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“Dragons and tattoos don’t necessarily mean tranquility, but rather power and violence,” Esmerian adds. “Those, to me, are more explosive, and, in a funny way, more inspirational than the more dormant, peaceful wings of a dove.”
Like Siegelson, Esmerian can rattle off a tidy list of latter-day jewelers who worked feathers into their designs. “I wrote my senior thesis on jeweled wings,” he jokes before adding Castellani, Froment-Meurice and Lalique to the roster. “Wings come and go in cycles; they’re a recurring theme,” he says. “They can be escapist, because they read flight immediately. And though they aren’t like a cross, which can ward off evil spirits, they can also symbolize protection. Wings stand for so many things.”
