This special exhibition, which is taking place in South Korea’s D Museum until April, showcases the maison’s influential role in shaping contemporary jewellery design
It was a cold, rainy November day in Seoul when Tatler made its way to the D Museum for a journey through Van Cleef & Arpels’ 100-plus years of history. The Time, Nature, Love exhibition, on show until April, offers an opportunity to gaze upon more than 300 jewels and precious objects from the maison’s archives, which together tell the story of the brand’s origins.
Archival documents, sketches and gouache designs stand alongside pieces from the Van Cleef & Arpels patrimony collection—a collection of the maison’s important high jewellery pieces and precious objects from the 20th century—and those that have been loaned from private collectors. “The Van Cleef & Arpels archives start in 1906—the date of the maison’s creation—and [add up to] more than 1.5 linear kilometres of documents, from drawings to photographs [and] registers to manufacturing books, advertisements and family archives ... They are real historical documents,” says Alexandrine Maviel-Sonet, the house’s director of patrimony and exhibitions. Curated by Alba Cappellieri, the exhibition revolves around its three titular sections, which explore jewellery’s complex relationship with time.
“We have 2,500 pieces [in the patrimony collection], so it was very difficult to [select just] 300,” Maviel-Sonet tells Tatler during a coffee break at the exhibition. Drawing from Italian writer Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, a book based on a series of lectures he had planned to deliver at Harvard University in 1985-86 before his untimely death, Cappellieri chose concepts highlighting how Van Cleef & Arpels represented the 20th century. The space at the museum dedicated to the theme of “Time”, where the high jewellery was showcased, covered ten sub-themes such as Paris, Lightness, and Multiplicity. “Nature” showcased Fauna, Flora and Botanica. Finally, the “Love” section displayed tokens of history’s great romances, interwoven with precious stones.
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In the 1970s, an era of cultural and sartorial revolution, co-founder Estelle Arpels’ nephew, Jacques Arpels, started reacquiring vintage treasures that are the pride of Van Cleef & Arpels and its storied craftsmanship over the ages. “He was one of the first to have this patrimonial conscience,” says Maviel-Sonet; his actions led to the maison realising they needed to actively manage their heritage. “Transmitting information and sharing stories about our history, our sources of inspiration and our emblematic creations has been at the core of our identity for decades,” she says.
In an evocative, neon-lit setting designed by artist Johanna Grawunder, the Van Cleef & Arpels exhibition juxtaposes the vintage and the modern to demonstrate the maison’s timeless artistry, taking visitors from the elegant Elfenbein Necklace, created in 1906 at the company’s inception, up to the modern day.
The 1930s were particularly exemplary for Van Cleef & Arpels, when it pioneered several major innovations under the creative leadership of Renée Puissant, daughter co-of founder Alfred Van Cleef. In 1933, the brand debuted the patented Mystery Set, a technique that completely hid the metal used in the high jewellery to highlight coloured stones. That same year brought the creation of the Minaudière, a “precious case for elegant women”, while the bold Jarretière Bracelet, released aboug 1937, was awash with 73 cushion-cut rubies. By the end of the decade, two versatile jewels had emerged as emblematic: the Zip necklace, patented in 1938, which could be transformed into a bracelet; and the Passe-Partout jewel introduced in the same year, which “adapted to the modern woman by its multiple combinations: belt, necklace, bracelet and its detachable clips”. Another stand-out piece is Elizabeth Taylor’s Barquerolles necklace, from 1971, showcased in the exhibition’s “Love” chapter, a gift from her husband Richard Burton on the occasion of her becoming a grandmother—hence its pet name, “the granny necklace”.
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