Painting with Gems: Van Cleef & Arpels’ Bracelets – “a Jewelry Holy Grail”
BY STELLENE VOLANDES
FEB 23, 2024 9:00 AM EST
Town & Country Magazine
The Inspiration
“As my eyes grew accustomed to the light,” archaeologist Howard Carter wrote as he gazed into the tomb of Tutankhamun, “details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold.” Can you get all that down on a diamond bracelet? Why, yes, in fact, Van Cleef & Arpels actually did.
After Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922, the house captured the ensuing Egyptomania on bracelets that told tales of pharaohs, sphinxes, scarabs, and phoenixes. Each jeweled panel was a hieroglyph scripted against a diamond background and written in lapis and coral, turquoise and sapphire, ruby and emerald.
“If you asked me to name 10 jewels that a collector should own,” says Claibourne Poindexter, vice president and senior specialist in the jewelry department at Christie’s, “a Van Cleef 1920s narrative bracelet would be one of them.” These gems of the Art Deco Egyptian Revival period have long been collectible—a connection to history and exceptional craftsmanship will do that—but they have now won a global audience of collectors and achieved icon status.
Van Cleef’s tradition of narrative bracelets began with the 1920s Egyptian Revival.
“You can’t find these currently for less than a million,” Poindexter says. That is, of course, if you can find one at all. Jewels created with this level of skill are not made in multiples. “Part of the value is in their originality,” he says. Plus, to paraphrase Gunilla Garson Goldberg in The First Wives Club: Liz Taylor had one just like it. (Hers purportedly had earlier belonged to King Farouk.) Which is one reason collectors rejoice when Van Cleef & Arpels returns to this trademark technique.
“When the maison was founded, in 1906, curiosity for other cultures, periods, and forms of art was a way to fuel the imagination and give rise to innovative creations,” says Van Cleef & Arpels CEO and creative director Nicolas Bos. “Our first band bracelets date back to the 1920s. They were adorned with abstract and geometrical patterns, but soon the idea of depicting figurative scenes arose, notably with the Egyptian bracelets. From there, I think that reproducing landscapes came naturally. They allow for an immersive expression of our sources of inspiration and high jewelry savoir faire.”
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