History of the Hero: The Harry Winston Sunflower collection
With their cheery golden hue, majestic heads and ability to follow the sun as it arcs across the sky, sunflowers have become synonymous with summertime, living metaphors of faith, divinity and hope since the time of the ancients.
No jeweller has understood this more than the ‘King of Diamonds’, Harry Winston, who has embraced the bloom as a symbol of joy and positivity for almost eight decades, reinventing the simple countryside flower time and time again as a luxurious motif in covetable, diamond-strewn collections.
This America-originated flower was once revered by the Aztecs, who used it to adorn their temples and to anoint their noble families. It was domesticated by the indigenous tribes of North America thousands of years ago, providing food for their tables and oil for their bodies. In Ancient Greece, the flower came to represent the water nymph, Clytie, who fell in love with the sun god Helios (also called Apollo), who sadly abandoned her. In their pity, the other gods transformed Clytie into a sunflower, who followed her lover across the sky with her gaze, imbuing the flower with a message of faith. In Renaissance Europe, the sunflower became an exotic commodity and a cultural phenomenon – harvested by Spanish sailors as rare trophies from the New World and cultivated in ornamental gardens by the Italian Medici court and by Peter the Great of Russia.
To the Victorians, who popularised ‘the language of flowers’ in order to send coded missives, sunflowers stood for haughtiness, due to their statuesque stems, as well as adoration. William Morris, whose poetic patterns and designs influenced both the Arts and Crafts Movement and the development of Art Nouveau in France, created striking sunflower motif wallpaper in the 1870s, while his (almost) contemporary, and the frontrunner of the Aesthetic movement, Oscar Wilde, actually adopted the sunflower as his own emblem. In 1882, Wilde embarked on a year-long tour of North America and his portrait was often depicted as merging with that of a sunflower on printed posters. In the centuries since, from Vincent Van Gogh to Ai Weiwei, sunflowers have never bloomed far from modern art, bringing with them a rich symbolism as well as their celebrated splendour.
For contemporary audiences, the sunflower is known as the primary Leo zodiac flower, thanks to it blooming during the height of the summer months in July and August. Consequently, the first Saturday in August has been proclaimed as 'Sunflower Day'.
So, it makes sense that in 1950, Harry Winston’s design team were inspired by the graphic structure and textural appeal of the flower for a one-of-a-kind high jewellery creation, which featured blue and white petalled sunflowers on a custom necklace, embodying Mr. Winston’s life-long belief that fine jewellery is truly “what man has done to perfect nature”.
Whereas Harry Winston’s iconic Cluster design (which has its origin story in the 1940s, in the glittering frost once glimpsed on a holly wreath by Harry Winston himself) features pear and marquise-cut diamonds juxtaposed at different angles to enhance their sparkle from every direction, the house’s signature Sunflower motif is characterised by the harmonious symmetry of a sunflower head, echoed in a glittering frame of accent diamond ‘petals’ radiating like a halo from a brilliant-cut central gemstone.
This summer’s latest iteration is the basis for a limited-production high jewellery suite and an exquisite gem-set timepiece. For a collar necklace, stud earrings and a gleaming cluster ring, yellow diamond centres are framed by corollas of eight, perfectly matched white diamonds, giving these pieces a vivid, optimistic warmth that works for either day or night. Another set dazzles with graceful arrangements of all-white diamond sunflowers, which look spectacular when worn alone, or layered up with other cherished diamond jewels. Meanwhile, the new limited-edition Premier Sunflower 36mm Automatic wristwatch boasts white gold case and sunny mother-of-pearl dial with a brilliant-cut diamond flower head blossoming at each hour marker. Eight other delicate sunflowers, each with a yellow sapphire heart, form an inner posy at the centre of the piece – a gorgeous focal point in this very contemporary Harry Winston garden.
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