MECHANIC OF NOBILITY

Moynat has long been renowned for the use of innovative and rare materials: the House created the first waterproof trunk in 1854 using canvas coated with gutta-percha, the sap of a tree from Indonesia. We delve into the world of creation and see how Moynat has evolved since its original manifestation.

the Art Deco movement is a period that has brought great clarity of line and shape. Clarity of vision, a quest for purity and simplicity combined with an exuberance of creativity and an effervescence of imagination to bring together different fields of artistic effort. It also led to a coming together of architects, painters, jewellery designers such as René Herbst, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Puiforcat, Etienne Cournault and Gérard Sandoz. While modern, sleek, and geometric forms define Art Deco as much as they do Moynat aesthetics, artistic director Ramesh Nair also draws inspiration from the whole spectrum of the arts: a sense of movement from dance, the geometrical shapes from Cubism, the contrast of black and white from NeoPlasticism and a fascination with the mechanical world of Futurism. Each year, Moynat selects an aspect of craft to shine a light on its unique approach: leathers, craftsmanship, surface embellishment. It is time to see how these different materials are held together at crucial points to delineate space in the container that we call a bag.

Taking a cue from transformable jewellery of the 1930s, Moynat has adopted the modernist approach to the metallic components of their bags, layering, inlaying and enamelling multiple metals such as silver, gold and platinum with more prosaic metals like brass and treating all materials with the same finesse of technique and workmanship.

The artistic evolution of Moynat reached a peak in the 1920s, a period marked by the Art Deco movement. The international exhibitions of 1925 until 1937 were landmarks in the history of modern decorative arts and made Paris into the capital of a new world of art, design, architecture and creativity. Moving away from ostentation, working with new materials and new technologies,

Closures, clasps, hooks and rings not only make the bag a useful, transportable object but also help elevate it from sober practicality to a dimension of the arts. These mechanisms are often called ‘bijouterie’ (jewellery) in French because of the beauty of the design and their close relationship to sculpture. A special place is given to the mechanics of their closures that are an invisible but passionate part of bijouterie. The Moynat lock, a triumph of artisanal craftsmanship, is the object that, more than any other, links beauty and mechanical ingenuity to life values: to make, to hold and to inhabit a personal space.

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