Garden of Green: Exquisite Jewelry from the Collection of Van Cleef & Arpels is open at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City.
The exhibit is part of the Museum’s Halls of Gems and Minerals, with a dazzling celebration of green gemstones as featured in jewelry over the past 100 years. The exhibition includes 44 pieces—32 of which will be on display for the first time in the U.S.—from the collections of renowned French high jewelry maison Van Cleef & Arpels, which since its founding in 1906 has designed jewelry and watches inspired by nature’s lightness, proportions, creatures, and colors.
From the fresh, apple-green of peridot to the dark, deep green of malachite, Garden of Green signals the start of summer with a showcase of glamorous green jewels across seven categories:
- Variations of Green, featuring pieces inspired by the natural world, such as the Cydonia necklace and earrings set (2009), which boasts more than 900 emeralds in a design that evokes the branches and large flowers of the quince tree
- Jadeite Jade, showcasing pieces from the 1920s, including a silk Art Deco evening bag accented with bright jade and rose-cut diamonds, a jade vanity case, and lapel watch
- Peridot, featuring a unique jewelry set, with 132 peridots and 580 diamonds artfully arranged to suggest garlands of leaves and flower petals
- Malachite, a mineral that forms around copper deposits, seen here in striking zodiac-themed pendants, the Alhambra long necklace, and malachite-faced watch from the 1970s
- Chrysoprase, a lustrous, translucent green variety of chalcedony, complimented by diamonds and rubies and featured in playful animal designs created in the 1950s and 1960s
- Green Chalcedony, characterized by ultrafine crystals and showcased in jewelry from the 1970s, including a curvaceous bracelet reminiscent of a leafy garland; and
- Emerald, the treasured green form of beryl that inspired the exhibition’s name: the stone’s unique pattern of inclusions, resembling branches, is called its jardin, French for “garden.” Of the 12 emerald pieces on view, the Quatre Chemins necklace, created in 2019, features a unique set of 16 emerald-cut Zambian emeralds (27.79 carats).
Garden of Green will be on view through January 2024.
