The Art of Craft: How a New Floral Brooch From Graff Pays Homage to Its Celebrated History of Diamond Design

The brooch was conceived as a tribute to Graff’s long history with pink diamonds.

A craftsperson at work on the floral brooch. Photo courtesy Graff.

To ring in the fall season, the London-based jewelry house Graff has released a new object that pays homage to the house’s history of innovative diamond design: a floral brooch featuring 63 carats of pink and white diamonds. 

Flora has long been a source of creative inspiration for Graff, which has sought to craft brooches in particularly imaginative ways. The house, which was founded in 1960, often draws inspiration from important movements throughout art and design history, such as the Art Deco and Impressionist periods. (Founder Laurence Graff is a notable collector of Impressionist art.)

Photo courtesy Graff.

Photo courtesy Graff.

Over the years, the house’s brooch designs have been celebrated for their delicate beauty and painstaking construction process, which is predicated on the idea that each piece should look and feel just as luxurious as other, more “traditional” pieces of fine jewelry. The new brooch features an imaginary bloom with intertwined stalks, its center set en tremblant upon tiny springs that enable its delicate petals to move along with the wearer.

The piece took a record 240 hours to make by hand, and incorporates a total of 293 round pink diamonds, accented by pear-shape and marquise white diamonds that frame its petals, stalks, and leaves. 

Photo courtesy Graff.

Photo courtesy Graff.

Graff is known for its use of pink diamonds, which dates back to the 1980s, when the famous Argyle mine in western Australia first yielded a wide assortment of rough pink stones. Its “Vivid Pink” ring—a whopping 5.63-carat fancy pink diamond flanked on both sides by shield-shaped white diamonds and set in 18-karat rose gold—helped to popularize pink stones, and notably sold at Christie’s in 2009 for $2.1 million, the highest price ever paid per carat for a pink diamond at the time. 

And in 2010, Graff’s founder famously won a landmark bidding war for a 24.78-carat pink diamond at auction, securing what became known as “The Graff Pink Diamond”—at the time, the most expensive single jewel ever discovered—for $46 million. Of that sale, Graff said, “I cannot exaggerate just how rare this stone is. This sale is one of the most exciting of my 35-year career. It is one of the most desirable diamonds ever to come to auction, and its beauty has haunted me since the very first time I set eyes on it some years ago.”


Follow Artnet News on Facebook:


Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.