The brilliance that binds Japanese crafts and Van Cleef & Arpels’ jewellery

The jewels and crafts displayed at the Mastery of an Art exhibition in Kyoto shows a strong link between the two art forms.

The Mastery Of An Art exhibition is on display at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto until August 6. Courtesy Van Cleef & Arpels
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The colourful streets of Kyoto are cluttered with classical Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, many of which are adorned with powerful depictions of dragons. The mythical creature is regularly eternalised in traditional Japanese sculptures, which sensuously capture the texture and movement of its scaly, snake-like body.

You might not expect to hear an art history scholar or antiques dealer talk about these Japanese dragon statues in the same breath as something like Van Cleef & Arpels’ famed Zip Necklace, which, when zipped, doubles as a bracelet and is a design that the maison’s president and chief executive, Nicolas Bos, refers to as an icon of the brand. “It’s the one piece that encapsulates the technicality, the craftsmanship and the sensuality of jewellery,” Bos says of the piece, which was first created by the French jewellery house in 1951 for the Duchess of Windsor.

In Mastery of an Art, an exhibition exploring the relationship between high jewellery and Japanese crafts, and currently showing at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMak), the Zip Necklace sits alongside an old dragon figure crafted from iron in the late 19th century by an unknown Japanese artist. It may not seem immediately obvious, but the link between the two works of art is a strong one, claims the museum's chief curator, Ryuichi Matsubara. He explains that, in both traditional dragon figures and Van Cleef & Arpels' intricate Zip Necklace, similar techniques are applied to demonstrate physical flexibility and movement, creating an unexpected affinity between Japanese crafts and the maison's high-jewellery creations.

While Van Cleef & Arpels is a company that prides itself on being French, and celebrates, time and again, the love story of its founders, Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels, its connection with Japanese artwork is far from obscure. As we overlook a peaceful pond and garden at the Hoshun-in Temple at the Daitoku-ji Zen Buddhist complex, Bos explains that when the jewellery maison was created in the early 1900s, its aesthetic was strongly shaped by Japonism, or the rediscovery of Japanese art in Europe. In France at the time, architecture, furniture, dedicated art galleries and design magazines were all being shaped by Japanese art and culture.

“This is really the time when the style of Van Cleef & Arpels was defined,” Bos says. “When you look, for instance, at the representation of nature, which is so important with this house, you can really see the influence of Japanese art.”

As such, Oriental touches are abundant in the jewellery house’s archives. A 1978 Buddha clip, made from gold, pink quartz, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, is on display at the exhibition, along with various lion, griffin and dragon brooches and rings made by the brand. Even some of the maison’s flowers of choice, such as chrysanthemums and peonies, Bos explains, move away from depictions of flowers as per the traditional French aesthetic, which tended to be more pronounced and powerful, and instead embrace the softer lines of Japanese design.

“The style, with its asymmetry, and a kind of fragility with the motif, sometimes goes against the French formal tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries,” he points out.

The architect recruited to design the display fixtures and overall layout of the exhibition, Sou Fujimoto, was fascinated by the fact that both the high jewellery and Japanese crafts referenced similar images from nature, but in juxtaposing ways. “It’s amazing to see how diversely people can understand nature as an inspiration of creations,” he says.

Within the exhibition, many of the maison’s jewel-encrusted clips take the shape of butterflies, and one end of an open diamond necklace features a butterfly formed from rubies in the maison’s trademark Mystery Setting. Meanwhile, butterflies are also bountiful on the Japanese pots, plates and bowls on display, which are produced from ceramic and decorated through overglazed painted enamels or wired cloisonné techniques. Birds, depicted on Van Cleef & Arpels’ brooches, clips, minaudières and powder cases, are dually pictured in scenic illustrations across a range of Japanese ceramics. The exhibition even showcases a pair of emerald lovebirds within Van Cleef & Arpels’ Maison d’Hortense cage, which was commissioned in the 1930s by an Indian prince for his pet tree frog, and is produced from yellow gold, agate, cabochon-cut rubies, sapphires and lapis lazuli. The peacock, another bird that features on a Van Cleef brooch and miniature gold box, is reinterpreted through intricate embroidery on an impressive, four-panel folding screen from the early 1900s by Japanese artist Nishimura Sozaemon.

