Bos

WORDS: OLIVIA MORRIS

Fine Heritage

With over 126 years of history, French jewellery house Van Cleef & Arpels knows everything there is about impeccable craftsmanship and the finer details. Here, CEO Nicolas Bos discusses the rich heritage of Van Cleef & Arpels and exactly how the Maison fine-tunes details when it comes to its iconic pieces

What does the Van Cleef & Arpels brand represent? To me, Van Cleef & Arpels represents enchantment in the field of High Jewellery and Watchmaking. Our sources of inspiration also helps us suffuse a sense of poetry into jewellery or even in the Extraordinary Objects we create. In the past and until today, nature, couture, dance, imaginary worlds and travels inspire us for our creations. Each collection is a new chapter in the Maison’s long story.

To continue to nurture creativity, the Maison’s philosophy is to always keep the balance between the respect for our traditions and identity and the introduction of a contemporary approach. To do so, we strongly believe in making bridges with other artistic fields – such as dance, photography, but also design, drawings, publishing – through collaborations: for instance, we collaborated with AlexandreBenjamin Navet around our flower celebration. In the field of dance, our partnership with the L.A. Dance Project goes on and in 2020, we even launched an initiative around contemporary dance with the project Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. All of these create a unique blend proper to Van Cleef & Arpels and allow us to deliver the Maison’s vision of a timeless universe filled with beauty and harmony – two words that probably represent the best of what we are aiming to express. Van Cleef & Arpels is all about the finer details when it comes to its pieces. Talk us through this process. Techniques and know-how are being transmitted every day in the Maison’s workshops and finding new ones or adapting the original ones in order to express our creativity. For instance, the Mystery Set was a technique developed and patented by Van Cleef & Arpels in 1933 in order to hide the setting and give pride of place to the stones. Today, two other techniques have been developed, each enabling new designs to be imagined. The Vitrail Mystery Set allows the setting to disappear on the back as well as on the front of the jewel, highlighting the translucent quality of the stones, while the Navette Mystery Set endows creations with a striking impression of relief thanks to marquise-cut stones.

Another Van Cleef & Arpels tradition is the transformable pieces that offer multiple wearing possibilities. The workshops are constantly working on new intricate, secured and discreet mechanisms while ensuring the creations’ suppleness. Our signature motifs and techniques are really part of our creative identity and are often very sought-after by High Jewellery collectors. Couture is also one of the Maison’s key sources of inspiration: fabric movements such as pleats, drapery or ribbons are reinterpreted through precious metal and gems in several creations. How do you ensure you continue the legacy of such a historic Maison? The Maison has been perpetuating its historical sources of inspiration such as nature, couture, imaginary worlds and dance, while nurturing it with a contemporary vision. Twenty years ago, Van Cleef & Arpels started to launch thematic High Jewellery collections and we carry on down the same path. It means pushing the technical boundaries further with innovations to enrich the creativity. For instance, the Mystery Set, which is a signature of the Maison, was patented in 1933, which we continue to develop. Today, we master the Vitrail and the Navette Mystery Set techniques.

In watchmaking, it means constantly innovating to tell new stories that enchant and invite to dream. This is the exact goal of our Poetic Complications and Extraordinary Objects collections. They are an invitation to see time as a story-maker, thanks to expert craftsmanship and virtuoso mechanisms. How do you choose the gems for the high jewellery pieces you create? We always want to spark emotion, this is why coloured stones have been at the core of the Maison’s creative process. Selected according to the most demanding criteria when choosing raw minerals, we cannot but be humble and admire what nature can create. The stones’ journey from the depth of the Earth into the craftsmen’s hand reveals beauty, it is also with great pride that we can see what we are able to accomplish today with these treasures through our know-how. Not only does High Jewellery evoke exceptional gems, it also suggests renowned and expert craftsmanship perpetuated by our craftsmen that we call Mains d’Or (Golden Hands). These techniques are at the service of the Maison’s creativity and style which all contribute to give birth to timeless creations. Van Cleef & Arpels has its very own approach of High Jewellery: benevolence, poetry and vitality are the keywords leading our designs while movement, asymmetry, figurative or abstract representations characterise their aesthetics. The Extraordinary Objects or Heures Florales recently debuted at Watches & Wonders. Talk us through this release. The Lady Arpels Heures Florales and Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier watches are inspired by the idea of a garden that would be able to tell the time. This very specific inspiration – l’horloge de Linné – was born from Carl von Linné’s works, a Swedish scientist and naturalist of the 18th century. He came up with the idea of a floral clock that would be a garden where

IMAGE: SUPPLIED you would be able to tell exactly the time depending on the number and the nature of the flowers that are open and/or closed. Of course, this idea was really a dream and nobody could actually ever create that garden. But we thought that the story was so beautiful that we could try to use the possibilities of mechanical watchmaking to give it life. And this is what we managed to do with a watch where you don’t see any indications of time, you don’t see hands, you don’t see traditional watchmaking elements. You see very delicate three-dimensional flowers that, hour after hour, open and close their petals and tell you the time in a very accurate manner.

The three Extraordinary Objects are true feats for our partners and Watchmaking Workshops in Geneva. It took all the expertise and savoir-faire of our teams, several ties of mechanisms, we can create that movement in an unexpected and magical manner. When the animations start, you either see the ballet of the planets or the full beauty of love in nature. With these unique pieces, we aim to arouse a deep sense of surprise and wonder. Throughout its lengthy history, Van Cleef & Arpels designs have adorned many notable figures. How is this seen within the timepieces, especially the ones displayed at Watches & Wonders? It is true that, over the decades, the Maison’s creations have found success with notable personalities. This is a part of our history in which we take great pride. But I am not sure that it is embodied in the new creations presented at Watches & Wonders. The watches and Extraordinary Objects that we introduced this year pay tribute to Van Cleef & Arpels’ cherished sources of inspiration, notably nature and astronomy. They offer an enchanted stroll into the Maison’s creative and poetic universe, instilling a sense of wonder to the measurement of time. In terms of craftsmanship that was and is still a very important pillar for the brand, how do you maintain this balance in keeping particular handcrafts alive while adopting technical evolutions that can speed up the production process? In the luxury business, creation prevails, but if you don’t associate that with a business sense, you can’t perpetuate a legacy. At the end of the day, good business comes from good creation. The more creative, the better the quality, the more expertise used, the more chances you have of being successful. With that comes a strong research on innovation, to improve the way we make our pieces. We strive to keep rare skills and craftsmanship alive, notably in our watchmaking collections. But, at the same time, we constantly think of new ways to improve our processes, not especially to speed them up – because good creation takes time – but to ever improve the quality of our pieces, so that they keep on enduring the test of time. Throughout your career what has been your most memorable project? This is not an easy question, there are a great number of projects that are memorable to me. But, if I must choose one, I would think of the Fée Ondine automaton, because it gave us the privilege to revive the very old tradition of automatons, which gathered 13 different workshops around the same goal. It opened up a lot of possibilities for the Maison. We wanted to find out what we could create if we weren’t constrained to a years and countless hours of work to come up wristwatch, and the Fée Ondine automaton with such complex creations, imbued with paved the way to the Extraordinary Objects the magic of the cosmos or the wonders of that we continue to create today. These exnature. The sense of magic associated with ceptional pieces are not made with a comautomatons fascinates us because, as jewel- mercial purpose, they offer a way to show lers, what we try to render through the still- that Van Cleef & Arpels’ spirit of storytelllife that a brooch or a necklace can be, is a ing is still very much alive. They evoke a sense of movement, and with the possibili- sense of wonder, like reading a fairy tale.