Solange Azagury-Partridge launches Poptails, while Harumi imagines a grand expedition

Exploration and celebration – a pair of new collections shown off-schedule in Paris recently couldn’t have differed more from each other in their inspirations, but they were both utterly captivating.

Harumi Klossowska de Rola presented Retour d’Expedition, an exhibition of jewellery and objects, at Van Cleef & Arpels’ L’Ecole des Arts Joailliers. The daughter of the French-Polish artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola and Japanese painter Setsuko Klossowska de Rola imagined a grand expedition between Europe and Asia, with the spoils displayed in wooden crates, some stamped with Japanese symbols like a ship’s cargo. 

Big cats abounded – cheetah, leopard and lion heads sculpted from buffalo horn, embellished with gold, mammoth ivory, aventurine or carnelian eyes, and dustings of black and white diamonds. These were set as rings and given their latin names, like precious specimens. A huge cuff featured a Cape Buffalo’s head carved from ebony, its yellow gold horns forming the bracelet. 

My favourite piece was the Sacred Ibis pendant, a minutely detailed ibis skull in yellow gold, with a needle-like ivory beak. These are pieces to treasure both on the body and the wall – they’re as much works of art as they are jewels.

A hop across Place Vendome to Hotel Costes and Solange Azagury Partridge’s jewel box of a shop to see Poptails, her new range of cocktail rings. 

Eight major pieces – and by that I mean major in size, scale, colour and texture – came about from a collection of random stones Azagury-Partridge had collected over the years but had yet to turn into jewels. Star-shaped diamonds, large oval opals, a chunk of emerald, cabochon emeralds and pink sapphires all feature, but not as anything so ordinary as solitaire rings.

Instead, the designer has mixed and jumbled these stones up onto huge rings, stacked upon multiple layers of colour wrought in ceramic plate and lacquer, stripes of metal encrusted with yet more stones in yet more colours, in the shape of everything from Indian temples to cartoon mice.

Azagury-Partridge describes them as "a party for your hands" – and I can’t think of a better description myself. Each piece is as unique as those created by Harumi, yet with a totally different feel. Party on.