Tiaras in a business meeting? Meet the man who crafts the ultimate power statement
Where once Empress Josephine donned a Chaumet tiara to signify royalty, now business leaders buy them to boost their confidence
14 June 2021 • 5:00am
Chaumet made the Empress
Josephine’s jewels
Credit: Alamy Stock Photo Everybody says we have the most beautiful workshop in Place Vendôme, says Benoît Verhulle, proudly gazing out towards the bronze statue of Napoleon that surveys this historic centre of jewellery savoir-faire. Even through the grainy picture afforded by our video call, I agree with him.
Chaumet s workshop director and his team of 15 craftspeople moved into the newly refurbished atelier, three floors above the 241-year-old maison s flagship boutique, last May. At 350 sq m (3,767 sq ft), it s almost four times the size of the previous workshop, and full of state-of-the-art equipment alongside traditional goldsmithing tools - with space for the team to grow.
Art review: Farnsworth puts spotlight on women behind the Maine arts scene Women of Vision uses artwork and wall texts to showcase their influence.
By Jorge S. Arango
Images courtesy of the Farnsworth Art Museum
Women have played enormously influential roles in the history of art since antiquity: from Theodora, Empress of Byzantium, and Isabella d’Este (known as “First Lady of the Renaissance”) to Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. This illustrious circle has included great philanthropists, museum trustees, astute collectors, powerful dealers, brilliant curators. Yet few museums ever focus on these women, ceding the limelight instead to female artists (themselves still a marginalized group).
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It was the intention of the coal and steel tycoon Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) that ‘the entire public shall forever have access’ to the art-filled mansion in Manhattan where he spent his final years. Its neoclassical limestone exterior is so austere that Mary Berenson called it ‘the Frick mausoleum’. The block-long building that houses the Frick Collection opened to the public in 1935 and has undergone few changes over the years. Minimal labels have done little to disturb the illusion that the robber baron and his dutiful daughter Helen, who administered the museum for decades, have just stepped out to buy a Vermeer or another of Marie Antoinette’s sideboards. It is currently closed for renovation and expansion, the latter partly underground.