Van Cleef & Arpels allowed to gain practical experience in jewelry design
The elaborate jewelry pieces of the house of Van Cleef & Arpels, always innovative in design and materials, have had many fans all over the world for decades. As beautiful as the small works of art are, their style is also unique and unmistakable, often incorporating floral, animal and elf designs.
Twelve students from the Fashion Design Institute were allowed to immerse themselves in the practice of jewelry design in an exclusive, four-hour workshop on the topic "From Design to Mock-up" and work on the three steps necessary to create a piece of jewelry at L'ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts in Paris: from the two-dimensionality of a design to the exact tracing to the Gouaché de Bijoux technique, in which the individual parts of the piece are joined together. The end result is a so-called "mock-up," a pewter casting that presents an initial complete idea of the jewelry piece. In the process, the students cut a butterfly out of the metal, shaped it and decorated it with rhinestones.
