Following a world tour spanning China and the UK, Van Cleef & Arpels has landed in Sydney with a rare public showcase – featuring a working gold zip necklace, a floating ruby flower, and more than a century of craftsmanship.
Van Cleef & Arpels has always taken a measured approach to growth. Founded in Paris in 1906, the high jewellery house spent more than a century building its legacy in Europe and Asia before opening its first Australian boutique just over a decade ago.
Now, the Maison is pulling back the curtain. The Art of Movement – its first Australian exhibition – has arrived in Sydney, offering the public a rare look at archival pieces, mechanical marvels and some of the brand’s most iconic high jewellery creations.
Held inside the heritage-listed Watersedge at Campbell’s Stores, the exhibition opened with a discreet VIP preview on Thursday before welcoming the public free of charge, featuring over 100 pieces from its private patrimonial collection and nearly 50 archival documents, sketches and design objects.
So why now, and why here?
“The Maison has been around for nearly 120 years. We’ve only been in Australia for ten,” Julie To, Managing Director of Van Cleef & Arpels Oceania tells Forbes Australia. “So I think it’s a great time for us to sort of open our doors a little bit more to the wider public in Australia.”
The show is structured around four chapters – Human Odyssey, Nature Alive, Elegance, and Abstract Movements – and leans less on product than on philosophy. The goal, To says, is “transmission”: a way of sharing the Maison’s techniques, emotion and craftsmanship with a wider audience.
“We have so many stories to tell, and the house is very passionate about transmission,” she says. “Because if we didn’t share the craftsmanship behind the pieces that we make, the stories behind them, it could quite easily die away.”
And it’s not just a gallery display. The public program includes jewellery education sessions through the Maison’s L’ÉCOLE school, along with weekend children’s workshops led by artist Benja Harney.
A necklace 600 hours in the making
Central to the exhibition is the Zip necklace – a gold-and-diamond creation that To tells me was originally requested by the Duchess of Windsor. Designed in the 1930s, it took more than a decade to realise. The brief? A necklace that functioned like a zipper. The execution? Mechanical precision, rendered by hand, in precious metals.
“It sounds simple now,” To says, “but at the time zippers were military hardware. To recreate that motion in gold took years of invention.”
Each Zip necklace is one-of-a-kind. They take around 600 hours to craft, not including the months – or years – required to source matching stones. Some pieces are only created once the right materials become available, regardless of how long it takes.
That approach also applies to Van Cleef & Arpels’ Mystery Set technique, seen in the ruby-studded Five Flower clip displayed in the final room. First developed in 1933, it’s a way of setting stones without visible metal. Each gem is hand-cut and slid onto hidden rails, forming a seamless surface of colour. The effect is clean and effortless. The reality is anything but.
To says jewellers require 15 years of training before they’re trusted to even attempt a Mystery Set.
“In some cases, we’ve had necklaces that took a period of ten years, because it took that long to find all the stones of similar colour and quality.”
Julie To, Managing Director of Van Cleef & Arpels Oceania
Asked what she hopes a passerby with no prior knowledge of the brand might take away from the exhibition, To responded: “That we’ve been investing in high jewellery since 1906 and haven’t deviated from that – and that you can discover our universe, which is really a very poetic way of viewing life.”
“That high jewellery is really about the craft – and the emotion that it evokes when you see the piece.
“We want people to admire the craftsmanship, the creativity… maybe not the value, but the feeling it gives them.”
The Art of Movement by Van Cleef & Arpels is taking place at Watersedge at Campbell’s Stores, Sydney, from April 11 to May 8.
