Experimental goldsmithing techniques and creative design produced between 1965 and 1985 will be showcased this fall when Chaumet opens “Un Âge d’Or” (“A Golden Age”), an exhibition in the salons above the Place Vendôme jewelry store in Paris.
“The 1970s was a very interesting era in jewelry, and specifically for Chaumet,” says Vanessa Cron, the French jewelry historian who curates the show.
In 1969, “man stepped on the moon,” she said. “People were amazed: we were entering a new era where anything seemed possible. Politically and socio-economically, the focus was on freedom and that translated into music, film, art and jewelry.”
“Chaumet was one of the biggest traditional jewelry houses,” she added, “but it took a parallel route to these sharp, outrageous creations that resembled artist jewelry.”
Fifty-six jewels and artifacts from the Chaumet archives will be on display, along with furniture by Pierre Paulin, Michel Ducaroy and Victor Vasarely; vintage fashion from Dior and Paco Rabanne; and Andy Warhol lithographs. And among the creations of René Morin, artistic director of Chaumet from 1962 to 1987, are Pierre d’Or designs, a collection with 24 carat gold cartouches instead of precious stones.
Part of the exhibit highlights various gold patinas and finishes, including textured, mirror-polished, braided, brushed and chiseled, as well as a Brutalist look called poli Arcade, named after the 1970s Chaumet boutique L’Arcade, which showcased its avant-garde garde creations of the time. One large Torque chain on display contrasts a rough Arcade surface with mirror-polished gold.
Another theme is carved stone, the work of master glyptist Robert Lemoine, who made brooches in the shape of musical instruments, military headdresses and playing card monarchs using malachite and tiger’s eye. They were designs by Pierre Sterlé, who started making jewelery for the house in the 1930s and officially joined it in 1976 as a technical consultant. And a third of the show focuses on objects such as the sculpted crystal and the animal made with gold vermeil. heads from Chaumet’s Bestiaire Fabuleux collaboration with French crystal house Baccarat.
Ms. Cron said she believed the creative period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s was now particularly attractive. After the Covid pandemic, “people crave something that resembles freedom,” she said. “The 1970s feels like the last era where people were really hopeful and carefree.”
The exhibition, scheduled from October 5 to November 5, will be the second show to be held at the jeweller’s historic hôtel Privé since 2020, when the restoration was completed; the first, in 2021, highlighted the house’s ties to Napoleon and Josephine. It should be freely accessible to the public.
Such installations, wrote Jean-Marc Mansvelt, the house’s director, in an email, “bring Chaumet to life.”
‘You can write books and tell Chaumet stories,’ he continued, ‘but it’s even better to show them; jewelry is a ‘physical’, tactile and emotional appeal. And everyone who sees these installations can form their own opinion and experience their own emotions and sensations.”