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No marks for guessing why classic hoops, loops and circles dominated jewellery in recent years. Symbols of completeness, their cocooning curves steered clear of any sudden tangents or sense of threat. But now, a new mood. Their spikier, more assertive cousins – the polygons – are gaining an edge.
Gaia Repossi’s sculptural Antifer concept, where a projecting angle gives the illusion of a hexagon to curved designs, has been pointing in this direction for a decade. But suddenly, octagons and hexagons are infiltrating every corner of the market, evoking spider’s webs, garden labyrinths and even the angular pound coin.
Jo Hayes Ward gold and pink-tourmaline Tapered Chaos Hex ring, £5,780
Alice Cicolini gold, Colombian emerald and lacquer enamel Jaipur Muzo Bougainvillea chandelier earrings, £65,000
These shapes have many facets to play with, and everyone from the Lebanese L’Atelier Nawbar to William Welstead, Alice Cicolini to Gucci, has been seduced. Take hexagons, the ultra-strong “building blocks of life”, forming cell structures, crystals and geological wonders – a theme very present in the work of award-winning English goldsmith Jo Hayes Ward. Her roughened mounds of golden hexagons are reminiscent of the Giant’s Causeway, where ancient lava cooled and cracked at 120-degree angles, forming the hypnotic landscape of six-sided blocks.
And then there’s the honeycomb. Chaumet has been well ahead of the curve here (while nodding to the bee, an imperial emblem of Napoleon) throughout its history. The Bee My Love fine-jewellery collection – its tessellating shape perfectly positioned when the “stacking” trend took hold – continues to evolve with ever-more inventive interpretations.
This year’s cuff and necklaces feel like a second skin: the meticulous articulation of every angle and link allows the elements to flow like honey and glow with light. They owe it to a “backbone of mathematics”, says creative director Ehssan Moazen. “All forms, organic or mineral, natural or man-made, can be explained through mathematics,” he says. “Through a state-of- the-art 3D design and milling process, we bridge the organic and mineral forms – as if nature unveiled its inner structure to us.”
Graff rose-gold and diamond ring, £2,600
Van Gelder gold and ruby Jali ear pendants, €4,900
Gucci High Jewellery gold, diamond, spinel and pink-tourmaline Allegoria necklace, POA
Bulgari High Jewellery rose-gold and diamond Monete ring with ancient silver coin (Thracian Chersonese, c386-338BC), POA
Hexagons are also imbued with symbolism and sacred mystery. In Christianity, they represent the six-day Creation, while in Indian temples they decorate the jali screens used to soften incoming light and encourage devotion – a feature that inspired Van Gelder’s beautifully nuanced graduating hexagonal earrings.
Octagons, for their part, are prominent in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, Buddhism, feng shui, Islamic art and, as Bulgari’s jewellery managing director Mauro di Roberto explains, in architecture reaching back to the ancients. “Since ancient Rome, the octagonal shape has been an emblem of perfection and harmony,” he says, “a combination of the circle, representing heaven, and the square, earth.”
Since its inception, Bulgari has infused its pieces with elements of its home city’s elegant geometry: the octagon graced the Serpenti dials of the ’50s, the sumptuous sautoirs of the ’70s and the more recent Octo timepieces, inspired by the dome of the Pantheon.
Regular polygons are also synonymous with the art deco aesthetic – and it’s no coincidence, at a time when there’s strong demand at auction for original art deco jewellery, that these motifs are making headway in contemporary design too. Benoît Repellin, worldwide head of jewellery at Phillips, says: “There’s a great fascination with the Roaring Twenties, and jewellers are capitalising on it.” He notes the parallels between the ’20s and today: “The movement for women’s rights; the growth of unisex fashion with its straight lines. And the strong lines and angles were a reaction to what came before. It had a certain defiance.”
L’Atelier Nawbar gold, diamond and turquoise ring, POA
William Welstead gold and green-sapphire ring, £17,040, shop.doverstreet market.com
Annoushka gold, diamond and tourmaline ring, £7,900
David Yurman gold and diamond Carlyle pendant, $12,000
Many designers are using ’20s architecture as their foundation. Annoushka nods to the iconic Chrysler building and the “free spirit and glamour” of the age by using emerald-cut stones with octagonal halos of pavé diamonds. Mumbai’s deco-style Marine Drive makes its presence felt in Flora Bhattachary’s Deco series, featuring octagonal aquamarines.
“Strong, clean lines and geometric forms have an inherent sense of order – but they can also reflect real personality,” says Repellin. “Today’s designers are ambitious with interior structure, making complex jewels that are just as beautiful on the underside – and polygons lend themselves to that.”
This chimes with the current appetite for unusual, expressive stones in engagement rings (including emerald- and square-emerald cuts, a feature of many original art deco pieces, which appear as elongated, irregular octagons), along with coloured gemstones, which take on particular brilliance in angular shapes.
The ubiquitous chain is getting a refreshingly graphic dimension too. Sabbadini’s audacious titanium Soho cuffs, rings and earrings are a playful abstraction of the classic curb chain, exaggerated into interlocked octagons. David Yurman’s Carlyle collection, also channelling art deco architecture, links big, bold hexagons into necklaces (available with pavé diamonds for extra oomph), “hoop” earrings, rings and bracelets with a sole, contrasting-metal link.
Flora Bhattachary gold, aquamarine and champagne diamond Salila ring, £1,990
Jessica McCormack white- and yellow-gold and diamond Hex medium-sized hoop earrings, £10,000
It isn’t all hard lines, though: there’s sensuality too. Jessica McCormack’s Hex collection and Space Odyssey ring, with its hexagonal step-cut diamond, gently curve around the finger; while the malleable 24ct gold of Solange Azagury-Partridge’s Shapeshifter Hexagon ring patinates and “subtly changes its form over time, so its owner becomes part of the process of design”. Now there’s a sharp idea.
