July 30, 2025

Tony Talks Chaumet

Entering Chaumet in Place Vendome is a privilege and a pleasure. If you do not know they have been jewellers for over two hundred years and indeed supplied Napoleon and the Empress Josephine with jewels. The headquarters overs look the place, from gilded and boiseries salons, they have their own extraordinary archive and museum, and the salons embrace you in elegance and history, beauty, and calmness.

I am a huge fan of how they are a totally modern house with, for example, male models wearing jewels, men buying necklaces and a balance between honouring the pieces from every decade right through to the twentieth century but also looking to the future.

The tiara is a signature piece, and they have an extraordinary archive of designs across the years, plus the fin de siecle hair ornaments which held osprey, and other plumes, soaring above the wearer’s heads secured into the high upswept hair of the time.

There is always some archive display in one of the salons varying in size and also, as this season, giving some hints and clues as to the origins of the new collection.

Taking time to go through the pieces, having the work, the stones and especially today, the versatility of the pieces in fascinating. In 2025 many complex pieces can be broken up into components and worn in different ways, from simply removing the pendant part of an earring, to stripping a necklace back to a simple strand of diamonds.

Nature is at the heart of Chaumet’s creative stories, from wheat to bamboo, from bees to hummingbirds. The stones of high jewellery are living things too, so the symbiotic relationship is indeed natural. It is also based on the history of the house, Josephine’s tiara of tremblant wheat ears sparkling with diamond dew was created by Chaumet.

This season Everlasting is the first chapter with Wild Rose the opening story. Inspired by an archival tiara, this parure spotlights the Wild Rose’s multitude of Golden Yellow Stamens by incorporating the most remarkable Yellow Diamonds. Drawing on the maison’s heritage, the Wild Rose Parure is inspired by one of its masterpieces from the roaring twenties: The Wild Rose Leaf Tiara, created by Joseph Chaumet In 1922.

The next story is Oat and Field Star. Echoing The Maison’s Long Tradition of Goldsmithing, the parure depicts a landscape of oats and field stars undulating in the wind. The virtuosity of the 12 Vendôme workshop shines through once again in a sumptuous necklace whose highly technical assembly entailed over 1,300 hours of work. Fully articulated and enhanced with diamonds, the yellow gold oat inflorescences contrast with the field stars. Chiselled in white gold, they glitter with yellow diamonds, including three cushion-cut stones totalling 8.32 carats. The signature lightness of the Chaumet style animates the transformable asymmetrical earrings. Intentionally designed so that the gold wire of the ear cuff tops the ear with a bouquet of oats that can be removed, the more classic or more elaborate effects that result respond to the wearer’s desires. This delicacy also inspires a transformable brooch that can be equally gracefully worn as a hair ornament or pinned on clothing.

The third story is Clover and Fern which is a dialogue between the two green plants themselves. The parure magnifies two emblematic motifs from the Chaumet stylistic repertoire, combining exceptionally diamonds and emeralds. Occupying a prominent place in the Chaumet heritage, the clover inspired a charming translucent green enamel and diamond brooch created by Jules Fossin in 1853 and now held in the Maison’s permanent collection. Reflecting the naturalism embedded in the Maison’s roots, the workshop’s mounters turned botanists to create a botanical duo.

Chapter two is Ephemeral, and the first story is carnation. Exceptionally draped in signature Chaumet blue, a hue in which no carnation naturally exists the parure represents a highly poetic contemporary distillation of the flower’s gracefulness. Demanding nearly 1,500 hours of work, this sumptuous transformable necklace suggests a bucolic meadow. Each link set with two sapphires, the result is a precious mesh, a signature Chaumet stylistic code. Next, we come to the story of Sword-lily, dazzling with ravishing Mozambique rubies. The sword-lily is sublimated by a parure whose diamond vines echo the entwined manner in which Chaumet represents nature.

Sweetshrub is the third story. In keeping with the maison’s pearl tradition the parure combines exceptional pearls, sapphires, and spinels, producing a pink degrade akin to a watercolour. Ever since 2,990 pearls were set on Pope Pius VII’s tiara by Marie- Étienne Nitot in 1805, the Maison has distinguished itself through the creativity of its pearl jewellery, of which the transformable Sweetshrub necklace is the latest example. Its perfectly matched 10mm-diameter freshwater pearls possess a magnificent pink lustre.

The third and closing chapter Reviving features four species treasured by the Empress Josephine, the first three are Magnolia Grandiflora, Fairy Iris, and Waterlily. In the fourth story Chaumet pays homage to the dahlia in a contemporary reimagining. Adorned with five removable rosettes that can be worn in five different ways, the Maison’s signature tiara acts as a successor to the tiara created in the 1850s by Jean-Baptiste Fossin, with surprisingly realistic detachable pansy flowers. The largest bloom forms part of a necklace that took nearly 1,300 hours to make, while the other four motifs act as brooches or hair jewellery. The double-twisted gold necklace is adorned with an imposing rosette whose rings of diamond-set white gold petals erupt in a 3.05-carat sparkling heart. The flowers give the appearance of constantly swirling, as they do on a ring lit up by a 5.82-carat F VVS1 diamond. Strikingly feminine ear motifs and chain-link pendants, each adorned with two diamonds weighing over two carats, illuminate the wearer.

Finally, Chaumet highlights the bee, without which nature could not exist.

Gathering brightly coloured precious stones as nectar, the bee is celebrated through seven brooches displaying the design of the honeycomb, deployed all the way to the claws. inextricably linked to the history of the Maison since Emperor Napoléon I chose it as an imperial emblem to assert his power, the insect has been lavishing its benefits on humanity for nearly 2,600 years and holds a fundamental place in pollination. In Jewels by Nature, it is imagined flitting from flower to flower and from jewellery set to jewellery set, playing its essential role.