The 2014 Biennale des Antiquaires marks a long-awaited homecoming for the house of Alexandre Reza.
The Place Vendome jeweler was last seen at the Paris show in 2000, a few years before its founder, after whom it is named, retired and left the business is a somewhat fragile state.
It’s taken Reza’s son, Olivier Reza, time to rebuild the business over the last several years, but he tells BLOUIN Lifestyle he is looking forward to his personal debut at the show at the Grand Palais.
“It’s our first commercial show since we re-opened 18 months ago,” said the younger Reza. “I like the fact that it happens once every two years, so it gives jewelers time to create wonderful pieces that show off the best of the brand. It’s more special for us since we are a brand very rich in gems, and very unique in the sense that we only exhibit by appointment as we only have one location.”
Reza has spent the last four years working on nearly 30 pieces for the Biennale. Although he hasn’t made a final decision on which ones he will showcase, he was eager to share some of his inspirations, saying: “I wanted the collection to be extremely comprehensive but compact. We basically created a collection that funnily enough had a common DNA, which is art, and it creates rhythm when you look at them one after another.”
A pair of sapphire cabochon and diamond earrings, for example, was inspired by the distortion works of sculptor Robert Lazzarini. Said Reza: “I had this beautiful pair of sapphire cabochons but I didn’t want to overwhelm them. So I pulled the rectangle shape [to look like it’s] not just melting, but also adapting the volume of the frame to best suit a woman’s profile. It gives the impression that the stone is really floating.”
An Henri Matisse masterpiece served as inspiration for another pair of earrings, featuring emeralds and diamonds set on a metal mesh back, although the lightbulb moment was almost accidental. Reza explained: “We had this collection of Colombian emeralds that I didn’t want to break up. I was playing with various designs and combinations of stones when, at some point in the drawing phase, putting the four emeralds in a sequence reminded me of “The Dance”. An all-metal support would have been too heavy, so I got the idea to perforate it.”
Then, when it came to a pair of pigeon blood ruby and diamond earrings, Reza explained he was inspired by how women sometimes wear flowers in their ear. “I wanted to create a branch shape that would support earrings en tremblant (a design specialty of the elder Reza’s) where each branch would have four flowers trembling off of it. The shape of that branch alone took me six months to design.”
Reza, who left a banking career in New York in 2008 to take over the company after his father’s retirement the year before, is keen to re-establish the strength of the brand he is charged with after previously shrinking the businesses and closing five stores worldwide to revive it.
Asked if he was feeling the pressure of being the doyenne appearing at a debutante ball, Reza said: “In today’s marketplace, the jewelers are big industrial groups, making it much more dynamic, but also creating more pressure, and feeling less artisanal. What I’m hoping to achieve is to have our work really recognized as true artistic craftsmanship that women desire to own and wear.”
To view the pieces Reza has designed and shortlisted for the Biennale, click on the slideshow.
