Style & Beauty Precious
Style & Beauty Precious Things White-gold Céphéide necklace and earrings, set with tanzanites, tsavorite garnets, sapphires and diamonds Heavenly bodies have awed mankind and inspired human art from ancient times, and jewellery, as an applied art form, has seen some of the greatest expressions. Indeed, precious materials like gold, silver and diamonds lend themselves to interpreting the shine and sparkle of the sun, moon and stars, those universal symbols of life’s rhythms. For Van Cleef & Arpels, always focused on the romance and poetry of jewellery, the skies are a rich source of creative inspiration. The brand’s latest collection, Sous les Étoiles, examines the heavens from a completely novel perspective. The designers seem to have journeyed into the further reaches of the universe themselves – which, in a sense, they have. Other houses have espoused space, but none has ventured quite so far when it comes to interpreting as jewellery the wonders of deep space. The designers had two special allies. One is noted French astrophysicist, Professor Isabelle Grenier, who first became involved with the brand when it created the Planétarium, the unique watch which features planets, represented by precious mineral spheres, revolving round a golden central sun in real time on discs of aventurine. The timepiece created astonishment and was followed by a smaller, three-planet-plus-diamond-moon women’s version. Sous les Étoiles is a more monumental project invoking the second ally – the extraordinary photographs taken by the Hubble and other deep-space telescopes of space landscapes, from galaxies to gas clouds, which form the inspiration for the shapes and, even more so, the colours of the new collection. Grenier believes the publication of such photographs and headlines surrounding space missions have caught jewellery clients’ imagination, and growing knowledge has increased fascination. Yet how does involving scientists sit with the house’s principles of poetic design? Very well, according to president and CEO Nicolas Bos. “Each collection is a new chapter of our adventure; we travel through time and space to unfold beautiful tales,” he says. “Astronomy is a familiar inspiration, from a star-shaped 1907 pearl-and-diamond brooch to the dynamic 1950s Météore collection. In 2010, Les Voyages Extraordinaires high jewels drew on Jules Verne’s novels, and now we are renewing this historic theme with a modern and striking vision of space.” For this, he credits a mix of references: “nature, art, 19th-century astronomical knowledge and, now, Isabelle’s expertise, plus colourful deep-space photographs”. The house’s jewellers work with traditional materials and methods, each piece a mix of high-jewel crafts, of figurative and abstract. The Terre et Lune bracelet, for instance, bears a globe of mystery-set sapphires – incredibly 26 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
hard to work on a curved surface – with a line of gold marking the equator and diamonds the continents. In contrast, the moon is symbolically depicted with diamonds, some inverted, suggesting the irregular lunar surface and casting a soft glow. The collection catches fire with pieces based on the photographs that Grenier presented to the creative team. “In the past, space photography was in black and white, and we see the stars at night, so most jewellery inspired by them is monochromatic,” she says. “Yet the stars are full of colour, as the pictures show. I also explained that the universe has a variety of simple shapes that lend themselves to jewellery – circles, ovals, discs, jets, and things change dramatically.” Bos adds, “Our designers imagined abstract forms of these shapes, less known than our figurative aesthetic. Space’s colour palette is infinite, and stones – with the play of light that enables them to change shade – can translate the nuances of the cosmos, truly revealing the relation between stars and gems.” They certainly do, from the swirling two-finger Iwamoto ring, named after a blue-green comet and containing a large octagonal Sri Lankan sapphire and a deep-green hexagonal Colombian emerald, through the extraordinary Sentier des Étoiles bracelet like a spiralling galaxy built of coloured sapphires, tsavorites and diamonds round a glowing 69.23ct cabochon Sri Lankan sapphire, to the magnificent Halley necklace with its geometric diamond-set tail and a 11.29-carat fancy vivid yellow pearshaped diamond at its heart. For her part, Grenier says she was “fascinated by the craft – so many tasks building very complex pieces that look simple. It’s beautiful when you can’t see the technical parts, and the less you see the more beautiful it is – like science when you don’t have to be told all the complex equations that go into a conclusion.” She found more parallels as she worked with the team, including the atelier head who is very into astronomy. “Scientists love novelty, and so do creators making new objects,” she says. “We all love to meet challenges and solve puzzles, though it seems unfair that you get a beautiful piece of jewellery while nature does not always grant a solution.” She hopes to continue working with the house, but, for the moment, her ideas have come full circle. One of the 150 items in the collection is the first-high jewellery version of the Planétarium, its swirling bracelet and bezel set with diamonds, pastel sapphires, spessartite garnets and black spinels, its solar system dial at the heart of a jewelled galaxy and, with its tiny turquoise bead Earth – the most poignant statement imaginable of our place in time and space. vancleefarpels.com ¬ PHOTOS ANUSCHKA BLOMMERS & NIELS SCHUMM; STELLAR FORGE: © NASA/ISABELLE GRENIER Clockwise from left: white-gold Hélios necklace set with one yellow sapphire, diamonds and pearls; a Hubble image of a stellar forge, one of the photographs from which the collection drew inspiration; whiteand yellow-gold Halley necklace – inspired by the eponymous comet – featuring one yellow diamond and white diamonds CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 27
