Painting with gemstones

A Chinese jewelry designer has sold a necklace for a record price, Deng Zhangyu reports. 

At the end of November, jewelry designer Feng Ji's "Jardin de Giverny" necklace fetched $2.6 million at Phillips fall auction in Hong Kong, a record price for Chinese jewelry designers.

A rising star in the jewelry business, Feng is known for her signature style of floating gemstones, a gem-setting technique the young designer often uses to make the metal settings of her creations invisible. The necklace that sold at a record price looks like a garland of flowers, with a center stone of a 19-carat pink diamond suspended by other colorful gemstones.

"My memories of living in Paris and my obsession with impressionism became my inspiration," says the 34-year-old, who is based in Shanghai.

The garland-like necklace represents flowers Feng encountered when she visited the private garden of painter Claude Monet in Giverny. The jewels' lights and hues come from Feng's love for Monet's paintings and resonate with her design philosophy of "painting with gemstones".