An Unusual Chiseled Onyx Necklace with 18K yellow gold and Diamonds, Modernist.
This necklace is 22 3/4th inches in length. Its width proceeds from 1/2 inches at the clasp to 11/16th of an inch in its middle before returning to it original width at the other side of the clasp. The 55 small diamonds, set into the gold, are estimated to weigh .50 cts. These white brilliant cut diamonds are all well matched, approximately H in color, near colorless, and very slightly included. The weight of the necklace is a comfortable 5.24 troy ounces which is neither light weight nor too heavy. Marked on the clasp is 18K, 75% pure, with the maker's mark, which is unknown to us. On the verso of each piece of onyx is a Roman numeral, used probably, for placement, after cutting, of each piece to form the necklace. The 18K gold spacers also are marked with Roman numerals. The diamond clasp is well made and works well. This necklace is accompanied by a GIA Colored Stone Report, indicating that the principal material is black onyx.
There is something about this piece that compels our attention and our curiosity. Is it that we never thought we would be mesmerized by a textured necklace in black? Possibly we are surprised that the refined and precisely drawn line on the side of the necklace that faces her neck is nonetheless not at all out of place with the irregular surface of black onyx on the outer edge of the necklace.
Well, the answer may lie elsewhere for this is a necklace that shows the result of conchoidal fractures - a fancy phrase that suggests that when the black onyx is expertly cleaved it leaves a shiny and also curved surface.
May we introduce the reader to a special master class by a stone cutter (lapidary) par excellence who has sculpted for your visual enjoyment an exemplary series of precisely cut pieces of textured rusticity thereby transforming onyx into something few of us have ever seen before!
What kind of design creativity is required to see, before it even exists, a a field of ruggedly scooped and chiseled curves which form a completely unpredictable, if not other worldly surface - all of which nonetheless prompts the designer to conclude that they can create a beautiful and captivating necklace.
Was this designer making a statement about the wearer...that possibly she was not formed solely from "adam's rib" but also from other quite natural, albeit rare forces that are refined yet also informal, sometimes explosive and frequently unpredictable, but that at last coalesces to form something or someone from whom we cannot take our eyes away and who always mesmerizes us and makes us curious as any good enigma should?
Welcome then to a truly unusual necklace, possibly, almost as unusual as...you.