Never-Before-Seen Jewels Go on View at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Housed in the refurbished, reinstalled Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery, Beyond Brilliance showcases more than 150 objects across 4,000 years of global history. “It celebrates the depth and breadth of the collection by examining objects past and present to discover the universality and creativity that jewelry offers,” says Stoehrer.

While the Boivin starfish acquisition may be remembered as one of the most important moments in Stoehrer’s MFA tenure, Beyond Brilliance has a multitude of other exceptional works. Among the most impressive jewels on display is an Art Deco brooch with a 60 ct. emerald centerpiece, carved and engraved in India in the 17th century, formerly in the collection of General Foods heiress and art collector Marjorie Merriweather Post. “It’s a piece that really shows the life of a jewel over time,” says Stoehrer. “It would have originally come to India through Colombian or Ecuadorian channels on Portuguese ships.”

The stunning example would likely have been mounted in a turban belonging to a Mughal emperor, Stoehrer explains. Acquired by the American retailer Marcus & Company in the 1920s, the emerald had a channel at the top allowing it to be strung on a necklace but was later reworked into a brooch by Oscar Heyman Brothers (a luxury New York jeweler still in operation today).

Part of the museum’s permanent collection since 2008, the brooch is in many ways the “hero” of the MFA’s jewelery collection; now it has myriad magnificent pieces to keep it company.

One such “companion,” displayed directly alongside the Post brooch, is a present-day design from Bhagat, one of India’s foremost luxury jewelers. The Jali brooch, with its specialty-cut diamonds and Colombian emerald cabochons, is inspired by an ornamental window screen found in India and Pakistan and reflects Bhagat’s signature Mughal-meets-Art Deco style.

The MFA is the first museum in the world to mount a Bhagat jewel (completed just two months before the Beyond Brilliance gallery opened to the public). Its new home, a case titled Jewel Tones, highlights “residents” from all eras, including a Bulgari necklace from the 1980s and a circa-1905 Art Nouveau necklace by Marcus & Co. that incorporates peridots and plique-a-jour enamel.

In addition to the Bhagat piece, there are four more newcomer jewels making their debut at the MFA. These include a pair of large tassel earrings dripping with more than 200 carats of blue sapphires by the fourth-generation German jeweler Hemmerle, a Galerie 2019 Creative Mind. “The jeweler is celebrated for its groundbreaking jewelry designs, embrace of new and surprising materials, and extraordinary craftsmanship,” says Stoehrer.

Rounding out this quintet are three brooches that center botanical and butterfly themes, including “a surprisingly lightweight statement jewel” by Anna Hu from 2023; a “large and highly sculptural but also delicate, appearing as if held together by air,” design by Feng J from 2021; and one of Wallace Chan’s iconic jeweled butterflies from 2013.

“If you have walked through an indoor butterfly conservatory at a local zoo or park, you have observed the way the insects move through the air, flying between plants, flowers, and sometimes settling on an unsuspecting visitor,” says Stoehrer. “This is how you are meant to encounter Chan’s butterflies—pinned to a bodice, nestled in the hair, placed as if landed on a shoulder, or perhaps as a flash of light from across a crowded room.”

One vitrine in the gallery will rotate annually. Currently it houses a tribute to Elsa Peretti, inclusive of two iconic examples of her work—a circa-1978 silver Bone Cuff and silver Scorpion necklace—that are permanently on view in the gallery. The other Peretti designs, presented on loan, emphasize the designer’s use of diverse materials such as silver, jade, rock crystal, leather, and jasper.

The remaining examples effectively go “beyond brilliance” to inspire a deeper, richer and more meaningful appreciation of jewelry. As Stoehrer says, “jewelry history is human history.”