The weather wasn’t the only thing icy on a frigid day in New York City. At the David Yurman boutique in Soho, visitors encountered a Cable bracelet with an entirely different kind of cool, a form as captivating as it was ephemeral.

Carved out of a tremendous block of ice by artist Shintaro Okamoto, the bracelet was a powerful counterpoint to the everlasting beauty of precious metals and diamonds—ice of a different kind. In the video above, see Okamoto work on the piece as he describes the process of his craft.

Some say that diamonds are called “ice” because they resemble frozen water. Others cite a more scientific reason: a diamond has one of the highest thermal conductivities at room temperature of any material.

Regardless of why, their crystalline, mesmerizing beauty is where the similarity between ice and diamonds ends. The nickname juxtaposes two diametrically opposed materials, playing with the contradiction of the transient with the everlasting.

David Yurman was one of the very first jewelry designers to set diamonds in sterling silver. He calls these creations Silver Ice®, an apt name for pieces that pair everyday style with exquisite luxury.

As David makes sculpture to wear from brilliant diamonds, audacious sculptors like Shintaro Okamoto shape ice into arresting, emblematic forms. Frozen water can make a meaningful statement about time, nature, longevity and power. In that sense, it’s not so different from diamonds.
 

Ai Weiwei, one of the most influential artists living today, is a Chinese political dissident and activist who uses art to make political statements. At the opening of the Stockholm International Film Festival in 2013, he created a buzz with two beautiful lions carved from ice. Inspired by the lion sculptures that guard Beijing’s Forbidden City, they symbolized that even the most powerful nations and leaders eventually fade.
 

Danish sculptor Olafur Eliasson, in partnership with the geologist Minik Rosing, created installations in Copenhagen and Paris called “Ice Watch” in 2014. He used a dozen icebergs from Greenland on the occasion of the Climate Change Conference to raise awareness of the phenomenon. Placed in a huge circle so the frozen forms created a “clock,” visitors directly observed the reality of melting arctic ice.

For the Yurman family, encountering ice is a magical experience that inspired our 2018 Holiday campaign and windows.