Van Cleef & Arpels is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the ballet that was inspired by their Fifth Avenue window:

“Jewels” is the name of a ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, that celebrates emeralds, rubies and diamonds with the music of Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. It was first shown in New York in 1967, making this a 40th anniversary for both the production and for Van Cleef & Arpels, because Balanchine was originally inspired by the Fifth Avenue windows of the French jewelry house to create a ballet around the three stones.

The revived performance, presented in its entirety at Covent Garden for the first time, encouraged Van Cleef to create Ballet Précieux – the new dance collection. The 80 jewels of Ballet Précieux, hot from the Paris workrooms, were divided into Balanchine’s emerald, ruby and diamond categories. Pieces of creativity and craftsmanship included earrings where two pear-shaped, tiger-eye emeralds dangled below diamond “tutus”; and a brooch of a dancer stretching her arms across a skirt to her miniature ballet shoes – even the dancing of Isadora Duncan was caught in outstretched diamond wings.

Van Cleef & Arpels’s Pulcinella ballerina clip shown above, os crafted in white gold and is set with pink, gray and white diamonds; the face is formed out of a rose-cut diamond.