Ara Vartanian
Ara Vartanian
The São Paulo designer who turned gemstones inside out
Ara Vartanian is a Brazilian jewellery designer of Armenian descent, based between São Paulo and London, whose work has earned sustained international recognition for its radical rethinking of how coloured gemstones are set and perceived. His signature technique — setting stones with their pavilions facing outward rather than inward — inverts the conventional logic of fine jewellery and produces an optical effect quite unlike anything achieved by traditional crown-up mounting. The result is a softer, more diffuse emanation of colour: light enters through the flat table, scatters through the body of the stone, and emerges from the faceted pavilion in a bloom rather than a concentrated flash. This single technical inversion has become the conceptual engine of an entire design philosophy, and it has placed Vartanian among the most discussed names in contemporary high jewellery.
Background and Formation
Vartanian was born into a family with deep roots in the gem and jewellery trade — his grandfather had emigrated from Armenia to Brazil, and the family business in São Paulo gave him early, intimate exposure to coloured stones. Brazil's extraordinary geological wealth, producing tourmalines, alexandrites, imperial topazes, paraíba tourmalines, and a vast range of other species, formed the material vocabulary of his childhood. This proximity to rough and cut stones from an early age shaped an understanding of gemstone optics that is experiential as much as academic.
He trained formally in jewellery design and subsequently spent time in Europe, absorbing the traditions of Italian and French high jewellery while remaining critically detached from them. The tension between that European heritage and the Brazilian sensibility — bold colour, sculptural volume, a certain physical directness — is legible throughout his mature work. By the early 2000s he had established his own studio and brand, with a flagship presence in São Paulo and, later, a London outpost that gave him direct access to the international luxury market and to the editorial and collecting communities centred on that city.
The Reverse-Set Technique
The defining technical innovation of Vartanian's practice is what the trade and press have variously called reverse setting, inverted setting, or upside-down setting. In conventional fine jewellery, a faceted stone is mounted crown-upward: the table faces the viewer, light enters and is internally reflected by the pavilion facets, and the stone displays maximum brilliance and fire. Vartanian inverts this arrangement. The pavilion — the pointed or keel-shaped underside of the stone, normally hidden within the mount — is turned to face outward, and the table is recessed into or flush with the metal setting.
The optical consequences are significant and are rooted in basic gemmological optics. When light strikes the pavilion facets at oblique angles from outside, it does not undergo the total internal reflection that produces brilliance in a crown-up stone; instead it passes through the stone and exits diffusely. The colour saturation is perceived as gentler, more atmospheric, almost as though the stone were lit from within rather than reflecting ambient light. Stones that might appear overly vivid or commercially saturated in a standard setting can read as luminous and complex when reversed. Conversely, pastel or lightly saturated stones — pale pink tourmalines, delicate lavender sapphires, soft green beryls — acquire a quality that is closer to stained glass or watercolour than to the hard brilliance of conventional cutting.
Executing this technique demands considerable skill from both the lapidary and the setter. The pavilion, normally protected inside a collet or prong setting, is now the exposed face and must be polished to a standard that the trade rarely requires of it. The metal work must grip the stone securely through its girdle or crown while leaving the pavilion entirely free and unobstructed. Vartanian's workshops in São Paulo have developed proprietary methods for achieving this, and the quality of the metalwork — typically in yellow gold, though white gold and oxidised silver also appear — is a consistent element of the brand's identity.
Gemstone Choices and Material Philosophy
Vartanian works almost exclusively with coloured gemstones, and his selection reflects both his Brazilian heritage and a deliberate aesthetic programme. Tourmalines of all varieties — rubellite, indicolite, Paraíba-type, bi-colour, and watermelon — appear frequently, as do aquamarines, morganites, citrines, amethysts, and the rarer Brazilian species such as imperial topaz from Ouro Preto and alexandrite from the mines of Hematita. Diamonds are used, but typically as structural or textural elements rather than as the primary stones: they may pave a shank or articulate a border, but the coloured stone commands the composition.
