This Vintage Van Cleef & Arpels Butterfly Necklace represents an earlier era of the maison’s nature-inspired jewellery, dating approximately to the 1980s–1990s. Crafted in 18K solid gold with Black Onyx and diamond detailing, it showcases VCA’s longstanding fascination with butterflies while offering an aesthetic distinctly different from the maison’s modern catalogue. Now discontinued, it sits firmly within the collector tier of vintage Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery.
The construction is one of the first things that distinguishes this piece. The Black Onyx butterfly is surrounded by beautifully thick, substantial 18K gold borders, giving the necklace a weight and presence characteristic of earlier VCA creations. A diamond accent introduces a refined point of brilliance against the dramatic contrast of black Onyx and gold.
Unlike current-production VCA pieces that can potentially be reordered or sourced through boutiques, this 1980s–1990s creation is discontinued, meaning availability depends entirely on vintage examples returning to circulation. For collectors, this makes condition, construction and the individual example increasingly important.
The necklace comes with a generic box and VCA cleaning kit. An original Van Cleef & Arpels box can also be sourced at a top-up if required, particularly for gifting.
Most importantly, this sits within a very different market from mainstream contemporary VCA: comparable collector-tier vintage examples are trading around SGD 10,000–15,000 on the secondary market, versus our offering price of SGD 6,888.
WLCSG curator note:
This is collector-tier VCA, and we would evaluate it very differently from a current-production Alhambra pendant. The appeal is precisely that you cannot simply walk into Van Cleef today and order another one. It comes from an earlier period of the maison, with those beautifully thick gold borders, substantial construction, Black Onyx and diamond detailing giving it a character that feels distinctly vintage.
For collectors who already have the mainstream VCA staples, pieces from the 1980s–1990s archives are where things become especially interesting. With comparable vintage collector pieces trading around SGD 10–15k on the secondary market, our SGD 6,888 pricing makes this a particularly compelling opportunity to acquire a genuinely discontinued chapter of Van Cleef & Arpels design.
