Marquise/Horse Eye

The most perfect lips in all the land... are horse eye marquise?

Horse eye beads are also called marquise beads, football-shaped, eye-shaped, or navette (which is French for 'little boat'). Marquise beads have pointed ends with an elliptically shaped outline (or simply put, eye shaped), boasting a higher length to width ratio. Therefore, these marquise beads are slim and long, giving them their elongated shape which coincidentally can give the beads the illusion of being larger. 

Marquise beads are often faceted but sometimes smooth. Marquise beads can be drilled horizontally or vertically, affecting how they lay when strung. 

The history of this shape in jewelry is a wild one--and one fit for our Crown Beads royal customers. During the 18th Century, King Louis XV of France wanted to find the ultimate way to memorialize and compliment his royal mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour. So he commissioned a jeweler to create a gemstone shape (in this case, a diamond) to look like his beloved's lips as Louis XV was adamant that the lips of Madame de Pompadour (as she was more commonly known) were the most perfect he'd ever seen. From this commission emerged the first ever marquise cut diamond, and thus a new gemstone shape was born. Prior to the 1970's, only royalty ever touched the exquisite marquise shape but now it's more widely available.