How Van Cleef & Arpels Turned an Epic Adventure Into High Jewelry
Here is the basic plot of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, in case you need a refresher: A boy named Jim Hawkins discovers a map leading to lost treasure and sets off with friends to find it. Turns out he is not the only one out searching. He meets pirates and other characters, gets taken hostage, is freed, and ultimately accomplishes his feat. Alternatively, you could just buy the Hispaniola brooch from the new Van Cleef & Arpels Treasure Island High Jewelry collection and let it tell the story. It would be a reliable narrator.
The name of the clip is an homage to the ship that embarks on the voyage to the titular destination. Boats are a recurring theme in the Van Cleef archives, and this piece is directly connected to two sailing-centric charms from the 1960s, as well as to clasps on minaudières from the 1930s. The artisans in the Van Cleef & Arpels workshop employed a stepped treatment of the rose gold on the hull to create the effect of wood planks and hand-sculpted the white gold on the sails into a concave shape to add volume and the illusion of wind. They then set the diamonds in horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions for similar impact. And they remained true to the text throughout, to get as close as possible to what Stevenson describes in the novel—which translated to two masts made of rose gold topped off with white diamonds. So there it is: the Hispaniola you once read about.
But every ship is only as good as the ocean it sails on (as Jim Hawkins knew), so how do you capture the spell of the sea in a necklace? Begin by hand-selecting blue sapphires—ones with appropriate azure intensity—and custom-cut them to fit the flowing structure of the piece. Use Van Cleef’s patented Mystery setting to render the gold invisible and create a sense of a wave of sapphires gracefully moving across the horizon (in this case that would be the wearer’s neck). And the pirates! Treasure Island’s own Long John Silver appears in rose gold, yellow gold, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. How do you create a high jewelry wooden leg? A meticulous construction in green wax first, then an engraving, by hand, on rose gold. The puffy sleeves of his pirate shirt? Curved lines on white gold.
At this point you may be wondering who would see the figments of Stevenson’s wild imagination as perfect material for one-of-a-kind brooches and necklaces and bracelets and rings. Such leaps of narrative are signature Van Cleef & Arpels. This is the house that created collections inspired by a 17th-century French fairy tale (“Peau d’Ane”), an 18th-century travel trend (the Grand Tour), and Barbarella. And while many houses cite sources of inspiration, Van Cleef has made it a mark of the maison to stay daringly true to them. Recall the bracelets of last year’s Grand Tour collection, which depicted Venice’s Grand Canal through the windows of the Doge’s Palace, as inspired by Lord Byron; or the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius erupting in the background, all in colored sapphires. The ambition to realize these scenes is found both deep in the house archives and higher up, in a jewelry workshop in Paris where generations of artisans stand by waiting for sketches to arrive, prepared to embark on the next adventure.
A tour with the Directeur des Métiers Haute-Joaillerie solves the mystery of how these pieces are made—and also adds to it. He presents a sketch of the Moussaillon necklace, which is meant to be a “joyful reinterpretation of a sailor’s neckerchief.” The piece has just been finished, and there, suddenly, is a necklace in varying colors of gold, finished with a trim of white diamonds and sapphires and fastened by a 23.47-carat spessartite garnet. Even in the box the sense of movement is visible: the textures of rope and fabric, the jauntiness of a sailor’s neckerchief, all rendered in gold. And somehow, in both the daring to dream that it was possible and the daring to make it so, a sense of wild childhood adventure has been conjured.
The precision in texture, technique, and materials is inarguable, but there is something else, something you can’t measure the way you might the weight of a spinel. These are true believers. Words like joy and emotion, commitment and passion, were heard in the high jewelry workshop as often as pink sapphire and precisely recut rubies. The Treasure Island theme was taken on as testament to the house’s belief in the importance of such inspiration—and in the seemingly limitless abilities of their craftsmanship.
They have, of course, more than a century of history to back that up. Earlier this year, an exhibit in Paris celebrated The Van Cleef & Arpels Collection (1906–1953), a book honoring the house and chronicling the fruits of ambition and innovation. There are Art Deco Egyptian Revival bracelets created after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in the 1920s; a rope necklace from the 1939 World’s Fair that epitomized the industrial glamour of the era; a pair of ’50s turquoise and ruby bangles that paid homage to Hollywood Technicolor. They tell tales of the times they first lived in and are evidence of Van Cleef’s ability to translate those moments into jewelry. So what does it mean that 2024 brought us a high jewelry collection inspired by the promise of new adventures on a faraway island? We have several working theories.
Top image: VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Pirate John clip featuring ruby, sapphire, and diamond set in rose, yellow, and white gold; Hispaniola clip with diamonds set in white and rose gold; Palmier Mysterieux clip featuring emerald, ruby, sapphire, and diamond set in rose, yellow, and white gold.
This story appears in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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