Experience the excitement of jewelry
21 May 2021
In its exhibition “Napoléon et Joséphine – Une histoire (extra)ordinaire”, the jeweler Chaumet presents (among many other jewels) acrostic bracelets that belonged to the empress. By deciphering the initials of each stone, we discover a word or a message, in this case the first names of her children: Eugène and Hortense. These museum pieces are obviously not for sale but this beautiful idea can easily be appropriated. Indeed, Chaumet still makes such sentimental jewelry, in the form of bracelets, in accordance with each person’s story. The unique message is thus known only to the wearer.
Discover the exhibition “Napoléon et Joséphine – Une histoire (extra)ordinaire”
08 January 2020
Passionate flights of fancy, golden ages, records broken, forgotten techniques… A few fragments from a thousand-year-old history.
08 March 2019
After several months of work, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s jewelry gallery will reopen on April 11, 2019. It has added approximately 80 new pieces to its rich collection, including two must-see items: the diamond and sapphire crown designed by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria in 1840 and Freddie Mercury’s collection of 49 vanity art deco cases, donated by his sister Kashmira Bulsara. However unlikely a match these two collectors would seem to be, the V&A has pulled it off!
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13 November 2018
As the main sponsor of the exhibition “The Body Transformed”, Kazumi Arikawa, president of Albion Art, donated 3 European jewels from the second half of the 19th century, in connection with Japan.
03 September 2018
Passed down, transformed or survivors, 100 pieces evoke 200 years of the Bourbon Parma dynasty. Even if you can’t buy any, go and admire them in the exhibitions laid on by Sotheby’s.
11 April 2018
Australia – a country that seems very distant to us, with one of the sparsest populations in the world – is a positive Eldorado for jewelers.
01 February 2018
In the 1980s, Chaumet became one of the first jewelry houses to showcase its own brand heritage. The brand now boasts an extremely rich collection of jewelry, glass plates, order books, invoices and some 80,000 drawings, covering more than two hundred years of history. Thirty-eight of these, based on its favourite theme – the tiara – will be exhibited at the Salon du dessin. A chance to explore the brand’s prestigious clients and its changing styles from the Empire to the present day.
Salon du dessin from 23rd to 26th March 2018 at the Palais Brongniart, Paris
31 October 2017
The Millon House is breaking up a collection of oriental pieces including a beautiful Moroccan necklace from the early nineteenth century worn by the bride. For its part, Christie’s offers an exceptional collection of Art Nouveau and Art Deco pieces by René Lalique, Raymond Templier or Georges Fouquet. The sale of Mallié-Arcelin’s study is a tribute to the royal provenance of these bracelets adorned with miniature portraits of the last King of France and his family. The Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales in Geneva should make the event … One with the “Donnersmarck”, two daffodil diamonds of more than 102 and 82 carats, which belonged to the countess of the same name who was also a famous 19th century courtesan, the Païva. The other with the “Grand Mazarin”, a pink diamond of 19 carats. Firstly belonging to the Cardinal Mazarin, it then passed through the collections of four kings, four queens, two emperors and two empresses. It hasn’t reappeared for sale since the theft of the crown jewels in 1792. Records in perspective.
In Paris: Mallié-Arcelin, November 10th 2017 at the Meurice – Millon, November 29th 2017 at Drouot.
In Geneva: Christie’s, November 13th and 14th 2017 – Sotheby’s, November 15th 2017.
11 October 2017
From 1959 onward, this American heiress lived in a Neo-Georgian mansion that she conceived as a museum to be bequeathed to the Smithsonian on her death. It is filled with her collection of decorative arts and jewelry.
11 July 2017
Contrary to popular thought, the more precious the materials with which a jewelry piece is made, the less likely it will come through time intact.
09 May 2017
This ninth-century talisman amulet is in fact a reliquary and is on display in the treasury room of the episcopal residence in Reims, next to the cathedral where the kings of France were once crowned. Its history still contains many dark areas.
18 April 2017
Boni de Castellane‘s wealthy American wife was one of the legendary collectors. “In 1909, Anna Gould had this necklace made at Cartier, probably from her own diamonds,” explains Marie-Laurence Tixier, director of jewelry department at Christie’s Paris. “And there had to be a large number of them to produce this magnificent matching fall.” The value of this necklace is also due to the extreme delicacy of its mount, which is produced with platinum thread and tassels that extend to the back of the piece.
Estimated at between € 500-700,000 – Auction sale on June 6th 2017 at Christie’s Paris.
11 April 2017
It will go on sale for between 800,000 and 1.2 million USD at Sotheby’s on April 25th in New York. This exceptional green, clear and intense 34.40-carat Colombian emerald is expected to break a record. Another reason for this is the pedigree of its owners, three great American collectors, including the heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean who, in the early twentieth century, had it mounted as a pendant along with the “Star of the East”, a 95-carat pear diamond. She then handed it over to Cartier as the first payment for the “Hope”, that legendary blue diamond that had once belonged to Louis XIV.
