The Wings collection is one of the defining contemporary signatures of Garrard, the London jewellery house whose origins stretch back to 1735 and whose appointment as Crown Jeweller was held continuously from 1843 until 2007. Introduced as part of the house's strategic repositioning in the early twenty-first century — a period during which Garrard sought to re-establish itself as a creative force in high jewellery rather than solely as a custodian of royal commissions — Wings translates one of jewellery's oldest symbolic vocabularies, the feather and the wing, into a rigorously contemporary idiom built around pavé-set diamonds, coloured gemstones, and the precise engineering of white and rose gold armatures. The collection spans earrings, pendants, rings, and bracelets, ranging in ambition from restrained single-wing studs to elaborate statement pieces in which sapphires, rubies, or emeralds are framed by dense fields of brilliant-cut diamonds arranged to suggest the layered structure of a feather.

Garrard and the Wing Motif: Historical Resonance

Wings and feathers have appeared in jewellery since antiquity, carrying meanings that shift across cultures — divine protection in ancient Egypt, martial honour in classical Rome, romantic sentiment in the Victorian era — but the motif found particular favour in the high jewellery tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Garrard itself, as Crown Jeweller, worked extensively with naturalistic and heraldic forms; feathers appear in the heraldry associated with the Prince of Wales, and the house's long engagement with royal regalia gave it an intimate familiarity with the symbolic weight such forms carry. The Wings collection does not invoke this history didactically, but the lineage is legible to anyone acquainted with the house's archive.

The more immediate creative context is the directional shift that followed Jade Jagger's brief creative consultancy in the early 2000s and, more consequentially, the appointment of creative directors who sought to give Garrard a recognisable design language capable of competing with the signature collections of houses such as Bulgari, Cartier, and Tiffany. Wings emerged as one of the answers to that challenge: a motif sufficiently archetypal to carry emotional resonance, yet sufficiently open in its geometry to accommodate a wide range of price points and gemstone treatments.

Design Language and Construction

The structural logic of the Wings pieces rests on the contrast between the rigid metal armature — typically cast or fabricated in 18-carat white gold or rose gold — and the soft, almost textile quality that pavé setting imparts to the diamond-covered surfaces. The feather-like effect is achieved by graduating the density and direction of the pavé field across the wing's surface, so that the stones appear to overlap in the manner of actual flight feathers rather than lying in a uniform plane. This is technically demanding work: the setter must maintain consistent stone spacing across a curved, tapering form, and the prong or bead work must be fine enough not to interrupt the visual continuity of the diamond surface.

In the more elaborate pieces, coloured gemstones — principally blue sapphires, rubies, and emeralds — are introduced either as central focal stones around which the wing structure is organised, or as accent stones set along the leading edge of the wing form, where their colour creates a chromatic boundary against the white brilliance of the pavé diamonds. The choice of these three species is not arbitrary: sapphire, ruby, and emerald constitute the classical triumvirate of precious coloured stones, and their use signals the collection's positioning within the high jewellery rather than fashion-jewellery register.

Rose gold settings introduce a warmer tonal register, softening the contrast between metal and stone and lending certain pieces — particularly the smaller earring and pendant formats — a more intimate, wearable character. The combination of rose gold with pavé diamonds and pink sapphires represents one of the collection's more commercially successful configurations, reflecting broader market preferences in the 2010s for warm-metal, pastel-gemstone combinations.

Gemstones in the Collection

The diamonds used in Wings pieces are predominantly round brilliant cuts in the smaller sizes appropriate for pavé work, typically ranging from approximately 1 mm to 2.5 mm in diameter. Colour and clarity grades are not publicly specified for the collection as a whole, but the visual uniformity required by pavé setting demands careful matching of colour and cut quality across large parcels of small stones — a procurement and quality-control challenge that distinguishes fine pavé work from its commercial imitations.

The coloured gemstones used as focal or accent stones in the more elaborate Wings pieces are subject to the full range of treatments standard in the trade for their respective species. Blue sapphires — most commonly sourced from Sri Lanka, Madagascar, or, in the finest examples, Kashmir or Burma — are routinely heat-treated to optimise colour and clarity, a treatment that is universally accepted in the trade when disclosed. Rubies, particularly those of Burmese or Mozambican origin, may similarly be heat-treated; the presence or absence of glass filling (lead-glass filling, a more controversial treatment) is a material distinction that reputable houses are expected to disclose and, in fine jewellery at Garrard's price level, to avoid. Emeralds, whether Colombian, Zambian, or Brazilian, are almost invariably clarity-enhanced with cedar oil or synthetic resin, a treatment so universal that the trade standard is to disclose the degree of enhancement rather than its mere presence.

