We might have missed a couple of days on our countdown to Christmas but the treat behind door number seven more than makes up for it. As we've said this year we wanted to highlight the sublime, the ridiculous and the truly special and exclusive. Today's pick definitely falls in the latter two categories. Aesop's Shirt Studs by Wendy Brandes. The foxes are petrified wood, rock crystal and onyx and the grapes are tourmaline. Everything is set in 18K gold and Wendy B assures us that both foxes have tested negative for rabies. Only one set has been made for that special one of a kind type of man.
To find out more about these very special shirt studs we caught up with the lovely designer herself. "The Aesop's shirt studs came about when I was meeting with a gem carver from Germany -- the same one who used dental tools to engrave the stones for my Queen Min rings (here, here and here). He also did my rock crystal and onyx owl and right now I have him working on a custom-ordered cufflinks depicting a client's two dogs. Every time the gem carver comes to New York, I go see what he has in stock. One time, he had carvings for numerous sets of shirt studs. One set was four little foxes (petrified wood, oynx and rock crystal). One of the other sets was four tiny tourmaline grape bunches. I immediately saw the Aesop's fable about the fox and the sour grapes in those two sets. I don't know how I convinced him to break the sets up so that I could buy two of each style to do a single set of Aesop's shirt studs. The remaining pieces were too small to be cufflinks, and who else is going to do a set of shirt studs with a moral to it? Maybe he's sold them as earrings. Anyway, I persuaded him to sell me two foxes and two grapes and then I had them set in 18K gold. This is the only set of these I'll ever do. The stylish guy who gets these will have a one-of-a-kind look... and all the other guys will have sour grapes about it!"
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