Haute joaillerie en perles · Paris · Est. 1987
High jewelry in South Sea, Tahitian and Akoya pearls — each one grown over years inside a living oyster, and chosen once in ten thousand.
I · La Culture
Every other gem is taken from the earth. A pearl is the only jewel made by a living animal — and the only one we can raise without breaking ground. The maison follows each pearl from graft to clasp.
i
It begins in water we do not own. In the atolls of the Gambier Islands and the bays of Western Australia, a grafter opens a Pinctada oyster by a few millimetres and places a single bead of Mississippi shell against its mantle. The oyster is returned to the lagoon the same hour. From here, nothing is ours to decide.
2 mmthe opening of the shell — wider, and the oyster does not survive
ii
For eighteen to thirty-six months the oyster wraps the graft in nacre — aragonite laid down in platelets a half-micron thin, thousands of them, each layer bending light against the last. This is why a fine pearl does not shine. It iridesces: rose, green, blue, depending on where you stand.
2,000+layers of nacre on a pearl the maison will accept
iii
At harvest the pearl is lifted, rinsed in seawater, and judged in north light — never electric — for lustre, surface, and orient. Most are beautiful. Almost none are ours. Of ten thousand pearls raised in a season, the maison keeps one.
1 / 10,000pearls that meet the maison’s threshold in a season
II · L’Atlas des Longueurs
A strand is named for where it falls. Choose a length below — the atlas shows where it sits, and what it was made for.
III · Les Pièces
The maison does not keep a catalogue. Each season it composes a small number of unique pieces from the year’s harvest — shown here, held in the salon.
Pièce I · Pièce unique
Pièce II · Pièce unique
Pièce III · Pièce unique
IV · Rendez-vous
Pearls are judged in daylight, against skin, in quiet. The salon keeps north-facing windows for exactly this reason. Viewings last an hour; nothing is sold in the first one.
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