Crystal clear

A showcase of jewellery becomes a meditation on empire, memory and the enduring seduction of adornment.

- DIVYA BALAKRISHNAN

THERE'S A SCENE in the 1958 technicolor musical Gigi where Aunt Alicia walks her young niece through what looks less like a jewellery box and more like a lesson. "A topaz? Among my jewels? Are you mad?" she exclaims, scandalised, when Gigi misidentifies a yellow diamond. She teaches her the cuts-emerald, pear, marquise which kings preferred which gems and how only the most beautiful emeralds contain that elusive blue flame darting within the green. "Without knowledge of jewellery, my dear Gigi, a woman is lost." While first judged by its quality and visual appeal, what truly sets a piece apart, as Aunt Alicia explains, is its provenance.

Who wore it, where it travelled and what moment in history it witnessed.

It's that last layer that I was thinking about in London as I walked into the Victoria & Albert Museum's (V&A) new exhibition: a display of more than 350 artefacts that stitched together the story of Cartier's dominion. "The jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers," King Edward VII called them. Within the vast stone belly of the museum lay proof of that reign.