Bina Goenka: Ruby Suite
Ruby Suite By Bina Goenka
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Bina Goenka’s extraordinary ruby lariat is a piece that requires close inspection to understand its intricacy. At first sight, it’s a thick rope of red and white, sparkling here and there with diamonds and culminating in generous tassels of ruby beads. Close up, however, the lariat reveals itself to be made up of hugely complicated structures of the tiniest beads wired into foliage-like shapes.
“It took four years to source all the rubies, of which there are nearly 2000,” reveals the Mumbai-based designer.
They are a mixture of beautiful, very small Mozambican ruby beads and briolettes, all high quality and unheated/untreated. Selecting Gemfields rubies also gave us the peace of mind that they are all responsibly sourced.
Rather than simply stringing them all together, however, Bina had the craftsmen in her atelier create tiny leaf-life structures from the beads in matching pairs. Only one craftsman could work on a single pair to guarantee consistency, and so each pair’s shape is entirely different from the next.
Next, Bina decided to combine these ruby shapes with natural clam pearls in a range of orbs and drops. These luminous snow-white pearls were then haloed with various cuts of white diamonds in an organic, haphazard fashion – almost like surrounding them with precious thorny crowns.
In addition to the richly beaded tassels suspended from the base of the necklace is a substantial centerpiece which sits at the wearers throat – a glorious expanse of ruby beads and briolettes clustered around three clam pearls set in their own bed of diamonds. The effect is of three tiny eggs in a nest of red, or white berries dripping with ruby vines.
The entire necklace is balanced by a seam of diamonds acting as the central branch, from which stem the various ruby and pearl components. It is entirely symmetrical, of course, but the variety of shapes and forms within it is staggeringly detailed – to achieve such remarkable symmetry of the most organic, seemingly random clusters of stones understandably took the work of many hands over many months.
In addition to the necklace are two pairs of earrings using the same materials – one pair sporting tentacle-like streamers of tightly clustered ruby beads, suspended from natural clam pearl and diamond studs, the other a snowflake-like profusion of rubies radiating out from their pearly hearts. The two central clam pearls of the latter pair are what is known as ‘extremely flamed’ – possessing a dazzling aura of opalescence within each pearl, and each beautifully matched to the other.
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