One theory holds that truly great design requires no signature: The singular marks of its maker should reveal a piece’s identity. So, if presented with a handcrafted titanium bracelet fashioned after an 18th-century saddle, or diamond earrings shaped like stirrups adorned with emeralds, or a black jade ring inspired by a hoof, the wise guess would be that these were one-of-a-kind jewels from Hermès, a house whose story begins in a harness workshop in 1837. That would be correct. In his ninth high jewelry collection for the maison, creative director of jewelry Pierre Hardy has done the full Hermès, so to speak. Its title? Into the Horsescape.
“I try in every collection,” says Hardy, whose last high jewelry collection for Hermès was inspired by color theory, “to go far away from the center, back to the center, far away from the center, back to the center. This time I tried to go back to the house, back home. I really wanted to look and to care about the very Hermès shapes and objects that they have produced over the decades.” Some of the pieces make this mission visible immediately. The brown and white diamond Galop ring is in the shape of a horse itself. The Sellette cuff does not p...