Lydia Courteille is one of the world’s most revered jewelry designers, renowned for reinterpreting history with a flamboyant, contemporary twist. She incorporates bold, colorful gemstones and unusual precious materials into her memorable one-off pieces.
As a former antiques dealer and collector with a love of history and ancient civilizations, she has a novel perspective
on design.
“In the past 30 years, I acquired an eclectic selection of 7,000 antique precious jewels, so I had in my hands all kinds of materials — gold, silver, platinum, gems, aluminum, steel, amber, tortoiseshell, and so on,” she relates. “This has helped me today to create more unusual pieces. With my experience, I know what materials I can and cannot use to create a model. I make new pieces with ‘antique’ inspiration, reusing old techniques, maintaining the savoir faire. It’s a special alchemy.”
A prolific creator with a powerful imagination, she can produce several collections a year. Her clients and connoisseurs have included fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, French rock star Johnny Hallyday, and Middle Eastern royalty.
“I like to invent. This way, we don’t follow trends. I hope to be ahead,” she states. “I design for people who have a taste for the extravagant, who have emotion, for people who are confident in their own choices. I love to see a very classical woman come to my shop and buy an eccentric piece.”
Fit for a queen
Among her latest collections is Marie Antoinette Dark Side, which draws on the tragic life of the last queen of France before the French Revolution, contrasting her fate with the romantic beauty of Versailles.
The monarch, who was sent to the guillotine in 1793, became a hot topic in the jewelry world last November after a pearl pendant she once owned achieved a world-record price at Sotheby’s Geneva. However, Courteille’s collection predates that sale, and as the title suggests, it explores some of the grimmer aspects of the queen’s life. While one ring depicts her blue and gold carriage, another piece in the collection shows the queen’s skull through the bars of a blue tanzanite crown. Royal blue is a dominant theme of the collection, inspired by Marie Antoinette’s bedroom in Versailles.
These jewels are a progression of Courteille’s Animal Farm collection, which launched a decade ago and shows animals from the queen’s Versailles farm wearing precious crowns.
Courteille is still creating more jewels for the Marie Antoinette line, which has received brisk orders and reflects the public’s continuing fascination with the queen. Following this favorable feedback, the designer plans to show off additional Marie Antoinette pieces at the upcoming Couture show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Worldly approach
In January, Courteille exhibited at the VicenzaOro trade fair in Italy as part of her strategy to add retailers in key overseas markets such as the US. Her works are already available in cities including New York and Miami, Florida.
At the show, she spoke to
Rapaport Magazine about her love of acquiring unusual gemstones such as opals and tourmalines on her extensive travels, and incorporating them into her sumptuous one-off creations with the help of highly skilled artisans.
“I collect stones, and when I see unusual or not-well-known material, I buy, I put it away, and then when I have enough, I make a collection,” she said at the time.
Among the pieces she is most proud of having created are her depictions of figures from the past looking toward the future — for instance, a ring showing the last Chinese emperor, his amber head set in 18-karat gold with black diamonds and yellow sapphires, gazing into a quartz crystal ball containing the head of Chairman Mao.
That piece is from her Un Automne à Pekin collection, inspired by the concept of feng shui and her visits to China. Other collections include Procreation, which features gem-encrusted wildlife emerging from eggs, and Nuevo Mundo, which takes inspiration from ancient Mayan civilization in Guatemala. In the latter, a skull pops up in a ring portraying a Mayan pyramid — a playful touch typical of Courteille, who loves to sit at a desk making sketches and moving gemstones into different combinations.
Leading lady
Courteille is at the forefront of contemporary women jewelry designers. She admires Solange Azagury-Partridge, who was often seen around the high-jewelry quarter at Place Vendôme when she worked as creative director for Boucheron several years ago.
“Solange has a strong personality,” Courteille says of the designer, who has a piece on permanent display at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs near the Louvre. Courteille also admires earlier jewelry artists such as René Lalique and Suzanne Belperron.
She has a collection of vintage Belperron pieces, which she showcases alongside her own designs at her boutique in a prime spot on Rue Saint-Honoré, a short walk from Place Vendôme. Celebrities and luxury tourists from around the world
gaze into the opulent window display to admire her contemporary and antique pieces before stepping inside to make
their orders.
Image: Lydia Courteille wearing her Lizard brooch / Procreation ring in gold / Un Automne à Pékin earrings with rubies, yellow and blue sapphires, tsaborites, ice jades and hauynites.Article from the Rapaport Magazine - May 2019. To subscribe click here.