About 25 years ago, the jewelry designer Sylvie Corbelin was in the Musée Guimet, the French National Museum of Asian Arts, when they heard a woman talking to a group of children.
“She stood in front of a sculpture of Buddha with two Naga snakes and she said:” The snake is like a human: to grow, it has to lose something, “” Mrs. Corbelin, who worked as an antique dealer at that time, said last month During a phone call from her house in Paris.
“This sentence stayed with me,” she added. “It gave me such an emotion that I came back, read a few things about snakes and I started designing a snake.”
The snake that Mrs Corbelin outlined that day was the first jewel that she created under her own brand name. It not only inspired her logo, with two snakes in a hug, it also produced a ring, called Initiée, or initiated: “Because according to many cosmologies there is always a snake about the origin of life,” she said.
The rolled up snake has appeared Countless designs by Mrs. Corbelin In the following years, including an 18-carat gold ring that she recently made for the year of the snake, the Chinese Zodiac designation for 2025 is. The Ring of $ 39,500 is set with an antique 72.5-carat pink tourmaline That was once used as a mandarin button, a decorative button that traditionally carried on top of the hats of high-ranking officials during the Qing Dynasty of China (1644 to 1911).
In the last century, snakes have been prominently present in jewelry, because their tails, long and linear or sleek and rolled up, lend themselves well to earrings, chains, bracelets and rings. But now, especially with the Lunar New Year’s connections, the motive has become especially popular for giving gifts.
Yet jewelers are hardly the only ones who have fallen prey to the temptation of the snake. Designers around the world – in categories as diverse as watches, handbags, crockery, even cigars – have long been honored the animal because of its countless aesthetic possibilities and the powerful symbolism.
Jean-Christophe Babin, The Chief Executive of Bulgari, Whose Best-Selling Serpenti Collection of Jewelry, Watches and Handbags Its Roots to A Gold Tubogas Watch The House Crafted in 1948, Said the Snake Motif Was So Brand’s Two were almost inseparable.
“Sometimes I think the motto should be:” Bulgari is Serpenti and Serpenti is Bulgari “, because it is so strong in all aspects of the company,” Mr Babin said last month on a video call from the brand’s head office last month in Rome.
This month the brand showed that the line could throw out its female skin and transform into something unambiguous masculine when it presented its first Serpenti watch for men, designed a partnership designed by Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, executive director of product creation of Bulgari, in collaboration with Maximilian Büsser, the founder and creative director of the Boutique Watch brand MB&F.
The slender model, with an egg-shaped housing that looks like the head of a Viper, is available in three versions: 18-carat rosé gold with green accents, titanium with blue accents and black with PVD coated stainless steel with red accents. Each is a 33-part limited edition.
It agrees with a Den of Snake-theme hours that have come on the market in the past two months pending the New Year Lunar, including the $ 9,100 from Oris Propilot x Year of the Snake Limited Edition and Hublot’s $ 35,100 Spirit of Big Bang Year of the SnakeWith a three -dimensional golden snake that slides under the dial, as well as a ceramic bezel with hose cases. Both are limited editions of 88 pieces (the number often appears in connection with Lunar New Year’s products, because eight is considered happy in China and double eight is even better).
The snake -related gift options are not limited to personal decoration. At the furniture and home decor retailer Crate & Barrel, a nine-part collection of Lunar New Year -items Including a festive red salad store decorated with a rolled up hose ($ 6.95) and a matte black five -carter enamelled cast iron pot with a hose -cake lid ($ 369.95), which was recently sold out.
“The collection sells super fast,” said Alicia Waters, president of Crate & Barrel and Crate & Kids, last month during a call from the headquarters of the company in Northbrook, Ill. “The snake is a common design motif – it is stylish, with style, with a little edge.”
The same can be said of the new Year of Snake Masterpiece Humidor Of the Premium Cigar brand Davidoff, which has created cigars and accessories since 2012 in honor of the Chinese zodiac.
Made from Macassar Wood, the cover of the Humidor shows a striking scene in Marquetry: a gigantic multicolored snakes that spirits through ocean waves, while the tobacco leaves monitors. Within 88 cigars are exclusively mixed for the box, the brand said, reflect the attributes of the snake.
Edward Simon, the Chief Marketing Officer of Oettener Davidoff, who makes cigar brands and brings it to the market, including Davidoff’s, said: “People are born in the year of the snake characterized as very quickly thinking, witty, light on their feet, and so on How we try to interpret and mix the cigar, by mixing different Tobaccos, such as a master chef who proposes a taste that he wants the consumer to have. “
The elegant luxury with hose themes that are brought to the market by Western brands, however, are in stark contrast to the year of the snake gifts of many Chinese consumers, said Joey Yap, a Feng Shui and Chinese astrology adviser in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
He chose gift vouchers, mandarin oranges, tea sets, ginseng and, among rich consumers, jade and gold as favorable gifts for the new year and warned that someone who gives luxury with snake themes should be more concerned about what not to give.
“Clocks and sharp objects are usually not good things,” Mr Yap said last month during a video call. “A clock is like:” Oh, your time is gone. ” Scissors and knives, normally, give people, because you are trying to break the tires and shoes are a big no in our culture because the word sounds like ‘breakdown’.