23 March 2017
From March 29th to June 5th 2017, the Grand Palais will present “From the Great Mughals to the Maharajahs. Jewels of the Al Thani Collection”, an exhibition that traces more than five centuries of Indian jewelry history and that also shows the influences both India and the West had on each other’s jewelry creations.
23 March 2017
Just back from India, here is a collage from my scrapbook which illustrates perfectly the feel and the richness of Indian jewlery.
17 January 2017
During his reign from 1643 to 1715, Louis XIV assembled all the conditions necessary to make Paris the capital of high jewelry.
28 December 2016
In the next film by Pablo Larraín, Natalie Portman plays Jackie Kennedy. She wears the exact replica of the watch worn by the first lady of the United States in the 1960s: a Piaget with a jade dial encircled by diamonds and tourmalines. Jewelers can’t abide seeing their former customers wearing any other creations but their own, even in movies: thus in 2011 Cartier recreated the jewelry of the Duchess of Windsor for Madonna, and in 2014, those of Grace Kelly for Nicole Kidman.
24 November 2016
This Japanese dealer and collector who’s one of the most important in the world, has just opened a showroom in Paris. But I paid him a visit in Tokyo.
22 November 2016
For those who missed the Bejewelled Treasures: The Al Thani Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, this is a chance to catch it. From March 29th, 2017, the Grand Palais will present 230 exceptional pieces from this private collection that retrace five centuries of Indian jewelry history, from the Mughal Empire to the present day.
26 October 2016
Forty paintings and engravings belonging to Versailles were selected for their representations of finery, little of which has survived. From Louis XIV to the Second Empire come tiaras, girandoles, golden fleeces, chatelaines and medals, each more sumptuous than the other.
“Le goût de la parure” (The Taste for Finery) at the Château d’Angers – From October 15th 2016 to January 15th 2017
07 October 2016
Among the major jewelry collectors figures Josephine de Beauharnais. “She also launched fashions in decoration,” says architect, Bambi Sloan, who drew inspiration for her for the new JoBo hotel. She’s combined reprints of vintage wallpaper with Jouy fabric designs or striped cocardes, carpets printed with rose or leopard-skin patterns, and portraits of Josephine given a twist with the addition of contemporary accessories. An original and humorous tribute.
© David Grimbert
06 September 2016
What were the tastes of this Empress who was one of the largest jewelry collectors of all time?
06 September 2016
Among the Crown Jewels Eugenie wore, only a few escaped the disastrous auction organized by the Republic in 1887. Exhibited near Napoleon III’s apartments, they are a testimony to the splendor and virtuosity of the jewelers of the Second Empire.
23 August 2016
This is one of the most beautiful rings of love … Napoleon had the beetle sculpted out of the projectile that killed his horse in the battle of Dresden, in August 1813. He then had it mounted on a pink-gold ring and offered it to his mistress, Marie Walewska.
24 June 2016
The Van Cleef & Arpels School continues its mission to initiate the general public by sponsoring cultural projects like a current thesis on Jean-Baptiste Tavernier at the University of Rennes. The latter, the ancestor of all gemstone traders ventured to Turkey, Persia and to an India infested with tigers, to bring exceptional gemstones back for Louis XIV.
24 May 2016
We see in this drawing from 1925, how the famous humorist Sem called the Duke of Windsor and the future Edward VIII. The Duke spent a lot of time in the Cartier boutique at rue de la Paix, where he bought jewelry for his fiancées, and especially for the Duchess of Windsor, for whom he would eventually abdicate the throne. He spent hours working over designs and matching gemstones with Jeanne Toussaint, who was at that time in charge of Cartier’s creations.
04 February 2016
March 2, London, Sotheby’s is selling 450 of the Duchess of Devonshire’s personal effects. Family photos, books, friends’ gifts and jewels evoke the personality of this English aristocrat, born Deborah Mitford, the youngest of the famous and very much-talked-about sisters of the Roaring Twenties.
10 December 2015
The exhibition “Bejewelled Treasures: The Al Thani Collection” presents 100 extraordinary, old and contemporary pieces retracing four centuries of the history of Indian jewelry. They are part of a set of 250 jewels and objects collected in just five years by Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani. The Qatari collector with absolutely no budget restrictions gathered up these priceless treasures: Colombian emeralds engraved with flowers and mounted as turban ornaments, natural pearl bracelets signed by the Indian contemporary jeweler Bahgat, the peacock brooch created by Mellerio in 1905 for the Maharaja of Kapurthala, and diamonds from Golconda, among the most beautiful in the world.
Until April 10, 2016.
29 September 2015
This pearl necklace estimated at between US $4.5 – 7 million is extraordinary for two reasons: the quality of its 38 pearls and its aristocratic origins, from the jewel box of Viscountess Cowdray, Lady Pearson. In the Christie’s catalogue where it appeared in 1937 a description still true today: “There is probably no other collection of pearls as beautiful as this.“
24 September 2015
Assouline has republished the text of the book Renaissance Jewellery written in 1979 by Yvonne Hackenbrock, a historian who officiated at British Museum and was curator specializing in Renaissance art at the MET. We learn that Francis I is at the origin of the Crown Jewels of France collection intended to display the prestige of the monarchy.
Experience the excitement of jewelry
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