Lydia Courteille Reveals High Jewels Inspired By The Silk Road

The vibrant colors, changing landscapes and diverse cultures of the Silk Road are often an inspiration for jewelers and artists. The historic trade routes that connected East Asia and Southeast Asia with South Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and Southern Europe, is literally a treasure trove of adventurous story telling that Parisian high jewelry artist, Lydia Courteille, was happy to recreate in a new collection of jewels.

Courteille isn’t the first to mine the richness of this subject. However, you won’t find many who can do it with such creativity and imagination. Her collection of one-of-a-kind jewels is titled “Caravan.” She uses her gem-encrusted, sculptural creations to map the route from Turkey through the former civilizations of Little Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia and Samarkand. The Silk Road operated roughly from the 2nd century B.C. to the 18th century, so there’s a lot of history to mine. Courteille does this with a collection of 13 rings, six earrings, four necklaces and two bracelets.

In addition to being an avant-garde high jewelry artist, Courteille is an avid collector of antiques and gemstones. So her knowledge of historic and cultural subjects is quite strong as is her myriad uses of gemstones. For this new collection, as in her previous ones, she creates sculptural pieces that depict people, places, animals and spiritual beings by using paved and encrusted gem settings along with magnificent large stones. Color is always important to her and this collection focuses on various shades of blue and green along with fiery yellow and orange. There are always a few pieces that standout for the use of material. For example, a pendant necklace and earrings use large slices of light brown jasper. She also mixes artifacts with her contemporary creations.

Blues and yellows are dominate in some of the pieces, such as an 18k gold ring with four faces, inspired by a god of four faces from Babylonia. A large faceted aquamarine is on the head of the magical god surrounded by blue sapphires. Another example is a ring with a realistic depiction of Aladdin’s lamp in 18k yellow gold mounted with paved diamonds and sapphires with some turquoise. The top of the lamp opens to reveal more jewels. In addition, there’s a ring featuring two ancient coins in yellow gold rimmed by blue sapphires.

A few of the pieces contain additional surprises when opened, like the Aladdin’s lamp ring. Another example is a ring paved in a multi-faceted design using blue and green with diamonds opens at the top to reveal a flame that is reminiscent of a story from Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest continuously practiced religions.

A necklace and earrings depicts the brown sands of the Gobi Desert using carved Jasper while adding 18k yellow gold, tsavorites and colored sapphires to depict an oasis setting.

As you may have noticed, rings are prevalent in this collection. A piece known as the “Cauldron Ring” features a large azurite gem held in place by six claws carved with animal faces. Diamonds, black diamonds and sapphires cover the shank of the ring.

A “Vulture Ring” in 18k gold features a sculpted version of the bird with its wings paved with round shaped brown, black and white diamonds wrapped around about a third of the domed shaped ring, which is paved in rows of sapphires, blue topaz with decorative white diamonds.

A blue Sumerian lion rests comfortably on top of a ring. Its body is wrapped in brown onyx. Meanwhile, a pair of earrings feature long rows of light blue beads attached to dark blue fishes. This piece is made with diamonds, blue and fancy colored sapphires, tanzanites and tsavorites.

This collection rich in historic and cultural symbolism certainly travels well.

If you want to learn more about Courteille and her new Caravan collection of high jewels, she will be discussing this during a live interview on my Jewelry News Network Instagram page on July 7 at 11:00 a.m. EDT.