Windsor Jewelry’s ombré halo heart pendant wins INSTORE design awards

The heart motif looked anything but familiar in Windsor Jewelry’s hands. The winning Ombré Halo Heart pendant necklace in 14K yellow gold centered a 45 mm by 45 mm heart-shaped dendritic agate, then wrapped it in an ombré halo of peach and pink morganites totaling 1.60 carats, spessartite garnet at 1.23 carats and citrine at 0.80 carats, all suspended on a Starburst Station Katherine & Joseph chain. Priced at $10,040, the piece captured both First Place and Retailer’s Choice in INSTORE’s 2026 Best Heart Motif category.

What set the pendant apart was not sentimentality but geology. Viviana Langhoff called it “a unique dendritic agate cut,” while Ellie Thompson described it as “a geological wonder” and “a beautiful gift to receive.” Smitha Sadanandan called it “a miniature landscape in stone,” a fitting line for dendritic agate, a chalcedony variety marked by fern- or tree-like branching inclusions that give the center stone its landscape effect. The result was a heart that read less like a Valentine’s staple and more like a polished specimen framed in warm color.

INSTORE’s 2026 Design Awards marked the 11th edition of the program, with 229 entries, matching the prior year’s total. Six retailers and three media personalities judged the entries through blind voting, and hundreds of other retailers voted online to determine the Retailer’s Choice winners. That structure matters because it shows the competition rewarding design that can hold up under both expert scrutiny and retail peer review.

The heart category itself has already started to define a specific lane inside jewelry design. INSTORE also ran a Best Heart Motif category in 2025, when Pompos Jewelry Corporation won first place with a platinum and 18K yellow gold heart ring centered on a 2.01-carat internally flawless heart-shape modified brilliant-cut natural fancy yellow diamond. Windsor’s pendant extends that idea in a different direction: instead of leaning on a single bright center stone, it builds visual power through color graduation, unusual mineral texture and careful mounting.

That approach fits Windsor Fine Jewelers, the Augusta, Georgia retailer behind the piece. The company says it began in 1975 with four showcases in Augusta’s National Hills Shopping Center and describes itself as one of the top five largest independent jewelers in the United States. In a category that can easily collapse into cliché, Windsor’s pendant showed how the heart shape can still feel personal when the materials do the storytelling.