Inside the Chaumet archive: CEO Jean Marc Mansvelt on why the house's future is forged from its heritage
Chaumet is protective about its archive – and so it should be. The archive defines the maison as one of the most storied jewellery houses, while shaping its future with a gentle influence on the current aesthetic. I’ve been invited to delve into the house’s immense collection of drawings, photographs, maquettes and actual pieces, but the negotiation is protracted. After all, why would the team want me rifling through 237 years of jewellery history?
But Chaumet knows its history is instantly fascinating and validating, a counterbalance to the front-of-house froth of diamonds – an extra je ne sais quoi that puts it in a different league to any new competition. And, what’s more, it’s a mainline to an epic period of French history.
Chaumet’s founder Marie-Etienne Nitot trained under the jeweller to Marie Antoinette, and after the Revolution quickly gained favour with Napoleon Bonaparte, becoming his official jeweller in 1805. Numerous commissions followed including royal ceremonial jewels for the Emperor himself, gifts for Empress Joséphine, and later for his second wife Marie-Louise of Habsburg-Lorraine.
Today, Chaumet is the only jeweller still in existence on display in the Louvre, while many original order forms relating to the Emperor are of such historical significance that they’re housed at the National Archives in Paris.
Back at the Parisian flagship on Place Vend?me, I’m ushered upstairs through jaw-dropping 18th-century salons, one of which has walls lined with nickel silver maquettes of tiaras, perfect replicas of the adornments that would become a house signature.
Joseph Chaumet (who took over in 1889 and after whom the company is named) had the foresight to keep these beautiful prototypes, along with every document relating to jewellery creation and sale from 1780 when the company was first founded.
In 1890 he decided to start taking photographs of every piece made, and created a laboratory in his home for this purpose, providing evidence of which pieces made it from sketch to reality. Amazingly, these photographic documents have survived; many other jewellery houses who did the same threw this evidence away when they ran out of space to keep it.
An official archive department was established in 1980, in part to celebrate the Chaumet bicentenary, and its employees have had their work cut out ever since. Everything is stored chronologically by decade and category, in acid-free paper, under temperature- and humidity-controlled conditions, and due to space (and security) issues, not all in one place.
Three hundred thousand photographic documents exist, along with thousands of photographic prints, 550 nickel silver tiara maquettes, 200 actual archive pieces (bought back at auction, from clients or favoured dealers) and millions of documents that relate to the house – orders, invoices, letters... The scale of the ongoing project to sift, analyse, cross-reference, digitise and preserve is immense.
And then actual jewels are brought out on trays, including pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries that have informed the design for this year’s high-jewellery launch, Chaumet est une Fête.
A Scottish bow brooch, made in 1907 for an American client and mimicking a loosely tied piece of tartan ribbon is delicate and see-through, and hugely accomplished in its lightness. Its modern-day incarnation is the hero piece of the whole collection: a large necklace with detachable tartan bow brooch – bigger, bolder and more graphic than its inspiration.
The influence of Chaumet’s impressive past on the new collection is obvious, but Jean-Marc Mansvelt, the house’s CEO, is keen to stress the archive is just one thread of reference for the creative team.
"Initially for this collection we thought about how women wear jewellery as an expression of celebration, and to look more beautiful. We tried to capture that 'wow' moment as they enter a room, and exaggerate it in the design of the jewel," he says of the collection, inspired by four types of music in four different settings, including England’s Glyndebourne and the New York Metropolitan Opera.
"We never want to re-do the same thing," he continues, "but to re-interpret the past in a new way. This collection is very different yet has many things in common with its source, like the tension of the 'fabric' you see in the old and the new bow. And how fascinating that the original brooch was made for an American client, yet we’ve never retailed in the US. We’ve always been chosen by great American families and artists, like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney with the diamond-winged aigrette that she commissioned. Or Edith Wharton; she was a client, too."
Next from the archives come a selection of pearls: a tiara from the 1920s, a bow brooch that doubles as a hair ornament, and a bracelet from 1890 in chunky yellow gold, set with three pearls from three oceans – a Tahitian grey from the Pacific, a pink conch from the Caribbean and a white pearl from the Indian Ocean. It looks hugely contemporary, and could easily have come from the 1970s rather than 80 years previously.
Pearls form an important part of the maison’s story – Empress Joséphine was known to be fond of them, while the "Salon des Perles", where ladies would grade and string pearls, was a fixture of the house 100 years ago. "Around 1890, Joseph Chaumet created the first-known laboratory of gemology with its aim to identify stones, part of which involved identifying the difference between natural and cultured stones. He was a visionary in that way," says Mansvelt.
A second chapter in today’s high-jewellery collection, Valses d’Hiver, is dominated by these gems – inspired by the music of an Austrian winter, with rhythmic waltz-like swirls of white diamonds and pearls. Certain pieces, like a brooch, contain archive pearls.
"A year ago we bought an old Chaumet necklace of three lines of natural pearls, all perfectly matched and then incorporated them into our latest collection," says Mansvelt of the pieces that have an actual, rather than just ideological, link to the past.
However, among the other standout pieces in Chaumet est une Fête, there are clear signs of the house’s modernity: from the unexpected colour combinations in Rhapsodie Transatlantique, another of the chapters relating to New York, that of the Met and Gershwin, which is dominated by the unusual mix of morganite, yellow chrysoberyl, imperial topaz, pink tourmaline and tanzanite; or the use of lacquer, deep ruby reds and even black in the final chapter, Aria Passionata, which calls to mind the curtains of La Scala. "I love how unexpected we can be," he says.
And does he feel the weight of responsibility, steering such a venerable brand forward? "It’s a great privilege, this sense of history has immense value, and if you understand the strong links back to the past, this offers not a constraint but a creative path. It’s not a weight but an opportunity to be loyal to yourself."
As I leave, Mansvelt offers one last piece of information, as a casual aside. "You know we’ve only studied between five and 10 per cent of all the millions of documents that we own. The task is so huge we’ve had to call in specialists to help us. But it’s revealing all sorts of Chaumet secrets. Like Picasso, he was a client."
I’m desperate to stop and ask more, but I’m halfway out the door. "Come and visit again," he says waving cheerfully, "we’ve only scratched the surface; it’s just the beginning of all sorts of new stories we can tell you."
High Jewellery from Paris Couture Week
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