Grace Lepard, the recently appointed head of design at De Beers Jewellers, is taking clients on an African safari, with the Portraits of Nature high jewellery collection inspired by the continent’s distinctive fauna. Using rough and polished diamonds to bring textural depth to each piece, the designer also played with the tonalities of rare fancy colour diamonds as a counterpoint to white diamonds in her abstract interpretations of five animals.

The wings of a pink flamingo are brought to life with an array of marquise-shaped fancy pink, brownish and orangey pink diamonds, while the markings of a Chapman’s zebra are rendered with princess-cut white diamonds and iridescent grey mother-or-pearl (a first for the jeweller). Pink, orange and yellow diamonds are used to evoke the wings of a Monarch butterfly, while colourful rough diamonds bring to life the textured skin of a Knysna chameleon, and fancy yellow diamonds complement white diamonds to bring energy to the shimmering scales of an Electric cichlid.