Chandrika

The necklace is a fringe of drops in two lengths, long and short in turn, so the line along the collarbone moves rather than marches. Each drop is built the same way: baguettes set edge to edge into the shape of a single large step cut, held in a frame of round brilliants, and finished along its lower edge with a row of 4 mm Akoya pearls. Above the longer drops sit small flowers of round brilliants, which carry the eye up into the collar.

The baguette clusters are the point. Set tightly enough, a group of small baguettes reads as one stone the size of the whole cluster, and it catches light in long flashes rather than in sparkle. The pearls do the opposite work. They are cream rather than white, chosen for warmth, and their lustre softens twenty three carats of white fire into the light of a moon just risen, before it turns silver. Chandrika is Sanskrit for moonlight.

It was drawn as a bridal necklace and made to be worn long after the wedding. The gold is 18K yellow, finished in rhodium where it meets the diamonds, so the setting disappears into the stones and the warmth of the gold shows only at the edges, where it answers the pearls.