New York – Ella Gafter is accustomed to accolades. Known as the Pearl Queen by the privileged few with wham she does business, the Polish-born, Italian-trained jewelry designer creates elegant, outrageously decadent jewels anchored by plump Australian pearls for the likes of Manhattan socialites and European nobility. It's as if recognition, glamour and sophistication are her birthright.

But this fall, Gafter, whose Art Deco and antique private viewing salon sits 31 floors above Fifth Avenue, will receive what is perhaps her most profound praise yet.

One of the few contemporary pieces of pearl jewelry that will be included in the groundbreaking "Pearls" exhibition at New Yark's American Museum of Natural History belongs to Gafter. And what a piece it is.

It is a brooch, but that implies something small and discrete – not an accurate description for this piece. If a woman actually wore this jeweled wonder, it would stretch from her collarbone to below her breast, resembling a delicate floral branch. It is set with 8.38 carats of diamonds and 10 lustrous South Sea pearls that have enough sheen to check your teeth on. A dainty diamond-encrusted butterfly with frosted glass wings and a yellow sapphire body perches on the largest pearl, a 15.5 mm beauty, and quivers ever so slightly. It is set on watch springs, a technique known as en tremblant, which Gafter uses in many of her more whimsical pieces.

She created the brooch about 18 months ago and has stored it for safekeeping ever since. It is brought out only occasionally, to impress and astound the private clients who make the pilgrimage to her plush salon, said her daughter and Ellagem business partner, Talila Gafter. But for the next two years it will be on display, first in New York starting in October 2001 and then at Chicago's Field Museum, where the "Pearls" exhibit will open in June 2002.

Although the brooch is one of Ellagem's showpieces, it will hardly leave a dent in the designer's immense jewelry collection, which features enough pearls to dress a sorority house full of girls. She showcases the pearls in most of her pins, earrings, necklaces and rings.

The elegant yet down-to-earth Gafter has an almost visceral love for the sea-born gems, so it's no surprise that she makes a point of buying them directly from pearl farms in Japan, Tahiti and Australia.

The source of the pearls in the brooch – and for most of Gafter's pearl jewelry – is Nick Paspaley, Australia's largest pearl producer and a personal friend of the cross-continental designer, who also keeps a salon in Rome. Their relationship goes back almost 20 years to a serendipitous encounter on the outskirts of Broome, Australia, when Gafter stumbled across a mud-soaked pearl farm and fell in love with Paspaley's entire crop.

Since then, she's made annual trips Down Under, getting dibs on the best gems as soon as they're plucked from the oysters. Just last year, Ella and Talila spent four days at Port Bremer, Paspaley's northernmost farm on the far-flung Cobourg Peninsula.

There, in the wilds of crocodile country, they befriended the farm crew thanks to Ella's impromptu cooking sessions in which she prepared pearl-meat pasta and a Champagne-infused fruit salad surprise. "They adored her," said Talila. "They loved that she always came dressed in all her pearl jewelry." And why wouldn't she? For this queen, it is the pearls that rule.