Cover Boghossian’s latest high jewellery collection Queens of Time celebrates powerful female leaders through history (Photo: Boghossian)
Boghossian’s latest high jewellery collection Queens of Time celebrates powerful female leaders through history (Photo: Boghossian)
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Boghossian’s latest high jewellery collection Queens of Time celebrates powerful female leaders through history, but looks well beyond the expected Cleopatra and Elizabeth I to find them
Every house with a high jewellery calendar has, at some point, done a queens collection. Marie Antoinette, Cleopatra and Elizabeth I turn up so reliably in these briefs that they’ve become shorthand for “regal” rather than being actual historical reference points. Boghossian’s Queens of Time includes both Cleopatra and Elizabeth, so it isn’t immune to the pull of the obvious. It rounds out its European roster with Theodora of Byzantium, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Catherine the Great and Empress Joséphine.
But what’s really noteworthy is who else made the cut: Māyādevi of the Śākya kingdom, mother of the Buddha; Seondeok of Silla, Korea’s first female monarch; Indradevi of the Khmer Empire, Cambodia’s earliest known female poet; Atossa Shahbanu of Achaemenid Persia; and Mumtaz Mahal of the Mughal Empire. None of these women show up in a typical high jewellery mood board and choosing them alters the intention behind this collection.
Above Mumtaz Mahal cuff and earrings; Joséphine necklace (Photo: Boghossian)
Mumtaz Mahal cuff and earrings; Joséphine necklace (Photo: Boghossian)
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Geneva-based Boghossian has built its business on cross-cultural gem sourcing and a client base that spans Europe, the Gulf and Asia, and a collection anchored entirely in European queens would have underserved a large part of that audience. Putting the Seondeok of Silla jadeite cuffs, set with fancy vivid yellow diamonds and built around the antlered crown she likely wore, next to the Catherine the Great moonstone-and-diamond necklace is a fairly direct read of where the high jewellery collector’s money and the interest sit right now.
The collection is most interesting where the material choice works harder than simply matching the colours of the stones. For instance, the Cleopatra necklace is made of golden-yellow mother of pearl rather than gold, with the Hercules Knot in the strands doing double duty as both a period-accurate motif and a protective symbol older than Cleopatra herself. Mumtaz Mahal, the Queen who inspired India’s Taj Mahal, has a parure in her honour: the tawiz-cut diamonds are shaped like amulet pendants still worn across South Asia today, tying a 17th-century Mughal empress to a design vocabulary that’s still culturally relevant.
Above Seondeok of Silla cuffs (Photo: Boghossian)
Above Seondeok of Silla earrings (Photo: Boghossian)
Seondeok of Silla cuffs (Photo: Boghossian)
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The two Elizabeth I sets provide biographical weight rather than mere illustration. Pearls, a symbol of purity, run through both, a direct reference to her position as England’s unmarried Virgin Queen. One sautoir is led by a conch pearl with antique coral and ruby cabochons; the second layers carved agate Tudor roses against 87 abalone pearls and orangy diamonds. Similarly, the Catherine the Great necklace draws on a bowknot diamond necklace she is known to have commissioned, reportedly kept hidden in the Kremlin, reworked here into hexagonal moonstone and kite-cut diamond inlay, a palette creative director Edmond Chin describes as the cold glitter of Russian winters.
Above Catherine the Great necklace (Photo: Boghossian)
Above Queen Elizabeth I necklace (Photo: Boghossian)
Catherine the Great necklace (Photo: Boghossian)
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Thirty-nine jewels across 11 women is a considerable amount of ground to cover; the collection is held together not through a shared palette, but through a consistent method: every piece traces back to a documented object, portrait or historical account rather than an imagined idea of queenship. That method carries risk for a house working across this many cultures and centuries, since the line between homage and appropriation is thin and unforgiving. But by being unambiguous as to the inspiration and influence behind each set, Boghossian manages to stay on the right side.
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