The reverse-set technique interacts differently with each species. Tourmaline, with its strong pleochroism and often complex colour zoning, produces particularly rich effects when inverted: the viewer sees colour gradients and tonal shifts that a crown-up setting might suppress. Aquamarine's characteristic pale blue-green, which can appear washed-out in a standard brilliant cut, deepens and gains mystery when the pavilion faces outward. Morganite's peachy-pink warmth becomes more intimate. In each case the inversion is not merely a formal conceit but a genuine optical strategy tailored to the properties of the individual material.
Vartanian has also worked with cabochon and non-standard cuts, and his collections have included rough or semi-polished stones incorporated into finished jewellery in ways that emphasise the geological origin of the material. This interest in the stone as a natural object — rather than as a standardised commercial product — aligns him with a broader movement in contemporary jewellery that values provenance, character, and individuality over uniformity.
Design Language and Aesthetic
Beyond the reverse-setting technique, Vartanian's design language is characterised by sculptural boldness, asymmetry, and a willingness to work at scale. Rings are often substantial, with stones of considerable size mounted in architecturally confident settings. Earrings may be long and articulated, moving with the wearer in ways that animate the diffuse colour of the inverted stones. Necklaces and pendants tend toward geometric clarity — circles, arcs, and linear forms — that frames the organic colour of the stones without competing with it.
The metal surfaces in his work are frequently textured or given a deliberately raw quality: hammer-finished gold, granulated surfaces, or oxidised silver that reads as near-black against vivid colour. This roughness is intentional and serves to prevent the metalwork from becoming merely decorative background. The jewellery reads as an object with physical presence, not as a vehicle for displaying stones in the most flattering conventional manner.
There is a consistent tension in his work between the precious and the elemental, between the refinement expected of high jewellery and a certain deliberate rawness that recalls the geological origins of the materials. This tension is arguably the most Brazilian aspect of his aesthetic: a culture that produces some of the world's most extraordinary gemstones has a different relationship to those materials than cultures that import them, and that directness is visible in the work.
International Recognition and Retail Presence
Vartanian's work has been featured in major international jewellery and fashion publications, and his pieces have been worn by a range of high-profile clients and celebrities, contributing to his visibility beyond the specialist jewellery world. His London presence — established in the Mayfair district, the geographic centre of the British luxury jewellery trade — gave him access to the international collector market and to the auction and exhibition circuit that operates through that city.
He has participated in international jewellery fairs and has been the subject of editorial features in publications including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and specialist jewellery press. The brand operates at the upper tier of the contemporary jewellery market, with pricing commensurate with the quality of the stones used and the labour-intensive nature of the reverse-setting technique.
Within the trade, Vartanian is regarded as one of the most technically innovative designers to have emerged from Brazil — a country whose contribution to the jewellery world has historically been understood primarily in terms of its gemstone production rather than its design output. His work has helped to shift that perception, demonstrating that the proximity to extraordinary raw material can generate a design intelligence as well as a supply chain.
Influence and Legacy
The reverse-setting technique, while not entirely without precedent in the history of jewellery, has been so thoroughly identified with Vartanian's practice that it has become his signature in the way that a particular cut or a particular colour palette might define another designer. It has influenced younger designers working in Brazil and internationally, and the technique has been discussed in gemmological and design contexts as a genuine contribution to the vocabulary of contemporary jewellery.
More broadly, Vartanian's career represents a significant moment in the internationalisation of fine jewellery design. The dominance of the French and Italian maisons in high jewellery has been challenged over the past two decades by designers from a wider range of national traditions, and Brazil — with its unparalleled coloured-gemstone resources and a design culture that is both cosmopolitan and distinctly local — has been one of the more productive sources of that challenge. Vartanian is the most internationally visible figure in that development.
His work also participates in a wider conversation within contemporary jewellery about the relationship between the maker, the material, and the wearer: a conversation that values authenticity, material knowledge, and conceptual rigour alongside the traditional criteria of craftsmanship and precious materials. In that context, the reverse-setting technique is not merely a clever trick but a statement about how one looks at a stone — and, by extension, about how one looks at the natural world from which it comes.