Frédéric Zaavy's brilliant career as a master jeweler shone like a meteor but flamed out far too soon. Zaavy considered himself heir to the legacy of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, gem dealer to Louis XIV, and was chosen as the exclusive jeweler for the 21st century revival of Fabergé. Zaavy's artistic genius lay in painting with precious stones and in engineering remarkable settings to hold those stones almost invisibly. His works achieved a preëminence in the thousand-year evolution of French jewelry. The influences on his life and work were myriad. Nature, quantum physics, art, music, spirituality, poetry, literature, and even science fiction all shaped his extraordinary world view and taste. He was a philosopher jeweler. Stardust encapsulates the last year of his life, from the moment he learned he would soon die, right through to the end, with his life still at full throttle.

With a text by acclaimed French philosophical writer Gilles Hertzog and a stunning visual narrative by celebrated photographers John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler, Zaavy's work and life are presented in a portrait of what was and of what might have been.