The specialists of the Jewelry and Watches department are presenting two necklaces by the visionary jewelry artist Jean Vendome at the PIASA online auction, starting on 12 November 2020.
Born Jean Tuhdarian in the city of Lyon in 1930, Jean Vendome embodies the revival of French jewelry in the 1960s. The name he chose, is a nod to the great names of Place Vendôme (with a circumflex accent) and already illustrates the character's ambition. Throughout his career Jean Vendome emancipated himself from the search for the motif in favour of the material. He is one of the first jewellers to apply the research of abstraction to jewelry, he imposes a new style of jewels, as a work of art.
His research particularly focuses on the renewal of shapes and materials and on transformable jewels. More interested in the possibilities offered by raw materials, Jean Vendome frees himself from the French jewelry tradition to create real portable sculptures. Deceased in 2017, the Van Cleef and Arpels School is currently organising a major retrospective of his work in Paris. The two necklaces that we are presenting at this auction, are perfectly characteristic of the master craftsman's work.
"My style was built mainly on the lack of means compensated by imagination "1
Jean Vendome put gold in majesty as early as 1952 with the "Pépite series", initiated by Jean Cocteau. In continuity with his research, the necklace (Lot 43) from the Totem collection that we present is the result of a reflection on the basic material of jewelry: Gold. Like a flattened nugget, our necklace, of pure simplicity, perfecly synthesises the jeweller's philosophy.
Jean Vendome, Jean Tuhdarian says (1930-2017)
Necklace Totem collection
Estimate : 7 000 / 10 000 €
A hunter of crystals and raw gems, a great connoisseur and passionate about stones, he builds his jewelry around the treasures he finds at fairs and shows all over the world. Not working with the traditional setting methods of jewelry making and doing absolutely everything himself, Jean Vendome arranges the stones in order to have the most astonishing rendering. They are most often arranged in slices and are very rarely cut, the natural aspect being what the creator is looking for above all. Thus, a whole play of transparency appears, in reference to the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle which fascinate him. The partly rough and polished ruby on the Soleil necklace (Lot 44) that we offer for sale is therefore quite characteristic of his work.
There are about 30,000 pieces of jewels, almost all of them unique, because he did not see the point of "copying a unique emotion". Ahead of its time, his work is more than ever in vogue. As he liked to remind us "Jewelry is an art and not a consumer product".
1 Quote from Jean Vendome
