meant to take us on a journey to the heart of this bright and burning hue.

“The ruby is very often referred to as the King of Stones,” says Nicolas Bos, President, CEO and Creative Director of Van Cleef & Arpels. “All stones have their own personality, history and specificity, so it’s not impossible to rank them in a hierarchy; rubies have, for the longest time, been the most regarded, considered the rarest and most symbolic stones, all over the world, even before diamonds.”

Whether it was medieval Europe, Asia, India or China – “pretty much everywhere that there was access” – bright red rubies were often treasured as the holy grail. And in this collection, Bos often let specific stones lead the way in terms of design, adjusting to reveal and maximise the beauty of each one. It’s a series of creative choices made in the ateliers with the craftsmen, looking at style and whether a piece is more “graphic or ornamental or something else”.