Grain de Café or Alhambra

Thirty years separate a bean from a clover on the Place Vendôme. Jeanne Toussaint's Grain de Café, from 1938, is a full coffee bean grooved down its middle, cast in gold and massed into clusters, so the piece reads by its weight and swell. Van Cleef & Arpels drew the Alhambra in 1968 as a flat four-leaf clover of stone inside a ring of gold beads, then spaced it along a chain. Cartier gathers its motif; the clover is counted out, one charm at a time.