Cicada: The Name Every
Serious Collector Is Whispering

Built in Someone Else’s Shadow

For years before Cicada existed as a name, the people behind it were producing exceptional work for some of the most important jewelry brands in the United States. This is a path almost no collector ever hears about, because the work was never signed with their name. It was signed with someone else’s. The techniques, the standards, the obsessive commitment to material quality — all of it was honed in service of other houses, under the demanding expectations that come with supplying the top tier of the American market.

This origin matters enormously. Most new jewelry brands spend their early years working out how to execute their ideas at scale. Cicada arrived having already solved that problem. The technical infrastructure, the artisan relationships, the understanding of what the finest collectors actually want — none of that needed to be built from scratch. It was already there.

When they finally decided to create work under their own name, they had only one question to answer: what did they actually want to say? The answer has been, by any measure, extraordinary.

A Breadth of Style That Almost No House Can Match

One of the defining characteristics of Cicada’s collection is its range. Many jewelry houses find a signature and repeat it — the customer knows exactly what they are getting. Cicada operates differently. Their collection moves from the boldly sculptural to the delicately feminine, from ancient-world references to contemporary geometry, from high-set colored stones to the most intricate enamel work imaginable. This breadth is not the result of indecision. It is the result of genuine technical mastery across disciplines that most houses cannot access.

The ability to work convincingly across so many styles requires something that is essentially impossible to acquire quickly: years of accumulated craft knowledge, applied across hundreds of different design problems. Cicada has that. It shows in every piece.

The Techniques Almost No One Does Well

Among the most technically demanding forms in all of jewelry making is plique-à-jour — a translucent enamel technique in which colored glass is suspended within a metal framework with no backing, allowing light to pass through the piece as though through a stained-glass window. It requires extraordinary precision at every stage. The enamel must be applied in multiple firings, each one capable of destroying the work that preceded it. The metal framework must be fine enough to be nearly invisible, yet strong enough to hold the glass permanently. The firing temperatures must be controlled to fractions of a degree.

Very few jewelry makers in the world execute plique-à-jour at a genuinely high level. It is the kind of technique that reveals, immediately and without mercy, the difference between a house that understands craft and one that only approximates it. Cicada is among a small handful of makers working today who do it with real authority.

Conch Pearls: The Collection Hiding in Plain Sight

If the plique-à-jour work represents one axis of Cicada’s technical achievement, their conch pearl collection represents another entirely. Conch pearls are among the rarest organic gems in the world. They cannot be farmed or cultured — each one forms naturally inside the queen conch, a protected species whose wild populations are strictly regulated. This means the supply of conch pearls is not merely limited. It is diminishing, year by year, as older stock is absorbed by collectors and the possibility of significant new finds grows increasingly remote.

Evaluating conch pearls requires exactly the kind of direct material experience that Soraya Cayen has spent her career building. Their value depends on the intensity and symmetry of the flame pattern — a silky, porcelain-like surface phenomenon unique to the material — the depth of their characteristic pink color, and an overall quality of surface that no certificate can adequately capture. You have to have seen enough of them to know what exceptional actually looks like.

Cicada has assembled one of the most significant conch pearl collections of any jewelry house currently in production. A meaningful portion of that collection is on exhibit at Cayen Collection in Carmel-by-the-Sea — available for private viewing by appointment or during regular store hours. For collectors who understand how rarely the opportunity to see this material in one place presents itself, we encourage you not to wait.

Why Now — and Why Cayen

Cicada is still new enough as a named house that many collectors have not yet encountered them. That will change. The combination of technical mastery, material depth, and genuine stylistic range that Cicada brings to the market is exactly what serious collectors respond to — and word among the people who have actually seen the work is spreading with unusual speed.

Cayen Collection carries Cicada because Soraya recognized, immediately on seeing the work, that it represented something genuinely important. Not a new entrant working toward excellence — a house that had arrived at it, quietly, in someone else’s name, and was now finally making work that bore its own. The conch pearl collection alone would justify the relationship. The plique-à-jour work would too. Together, they represent a body of jewelry that belongs in serious collections.

If you have not yet seen Cicada in person, we would be glad to change that. Come in, or reach out to arrange a private showing. Some things need to be held.