Cicada

Cicada is among the rarest things in high jewelry — a house that arrived already fully formed. For years before it had a name, the people behind it produced top-tier bespoke work for some of the most demanding American houses, signed with someone else’s name rather than their own. They didn’t launch Cicada to learn the craft; they launched it because they had already mastered it.

Two signatures define the work. The first is plique-à-jour — translucent enamel suspended without a metal backing, so light passes through the piece as through stained glass; very few houses execute it at this level. The second is conch pearls: among the rarest organic gems in existence, impossible to culture, formed only in a protected species, their supply finite and diminishing. Cicada holds one of the finest collections of conch pearl jewelry in production today. The range across both — sculptural to delicate, ancient-world to contemporary — is the mark of genuine mastery across disciplines, not indecision.

I carry Cicada because I knew, the moment I saw the work, that this was a house that had already arrived — not one working toward excellence, but one that had reached it quietly, in someone else’s name, before it ever used its own. Conch pearls like these you have to have handled a great many to judge. I have.