JAR Rock Crystal & Sapphire Butterfly Brooch

The jeweler who started with needlepoint

Joel Arthur Rosenthal was born in 1943 and grew up in the Bronx, where he spent much of his early life in the city's museums. He studied at Harvard, initially aspiring to be a painter, and moved to Paris shortly after graduating in 1966. There he met Pierre Jeannet, the Swiss-born partner who became the other half of the business.

The two spent their time in antique shops, museums and salerooms learning about old jewelry, diamonds, pearls and colored stones. In 1973 they opened a needlepoint shop on the rue de l'Université. For Rosenthal, needlepoint meant painting flowers on white canvas with colored wools. The shop lasted only 11 months, but clients began asking him to redesign their jewels, and his attention turned to stones.

In 1976 he went back to New York to work for Bulgari, then returned to Paris to open a business under his initials. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the opening of JAR on the Place Vendôme to 1978; the 2025 sale catalog for this brooch gives 1977. At the start it was a team of two, Rosenthal and Jeannet. In 1987, around the time this brooch was made, they moved into a larger space next door to their first shop, the same space they occupy today.

The atelier has stayed deliberately small. Its shop just off the Place Vendôme has no display windows, and entry is by invitation. Reports of how much it makes differ: one account says JAR creates only a few dozen pieces a year, while another describes fewer than 100. Jeannet once described the process this way: if at the end Rosenthal's eye is not happy, 'we destroy the piece.'

A butterfly in rock crystal and blue

The brooch is a butterfly whose wings are carved from rock crystal, clear quartz, each one inset with oval and round sapphires in shades of blue that range from pale to deep. A vertical line of differently shaped sapphires forms the body. Everything is mounted in blackened silver.

That dark metal is a JAR signature. The Metropolitan Museum credits Rosenthal with reintroducing silver to fine jewelry and blackening it to bring out the color of the stones and the shine of diamonds. The 2025 sale catalog said that here the patinated silver and deep blue sapphires give the piece a 'moody, gothic quality,' while the carved crystal adds a contemporary feel.

Butterflies and flowers are the two themes that run most often through Rosenthal's work, usually in the form of brooches. The catalog went further and suggested the butterfly may be his most recurrent motif from nature, its wings an ideal canvas. At his 2013 retrospective in New York, swarms of jeweled butterflies covered the walls.

How to know it

Unlike many JAR jewels, this one is signed. The sale description records the mark 'JAR Paris' together with French assay and workshop marks, and the brooch came with its signed box. That matters because Rosenthal often leaves pieces unsigned: two other JAR jewels in the same December 2025 sale, a pair of ruby earclips and a reversible pendant-brooch, were unsigned and relied on their original JAR boxes and documented history.

The brooch's paper trail is unusually complete. It was shown in The Jewels of JAR Paris at Somerset House in London in 2002-2003 and illustrated as plate 364 in the book JAR Paris, published in London in 2002. The catalog dates it to circa 1987.

The sale description gives no carat weights, color grades or country of origin for the sapphires, and no weight for the brooch itself. The wings are described only as carved rock crystal set with oval and round sapphires, and the body as a line of variously shaped sapphires.

One collector, then the auction room

The brooch came from a single private collection offered in New York on December 8, 2025, under the title 'A Legacy of Elegance: Jewels from an Exceptional Collection.' The owner was not named. The collection of more than 60 pieces spanned the 1930s to the 1990s and centered on JAR and Suzanne Belperron, with work by Cartier, Boivin and Boucheron. Several of its JAR pieces had been lent to the 2002 Somerset House exhibition.

The sale was the first evening jewelry auction in New York in more than a decade at the house that held it, and the first jewelry sale in its new headquarters in the Breuer building on Madison Avenue. Highlights toured internationally before going on view there on December 5. The brooch was lot 13, estimated at $300,000 to $500,000.

