Star Dior jewellery designer Victoire de Castellane brings an exhibition of new pieces to London’s Gagosian Gallery for just five days at the end of January.
animalvegetablemineral is an intoxicatingly beautiful haute joaillerie celebration of the natural world, which sees diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies take the forms of blossoming wildflowers, meandering serpents and rough-hewn ingots.
It’s Castellane’s second exhibition - following the gorgeous Fleurs d’excès exhibition at the Gagosian Paris in 2011 - in a fifteen year-long career as Dior jewellery's Creative Director. Before this she spent fourteen years designing costume jewellery for Chanel, and you can clearly read this influence in the technicolour bombast of animalvegetablemineral.
If it feels like you’re at a sculpture exhibition, it should. These aren’t accessories so much as ‘precious objects’ in which wearable elements (rings, necklaces and bracelets) form detachable parts of a standalone sculptural piece. In Opiom Velourosa Purpa (2010), for example, a ‘cushion’ of maroon volcanic rhyolite supports a necklace of crimson-lacquered white gold set with diamonds and rubies.
Meanwhile, in the bracelet piece Lunae Lumen Holly Clorum (2013) an azure-laquered serpent, set with opals and a cluster of diamonds, curls itself around the fissures of a granitesque base – all in a kind of fanciful still-life.
There’s something spellbinding about these pieces – no doubt due to Castellane’s love of the aesthetics of animation - from Walt Disney to manga. The show is a must-see for admirers of the Dior house, for sure, but the brilliance of these pieces will dazzle anyone with even the slightest bit of sparkle in their hearts.
| What | Victoire de Castellane: animalvegetablemineral, Gagosian Gallery |
| Nearest tube | Bond Street (underground) |
| When |
28 Jan 14 – 01 Feb 14 |
| Price | £0.00 |
| Website | Click here for more information |
