Pushing through the well-heeled crowds pouring into the recent LAPADA art and antique show in London, the thickest knots of visitors were clustered around the booths showing antique and period jewelry. The buyers were peering into the vitrines, leaning, pointing, or trying on; this was serious business.
Though the show was organized by the Association of Art and Antique Dealers (formerly the London and Provincial Antique Dealers Association), these were not the kind of “glass case” collectors — academic, esoteric, living in the past — but rather au courant women of style and substance.
There laid glamorous spreads of Victorian jewelry, from the reign of Britain’s Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901, which produced a bounty of charming, whimsical pieces that connoisseurs clamor for today. The burnished-gold fringed collars; cuffs and bangles; drop earrings with their amphora shapes, virtuoso granulation, and wirework borrowed from antiquity; naturalistic diamond spray brooches; great garnet carbuncles; Renaissance-inspired brooches and pendants, elaborately chased and sculpted; voluptuous golden lockets, bows, and butterflies; bunches of lustrous seed-pearl grapes. Everywhere that marvelous mash-up of cultural and historical themes that is so uniquely Victorian. The true appeal of Victorian jewelry, of course, lies in the depth and breadth of its expression, its sentiment and symbolism. The telling of beliefs, allegiances, flirtation, romance, celebration or mourning, science and discovery. These were jewels oozing confidence and curiosity, prosperity and pride.
It was this richness that lured Lorenz Bäumer, artistic director for fine jewelry at Louis Vuitton, when he dreamed up Voyage dans le Temps, one of the recurring themes in his haute joaillerie collections for the brand. In the eclecticism of 19th-century jewelry, he saw the Victorians’ new awareness of a wondrous world that was fast expanding with the growing appetite and possibilities for travel.
As with his first collection, L’Ame duVoyage, he continued to tap into Louis Vuitton’s association with travel; Voyage dans le Temps, however, is a trip through time, to the company’s beginnings in the mid 1800s. Bäumer decided the journey should be taken by the instantly recognizable Louis Vuitton logo, the monogram flower that has been a constant in his designs for the house. He sent the little flower hurtling back through history to the age of Victoria, where it picked up the flavors and sensations of the era, which it brought back to the present, trans- forming tradition into sharp, chic modernity, glossing it with space-age materials and cutting-edge techno- logical wizardry.
A highlight of the 2012 Voyage dans le Temps collection was the Dentelle de Monogram necklace, a classic Peter Pan collar of intricate diamond lace, to be worn against the skin or over clothes with all the coy charm of a Victorian lady, her secrets carefully hidden. The collection’s Galaxie Monogram neck- lace referenced Belle Epoque chokers, while its Fleurs d’Eternité designs proffered incarnations of the love knot, one of the most enduring and emotive Victorian motifs, signifying the indis- soluble bonds of love. Representing the 19th century’s exploration of the natural world, the collection’s Monogram Infini pieces translated the Fibonacci sequence—the mathematical code behind the sacred geometry of curving leaves and shells—into spinning spirals of diamond light.
The newest evolution of Voyage dans le Temps, released in July, comes alive with colored gems (perhaps evoking the mineralogical discoveries of the 19th century and the growth of colonialism)—ravishing spinels in shades of pulsating red, lavender pink, and silky blue grey; heavenly blue Ceylon sapphires; electric Paraíba tourmalines; stately Imperial topaz in tones of warm bronze or dusky pink; and Australian black opals, a night sky shot through with flashes of red and green. Bäumer says that he continues to be enamored with Victorian jewelry, especially its ingenuity and craftsmanship. “The closures, the clasps, the way in which a piece of jewelry can be transformed and worn in multiple ways, is very inspiring to me.” For this collection, he has created a long sautoir set with two black opals that can be transformed into a shorter necklace and two bracelets by means of invisible clasps.
In this, as in every aspect of the collection, Baumer considers not only the past but the woman of today: how she thinks and dresses, her lifestyle, her moods. “In the 19th century, women wore jewelry as if it were armour, from the tiara to the huge corsage ornament; in Voyage dans le Temps, each of these elements is given a new interpretation for the woman of our times,” he explains. “Everything starts with the woman.”
