During my interview with Léonard Pouy, curator of the exhibition “Paris, City of Pearls” at L’École des Arts Joailliers, and author of the remarkable book of the same name, I wanted to learn more about one of the central characters: the flamboyant jewelry dealer Léonard Rosenthal.

By Sandrine Merle.

 

 

Sandrine Merle. At the beginning of the 20th century, the merchant Léonard Rosenthal was a major figure in your book devoted to the history of fine (natural) – pearls. He also has a gigantic portrait in the exhibition. Could you tell us more about him?  

Léonard Pouy. As a young man, he arrived, penniless, in Paris from Grozny at the beginning of the 20th century and went on to experience a meteoric rise and a dizzying fall. In the 1910s, Léonard Rosenthal became one of the richest and most powerful figures in Paris, thanks to the flourishing trade in fine pearls, which had become more valuable than diamonds. He supplied Parisian jewelers with pearls bought first in Venezuela, then in the Persian Gulf, where in 1906 he took advantage of the economic crisis in England to establish himself against the historical dominance of the English. Sixty thousand divers now depended on him. Thanks to the fortune he made in the fine pearl trade, he extended his influence in the capital as a promoter, financing the Arcades des Champs Élysées and a number of urban planning projects such as Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin and Porte Maillot, which never saw the light of day. He also produced a film by Sergei Eisenstein. Yet within a few months, everything had fallen apart. The scarcity of fine pearls due to oil exploitation, the arrival of cultured pearls, the 1929 crisis, but also his taste for risk and his penchant for gambling and women, all contributed to his downfall. He thought that his many decorations, his status and his fortune would save him from deportation during the Second World War, but this was not the case: he was forced, like tens of thousands of Jews, to flee to the United States.

 

Sandrine Merle.His younger brothers Adolphe and Victor were also adventurers who took part in his epic.

Léonard Pouy. Léonard Rosenthal repatriated his family, including Victor, who proved to be particularly important. Fluent in Arabic, he travelled to Bahrain in 1906, where he bypassed the traditional supply chain of multiple middlemen. In his memoirs, Léonard Rosenthal recounts how his brother tricked the fishermen into reserving the best merchandise for him: he unloaded 50 donkeys from his boat, apparently carrying his fortune, which he had converted into coins for the occasion. He prospered there despite competition, the First World War and spy networks. After living in Venezuela, Victor settled in Bombay. And underneath his three-piece suit, his body was entirely tattooed, which at the time was no fashion statement! For those interested in these extraordinary lives, I recommend the excellent novel by his granddaughter Nicole Landau, La Perle de Blanca, retracing this family saga.

 

Sandrine Merle. You say that Leonard Rosenthal created his own myth and that not everything he wrote is to be taken literally.

Léonard Pouy. He wanted to be recognized as a great international merchant, which he really was, as I was able to see in the Gulf archives. He wrote his own story very early on, notably in “Faisons fortune” (1924) and “L’Esprit des affaires” (1925). The way he tells it, he flew to Bahrain every three weeks by mail plane, when in fact he sent his brothers. And contrary to what he suggests, he was neither the only pearl merchant, nor the only one to own a building on rue La Fayette. Bienenfeld, to whom Georges Perec was related, was an equally important and romantic figure. We should also mention Armand Citroën (brother of the carmaker) and Léon Hatot, whose house disappeared after he was deported in 1939.

 

Sandrine Merle. I can’t help mentioning another figure in this story, Albert Londres, to whom you dedicate the chapter entitled “À ce prix, Mesdames” (“The real price you pay, ladies”).

Léonard Pouy. Journalist Albert Londres wanted to be the first non-Muslim Westerner to visit Mecca. He didn’t succeed and ended up on the shores of the Red Sea, where he became interested in the pearls fished there. He was advised to go to Bahrain, where he was amazed and terrified by the living conditions of the slave divers. Like a modern-day whistle-blower, he produced a report entitled “À ce prix, Mesdames”, just like Di Caprio did with blood diamonds. In this way, he contributed to the decline of fine pearls and the emergence of cultured pearls as a solution.

 

Sandrine Merle. This fascinating story doesn’t end with Léonard Rosenthal: his descendants played an important role in the Paris trade.

Léonard Pouy. His son Jean Rosenthal, a great Resistance fighter and stone merchant, invited Joseph Kessel to the mines of Burma. This trip inspired his famous book La Vallée des Rubis. His grandsons Hubert Rosenthal and his great-grandson Cyril still live in Tahiti, where the Rosenthals launched one of the first pearl farms in 1968. In fact, it was Léonard Rosenthal himself who financed the farm, because, ironically, he made his fortune from the cultured pearl trade, which he so decried in his articles, and which was partly responsible for his downfall. I wanted to emphasize this link with Tahiti by exhibiting Samuel Fred’s necklace: without the French merchants, these pearls might not exist. Finally, I’d like to point out that some of the pearl merchants who survived the Holocaust went on to trade in cultured pearls, which enjoyed great success in Paris in the 1980s. There’s so much more to explore on this subject – we’re still in the early stages.

 

“Paris, City of Pearls” by Léonard Pouy, with contributions from Olivier Segura and Charline Coupeau, published by Editions Norma.

 

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