De Grisogono Ventaglio

Lebanese-Italian jeweler Fawaz Gruosi (b. 1952) founded the Geneva-based De Grisogono in 1993, naming the luxury jewelry company after his mother, who had been the Marquise de Grisogono. He wanted a name that would conjure elegance and rarity. Gruosi would soon have his own aristocratic nickname — “King of Black Diamonds” — for the stones that made his jewelry house famous.

Born in Beirut, Gruosi grew up in Florence and as a teenager got a job with the Florentine jeweler Torrini and went on to work for luxury jewelry houses Harry Winston and Bulgari in the years that followed. When De Grisogono was established, most jewelers favored the simplicity of white diamonds and platinum. Gruosi was more interested in color and diamonds with character. Along with the then-undervalued black diamonds, he designed vibrant pieces that exuberantly mixed stones like emeralds, sapphires, amber, pink opal and jade.

De Grisogono’s audacious pieces bedecked with black diamonds captured the fancy of well-heeled buyers in the 1990s, leading to the brand’s meteoric rise to fame. It entered the world of luxury watches in 2000 with the Instrumento Uno for men, which led to the development of the Crazy Skull in 2015. The playful made-to-order timepiece could be outfitted with up to 45 carats of gems.

Since the early aughts, De Grisogono has become synonymous with A-listers who donned the jeweler’s wares on red carpets; the company was also known for hosting an annual party at the Cannes Film Festival. De Grisogono made headlines in 2017 by partnering with Christie’s to sell a necklace made with a dazzling 163.41-carat emerald-cut diamond for $33.7 million — a record price for a D-color flawless diamond.

In January 2020, the jewelry house filed for bankruptcy. Today, Gruosi continues to sell his intricately designed decadent pieces from his namesake boutique in London.

Find a range of De Grisogono jewelry on 1stDibs, including necklaces, rings and other accessories.

In the United States, ear piercing didn’t really become popular until the 1950s and ‘60s, but our desire for a dazzling pair of vintage earrings has deeper roots than that. In fact, wearing earrings actually goes back thousands of years, and you can find many tangible connections between now and then in how we continue to talk about these treasured accessories.

Women wore ornamental earrings — studs and hoops at the very least — in Ancient Egypt, which is home to mines that are among the earliest sources of emeralds in the world. Emerald earrings are highly prized today, and their quality lies in their rich, saturated color. The highest-quality emeralds are green or bluish-green. Earrings worn by the affluent in early Roman civilizations were set with precious stones such as diamonds and pearls, and a clean-looking pop of pearl on the front of the lobe is as timeless as ever. Hoop earrings are imbued with symbolism and cultural significance for many, and on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ancient Near Eastern Art Gallery is a pair of simple gold hoops from Mesopotamia dating to between 2600 and 2500 B.C.

Today, ear piercing is very popular all over the world, and, as a result, it is difficult to overstate how much everyone pines for a good pair of earrings — modernist drop earrings, glamorous Victorian hoops, geometrically complex chandelier earrings, you name it. Sure, jewelry trends and the fashion darlings of social media come and go, but earrings have a staying power that seems impenetrable: The still-strong love affair between British royals and Cartier earrings is more than a century old, glossy 1970s hoops from legacy houses such as Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels remain the statement makers they’ve always been and although people have been stacking earrings for many moons, the allure of an expertly mismatched stack of charms and studs still feels fresh and new.

While there is no shortage of modern earring designs to choose from, the classics, like coral earrings, Art Deco–style earrings and diamond drop earrings are still heavy hitters. On 1stDibs, find a wide range of antique, new and vintage earrings today.