The modern jewelry collector often desires pieces that remix the past to fit a fast-paced, multi-hyphenate lifestyle, as seen in the 2020 Maharajah Necklace, a breathtaking masterwork from Cartier’s contemporary high-jewelry collection that redefines the house’s Tutti Frutti signature style. While early 20th-century iterations relied on a dense, rigid mosaic of colours, the 2020 Maharajah leans into pure, opulent scale and fluid transformation.

This design pays direct homage to a watershed moment in luxury history: the legendary 1928 Patiala Necklace commission, when Maharajah Bhupinder Singh of India walked into Cartier’s Paris workshops with trunks overflowing with thousands of ancestral gemstones and requested a singular, modern setting. Cartier’s signature Tutti Frutti style grew directly from this cross-cultural exchange, blending the centuries-old Mughal tradition of hand-carving emeralds and rubies into organic leaf and floral motifs with avant-garde French platinum engineering. The 2020 edition honours this regal inheritance while reimagining it for a new era.

Master artisans spent over 4,500 meticulous hours crafting the 2020 Cartier Maharajah Necklace, which features a 43.73-carat hexagonal emerald alongside two additional Colombian emeralds totalling 86.96 carats, complemented by a versatile 19-gem cluster pendant. What makes this specific piece the ultimate contemporary object of desire is its radical versatility. It is explicitly designed for a collector who demands that their art move with them.

Perpetuating Cartier’s legendary tradition of transformable jewelry, the piece can be dismantled and seamlessly reconfigured to be worn in eight entirely different ways. The inner ruby core detaches to become a sleek choker; the central cluster can be worn alone as a minimal pendant on a platinum chain, and the trailing tassels effortlessly convert into statement drop earrings.

By blending the historic, hand-engraved gemstone traditions of the Indian courts with modern, modular engineering, the 2020 Maharajah isn’t just an artifact to admire behind glass but an active, living expression of cross-cultural luxury designed to be lived in.

Explore the historical Tutti Frutti high jewelry collection at Cartier, or discover fine jewelry collections at Net-a-Porter.

Images via Cartier.