Iznik ceramics inform this stunning choker where in the traditional square centrepiece we see the local innovation of a fish-scale pattern (referencing the sea) rise up from the two ends and meet i...

Iznik ceramics inform this stunning choker where in the traditional square centrepiece we see the local innovation of a fish-scale pattern (referencing the sea) rise up from the two ends and meet in the middle. Within each scale is a budding narcissus, the full flower of which embellishes each of the oval spacers where the Nargisa is held within a cloud made of joined crescents. The end panel too has two crescentic trios facing each other.

Realised in deft openwork naksha and framed elegantly with diamond-cut topas, the choker gains enormously from its rare emerald-green faceted-glass-bead stringing. Not only does the rich colour offset the gold to dazzling effect, it's also respectful of history seeing as to how favoured the shade was by the Sultans of Ottoman Turkey.

In the last row of stringing you’ll find, interspersed with the beads, little ball clusters. These add a bit of carefree quirk to the jewel and also welcome relief from five rows of solid green.

You’ll wonder why our narcissus has eight tepals when the normal’s six. Well, it’s a sort of artistic license taken to transmogrify the flower into the Najmat-al-Quds –– the eight-pointed star that’s been seen from ancient times on great architecture and various heritage art and craft. As for the narcissus, you’ve witnessed, of course, its ubiquity in the meadows of Kashmir, as you must know of its significance in Turkish erotic poetry.

What's life without love? And what’s love if not etched forever in pure guinea-gold.

Here’s love, then, as a choker handcrafted with care in pierced naksha to evoke the passions within the walls of the New Palace in Istanbul from where the sea and the sky always seem to merge and where you, as Nargisa, charge the air with your beauty, ethereal and everlasting, and fragrance it with your indubitable nobility.