Independent media since 2014
by Charlotte Wannebroucq · CNE Accredited Gemmologist

Van Cleef & Arpels

VAN CLEEF & ARPELS, POETRY AT THE HEART OF JEWELLERY

Born in 1906 to 22, Place Vendôme, The union of Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels, Van Cleef & Arpels For more than a century, this jewelry house has been dedicated to mastering the art of stone cutting and creating works of art with imagination. From its earliest years, the House explored the forms of its time, before developing a more personal style in the 1920s and 1930s, driven in particular by Renée Puissant and the cartoonist René Sim Lacaze.

Nature, sewing, dance, travel, stories and astronomy feed a repertoire where the jewel sometimes becomes a movement, sometimes a narrative. This creativity is accompanied by a constant search for techniques: patented in 1933, the Mysterious Serf It allows, in particular, to free the surface of the stones from any trace of metal. In 1968, the creation of the first sawing machine Alhambra introduces another motif that is meant to span the history of the House.

From Place Vendôme to the international scenes of Haute Joaillerie, Van Cleef & Arpels Thus he constructed a vocabulary in which the stone is never dissociated from the drawing, and where the precision of craftsmanship serves primarily an idea: transforming the precious into emotion and narrative

Van Cleef & Arpels
© Esprit Joaillerie

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