For the centrepiece stones in the most significant Wings commissions and high jewellery pieces, Garrard has the resources and relationships to source stones accompanied by laboratory reports from the Gemmological Institute of America (GIA), Gübelin Gem Lab, or the Swiss Gemmological Institute (SSEF), which would confirm origin, treatment status, and, for sapphires and rubies of exceptional quality, the presence or absence of heat treatment — a distinction that commands a meaningful premium in the current market.

The Collection in Context: Garrard's Contemporary Identity

Garrard's history as Crown Jeweller — responsible for the maintenance and, on occasion, the creation of pieces within the British Crown Jewels — gives the house a gravitas that few jewellery brands can claim. The challenge of any historic house seeking to remain commercially relevant is to honour that heritage without being imprisoned by it. The Wings collection represents one strategy for navigating this tension: it is emphatically contemporary in its aesthetic, making no direct reference to royal commissions or historical archive pieces, yet it is executed with the craftsmanship standards and material quality that the house's reputation demands.

In the broader landscape of British fine jewellery, Wings occupies a position analogous to certain signature collections at other historic houses — Cartier's Panthère, for instance, or Bulgari's Serpenti — in that it provides a recognisable visual identity that can anchor marketing, anchor retail display, and provide customers with a legible point of entry into the brand. Unlike those continental examples, however, Wings has not yet achieved the same degree of global cultural saturation, reflecting both the different scale of Garrard's operations and the more restrained register in which the house has historically communicated.

The collection has been presented at Garrard's Albemarle Street premises in Mayfair, London, which has served as the house's home since 2019 following a period at New Bond Street. The Albemarle Street address, in the heart of London's fine jewellery and art-dealer district, situates Garrard within a neighbourhood whose associations reinforce the collection's positioning.

Craftsmanship and Production

Garrard maintains a workshop tradition that, while not immune to the broader industry trend towards outsourcing certain manufacturing processes, retains in-house expertise in the setting and finishing work that distinguishes fine jewellery from production jewellery. The pavé setting in Wings pieces — particularly in the larger, more complex formats — requires bench jewellers capable of working across compound curves with consistent precision, and the finishing of the metal armatures, including the polishing of the exposed gold surfaces between and around the set stones, demands a level of hand-finishing that cannot be replicated by automated processes.

The collection is produced in limited quantities relative to mass-market jewellery brands, and certain pieces — particularly those incorporating significant coloured gemstones — are effectively unique or near-unique by virtue of the individual character of the centre stones. This positions Wings within the broader category of fine jewellery in which the piece is understood as an object of lasting value rather than a fashion accessory with a defined lifecycle.

Symbolism and Wearability

The wing motif carries a breadth of symbolic associations that contributes to the collection's appeal across different customer demographics and occasions. In Western cultural tradition, wings suggest freedom, aspiration, and transcendence; they appear in the iconography of angels, of Nike and Hermes in classical mythology, and of the Romantic imagination more broadly. In the context of fine jewellery, they carry additional associations with lightness and delicacy — qualities that are reinforced by the actual visual effect of the pavé-set pieces, in which the diamond-covered surfaces seem to dissolve the mass of the metal beneath them.

From a wearability perspective, the wing form lends itself naturally to earring design, where the asymmetry of a single wing or the bilateral symmetry of a paired set can be exploited to frame the face. Pendant formats benefit from the form's natural directionality — a wing implies movement, and a pendant that moves with the wearer activates this quality in a way that a static geometric form does not. Ring designs present a greater structural challenge, since the wing form must be reconciled with the functional requirements of a piece worn on the hand, but the collection's ring formats address this by typically confining the wing structure to the upper face of the ring, where it can be appreciated as a sculptural object without impeding wear.

Market Position and Collectibility

At the time of writing, Wings pieces occupy a price range that extends from entry-level fine jewellery — small pavé earrings in white gold with diamonds — to significant high jewellery commissions incorporating important coloured stones. This breadth is both a commercial strength and a positioning challenge: it allows the collection to serve customers at multiple levels of expenditure, but it also means that the collection's identity must be robust enough to remain coherent across a wide range of material values.

The collectibility of contemporary Garrard pieces is supported by the house's longevity and its continued operation as an independent fine jewellery brand. Unlike some historic names that have been absorbed into luxury conglomerates and repositioned as lifestyle brands, Garrard has maintained a focus on jewellery and silversmithing, which preserves the integrity of its archive and the relevance of its craftsmanship heritage to contemporary production. Pieces from the Wings collection, particularly those incorporating significant or unusually fine coloured gemstones, may be expected to retain value in proportion to the quality of their stones and the condition of their setting and finish.

Further Reading

• GIA: Understanding Gem Treatments
• GIA Gems & Gemology: Sapphire and Ruby Origin Determination
• AGTA: Gemstone Treatments Reference Chart