The Cotswolds Garden

They had been apart for fifteen months. The reconciliation began in a hospital corridor in late October, and by the following spring they were planting roses together at the family house in the Cotswolds.

The commission arrived to us by way of a single sentence: I want to wear the garden we grew back, on the night we toast what we almost lost. No catalogue could begin to answer this. We did not require a brief; we required a long conversation.

Over seven months the patron met her Concierge eleven times. The first three meetings produced nothing on paper. She spoke of her grandmother’s ruby brooch, of the particular pink of a David Austin rose called Munstead Wood, of the silence of a garden in February. We listened. We sent letters back.

Cabochon rubellites in graduated hues. Rose-cut diamonds set in naturalistic gold. A piece that does not announce itself.

The parure comprises six pieces, designed to be worn as a single composition or broken into elements. The principal necklace carries thirty-one rubellite cabochons in seven graduated tones — each stone matched against the others over four sittings. The rose-cut diamonds are family stones, from her grandmother’s ring, re-set with consent.

The naturalistic gold work — the leaves, the tendrils, the small unopened buds — was completed by a master who has worked in this idiom for thirty-four years. The maestro takes one parure commission every other year and refuses the rest.

It was delivered in March. The reconciliation dinner had been postponed, and then postponed again. When the patron finally wore it — at a quiet supper for six in the conservatory of the Cotswolds house — her sister did not comment on the pieces, only on the colour. Munstead Wood, she said. You remembered.

A portion of this commission has returned to the Nizam Maestro Fund, supporting an apprentice in the atelier for the following two years.