Suzanne Belperron

This public school was created in 1773 by the Swiss painter Melchior Wirsch and the French sculptor Luc Breton.

The town of Saint-Claude was also, between 1885 and 1929, one of the most important world centers of diamond cutting.

Aware of Belperron's talent as a designer, her mother encouraged her by enrolling her in the School of Fine Arts in the town of Besançon.

The French jewellery house Boivin, created in 1890, had lost its founder in 1917, who was a talented designer.

Based in her private salon at 59 rue de Châteaudun in Paris, Belperron secured the services of the stonecutter Adrien Louart (1890–1989) and appointed Groëné et Darde as her exclusive manufacturer.

Suzanne married Jean Belperron, an engineer, who had been born on 18 February 1898 in Dole, also in the Jura region.

Suzanne Belperron (1900–1983), born in Saint-Claude, France, was an influential 20th-century jewellery designer based in Paris.

She worked for the Boivin and Herz jewellery houses before the outbreak of World War II.

Subsequently, she took over the Herz company, renaming it Herz-Belperron.

Belperron had many important clients, including royalty, arts and show business on both sides of the Atlantic.

Madeleine Suzanne Marie Claire Vuillerme, daughter of merchant Jules Alix Vuillerme (1861–1913) and Marie Clarisse Faustine Bailly-Maître (1866–1931), was born 26 September 1900 in the town of Saint-Claude, in Jura Mountains (eastern France), 60 kilometres from Geneva (Switzerland).

To fill the long winter months, the inhabitants of the Jura region had developed over the centuries a wide array of traditional crafts, including the art of cutting stones.

A close friend, Diana Vreeland (1903–1989), a major figure in the history of twentieth-century fashion adored Belperron's style.

Belperron won first prize in the "Decorative Art" annual competition of 1918, with a pendant-watch.

That prize was the reward for her years of study in "Watch-making and Jewelry Decoration".

In March 1919, soon after her move to Paris at the beginning of the "Golden Twenties", Belperron was taken on as a modelist-designer by Jeanne Boivin, the widow of René Boivin.

From 1920 the collections of the Maison René Boivin featured many jewels inspired by Belperron's sketches from 1917, when she was still a student at the School of Fine Arts.

At the time, these large curvaceous jewels went against the dominant Art Deco style, with its refined, geometric and structured jewels.

Jeanne Boivin, who always considered Belperron "a bit like her own child", recognised that she played "a major role in the artistic life of the Maison René Boivin".

Without children, Belperron dedicated herself to advancing the creative cachet and international reputation of the jewellery house.

In 1924, she became, at 23 years old, co-director of the Boivin jewellery house.

The civil ceremony took place in the town hall at Besançon on 11 July 1924.

The couple moved to 49 Rue Lamarck in the Montmartre area of Paris.

In the studio of the Expressionist painter Gen Paul in Montmartre, Belperron met the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the actors Robert Le Vigan and Arletty, and the playwright René Fauchois.

At Boivin, Belperron made a name for herself with designs that set precious stones in semi-precious materials like chalcedony, rock crystal, and smoky quartz.

Belperron might have begun to feel bored and frustrated that the original designs for Boivin's creations were not attributed to her.

This was not exceptional – jewellers over many decades had insisted on the anonymity of their designer-creators, no matter how talented they were.

During the 1930s, the originality of Belperron's works brought increasing international acclaim to the Maison Bernard Herz.

Belperron's fame grew, and she became a major figure in the artistic world both in France and abroad.

Almost every month, her creations appeared alongside those of jewellers such as Cartier, Boucheron or Van Cleef & Arpels in luxury fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, with the regular collaboration of well-known photographers, notably George Hoyningen-Huene and Horst P. Horst.

In February 1932, Belperron resigned her position with Maison René Boivin.

In April 1932, Belperron accepted the offer of Bernard Herz to take up a central position in his company.

Bernard Herz, a renowned Parisian dealer in pearls and precious stones, was one of René Boivin's favourite suppliers.

Herz gave her the freedom to design her own models under the name of Herz.

She was replaced by Juliette Moutard in January 1933 (who previously worked for the manufacturer of luxury watches Verger Frères) and Germaine Boivin, the daughter of Jeanne and René Boivin (who was previously a designer for her uncle the fashion designer Paul Poiret).

New York jeweller Paul Flato approached her in July 1939 to propose an artistic collaboration, declined by Belperron.

As an unrivalled colourist, the essence of Belperron's work was her ability to play with aesthetic influences from many sources and motifs inspired by nature.

Belperron was fascinated by the arts and the distant cultures of Egypt, East India, (the Assyrian civilisation in particular), the Far East (China, Japan), Africa and Oceania.

She found inspiration in nature's flora and fauna, from creatures like starfish and insects to minutiae of a garden's flower petals and leaves.

Belperron was also captivated by the underwater world, fascinated by the splendour of its shapes and the combinations of its colours.