Écrin

Place Vendôme · Paris, since 1906

Van Cleef & Arpels

A Place Vendôme house that makes jewels of luck and gardens: a four-leaf clover in stone, heart-shaped petals of polished gold, rings that perch across two fingers. Its signature is a double row of tiny gold beads, and a hand precise enough to set rubies with no visible metal.

Founded by Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels. Ideas from €880. Van Cleef & Arpels site

Zip

Zip

1950
Alhambra

Alhambra

1968 From €1,600
Frivole

Frivole

2003
Between the Finger

Between the Finger

1972
Perlée

Perlée

2008 From €880
Bouton d'or

Bouton d'or

2016
Lucky Animals

Lucky Animals

2017
Fleurette

Fleurette

The conversation

Answered by other houses

  • Menottes dinh van bracelet: two interlocking yellow-gold half-rings on a knotted black cord, on a white ground.

    Menottes dinh van, dinh van after Zip

    A quarter century after the Zip turned a working fastener into a necklace, Menottes made the clasp the whole jewel.

  • Jeux de Liens pendant, medium model, rose gold and diamonds

    Liens, Chaumet after Between the Finger

    Five years after Van Cleef set two motifs face to face across two fingers, Chaumet drew the tie between two people as a crossed ribbon.

  • Divas' Dream pendant on a rose-gold chain, the fan paved with diamonds shading to pink sapphires below a round pink sapphire, on embossed BVLGARI paper

    Divas' Dream, Bulgari after Alhambra

    Divas' Dream takes up the motif repeated as a talisman: a Roman fan edged in gold and filled with pavé, malachite or mother-of-pearl.

  • Opera

    Opera, Buccellati after Alhambra

    Opera cuts the house's own four-petalled rosette free and wears it alone, the way the clover is worn.

  • Giardino ring in rose gold: an openwork four-petalled flower with a lace-edged outline paved with diamonds and a round diamond at the centre, on a cream ground

    Giardino, Mellerio after Alhambra

    Giardino opens the four-petalled flower in lace-edged gold with one stone at its heart, after the gardens of Isola Madre.

  • Piaget Rose ring in rose gold: a full-blown rose whose petals are paved with diamonds, on a transparent ground.

    Piaget Rose, Piaget after Frivole

    Piaget Rose builds the gold flower up in layered petals, modelled on the rose named for Yves Piaget.

  • Blossom Triple ring in white gold: three linked blossoms with diamond-set petals across the top of the band

    Blossom, Boodles after Frivole

    Blossom keeps the gold flowers small and beads their petals with diamonds like dew.

Inside the house

  • Perlée

    Perlée after Alhambra

    The gold beads that ring every Alhambra clover were given a collection of their own, lining bangles and hoops.

  • Lucky Animals

    Lucky Animals after Alhambra

    Van Cleef cut its hard-stone marquetry into a bestiary and kept the Alhambra's contour of gold beads round each creature.