Parees Earrings

Parees Earrings are the moment of choice held in gold, the suspension of judgment, the breath before the decision, the instant when two paths diverge from a single point and the world becomes irrevocably different depending on which one is taken. Each earring descends from a smooth, rounded stud head through a long, tapering neck that bifurcates near its base into two parallel tines, slightly splayed apart, holding a gemstone in the charged space between them. The stone does not sit in a bezel or a prong setting, it is held by the pressure of the two arms, suspended in the tension of the fork, as if at any moment one tine might release and let it fall. It is the golden apple of discord, held in the hand of Paris in the moment before he extends it to Aphrodite and sets the Trojan War in motion.

Paris, Alexandros of Troy, son of King Priam, was called upon by Zeus to judge which of three goddesses was most beautiful: Hera, the queen of heaven; Athena, the goddess of wisdom; or Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Each goddess offered a bribe. Hera offered power over kingdoms. Athena offered wisdom and skill in battle. Aphrodite offered the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. Paris chose Aphrodite, and with that choice, sealed the fate of Troy. Ten years of war, the death of Achilles and Hector, the burning of the greatest city in the ancient world, all of it flowing from a single moment of judgment on a mountainside, a single decision between three equally impossible gifts.

The name Parees is the French form of Paris, connecting the Trojan prince to the city that bears his name, the city that became the world’s capital of beauty, desire, and the arts of pleasure that Aphrodite represents. In this double etymology, the Parees Earrings are simultaneously ancient and contemporary: the oldest story of beauty and consequence told in the language of the most beautiful city in the modern world. The forked form of each earring is both the diverging path and the dividing choice, the moment when a single thing becomes two, and the two can never be made one again.

The form also resonates with the divining rod, the forked branch of hazel or willow that dowsers have used for millennia to locate underground water, metals, and hidden things. The dowsing rod works, in the mythology of the practice, because it is sensitive to the tension between above and below, between the visible and the invisible, between what is known and what is sought. The Parees Earrings hold their gemstone in exactly this position: at the fork, at the point of maximum tension, in the space where two directions become one question.

The stud head at the top of each earring is a smooth, rounded form, organic and uncomplicated, the natural beginning before complexity arrives. The long neck narrows gradually and with great elegance before the fork opens, so that the drama of the bifurcation is not announced but discovered as the eye travels down the length of the piece. The gemstone at the fork is held between the two tines in a setting that integrates it into the junction itself, as if the stone were not placed there but grew there, a seed in the moment of germination, splitting the single stem into its two branches.

Available in 18k rose gold with ruby, 18k white gold with sapphire, and 18k yellow gold with diamond. In rose gold, the ruby between the fork is Aphrodite’s gift, desire, beauty, the promise that destroys cities. In white gold, the sapphire is Athena’s offer, clarity, wisdom, and the cool knowledge that understanding a decision does not always prevent it from being made. In yellow gold, the diamond is Hera’s power — the full spectrum of earthly authority, blazing at the point where the choice is made and cannot be unmade. 3D designed and hand-finished in Sao Paulo, Brazil.