Pushing boundaries, Boucheron has combined denim with diamonds; employed holographic coating, Cofalit or aluminium; and incorporated glass along with a 5D memory technique for producing a series of avant-garde jewellery.

Last year, the maison turned to cutting-edge 3D sand printing for another innovation capsule – the Quatre Sand Cuff.

The iconic Quatre is characterised by four bands with distinctive motifs from Boucheron’s archives. The challenge was to distil the material into its clean, graphic lines instead of rounded contours.

Boucheron previously took its high jewellery to the next level, by embedding sand from the Thar Desert into a rock crystal necklace, and sculpted Or Bleu pieces out of black sand without the need for any metal edges or encapsulation.

Iconic Quatre designed with four distinct bands.

Creative director Claire Choisne continued exploring other technologies for reinventing Boucheron’s jewellery, with the 3D sand-printing technique borrowed from the automotive and aeronautics industries for fashioning the Quatre Sand Cuff.

The process involves spraying polymer binder onto the sand in successive layers barely a millimetre thick, like a millefeuille puff pastry, making the grains adhere to one another as if glued. The resulting hardwearing material retains the texture of the sand.

The creative director designed the innovation capsule as a set of seven pieces comprising one black sand and yellow gold bracelet featuring an XXL version of the Clou de Paris pattern; two other bracelets with the same materials and pattern, but in a smaller format; and four brushed gold bangles.

From a technical perspective, it was extremely challenging to craft the pieces. The Creative Studio firstly used 3D modelling to achieve the oversized dimensions, while still reproducing the precision edges that characterise the signature Quatre pattern.

Each black sand component was then shaped using 3D printing, before being mounted onto the gold structural bangle. Its polished inner surface and brushed edge maximise the interplay of textures and light, while a special coating seals in the colour of the sand.

The edgy reinterpretations of the Quatre can be worn separately, stacked or together.