Salt Pendant

A single salt-water pearl — 8mm, lightly off-round in the way that cultured pearls grown in moving water tend to be — on a 16-inch fine trace chain in 18-karat yellow gold. The pearl is faceted by hand: twelve flats cut at equal intervals around the equator, turning a surface that would otherwise be a simple lustre into one that fragments light into discrete points.

The bail is made from the same yellow gold as the chain, hand-formed over a mandrel to follow the curve of the pearl without pinching the nacre. It is a detail invisible to anyone except the goldsmith who made it and the wearer who knows to look.

The Salt Pendant sits mid-chest on most wearers, which is long enough to be worn under a collar but short enough to fall outside an open one.