Chaumet marks its 240th anniversary this year with a new collection that draws on a host of defining cultural references from the high jewellery house’s history. The ‘Perspectives de Chaumet Skyline’ necklace takes modern cityscapes as its inspiration, rewriting their clash of geometry in warm yellow gold that has been polished, openworked, engraved and hammered.
‘The work of gold on this piece is a tribute to the 1960s and 1970s, from the time of Pierre Sterlé and René Morin,’ says Chaumet CEO Jean-Marc Mansvelt. A serrated silhouette gives an illusion of chaos, a nod to deconstructivism; Mansvelt points to Irving Penn’s Collapse and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater as direct inspirations.
‘The construction of a piece of jewellery is also a question of architecture: creating balance, harmony, tension, the relationship between empty and full,’ says Mansvelt. ‘It should never be forgotten that a piece of high jewellery only exists because it must be worn and be comfortable to wear.’ The resulting asymmetrical zip of textured gold ultimately finds its own balance, juxtaposing its sharp angles against the perfectly pear-shaped orb of a Colombian emerald. §