Creams, golds and caramels

These are the warm neutrals: cream running to butterscotch, caramel clouding through a pale disc, a golden-brown cube with darker bands across it, a mustard yellow flat enough to read like a small sun. Different materials, one job — warmth without shine.

Banding is the whole point of wearing a striped stone rather than a plain one. The bands shift as your hand turns or as the pendant swings, so the piece keeps changing at the edge of your vision all day. A plain stone is restful; a banded one is company.

Yellow and cream also solve a specific problem. If you like warm colour but do not wear gold-tone metal, these give you the warmth against silver-tone wire, and they do it without the piece looking like it is trying to pass for something it is not.