It sold for $698,500. The collection as a whole brought about $13.9 million, every lot found a buyer, and 12 one-of-a-kind JAR creations together brought $5.7 million. The brooch tied a pair of JAR ruby and diamond earclips from the same sale at $698,500, and a reversible JAR pendant-brooch in the same sale made more than $1 million. The sale began on the evening of December 8, 2025, in New York, which was already December 9 in London; one trade report dates it to December 9.

A living jeweler in the museum

Rosenthal's reputation rests on two exhibitions. The first, at Somerset House in London in 2002, was lit so dimly that visitors were handed flashlights to see the jewels. The second, Jewels by JAR at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from November 20, 2013, to March 9, 2014, showed more than 400 works. It was the first retrospective of his work in the United States and the first the museum had devoted to a contemporary artist of gems.

He is best known for pavé, setting small stones so close together that they read as a continuous surface, and for grading their colors so finely that the effect looks painted. Ahead of the 2025 sale, the auction house credited him with a 'pavé-set revolution' now considered foundational to 21st-century jewelry, and its catalog called him the most influential jewelry designer of our time.

The butterfly brooch shows the other side of his work: a single carved material, a handful of sapphires and a dark metal, arranged so the color does the work. Its price placed it seventh in a ranking that the selling house published of the highest prices its own sales have achieved for JAR jewels.

The numbers

Carat weight

Not published; the sale description gives no stone weights

Color / clarity

Blue sapphires in varying intensities; no grades published

Origin

Not stated for the sapphires

Cutter / maker

JAR, Paris (Joel Arthur Rosenthal); wings of carved rock crystal

Metal

Blackened silver

Date

Circa 1987

Timeline

1. 1943

   Joel Arthur Rosenthal is born in New York.

2. 1966

   Rosenthal graduates from Harvard and moves to Paris, where he meets Pierre Jeannet.

3. 1973

   Rosenthal and Jeannet open a needlepoint shop on the rue de l'Université; it lasts 11 months.

4. 1976

   Rosenthal returns to New York to work for Bulgari.

5. 1978

   JAR opens on the Place Vendôme in Paris (one 2025 catalog gives 1977).

6. 1987

   JAR moves into a larger space next door to its first shop.

7. 1987

   The rock crystal and sapphire butterfly brooch is made, circa this year, signed JAR Paris.

8. 2002

   The brooch is illustrated as plate 364 in the book JAR Paris, published in London.

9. 2002

   The brooch is shown in The Jewels of JAR Paris at Somerset House, London (2002-2003).

10. Nov 20, 2013

    Jewels by JAR opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with more than 400 works.

11. Mar 9, 2014

    The Metropolitan Museum retrospective closes.

12. Nov 25, 2025

    The single-owner collection goes on offer in New York.

13. Dec 5, 2025

    Highlights of the collection go on view in the Breuer building on Madison Avenue.

14. Dec 8, 2025

    The brooch sells at auction in New York for $698,500, above its $300,000 to $500,000 estimate.

The world in 1987

• Mar 6, 1987

  The ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes off Zeebrugge, Belgium; 193 people die.

• Apr 19, 1987

  The Simpsons first appears, as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.

• Jun 12, 1987

  In Berlin, Ronald Reagan challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

• Oct 19, 1987

  Black Monday: stock markets fall sharply on Wall Street and around the world.

• Dec 8, 1987

  Reagan and Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Washington.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, JAR Rock Crystal & Sapphire Butterfly Brooch is number 34 of 100 in the jewelry entries of the FLOAT 100. 44 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (33 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Before jewelry, Rosenthal ran a needlepoint shop in Paris that lasted just 11 months.
• Visitors to the 2002 JAR exhibition in London were given flashlights because the galleries were kept so dark.
• Rosenthal is the only living jeweler to have received a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, according to the 2025 sale catalog.
• JAR's shop near the Place Vendôme has no display windows, and entry is by invitation.
• Pierre Jeannet has said that if Rosenthal's eye is not happy with a finished piece, they destroy it.
• This brooch and a pair of JAR ruby earclips sold in the same December 2025 sale for exactly the same price, $698,500.