FORBIDDEN PLANET: Chaumet is bringing its 237 years’ worth of history to Beijing’s Forbidden City.
The Place Vendôme jeweler, which is closely associated with Napoléon I and Empress Joséphine, will exhibit some 300 works, jewels, paintings, drawings and objet d’art dating from the end of the 18th century to today at the National Palace Museum as part of the “Imperial Splendors” retrospective, scheduled to run from April 11 to July 2.
“Through a selection of works belonging to the Palace Museum, the exhibition offers an exchange between the Chinese and French jewelry arts, imagined around a mutual culture of excellence, to unveil shared inspirations and reciprocal influences,” Chaumet said in a statement.
Under the scientific direction of Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre museum in Paris, the exhibition will end with the presentation of the tiara of the 21st century, the product of a creative competition at Central Saint Martins in London.
The show will feature items on loan from prestigious collections and prominent museums including the Louvre, the Château de Fontainebleau and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
They include the Bourbon-Parma tiara, made by Joseph Chaumet. It was worn by Hedwige de La Rochefoucauld for her marriage to Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma in 1919 but has since entered popular culture as a symbol of the house’s creativity. Stella Tennant donned it in an advertising campaign for Chaumet a few years ago, while it was used as inspiration for the tiara Anne Hathaway wore in “The Princess Diaries.”