Bold, audacious, elegant, scintillating. The new collection of rings from the French house of Isabelle Langlois is opulent and charismatic. Even its name glows in the dark, Scheherazade, the bedtime story teller in the The Thousand and One Nights. A collection of mythical tales, a long and lasting tale, as the Scheherazade Collection from the house of Isabelle Langlois is destined to become.

Arabesques are seemingly sculptured into the pink gold of the rings, each one set with a magnificent gemstone and surrounded by diamonds, tourmalines and sapphires of multiple colors. Among the central stones is the peridot, the emerald of the night with its spectacular green color bursting forth from a setting of diamonds, pink sapphires, and pink and green tourmalines. The Ancient Egyptians called the peridot the sun stone, a mystical stone often associated with light. A volcanic stone which can only be extracted by the hand of man once the tectonic plates and volcanic activity resurrect these stones to the surface of the planet.

The amethyst is another central stone used in the collection, surrounded by diamonds and orange, pink and violet sapphires. The amethyst, one of the world’s best known purple stones, decorative, yes, but also regarded as a protective and stress-relieving stone for it is a living quartz crystal, a purple-colored quartz crystal. The Ancient Greeks and Romans thought it looked like the color of wine and thought the wearer could be protected from the effects of drink. Other qualities attributed to the amethyst are its ability to enhance the immune system and reduce headaches.

The rubellite enjoys a leading role in another ring in the Scheherazade collection, surrounded by diamonds, cordierite, rhodolite, pink sapphires and pink tourmalines. This tourmaline enjoys a saturated dark pink color which some might see as violet. Its high manganese content renders it a highly sparkling stone when light is shed upon it and so it is a fluorescent stone and garners its name from the Latin rubellus for reddish. Like amethyst it is a stone associated with healing and driving away obsessive thought.

Isabelle Langlois is the daughter and granddaughter of lapidaries in the Jura region of France. Lapidaries are artists and crafts people who form stone, minerals and gemstones using the lapidary techniques of cutting, grinding and polishing. In short the designer was born into a world of gemstones.
©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette
http://www.isabellelanglois.com