Blue Graduated Sapphire Tennis Chain

The piece

Graduated means the stones step down in size as the chain runs toward the back of the neck — largest at the center, tapering toward the clasp. It is the harder way to build a tennis chain, because every stone has to be matched to its neighbour in both size and colour, and a mismatch shows immediately at the taper. 22.1 carats of round blue sapphire, prong-set the full 17 inches, on 26.70 grams of 14K gold. No diamonds in this one. The colour is the point, and blue sapphire holds it under artificial light better than most stones we set. More builds across our tennis chains .