And yet, parallel motifs are not what inspired the Mastery of an Art exhibition in Kyoto. And though the 260 pieces of high jewellery on display are all sourced from the maison's previous collections and privately owned pieces, the brand itself had little involvement in the selection process. Curator Matsubara was given full independence and access to the Van Cleef archives, and Bos says that this new perspective, free of a corporate or internal vision, is what made the collaboration so interesting.

“I find it quite fascinating; somebody coming with his own expertise, his own point of reference and actually picking and choosing from your archive, from your history, and deciding to tell his own vision through that.”

What Matsubara was most enraptured by, however, were the actual Van Cleef & Arpels workshops. “Spending time over there with the jewellers and understanding the techniques behind the craft was more interesting to him than the chronology and the historical or artistic context of the pieces,” says Bos. “It reminded him of his Japanese workshops, and he saw similarities in the philosophy of the craftsmen.”

This, ultimately, is what binds the various elements of this far-reaching exhibition. Van Cleef has always prided itself on its craftsmanship, and a respect for the process of creation by hand is apparent throughout my stay in Kyoto. Unlike more industrialised cities in Japan, Kyoto, which was once the capital of the country, remains very culturally minded, and traditional Japanese crafts still thrive in the city’s schools and universities. Bos refers to the area as a metaphorical bridge between modernity and tradition. “In the West, there is always this idea that to create something new, you’ve got to destroy the past, in a way. Here, it is the exact opposite: to create something new, you’ve got to understand and respect the past, and learn from it.”

In Japanese culture, art is much more than a mere hobby. It demands thorough, methodical techniques and an overall mastery of skill, so there is a great level of admiration and respect for traditional craftsmanship. Skilled artisans or masters of craft techniques are often referred to by locals as “living national treasures”, and so, fittingly, the exhibition includes works by some of Japan’s best-known contemporary artists, including Moriguchi Kunihiko and Hattori Shunsho. “There is a high respect for these craftsmen, their competence and their capacity to transmit to keep their craft alive,” explains Bos. “It’s the idea that patrimony is not only artwork, buildings or objects, still and inanimate. Patrimony is also incarnated by people, and these people need to be identified, respected and celebrated.”

This idea of honouring and respecting tradition is evident throughout my visit to Kyoto and reflected in some of the most basic of acts. Tea at Kourin-in at the Kodai-ji temple, for example, is served in painted bowls dating back 400 years, and jewellery is strictly prohibited, for fear it may scratch and damage these bowls, which are cleaned, or purified, with special red cloths. After drinking the bitter, matcha-flavoured tea by sipping from the back of the bowl, or the area without a painted design, tradition dictates that a guest uses their thumb and forefinger to wipe the part that their mouth touched, and then take a few moments just to admire the beauty of the bowl, always keeping it on the left palm and turning it clockwise with the right hand. The traditional art of floral arrangement, or ikebana, is similarly ritualistic. Seasonal flowers are used, and stems are inserted at precise angles in an overall asymmetrical manner to reflect shin, soe and hikae, or heaven, human and Earth. This style, accredited to early Buddhist monks, can be seen amid temple offerings and shop windows all around Kyoto.

The global climate today is a digital one; tell your average millennial to sit through eight small courses of food at a traditional Japanese meal, take off a watch before sipping tea or ensure branches are arranged at precise angles in a floral arrangement, and you may just be met with ridicule. “You have to try to talk to your 18-year-old about craftsmanship, so he will understand and appreciate it, and so that maybe one day he will want to become a craftsman,” says Bos.

"Fewer and fewer younger people like to be craft workers, and that's a pity," Fujimoto adds. He is optimistic that initiatives celebrating traditional creative techniques, such as the Mastery of an Art exhibition, will help raise awareness of dying art forms, and that visitors will be able connect to the concept, both on a personal level and a societal one. Then, just maybe, they too will be motivated to help spread awareness of traditional craftsmanship, becoming vessels through which the art can be transmitted to future generations.

Read this and more stories in Luxury magazine, out with The National on Thursday, June 15.

hlodi@thenational.ae