Paris, wonderful lamp. If he finds her, the genius awakens and a thousand and one storms are unleashed. A forgotten display case opens and the stories take off, dance and fly in a spiral. A poltergeist of joy. A drawer is unclogged and the folders full of sketches and notes spread their wings and reveal secrets that have been silent for so many years.
Under the cobblestones of Paris there was no beach, the revolution was to think that there could be one and to get your feet wet – Pauline à la plage – even if it was only for a day. Just for one day, David Bowie sang in Heroes. Eldorado did not exist either, a chimera that made wills and souls go crazy. Because we wanted it so much, the beach existed.
Radiance, desire and metamorphosis of vertigo. There is a bit of all this in the exhibition Un âge d'or, which traces an artistic, political and sociological path that extends from 1965 to 1985, barely explored and that qualifies Chaumet's biography. It is the maison that pumps at 12 Place Vendôme, first cousin of Passeig de Gràcia, and that sells its jewelry exclusively in Rabat.
Chaumet relates without shame to luxury, to the fineness of his stonework and to artistic power without forgetting his origins and patrons, Napoleon, Josephine... But that was another revolution, without Godard's Maoist banners or films. Who would perhaps associate the firm created by Marie-Étienne Nitot in 1870 with May 1968, with glam rock, with the post-Gaullist tumult, the Elysée trembling, with the demonstrations in the Quartier Latin, in Mexico, in Berkeley, in Bratislava...
No one would link a brand in which the brilliance that runs through its veins blends with the new beats of that time, the démode (anti-fashion) of Sonia Rykiel with her sweaters and tights, or the punk of Vivienne Westwood. The two rebellious queens who left within a few years of each other.
In those 20 years that the exhibition covers, the brand opens up to a new world with jewelry whose materials, designs and intentions leave behind an era in decline just as Elsa Peretti managed to modify the DNA of a post-Audrey Hepburn Tiffany's.
Where does the spark of change jump? The end of the sixties “are marked by dazzling progress but also by profound conflicts that have pushed youth around the world to greater political involvement and a need to reject the limits imposed on all aspects of life to create a new world. It is in this context that the house begins to explore new horizons in jewelry,” the curator of the exhibition, Vanessa Cron, explains to Magazine.
If Nitot and Chaumet are the figures who enthroned the brand in the 18th and 19th centuries, the figures of the era now reviewed are Pierre Sterlé and, especially, René Morin, thinking of striking but less pompous and ornate jewels. The 1970 Arcade collection is the one that changes all the codes.
“Those pieces are an astonishing demonstration of his visionary spirit that is many years ahead of his time. I would have loved to meet him, but researching the archives I realize that he was a man of surprising avant-garde,” Cron confesses.
The radical change can be seen in the pieces and posters of the time. In the shapes, in the materials, the jewelry house takes a secondary road to that of gold and diamond pieces. The curator speaks of “audacity and risk”, the story is completed by the new techniques and materials that appear and the search for a new language. On the one hand there are pieces made of precious stones and metals, on the other hand, such as silver and platinum, long considered of lower rank.
Through the rooms of the exhibition, you can breathe the new air of the late sixties and all of the seventies, but not only with social and political influences, but also aesthetic influences inspired by visionary series like Star Trek. Namely: earrings, but also bracelets that start on the shoulder and adorn the entire arm, in ads that flirt with kitsch, extreme makeup and garçon or over-the-shoulder hairstyles that contrast with Françoise Hardy's long hair , Catherine Deneuve or Véronique Sanson.
Vanessa Cron and the entire Chaumet team have spent many hours with white cloth gloves rubbing the wonderful lamps that they have opened from display cases and drawers unopened in a while to discover documents, letters, sketches. They were from half a century ago, you cannot call them archaeologists, but the speed of life places that time further away than it seems.
“What has surprised me most about diving into that period that seems so close, the seventies, is that we have discovered so many new things... I thought I knew that decade well, but what I have discovered in the archives has made me see that there is always hidden treasures that we had never come across.”
Which reminds us of the phrase of another great Chaumet figure, Madame Béatrice de Plinval, head of the house's art fund, which she left for this supplement a few months ago: “It took me twelve years to begin to understand the general vision of the collection.” ; “You are learning all the time.”
The genie of the wonderful lamp exhibition un âge d’or 1965-1985 opens its doors from October 5 to November 5. Paris, city of walks, kisses, caresses and tears, of impossible heartbreaks that never go away. How could they?
