Doing justice to jewelry workshops… at last!

A little story…

A year ago, I walked into a very famous Parisian jewelry House on the Place Vendôme to admire the collection of antique jewelry that the House shows to its devoted admirers.

Making no secret of it, I quickly said that I was in the trade. I picked up on the House's highly romanticized history and corrected a few errors and approximations, under the indulgent eye of my partner, who is unfortunately used to my outbursts…

The pieces on display are well chosen. They tell the history of the House intelligently, and between the lines one reads the history of jewelry itself. Coming to a very beautiful bracelet, I turned to the young salesman beside me and said: "It's a very beautiful piece. Do you know whether the maker was André Vassort?" He replied: "Every piece here was made by the House."

I insisted, but he did not understand what I meant. After some discussion, I realized that he simply did not know: many of the House's pieces are in fact the work of discreet workshops and makers.

And today?

These workshops, which had their own designers, offered their creations to the great Houses, who then added their signature alongside the workshop's maker's mark. By tradition, workshops work in the shadows, never speak about their clients, and their work is never mentioned in the windows of the Place Vendôme.

Today, many of the workshops that made the glory of French jewelry have disappeared or been absorbed by those same Houses. Marketing has narrowed creation to a limited number of designs and a very strong brand identity, reducing the creative role the workshops still played some twenty years ago.

Some still work for brands that have not brought production in-house, or are entrusted with high jewelry pieces that are too complex or too time-consuming to make.

Where to find these jewels?

These jewels do not bear the workshop's signature, but they carry a mark that never lies: the maker's mark. On some jewels, the signature (Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Cartier or Hermès) thus sits alongside a lozenge-shaped mark with letters and a distinctive symbol, known in French as the "différent". It is unique to each workshop and makes it possible to identify it, and even to date the jewel when the mark changed over time.

On the antique jewelry market, collectors are no longer mistaken. Among the names they seek are André Vassort and Georges Lenfant, for jewelry from the second half of the 20th century.

Here, a very beautiful Hermès bracelet in 18-carat gold, made by Georges Lenfant, sold for nearly €8,000, or more than €10,000 including fees!

There, Sotheby's Hong Kong sells a pair of 18-carat gold and diamond ear clips bearing only André Vassort's maker's mark, for nearly €9,000 including fees.

Then there are the great workshops of the 1930s that became names in their own right, such as Verger Frères or Strauss, Allard et Meyer. Here, at Sotheby's, an Art Deco gold and diamond watch signed Boucheron and made by Verger Frères.

Of course, the few names mentioned here are far from exhaustive: they offer a small glimpse of the savoir-faire of French jewelry. This article could run on for pages, and each of these workshops would deserve a blog post of its own (or an entire book).

If, for the great Houses, workshops must remain in the shadows, at a time when tastes are becoming uniform and jewelry bland, when skills are being lost to convenience, perhaps the time has come, if not to show them fully, at least to bring these great workshops out of anonymity. And on my next visit to the Place Vendôme, seeing their names on the labels would mean that the Houses have finally understood that, far from diminishing their image, standing alongside the great workshops enriches it.