It’s Never the Wrong Season for Turquoise

As autumn approaches, you could be forgiven for thinking turquoise has had its moment in the sun. Yet new jewelry lines featuring this boldly hued hardstone suggest that this year, it is so much more than a summer romance.

In September, Tiffany & Co. released Bird on a Rock by Tiffany — a new collection that Nathalie Verdeille, the brand’s chief artistic officer for jewelry and high jewelry, created as an homage to the iconic avian brooch Jean Schlumberger first imagined in 1965. The collection comprises fine jewels and two high-jewelry suites, one of which is dedicated to turquoise.

One smooth turquoise cabochon replaces the Tiffany diamond as the bird’s perch in the latest version of that brooch, while another sits atop a ring between two diamond-set birds. The star of this suite is a necklace featuring more than 50 large turquoise beads interspersed with diamond wing motifs, culminating in a swooping bird that appears to snatch up the other end of the strand and the large cabochon dangling from it to make a lariat.

Besides celebrating the legacy of Schlumberger’s original Bird on a Rock, the use of turquoise is a nod to the legendary jeweler himself, who often incorporated the material into his work. One spectacular example is in the Paul and Rachel Mellon Collection at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: a Leaves collar necklace he created for Tiffany in 1956, with hundreds of smooth turquoises forming fronds that lead into diamond-set leaves.  

Dior also understood the allure of turquoise in the 1950s, but it used synthetic versions in the costume jewelry that British designer Mitchel Maer created for the house. Now, Dior is once again playing with the illusion of turquoise. New additions to the My Dior fine-jewelry line, which came out in September, take inspiration from the woven cane panels on the Napoleon III chairs at the fashion house’s 30 Avenue Montaigne flagship in Paris. Dior recreated this lattice in gold to form geometric cuffs, chokers and rings, with some featuring a backing of turquoise lacquer peeking through the gaps. While it’s not the real thing, this design further signals a strong desire for the stone’s endorphin-boosting azure hue.

At the Las Vegas shows in June, many jewelers presented turquoise creations. Jacquie Aiche, whose work often includes Native American motifs, used the stone heavily in her new designs; turquoise is a prized material among tribes such as the Navajo, Zuni and Hopi, for both adornment and ceremonial use. Jenna Blake presented innovative ways of utilizing the blue stone: chopping beads in half to serve as end pieces for gold tubes with black-enamel stripes, which the designer then strung with polished coral or emerald beads to make chunky necklaces. Meanwhile, a pair of earrings in Karina Choudhrie’s Under the Sea high-jewelry collection contains elongated drops of blue and green turquoise. The two colors create a vibrant clash, while the veining in both stones keeps them perfectly in sync.

Shari Cohen of Seal & Scribe gave her gem-setter quite the headache when she came up with a new twist on the polka-dot trend. Her Positano and Saint Tropez rings involved placing smooth cuts of bright turquoise or coral at the center, and setting tiny cuts of the opposite gem directly into the gold of the curvaceous shank to create little dots. Her setter told her she could more easily replicate this look with colored enamel, but Cohen retorted that “everyone does enamel now.” For her, showing off this popular hardstone was worth going the extra mile.

Main image: A model wears jewelry from Dior’s My Dior collection in 18-karat gold with turquoise lacquer. (Dior)