On June 2, Van Cleef & Arpels is to unveil “A New Artwork: Metamorphoses of Jewellery, 1880-1914,” an exhibition in Paris specializing in nearly 100 gadgets from a interval that included the Artwork Nouveau period, many designed by the foremost artisans of the age, like René Lalique, Georges Fouquet and Henri Vever.
“Artwork Nouveau is a subject that we had not coated previously in our exhibitions, and we do, once we program our reveals, all the time strive to take a look at totally different angles, totally different time durations, in addition to totally different cultures,” stated Lise Macdonald, the president of the model’s L’École, College of Jewellery Arts. Its most up-to-date present featured gold ornaments from China over a number of centuries.
Reservations may be made on the faculty’s web site for the free exhibition, to be held in L’École’s 18th-century constructing close to Place Vendôme via Sept. 30 (with a hiatus from Aug. 5-21). A lot of the displays, on mortgage from manufacturers and establishments just like the Musée d’Orsay, have distinctively Artwork Nouveau particulars: curving strains, a mix of treasured supplies and commonplace ones like glass and pewter, and imagery impressed by nature or fantasy.
However the motion, which had its heyday from about 1890 to 1910, was not restricted to jewellery. “The imaginative and prescient of Artwork Nouveau was that all the arts are touched by it,” stated Paul Paradis, a instructor at L’École who labored on the exhibition. “It was a complete design idea, from the ceiling to the ground to the door handles.”
Not one of the jewellery — together with a Lalique necklace in gold, enamel, glass and platinum with dangling pendants that resemble ladies with vivid inexperienced and cobalt butterfly wings round their legs — was made by Van Cleef, which opened its first retailer in 1906 on Place Vendôme.
“The mandate of the college is to not deal with Van Cleef & Arpels,” Ms. Macdonald stated; it’s meant “to talk to the bigger viewers on the historical past of knickknack, on its know-how and on gemology.” Throughout the interval represented within the exhibition, Van Cleef was focusing extra “on abstractions and symmetry and the development of Artwork Deco.”
Joanna Hardy, a wonderful jewellery specialist based mostly in London who will not be affiliated with the college, stated L’École is extra involved with schooling than it’s with advertising and marketing. “Simply because they didn’t make it, doesn’t imply to say they wouldn’t present it,” she stated.
Nonetheless, the present’s theme appears to strengthen the model’s positioning.
Van Cleef is “making an attempt to make use of Nouveau to say, ‘We’re about craftsmanship — it’s not simply in regards to the gold you purchase or the diamonds you purchase,’” stated Akshay Madane, a companion on the administration consulting agency Kearney.
Different luxurious manufacturers have used museum sponsorships and exhibitions to promote related tales, he stated. “They’re making an attempt to teach and encourage, they usually’re doing it slowly in a refined approach in order to not come throughout as sales-y, as a result of that’s not what these manufacturers are about.”
