Blood and Stone
As the maison’s NICOLAS BOS unveils Van Cleef & Arpels’s latest high-jewellery collection in Thailand, he explains to jing zhang the mystique and symbolism of rubies
The colour of love, passion, royalty, blood and burning embers, the red of precious rubies has been prized around the world for millennia. In the 1980s, Jacques Arpels of Van Cleef & Arpels even told a journalist that rubies were his favourite stone. Indeed, the jewellery house has had a love affair with the ruby for more than a century, crafting stunning creations such as the 1937 Peony Clip – a riot of bright rubies depicting the peony flower, surrounded by diamond foliage, and once owned by Princess Faiza of Egypt.
Fast forward 80-plus years and we’re in Thailand, known in the world of stones as a ruby capital – a centre of trade, cutting and treatment – for the unveiling of the Treasure of Rubies collection. It took the Van Cleef house around 10 years to gather stones that total more than 3,000 carats – all to create 60 unique pieces in a corpus meant to take us on a journey to the heart of this bright and burning hue.
“It’s very often referred to as the King of Stones,” says Van Cleef & Arpels’s celebrated president, CEO and creative director Nicolas Bos. “All stones have their own personality, history and specificity, so it’s not totally impossible to rank them in a hierarchy, but it’s true that rubies for the longest time have been considered the most regarded, the rarest and most symbolic stones, all over the world, even before diamonds.”
Whether it was Medieval Europe, Asia, India or China – “pretty much everywhere that there was access” – bright red rubies were often treasured as “the holy grail”. And in this collection, Bos often let specific stones lead the way in terms of design, adjusting to reveal and maximise the beauty of each one. It’s a series of creative choices made in the ateliers with the craftsmen, looking at style and whether a piece is more “graphic or ornamental or something else”.
Bos is obviously reluctant to choose a favourite piece, but he will identify the Andaakar necklace as one of his personal highlights – made from white gold, pink gold, rubies and diamonds with an oval-cut hero ruby of 5.03 carats.
“This type of structure I really like – there’s a lot of references here, and mixing of colours and combinations,” he says of the alternating golds that offer a wave effect in a solid-looking, articulated structure that’s still very comfortable hugging the neckline.
There’s a lot to look through in this collection, a veritable treasure chest of innovative and versatile pieces ( Van Cleef is known for its
transformable, detachable pieces) that will tantalise the most discerning high-jewellery fans.
The launch in Thailand was also a nod to the history of rubies in this area of the world; the mystique of Asia, as well as the house’s own travels here. “One of the references during design was the 1950s-’70s, when the Arpels brothers were travelling constantly to Asia, Southeast Asia and India to source all the stones,” Bos explains. “It would be strange to launch it in Paris or Rome – we thought it would be more fitting here.”
This stylistic influence resulted in Asian-, Indian- and Persian-inspired Van Cleef pieces of that time “that we wanted to pay tribute to with this collection. There’s that context.”
It’s the context that’s helped produce some of my own favourite pieces. The Rubis Imperial necklace is a jaw-dropping, fluid creation with nine rows of ruby beads totalling 1,066 carats and held with a huge bejewelled diamond clasp – an epic homage to the Maharajas of India. I can’t help but think it would look great in my own (currently quite bare) collection – perhaps when I win the lottery.
The strength and brilliance of the ruby is showcased in many iterations – as Bos says, “it’s always been a hero stone”
We’re wowed by the powerful swirl of the Berunda (a two-headed bird from Indian mythology) bracelet cuff with cushion-cut stones. The ultrafeminine, Indian-inspired Priya transformable long necklace charms with pink sapphires and tasselled pearl and ruby beads. And the Duo de Diamants pear-shape earrings with detachable pendants show the versatility of the house: wear them as gobstopper showpieces for a gala or take off the pendants (with 20.37- and 21.26-carat diamonds) for a more discrete look.
The strength and brilliance of the ruby is showcased in many iterations here – as Bos says, “it’s always been a ‘hero’ stone”. Of course, that’s partly due to the brilliant shades of red that so easily and impressively conveys love, passion, power, strength and energy.
As one of the very few people in high jewellery who heads both the business and creative sides of a large maison, Bos is himself in a unique position. He got into jewellery “a bit by coincidence”, but all with the Richemont Group, first working at the Fondation Cartier where he handled business as well as a collection of contemporary art.
“I was always doing both the business and creative sides,” he says. When the same group purchased Van Cleef & Arpels, Bos was asked come on board “with pretty much the same philosophy … working with creative people, experts, collaborations … making the business sustainable, as well as training the next generation of craftspeople so that the brand can invest in the future.” The L’École Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery schools are testament to this.
“This house still exists and is active today because it’s always been able to combine a real creativity and innovation with a sense of commercial business. You need to have both,” says the jeweller. And yes, today, it’s hard not to notice the butterflies, 3D flowers and the famed four-leaf Alhambra motifs dominating the brand’s highly successful commercial lines.
That balance is hard to come by. A jewellery brand that is no more than an exercise in creativity and craft won’t survive if there’s no good business supporting it. “There are many examples of this,” Bos adds. There are also many examples of houses going too commercial and losing touch with their original artistic spirit.
With the luxury industry in a state of flux, brands must be careful when adapting to new ways without losing their essence. The 1930s, ’50s and ’60s were great decades for high jewellery, Bos says, but 20 years ago, the industry was just emerging from a lull in the ’80s and ’90s. And the revival of fashion houses, such as Gucci in the late ’90s, made many in jewellery look towards fashion as role model, where they tried “to duplicate elements of communication, distribution, business models and even the way of working with stylists and designers – as in fashion, which I don’t think is necessarily relevant to jewellery.”
“We create pieces that are here to last forever. We cannot develop a collection in three or four months – it takes many years and we’re working on a lot of them in parallel. The idea of a collection in fashion is to capture the flavour of the day, but in jewellery you have to be relevant yet more timeless,” Bos says.
The way that Van Cleef & Arpels looks at things is all about “developing it in our own way. We are specific, we have our roots and history that we want to maintain,” he explains, “but we also have connections to the world of art, to the world of craftsmanship and to the world of fashion.”