Special tokens of affection, framed in items of jewelry, miniature portraits are nothing particular. More exceptional is the likeness that Cece Fein-Hughes lately produced in her London studio. The sitter was a pet canine, whose medieval ancestors have been the canines of selection at French royal courts. And the cute little Bichon Frisé that now sits on the centre of a Cece Jewellery yellow gold signet ring is Jax, loyal companion to one of many model’s shoppers. ‘Jax is one of her greatest loves,’ Fein-Hughes explains, ‘so the team and I went for a delicious big red heart to frame his fluffy face, and of course a scattering of diamonds to make him sparkle.’
Fein-Hughes has made successful of narrative designs that incorporate small, tattoo-like motifs, which she first paints in watercolours earlier than giving them to a grasp enameller so as to add to rings, pendants and far else. And Jax will not be the primary pet she has captured. There have been horses, cats and extra dogs, together with ‘an exquisite Great Dane in miniature, sitting on an engraved crescent moon and subsequent to a floating pink apple, his go-to snack stolen from the tree in his backyard’.
Nor is Fein-Hughes alone. Fabergé additionally gives a special-commission service for including pet to gem: on the legacy model, images of animals might be translated into treasured lockets. Alternatively, its Heritage Collection contains pendants within the form of the model’s well-known eggs, safeguarding a canine or rabbit, set with diamond eyes. And, famously dedicated to her four-legged buddies, Chopard’s Caroline Scheufele debuted her Dog necklace throughout the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Part of the Swiss model’s Red Carpet excessive jewelry, the collier sparkles with 27 multi-coloured pearls and 9,000 treasured stones, together with black diamonds, sapphires and tiger eye cabochons. ‘The necklace is adorned with a parade of dogs,’ Scheufele explains; and the line-up counts a poodle, a Border Collie and an Afghan hound amongst its quantity. But there’s one pooch that’s notably near Scheufele’s coronary heart: ‘Fun fact,’ she says. ‘Byron, my lovely and faithful companion, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel who almost always accompanies me on travels, served as the model for one of the mascots of this necklace.’
