Handmade Solid Silver Caviar Shell

Made by hand in the United States by artist and metalsmith Adam Grinovich, Pearle's caviar serving shell transforms one of the table's most traditional objects into a piece of contemporary sculpture.

Each shell is individually formed from solid 925 sterling silver, using traditional metalworking techniques whose lineage reaches back centuries. Rather than casting a perfect, anonymous object by machine, Grinovich works the metal by hand, shaping, forming and finishing the silver through a process closer to historic silversmithing than modern manufacture. The result retains the subtle evidence of its making: a piece that feels precious without feeling pristine, and substantial enough to become an heirloom.

Grinovich is an artist as much as a metalsmith. Trained in jewelry and metalsmithing at Massachusetts College of Art and at Stockholm's Konstfack University, his practice has spent years examining the strange languages of glamour, worth, luxury and adornment, and the ways materials acquire meaning far beyond their utility. 

That makes the collaboration particularly apt. Caviar has always been surrounded by objects that announce its preciousness: mother-of-pearl spoons, silver service, crushed ice, elaborate rituals of presentation. Pearle plays with those codes, preserving the ceremony while reconsidering what the luxury itself can be. Grinovich's shell does the same.

Lab-grown sapphire and ocean jasper cabochons have been hand-welded to the shell, arranged in a spare, contemporary pattern. Their saturated blue introduces an almost jewelry-like detail to the shell.

Made in South Carolina completely by hand, the finished shell sits somewhere between serving piece, sculpture and jewelry for the table. Fill it with Pearle caviar, place it over ice, or leave it out after dinner. It was designed to be used, but it doesn't particularly mind being stared at.