Jewelled objects reveal the links between the great jewellery houses and interior designers

When Paris high jewellery house Van Cleef & Arpels opened its first boutique in 1906, on Place Vendôme, one of its first orders was neither a pearl necklace nor a diamond ring. Rather, it was a jewel designed to adorn the home: a scale model of the New York socialite Eugene Higgins’ Varuna yacht, crafted in gold, silver, jasper, ebony and enamel. What made it particularly unique, however, was its modern functionality – it was fitted with an electric bell pusher to call the butler.

Jewelled objects for the home

By the 1930s, Van Cleef & Arpels’ precious approach to technology elevated women’s wants with the marvellous minaudière, a rare 1935 version of which is photographed here. This tin box-inspired purse was engineered in gold, lacquer and gemstones to contain mirrors, face powders, a cigarette lighter, a lipstick holder, a tiny watch and, in this case, a pair of folding diamond-set spectacles.

Inspired by ‘Time, Nature, Love’, a Van Cleef & Arpels exhibition that opened at Milan’s Palazzo Reale in November 2019, we began to consider a story with all the other great jewellery and luxury maisons that elevate everyday objects into precious ones. This year, we were given kind permission from some of them to photograph precious archive objects from the 1900s to today.

Here, we reveal the gently humorous designs of Bulgari, a 140-year-old house whose pioneering way with silver and gold has led it to create everything from precious office accessories to joyously social pieces. There are exquisite workplace tools from Montblanc, also established in 1906, in Hamburg. Montblanc pen nibs are always 14ct or 18ct solid gold, their 1980s gilded ink wells and blotters fashioned in Baccarat crystal.

Puiforcat, founded in 1820 in Paris, was given its own distinctive signature four generations later when Jean Puiforcat based the house designs on rigorous lines, cubes, spheres and cones, combining silver with vermeil, as illustrated in the 1937 vase and candleholders we selected here.

We are so honoured that these legendary houses agreed to draw deep from their vaults to allow us to photograph these museum- quality designs that we have paired them with furniture and furnishings that might well be crafted in their own workshops. Eric Schmitt’s blue patinated bronze console, for instance; Michele De Lucchi’s blue glazed porcelain and 24ct gold coupe for Sèvres, and Sahco’s hammered-satin wallcovering that seems to have been fashioned with a silversmith’s tool. Each element beautifully reflects the notion of jewels for the home.

Meanwhile, Boucheron, the Parisian house created in 1858, offers the oldest jewelled object in our story – a lapis lazuli perfume bottle from 1900. Steeped in the Belle Époque style that saw the high jeweller augment its collaborative design ethos, it’s a fragrant reminder that adornment for the home and the body remain forever entwined.

Interiors production: Felizia Berchtold Photography assistant: Tanguy Ginter Digital operator: Margaux Roy

A version of this story appears in the April 2023  Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today