An elegant new book celebrating the 10th anniversary of the jewellery brand Cadar provides timely recognition of its founder Michal Kadar’s unique talent and skill as a unique creator of emotive ornamentation.

Titled ‘Cadar The Golden Movement,’ the book was unveiled recently in New York as a finely printed history of a unique marque. It appears just weeks before the happening brand debuts its first flagship store in the city.
 
Movement has always been at the heart of Cadar’s DNA, underlined by the book’s cover which features a hologram of its yellow gold Feather Drop earrings, gently swaying and transforming from a vertical line to an S shape. The imagery links back to Michal’s earliest childhood memories of sunset gardens and the last rays on the Mediterranean at Tel Aviv, where her parents moved to from Libya, via Italy.

A graduate of Alber Elbaz’ alma mater Shenkar College, Michal developed her own successful fashion label before moving to the US and meeting her husband Avraham Kadar. Frustration at not finding a suitable engagement ring led her to design her own – a canny yellow gold TU Ring, created with different “jackets” over a solitaire white diamond to better express the different moods and moments of life.

That began a decade-long journey, which The Golden Moment subtly recounts. Michal debuted a series of collections including Light, where adaptable TU rings and drop earrings gently twist in the wind. This was followed by Water, where a choker necklace comes in small rivulets of gold, and earrings appear composed like gold droplets. The Water collection’s cocktail rings feature interlinked semi circles of white and black diamonds, allowing the ring to assume multiple silhouettes.

All told, Michal has now created over a dozen collections, such as Bloom, an elegant series of floral shaped bracelets studded in diamonds. Bloom also includes a cocktail ring, where its white diamond seems to blossom like a bud. Later collections boast names like Endless, Psyche, Feather, Fur, and Origin – all featured in special chapters throughout the book.
 
These collections are chronicled all the way to Python, whose sinuous shapes glide snakelike around wrist, neck and nape; and Essence, whose section hoop earrings and lariat necklaces evoke the gilded glory of Gustave Klimt’s 1909 painting The Tree of Life. 
 
“When I design jewellery, I channel all of my history and heritage into the process, reimagining gold as a luxurious fabric, caressing and comfortable, that can constantly adapt to the wearer,” Michal explains in her introduction.

Each chapter is accompanied by artworks that inspired the designer – like Man Ray’s iconic image Glass Tears of 1932. This hints at Cadar’s Reflections cocktail ring, shaped like an almond eye with its lids dusted in diamonds, or the remarkable Reflections Statement Chandelier necklace, featuring droplets of white and black diamonds which the photographer would surely have loved.
 
Michal’s designs have won multiple plaudits and prizes. In 2016, Michal received the prestigious Fashion Group International “Rising Star” award for fine jewellery. The following year, Cadar garnered “Best in Gold” at Couture, the expansive trade show in Las Vegas that is the heartbeat of the jewellery industry in North America. In 2018, Cadar nabbed “Gold Design of the Year” in the inaugural Town & Country Magazine Jewelry Awards. Her blend of nature, haute gamme artisans, and artistry has clearly struck a chord. 
 
Works by Degas, Yirawala, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Katsushika Hokusai illustrate The Golden Moment, which was printed in Italy with layout by Construct London. Moreover, images of the Chrysler Building and 19th century maps of New York are reflected in Cadar’s geometric designs, seen in rectangular hoop earrings or pyramidical rings and bracelets in its Foundation collection. Crisp photography by Dudi Hasson underlines the sheer quality of Cadar’s jewellery, designed in New York and primarily produced by top-level artisans in Italy.

 
Beside its special, undulating sense of movement, or sense of second skin adornment, Michal’s jewellery often seems alive with the sense of nature’s beauty. Whether it’s her rose-gold Fur cocktail ring, sprouting delicate tendrils topped by tiny diamonds, or a fantastic Flora Statement choker, with diamonds seemingly sewn into golden lace shaped like a zinnia petal.
 
The book culminates with Michal’s Home collection, and her most personal creations, from Shell rings that can open and close, to Shell charm necklaces. This brings the designer back full circle to collecting shells on the beach with her father.
 
Very much a brand on the move, Cadar will open its debut flagship this fall in The Meatpacking District, on one of Manhattan’s most happening corners – 13th Street and Washington. Cadar currently retails in some 40 high-end stores in the US, from Bergdorf Goodman and Wilkes Bashford in San Francisco to the Four Seasons in Florida and Neiman Marcus in Newport Beach. 
 
Next year, Michal plans a major international expansion for Cadar which, judging from the remarkable The Golden Movement, augurs extremely well for the future.