A Different Way of Looking at Jewelry

Nov 17, 2019.The celebrated series of lectures that the Italian writer Italo Calvino prepared just before his death in 1985 were the starting point for the Van Cleef & Arpels exhibition "Time, Nature, Love," scheduled to open Nov 30 in Milan.

That may be an unusual inspiration for a jewelry exhibition, but Nicolas Bos, the company's chief executive and creative director, said he wants it to be "An experience for visitors which should be very far from what they would experience or expect in a jewelry store or workshop." In contrast, the Van Cleef show is to take a more abstract approach, with its curator, Alba Cappellieri, selecting themes - and jewelry pieces that illustrate them - from what Calvino wrote were his eternal values for literature: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency This layered, intellectually curious approach was promulgated by Mr Bos who, unusually in the jewelry industry, has been both the business and artistic leader of the Richemont-owned jewelry house since 2013.

Not to diminish the importance of craftsmanship or provenance, but examining jewelry's role in a wider cultural role is the aim of the exhibition Ms Cappellieri - a professor at the Politecnico di Milano and director of the Museo del Gioiello in Vincenza, Italy, which bills itself as Italy's only museum dedicated to jewelry - shares the approach, Mr.

Bos said He described her selections as emphasizing "The connections between jewelry, fashion and other forms of decorative arts, as well as literature, over the decades And she has done it with a very personal - and very Italian - vision". Source