I Agree With Pantone: Let’s Do Lapis!

This week, the color experts at Pantone released its picks for the 10 top colors for spring 2017. I’m most excited about Lapis Blue, because lapis lazuli is one of my favorite gems.

I’ve loved lapis ever since I went to see the blockbuster King Tut museum exhibition in the 1970s and saw Tut’s solid-gold death mask in person. (That’s lapis lazuli on the eyes and eyebrows; the stripes in the headdress are glass colored to look like lapis.)

I still have the souvenir book I got at the exhibit. I used to flip through this all the time when I was a kid.

I credit the exhibit and book with nurturing my passion for gold too. Look at how gold endures for millennia! In fact, it gets more beautiful over time.

Decades later, when I designed a ring in honor of the famously beautiful Egyptian queen Nefertiti, I naturally created it in 18K yellow gold and lapis lazuli.

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I had the lapis custom cut in the oval shape of a cartouche, which I then set horizontally instead of vertically. I’m a rebel like that. Because a queen needs protection — sometimes in the form of a little poison — I gave the Nefertiti ring a secret compartment.

Nefertiti shown open.

I only created one Nefertiti ring in gold. Right now, it is specially priced to celebrate the Pantone news. Get it while you can.

I prefer lapis combined with yellow gold, like the Egyptians did it, but I’ve done a few one-off pieces in  silver and lapis. A friend persuaded me to make a Nefertiti ring in silver, just for her.

One of a kind. Made for Elizabeth.

I even did it as a poison ring, though I normally don’t make my poison rings in silver.

Silver Nefertiti ring shown open.

Several years ago, gorgeous blogger Sheila of Ephemera snagged another silver-and-lapis ring.

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Right now, the only other lapis piece I have in stock is my famous Empress Wu dragon ring, with the revolving lapis globe clamped in her jaws.

Price upon request. Email info at wendybrandes dot com to inquire.

Watch it go!

I do have some lapis lazuli stud earrings in the works, so if you’re interested, holla at me at info at wendybrandes dot com so I can reserve a pair for you.