Guests invited into Boucheron’s private apartment on Paris’s Place Vendôme in July were greeted by a monumental floral installation by master ikebana artist Atsunobu Katagiri.
For Claire Choisne, Boucheron’s creative director since 2011, it was not the first time she had encountered the ancient tradition, which fuses aesthetics, meditation and philosophy. ‘I went to Japan for the opening of our Ginza flagship in October 2023 and during that trip I took part in an ikebana masterclass,’ Choisne tells Spear’s. ‘I was struck by how deeply the philosophy of impermanence resonated with my own vision.’ Katagiri’s mountain of greenery and blooms deteriorated gradually over the course of Paris Haute Couture Week: a message echoed by the extraordinary ‘Impermanence’ high jewellery collection discovered in the next room.
Illuminated within the darkness, six plinths displayed six precious ikebana sculptures, graduating from icily translucent to brilliant white to pitch black. ‘Each ikebana is an embodiment of how nature is gradually vanishing. This collection is an invitation to better contemplate and protect nature,’ says Choisne. Scintillating stems mimic nature’s organic forms, their petals and leaves dancing with diamonds. Look closer still, and an insect appears within each arrangement: a furry caterpillar crawling towards two cyclamens, a dragonfly perching on a eucalyptus branch, a stag beetle resting on a black-spinel vase.
But what of the jewellery? There were gasps of surprise and delight as Choisne explained that each creation can be plucked from its vase and worn as a jewel. A thistle transforms into a two-finger ring, an iris can be worn as a shoulder brooch, that dragonfly becomes a single, shoulder-dusting earring.
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‘I wanted to focus on the plant first, not the jewel,’ says Choisne. ‘All the pieces are conceived as part of a larger composition, but they’re also designed to be picked, like you would pick a flower in a field, and worn.’
It’s a typically avant-garde statement from a designer described as the ‘Willy Wonka of Place Vendôme’. For Boucheron’s annual Carte Blanche High Jewellery collection, Choisne has freedom to realise her most fantastical ideas, using any means necessary. That means looking beyond the traditional high jewellery lexicon to materials and techniques developed for science or engineering.
In 2018’s Nature Triomphante collection, Choisne collaborated with a French environmental artist to preserve real flower petals. In 2020, aerogel, a substance used by NASA to capture stardust in space, was encased in rock crystal to offer the wearer a ‘drop of sky’. The 2021 Holographique collection employed a high-tech spray to recreate rainbows of light through water. And last year’s Or Bleu collection included jewellery sculpted from 3D-printed, polymer-bound black sand, using a technique developed for the aeronautics sector.
‘Questioning the notion of preciousness has always been in Boucheron’s DNA, ever since Frédéric Boucheron first used rock crystal,’ says Choisne. ‘My aim, in the same way as Frédéric, is to demonstrate that certain materials not considered noble at first sight are actually just as precious as gold and diamonds.’
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In the pitch-black conclusion of Impermanence, a poppy’s matte-black titanium petals are adorned with Vantablack, the darkest material ever created, which absorbs 99.965 per cent of light. The effect is dramatic and disorientating, like peering into a black hole of nothingness, while black spinels glimmer gently at the flower’s heart.
This final composition is named No. 1: the climax of a countdown, the light that’s gradually faded throughout the collection finally extinguished. ‘I wanted to address a societal message, using black and white to illustrate the disappearance of nature,’ says Choisne. That meant using borosilicate glass, drawn out to just 2mm thick for the translucent Composition No. 6; a plantbased resin never before used in high jewellery for matte-white No. 5; along with aluminium, titanium and ceramic in varying shades of grey and black. More humble materials include the hair-like paintbrush fibres which adorn the articulated caterpillar, a creature that Choisne describes as ‘my most cherished piece’.
Just as impressive as the material innovations are the skills of Boucheron’s craftspeople. The 3D-printed resin thistles of Composition No. 5 presented a challenge: how to set diamonds within a structure that contains no metal? The solution was to sew more than 800 bezel-set diamonds inside the plant’s alveoli: a feat that accounted for a huge chunk of the 2,880 hours it took to handcraft the bouquet. Elsewhere, 700 rosecut diamonds are set into the petals of two cyclamen flowers, creating a stained-glass play of light. A real magnolia branch was 3D scanned and recreated in aluminium. Frédéric Boucheron, who championed a naturalistic approach to design, would surely approve.
Worn as jewellery, the scale and detail of these pieces make an artistic statement that’s far removed from wealth-flaunting bling. They’re at their most poetic and thought-provoking, though, when displayed as ikebana, inviting the admirer to pause and reflect on Choisne’s vision: to crystallise a fragile, fleeting instant for eternity.
