An enamel, pearl and diamond necklace by Mick Milligan, given to Pattie Boyd by Eric Clapton, early 1980s

In the early 1980s, Eric Clapton worked closely with British jeweller and longtime friend Mick Milligan to commission and design this unique pink enamel, pearl and diamond necklace as a gift for then wife Pattie Boyd, as orchids are one of her favourite flowers.

Mick Milligan was a jewellery designer for Liberty and Co. and Zandra Rhodes and worked in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. (See also lot 40 for another pendant by the same maker.) Milligan famously designed the silver aircraft featured in photographer Bob Seidemann’s controversial album cover artwork for the eponymous 1969 album by British supergroup Blind Faith, which comprised Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker and Ric Grech. Clapton recalled the controversy in his 2007 autobiography: Bob [Seidemann] told me that he had an idea for an album cover for us. He wouldn’t say what it was, just that he was going to put it together and then show us. When he finally presented it, I remember thinking that it was rather sweet. It was a photograph of a young, barely pubescent girl, with curly red hair, photographed from the waist up, naked, and holding in her hands a silver, very modernistic aeroplane, designed by my friend the jeweller, Micko Milligan. Behind her was a landscape of a green hill, like the Berkshire Downs, and a blue sky, with white clouds scudding across it. I immediately loved it because I thought it captured the definition of the name of our band really well - the juxtaposition of innocence, in the shape of the girl, and experience, science, the future, represented by the aeroplane. I told Bob that we should not spoil the image by putting the name of the band on the front cover, so he came up with the idea of writing it on the wrapper instead. When the wrapper came off, it left a virgin photograph. The cover caused a huge outcry. People said the representation of the young girl was pornographic, and in the States record dealers threatened to boycott it. Since we were about to embark on a major tour, we had no alternative but to replace it over there with a shot of us standing in the front room at Hurtwood.