Van Cleef & Arpels Onyx Vintage Alhambra Necklace VCARA43100

“To be lucky,” the French jeweler Jacques Arpels (1914–2008) once said, “you must believe in luck.” Arpels, nephew of Van Cleef & Arpels cofounder Estelle Arpels, certainly did — and nowhere is this more evident than in the Magic Alhambra necklaces, as well as in the rest of the jewelry house’s Alhambra collection, the design of which references a certain lucky charm.

A young Jacques was reportedly fascinated with searching for four-leaf clovers — a plant synonymous with good fortune — in the yard of his childhood home. His affinity for four-leaf clovers informed some of his most celebrated work at the jewelry house, which he joined in 1932. By the 1950s, Van Cleef & Arpels sought to create more everyday jewelry. Enter Jacques’s simple quatrefoil design, inspired in part by his childhood expeditions as well as the keyhole arches common in the Moorish architecture of Spain and Northern Africa. The Alhambra motif, first launched as a long necklace in 1968, is said to be named for the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, where these archways abound. A Magic Alhambra necklace that debuted in 2006 featured six motifs of different sizes. The piece, which joined some dozens of necklaces created for the series over the years, is an artful take on Van Cleef’s most recognizable design, and its asymmetrical pattern gives the impression of the quatrefoils dancing across its wearer’s décolletage.

Early Alhambra pieces caught the attention of celebrities like Grace Kelly, and its popularity endures today, with Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, wearing earrings and a necklace from the collection to 2020’s BAFTA awards ceremony. As a result of ever-broadening enthusiasm for the line, Van Cleef & Arpels devised new riffs on the quatrefoil design in the decades since its launch. 

Like many pieces created by the artisans at Van Cleef & Arpels (after all, this is the jewelry house that invented the painstaking mystery setting), the Alhambra collection owes to a mix of artistry and stunning precision. Each quatrefoil is carefully shaped and hand-set with a stone and then attached to a chain. Certain Alhambra styles — such as lapis lazuli or mother-of-pearl — require the jeweler to cut quatrefoil pieces to fit exactly into their frames, which are then secured with barely visible prongs. The result is, well, magic.

One of the world’s foremost jewelry houses, Van Cleef & Arpels is particularly noted for a focus on technical virtuosity, craftsmanship and artistry, evident since its beginning. Rather than create earrings, bracelets, necklaces and other adornments primarily for the aim of displaying of wealth and opulence, Van Cleef & Arpels sought to produce jewelry that projected the wearer’s taste and style.

The company was formed a year after the 1895 marriage of Alfred Van Cleef, the son of a gem cutter, to Estelle Arpels, daughter of precious-stones dealer Salomon Arpel. Ten years later, Van Cleef & Arpels opened its first boutique on the Place Vendôme in Paris, setting the march on a square now crowded with dealers in bijouterie. (The company still occupies the New York flagship store opened in 1939 at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.)

Born from a union of expertise in both jewelry making and gem selection, the Van Cleef & Arpels distinguished itself with both the consistency of the color and clarity of its stones and the creativity of its designs. In doing so, the house would win a roster of dedicated, fashion-conscious clients that included the Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Hutton, Jacqueline Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor. In 1933, Van Cleef & Arpels patented its trademark Mystery Setting — a technique by which gems are fitted into an intricate matrix of slots and “drawers” that keep the setting hidden. Another signal innovation was the Zip necklace, introduced in 1951, which can be worn either around the neck or, with the zipper closed, as a bracelet.

But as much as to the firm’s craftsmanship, clients have been drawn by the insouciance and playfulness of Van Cleef & Arpels designers, as well as their attunement to the cultural climate. After the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, the company produced several lavish pieces featuring hieroglyphics and other Egyptian motifs to go along with the geometric Art Deco jewelry of that decade and the next. Following World War II, as symbols of freedom and rebirth, the firm focused on naturalistic forms such as birds, flowers, fruit and flying insects. High society’s 1960s fascination with the Near East and India prompted such pieces as the best-selling Alhambra necklace, popularized by Princess Grace.

Lately, attention among collectors and connoisseurs has centered on Van Cleef & Arpels’s quality of workmanship as much as its glamour. The firm was the subject of a 2012 show at the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, as well as exhibitions at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, in 2013 and at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2014.

Find an exquisite collection of Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry on 1stDibs.