Van Cleef & Arpels Celebrates 100 Years of Art Deco With Tokyo Exhibition

IN FULL BLOOM: When Van Cleef & Arpels scooped up a Grand Prize at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, the house of Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels was a rising signature in jewelry that was less than two decades old.

Now a grande dame of Place Vendôme, it retraces its deep Art Deco links and 100-and-some years history and with an exhibition running until Jan. 18 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum — itself an architectural jewel of the movement, built in 1933 after Prince and Princess Asaka, members of the Japanese imperial family, returned from Paris and the Exhibition.

Articulated in four chapters spread throughout some 25,000 square feet across the museum’s main building and annex, there are 250 pieces of jewelry, timepieces and precious objects drawn from the jeweler’s patrimonial collection and private ones, and 60 items from its archives.

Among the pieces not to be missed are the prize-winning 1924 Entwined Flowers, Red and White Roses high jewelry bracelet that was among the designs that earned Van Cleef & Arpels the Grand Prize at the 1925 exhibition; and a Camellia Minaudière from 1938 with a detachable floral clasp that could be worn as a brooch and based on a 1933 patented design for a case holding a mirror, lipstick, powder compact, cigarette lighter, notebook and more necessary items for evening outings. There’s also the Chrystanthemum brooch, which features the mystery setting technique, invented in 1933 and patented in 1937.