Grain de Café or Bouton d'or
Cartier · Van Cleef & Arpels
Grain de Café
The coffee bean, full and grooved down its middle, cast in gold and gathered into clusters.
Bouton d'or
Little discs of gold, each with a stone at its centre, massed in rows and rings like the head of a buttercup.
Born in Paris two years apart, both ideas waited decades for a second life. Van Cleef & Arpels set a stone in the middle of small gold discs in 1936, echoing the sequins on evening gowns of the decade, and revived them in 2016 as Bouton d'or, massed like a buttercup's head. Toussaint's Grain de Café beans for Cartier date from 1938 and came back in 2023, starting with a reissue of a 1955 necklace. Flat, flickering discs and swelling, grooved beans: the same decade's gold, read two ways.
| Fact | Grain de Café | Bouton d'or |
|---|---|---|
| Introduced | 1938 | 2016 |
| Designer | Jeanne Toussaint | — |
| School | Place Vendôme | Place Vendôme |
| Materials | yellow gold, white gold, platinum, diamond, tourmaline | yellow gold, rose gold, white gold, diamond, chalcedony, onyx, carnelian, mother-of-pearl |
| Moves | No | No |
| From | €7,900 | Not published |
| Top of line | €371,000 | — |
Prices in euros as published by each house, October 2026.
More with Grain de Café
- Grain de Café or Plume de Paon Boucheron
- Grain de Café or Sunflower Harry Winston
- Grain de Café or Alhambra Van Cleef & Arpels
- Grain de Café or Calla Vhernier
More with Bouton d'or
- Bouton d'or or Plume de Paon Boucheron
- Bouton d'or or Sunflower Harry Winston
- Bouton d'or or Calla Vhernier
- Bouton d'or or Lily Cluster Harry Winston