By Maison Gripoix
Located in New York, NY
Maison Gripoix Vintage Red and Green Flower Dangling Earrings Set in Gold Tone. These are some of the most stunning earrings in my collection. The colors, of course, and the way they are made. They are just exceptional. They will always be relevant. They are well-made and make a statement. They are just classy and chic. Clip On. Always In Style. Clip on.
I also have them in blue. Acquired in Paris.
Guy de Maupassant wrote a famous story about a necklace. The story is about a young, pretty, intelligent, well-educated, but poorly endowed bride who has to marry a petty official; thus, suffering from the limitations of living a life with a husband who lacks any exquisite qualities. One day, to entertain his dejected spouse, her husband receives an invitation to a ball and gives his wife the 400 francs he had saved for a hunting rifle so that she can order an appropriate dress.
However, when the dress is ready, it becomes clear that it is lacking jewelry, and it would be impossible to attend the ball while looking so poor. The protagonist approaches her wealthy childhood friend, with whom she was raised at the monastery, and borrows a diamond necklace from her. The ball is a great success, and she is the centre of attention. However, when the woman returns home, she discovers that she has lost the necklace. To conceal her faux pas from her friend, she buys a new necklace identical to the one she lost. To pay it off, the woman becomes mired in massive debt, which, over the years, gradually drags her down the social ladder from the bourgeoisie to poverty. Ten years later, having lost her good looks, the woman encounters her friend on the Champs-Élysées, who still looks young, beautiful, and rich. The protagonist reveals to her friend the entire story about the necklace, but her friend replies in amazement that the diamonds were fake and would “cost 500 francs at most.”
Maison Gripoix starts with a dramatic story. In 1869 (or a year earlier, according to other sources), Paris master glassmaker Augustina Gripoix began creating replicas of pearls and crystals, casting glass into various shapes and colors and setting them in the most sophisticated settings. She used the pâte de verre (glass paste) technique, whereby a traditional ceramic or gypsum form was filled with a multi-colour piece of glass and special gluing substances and then baked in a furnace, resulting in objects featuring fantastical hues. Only Augustina made her crystals by pouring the melted glass paste into the press moulds, skipping the furnace step, allowing her to achieve the purity of colour, transparency, and shine. She found a simple method to create beautiful jewelry, and thus, Marquises, Duchesses, and Princesses queued up. Madame Gripoix would then create replicas of their jewelry in case of robbery, loss, or for unusual pieces to be used in their new wraps, neckpieces, or boas. The so-called ‘costume jewelry’ emerged to a large extent thanks to the work of Maison Gripoix.
Augustina Gripoix earned her fame in the 1890s when she began creating necklaces for Sarah Bernhardt to wear on stage and later designed costume jewelry for the first high-fashion house, founded by Charles Frederick Worth. Later, Paul Poiret, the leading couturier of 1910, contacted her, and she created sophisticated Oriental-style jewelry for him to match his famous Oriental costumes, based on the aesthetic of Diaghilev’s initial Russian seasons.
The value of costume jewelry was now being recognized in its own right and not just for imitation purposes. The taste of emancipated young girls, who were gaining more and more freedom and opportunities, was best met with bijouterie. So in the 1920s, when Augustina’s daughter Susan became the head of the House, Gripoix prospects became even more exciting. Girls with short-cropped hair in short dresses zoomed by in open-top cars wearing bijou rather than diamonds. Everyone ordered bijouterie from Madam Gripoix during this period, from Jeanne Lanvin to Jean Piguet; however, the best relationship Gripoix had was with Gabrielle Chanel.
It is well-known that Chanel, a fan of large jewelry with large stones, made bijouterie super fashionable. Chanel brought copies of Byzantine jewelry to Susanne Gripoix. She asked her to create the pieces in that same style, requesting, “Let everyone think that this jewelry is not new, but found somewhere on an excavation site nearby Rue Camborne.” She was so satisfied with the result of her order that she remained a faithful client of Gripoix for several decades. This was how the famous Byzantine style of Chanel jewelry was brought to life, featuring golden Maltese crosses with large multicolor stones and matching bracelets, cabochons, and massive brooches, all of which have become a part of the Gripoix .
Chanel liked to combine both natural and imitation stones in a single item; for example, she would pair natural and imitation pearls in a single necklace. Gripoix made them in such a way that it was impossible to distinguish between them. Susanne Gripoix created exceptional, irregularly shaped pearls from glass for Chanel, imitating the baroque pearls. They were enameled in her workshops with mother-of-pearl to obtain some of the soft shine characteristic of natural pearls
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As the leading supplier to the couturier houses in Paris, Gripoix collaborated with many renowned designers, including Cristóbal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, and Christian Dior, as well as Yves Saint Laurent and, later, Christian Lacroix and Marc Jacobs. However, it was the cooperation with Chanel that was the most significant, both for Chanel and for Gripoix.
Today, Gripoix is no longer a family-owned company, but the House continues to craft jewelry, although the style has undergone considerable changes over the last few years. The jewelry has become more straightforward, more graphical, and even minimalistic. In 2011, however, Gripoix and Catherine Baba...
Category
1980s French Modern Vintage Mixed Metal Earrings
