Green certainly has been the color of summer 2024, propelled by the digital green hue of Charli XCX’s “brat” album cover.
But in the world of jewelry, green has long been a big hit. From emeralds to malachite, tsavorites to teal sapphires, the color’s association with nature and the versatile way it can be paired with other stones just appeal to designers.
So what is the go-to green gemstone now catching the eye of major houses and independent brands alike? Chrysoprase.
The stone, which ranges from a very pale green tint to the color of a Granny Smith apple, has a Greek name (pronounced KRAI-sow-prayz) that translates loosely as “green gold.” The most important commercial mines are in Marlborough, a region in Australia’s Queensland state, and in central Tanzania, but deposits also have been found in Western Australia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Brazil and Indonesia.
Gabor Kigyossy, a gem carver and jewelry designer in London, regularly works with chrysoprase, sculpting it into frogs and leaves as well as traditional cabochons that he said “are very easy to set and design around.”
The stone was widely popular in the 1980s and is now “having a bit of a renaissance,” Mr. Kigyossy said. “There is a comeback.”
He noted that green stones — including emeralds, tsavorites and green and teal sapphires — were in high demand at the annual gem shows in Tucson, Ariz., which he attended in February. “These will bring all the other green varieties up with them,” he said.
Chrysoprase’s glowing, translucent quality, which really comes out with polishing, distinguishes it from other green stones. “It transmits light — like a high-quality jade — that gives a glow to the stone and enhances the color,” Mr. Kigyossy said.
But prices for chrysoprase are a fraction of that for emeralds or jade. And its popularity may be set to grow: Some jewelers and lapidarists have said that they increasingly avoid malachite as, Mr. Kigyossy said, it is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral that can be an irritant when its dust is inhaled.
Chrysoprase, in contrast, is reputed to have healing qualities.
“The stone promotes love, forgiveness and joy,” said Lito Karakostanoglou, a Greek designer and the founder of Lito Fine Jewelry. “It makes me happy, and helps one feel less depressed and anxious. For me, it totally works.”
Ms. Karakostanoglou said she first came across chrysoprase many years ago at the Tucson gem fairs. “It has an amazing, bright green color — and it was love at first sight,” she recalled.
Her Analisa necklace ($18,000) is set with a row of five carved scarabs, a frequent motif in her work. Accented with a brown diamond and fiery red coral, the beetles are carved from a mix of chalcedony and chrysoprase, each in a slightly different shade of green. “The colors are not the same, but that’s the beauty of it,” she said.
She also has a minimalist necklace ($2,800) with a line of graduated pear-shape chrysoprase drops totaling 65 carats, set on a vintage yellow gold chain. “It’s a pick-me-up and changes my mood,” Ms. Karakostanoglou said. “I always carry it in my jewelry box wherever I go.”
Also channeling the stone’s symbolism is David Morris, whose Fortuna collection — named for the Roman goddess of fortune and reflecting the concepts of luck and destiny — layered chrysoprase disks with diamonds in hoop earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings. The London jeweler also uses the stone in its high jewelry, including the Electra 18-karat white gold ring inlaid with 1.97 carats of chrysoprase and topped with a 5.49-carat tsavorite.
Chrysoprase has increasingly been seen in high jewelry. Bulgari played with it in its Aeterna collection, using the stone as the backdrop for the rose gold Timeless Harmony necklace, topped with 11 round-cut and nine oval-cut emeralds, a smattering of amethysts and pavé-set diamonds.
In Dior’s Diorama high jewelry collection, whimsical animals — a fox, a squirrel and a deer — were carved from chrysoprase and then nestled among a forest of emeralds, yellow sapphires and tsavorite garnets to create a necklace, brooch and a pair of earrings.
And Cartier recently presented a clutch of large chrysoprase beads on its Panthère Chatoyante necklace, an addition to the house’s Nature Sauvage high jewelry collection introduced in June. They were paired with rubellite drops and emerald beads that met in a panther head of diamonds and emeralds with black lacquer accents. The house clearly is partial to chrysoprase, as it also played a big role in the new Tuttitutti collection, an addition to its Libre line, which included a 10-piece limited-edition jewelry box in the house’s signature blue and green peacock décor motif.
The stone also was the highlight of a trio of pieces in the Clash de Cartier line — a ring ($14,600), bracelet ($65,500) and ear cuff ($15,600) — that debuted exclusively at Harrods in London, and are scheduled for sale in the United States in October.
As for the independent jewelers that have embraced the stone, the new British brand Anoona stands out: The brand debuted in November 2023 with several chrysoprase pieces, including Lunar pendants in two sizes (from $1,800), a cluster ring ($3,000) and set of cuff links ($5,000).
Sadhbh Roux-Fouillet, Anoona’s creative director who previously designed for Annoushka and Solange Azagury-Partridge, said that featuring hand-carved chrysoprase in her designs “was a no-brainer for me.”
“It has an amazing color, with a powerful, minty green,” she said. “There is a kind of glow to it.” Other green stones such as malachite felt too standard, she added, and would not have helped the brand distinguish itself.
This summer Ms. Roux-Fouillet has followed up with several chrysoprase earrings in the Lunar collection, all accented with diamonds, including chrysoprase disk studs holding yellow gold hoops ($3,100) and chandelier styles with two sets of disks ($4,600) or three sets ($9,900).
Ms. Roux-Fouillet said that she had found chrysoprase from Australia and Brazil to be the best quality, but added that finding and matching the stones took time.
She regularly travels to Athens to work closely with the lapidists — a multigenerational family of artisans — who cut, polish and carve the stones.
“Chrysoprase is a tricky one because you can cut it open and it can be very chalky inside,” Ms. Roux-Fouillet said. “There can be lots of cavities and veins.”
A rough piece of chrysoprase often needs to be cut several times to produce a single matching stone. “It depends on every piece,” she said. “We really enjoy when the piece will be clean and with a stunning color all the way through.”
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