FRED PARIS ANGEL SKIN CORAL AND GOLD EARRINGS

Lovely is the word that we feel best describes these 1970s vintage earrings by Fred Paris. Each earring takes the form of a slightly tapering, gently domed half-hoop entirely paved in gold granulation-style beadwork, rows of small, highly polished hemispherical gold beads that catch the light like a cluster of bubbles. At the top, where the earring would sit against the earlobe, each is crowned by a single round cabochon of Angel Skin coral, the pale, delicate salmon-pink variety prized above almost all other coral colors. Angel Skin coral (in Italian,“pelle d’angelo”) is the trade name for the palest, softest-pink grade of precious Mediterranean “Corallo” historically “Corallium rubrum,” harvested off Sardinia, Sicily, and the Bay of Naples, and worked for centuries in “Torre del Greco”, the town near Naples that has been the world capital of coral carving since the 1700s. The delicate, even, milky-pink tone with a faint whitish “bloom" is the rarest and most valuable of the coral color range, above the deeper rosso and oxblood tones, and by the mid-20th century it was a signature luxury material in fine European jewelry. Coral itself is one of the oldest ornamental materials in human history, used protectively and decoratively from antiquity through the Victorian era's great coral vogue and it enjoyed a strong revival in the 1960s–70s. The granulated gold beadwork references one of the oldest goldsmithing techniques in existence, true granulation goes back to the Etruscans and the ancient Near East, though here it is executed as a mid-century decorative texture rather than the microscopic ancient technique. This warm, tactile, “cluster of gold spheres” surface was very much in the visual language of 1970s high jewelry, when heavy yellow gold, organic textures, and bold cabochon color were fashionable. Fred (Fred Paris) was founded in 1936 by Fred Samuel, a jeweller who had trained in Buenos Aires before opening his Paris house on the rue Royale. The firm became a favorite of a glamorous international and film clientele. Pieces from the 1960s–70s like these, bold gold, coral cabochons, sculptural texture, are characteristic of the house's sun-warmed Riviera aesthetic of that era. It is no surprise he was known as the Sunshine Jeweller: “I realized that I was not learning a trade, but learning to love the trade, and even more, to love these stones that both contained and captured light.” (Fred Samuel, A Jeweler's Memoirs, 1992) Designer: Fred Paris Period: Vintage Year: 1970s Material: 18 Karat Yellow Gold and Angel Skin Coral Condition: Very Good Made in France