The maison

1911

The house opened in the winter of 1911, in two rooms above a lapidary’s workshop off the rue de la Paix. The first thing it sold was a brooch — the pattern is still in the archive, and it is still made, at the size it was drawn.

The founder had trained as a setter rather than as a designer, which is unusual and which set the character of everything since. A house founded by a designer tends to draw first and solve the making afterwards. A house founded by a setter tends to start from the stone and from what can honestly be done to hold it, and it tends to make fewer things.

The war years

The atelier closed between 1914 and 1919 and again between 1940 and 1945. Both closures are documented in the ledgers, along with a third gap in 1926 that had nothing to do with history and everything to do with a fire in the polishing room.

What survives from before 1940 is the drawing books rather than the pieces. This is the ordinary fate of jewellery: it is worn, inherited, altered, broken up, and remade, and the drawing outlives the object. It is why the Archives collection is drawn from the books rather than from a vault.

Three generations

The house has been in the same family since it opened and at the same address since 1948. There are eleven setters at the bench today, which is more than there were in 1911 and considerably fewer than the volume of enquiries would justify.

We buy rough where the market allows and cut it in house. This is now rare, and we are not sentimental about why: it is rare because it is slow and because the yield risk sits with us rather than with a supplier. It survives here because it is the only way to know a stone from the crystal rather than from a certificate.

What we make

Fewer than ninety pieces a year. Roughly a third are commissions, a third are made to house patterns, and a third are cutting projects that begin with a piece of rough and end wherever the rough allows.

We do not have concessions, we do not licence the name, and we do not sell through third parties. If a piece bearing our sponsor’s mark is offered anywhere other than from this address, it is second-hand, and we will happily tell you what we know about it.

Coming in

The atelier is open Tuesday to Saturday by appointment. An appointment is an hour, it is with a setter rather than with a salesperson, and it does not commit you to anything. Most first appointments are spent looking at stones under a loupe and talking about millimetres.