Lydia Courteille

ydia Courteille’s Carnet de Voyage

Lydia Courteille’s dreams and imagination have been nurtured since childhood by a need to express herself in a manner which would take her on an odyssey to all four corners of the world. Curiosity and culture were magnets to faraway lands and distant pasts. Her experiences are intertwined with the towns and regions she has visited throughout her extensive career, transforming them into memories and strong statements, spiced with the works of art, architecture and legends she encountered along the way.

Courteille’s jewellery is punctuated with the stories of strong-minded and independent women. From the tragic Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, who painted her own physical pain in such a graphic manner, to the Queen of Sheba, a legendary figure believed by some to have ruled Ethiopia 3,000 years ago, their extraordinary destinies are one of the major influences behind her collections and her go-to attitude. Since 1980, she has forged a path for her own creativity. Her jewels combine unusual gemstones with unusual outlines and a composition of symbolic meanings which would not normally be found side by side.

Her work is deliberately satirical and humoristic. Some of her jewels are particularly poetic, while others remind us of the short time we have on Earth, such as her memento mori. Some are intentionally seductive.

Some well-known names have been with her from the start, including Karl Lagerfeld, Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent and stylists such as Riccardo Tisci for Lanvin, and Thierry Mugler to name but a few. Many great names from show business have Lydia Courteille pieces in their collections, names which may be familiar to the reader, including Madonna, Catherine Deneuve, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Nicole Kidman, Tom Ford and the late Johnny Halliday.

After studying gemmology, Courteille embarked on her own career as an independent antique dealer and began to create her own jewels. Courteille has never given up the antique jewellery side of her career and she still collects, buying and selling jewels which appeal to her. She opened her first boutique on rue Duphot within the Parisian golden triangle of luxury and couture. She then moved to rue Saint Honoré, setting up her second shop a stone’s throw from the famous Place Vendôme. On rue Saint Honoré, her boutique invites us to enter a magical world; to pass through a mirror and enter a sophisticated, unexpected world of fantasy and rebellious desire. Said to be ‘Paris’s best kept secret’, it’s a compulsory stop for all those interested in jewellery.

arie-Antoinette – The Dark Side M

A visit to the Chateau de Versailles led Courteille to imagine an entire collection in pale blue, the colour of Marie-Antoinette’s chambers at the Trianon, which Marie-Antoinette had designed herself. Courteille depicts Marie-Antoinette both at court and at the Hameau de la Reine with her animals. Throughout the collection, she explores the tragedy of Marie-Antoinette’s life, how it changed from luxurious garments, ostrich feathers, balls and parties to imprisonment in the Temple Prison and the Conciergerie. She was beheaded at the height of the Terror.

Courteille travels through time to the tragic world of this great French icon, Marie-Antoinette, Queen Consort to Louis XVI. An Austrian princess, Marie-Antoinette came to France aged 14 and was married to the dauphin, Louis, in 1770, to seal an alliance between the two countries after the Seven Years’ War. The fact that she came from Vienna was already a disadvantage and her dislike for court etiquette at Versailles did not help.

To escape the constraints of her court life, Marie-Antoinette built a small village within the grounds of the Chateau of Versailles, a place where she could be reminded of her simpler life in Austria. Courteille brought this episode alive in her 2012 collection, ‘Animal Farm’ (Lydia Courteille, 2016), by creating jewels inspired by the farm animals Marie-Antoinette spent so many hours with there.

de Breteuil.

Below: Hameau de la Reine ring, ‘Marie-Antoinette – The Dark Side’ collection, 2016 – sapphire, diamond, titanium, 18k yellow gold. The hen sits within a crown, representing Marie-Antoinette’s life of escape in the hamlet.

Opposite page: Marie-Antoinette of Austria, Queen of France. Colour print by Jean-Francois Janinet, 1777. © Classic Image / Alamy Stock Photo

Often criticised for her spendthrift ways, Marie-Antoinette’s unpopularity steadily increased. As a result, during the ‘scandal of the necklace’, public opinion considered her guilty, even though the courts of the land had proven her innocence.

The story behind this necklace began when Louis XV commissioned the crown jewellers, Boehmer and Bassenge, to create a spectacular diamond necklace for his mistress Madame du Barry, for the hugely extravagant price of two million pounds. Unfortunately for the jewellers, the king died before they could deliver the necklace and receive payment. To their further dismay, his successor’s wife, MarieAntoinette, had no interest in the necklace, and refused to buy it. There followed a plot orchestrated by a descendent of King Henri II, named Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Remy, who schemed with her husband to persuade the Cardinal de Rohan to obtain the necklace as a way of winning the queen’s favour. Having previously made an enemy of Marie-Antoinette and wishing to re-establish himself at court, the Cardinal agreed. In order to convince the Cardinal that the queen had indeed forgiven his former indiscretions, Jeanne arranged a clandestine meeting one evening between the Cardinal and an actress pretending to be the queen. Suitably persuaded, he made arrangements for the queen to acquire the necklace. The subterfuge was only brought to light when the jewellers asked to be paid and, having no knowledge of the supposed purchase of the necklace, both the king and queen refused.

ndian Song I

Seeking ideas for her collections, Courteille travelled extensively in India, following in the footsteps of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1589 ce), Tamerlane and his great-great-great grandson, Babur, who established the Mughal Empire, reigning between 1526–1530 ce

The result, ‘Indian Song’, is a collection full of colour, representing the extraordinary colours of India. Courteille takes us on a journey from temple to temple, where we visit the festivals that are of such importance to the Indian people.

Courteille took the architecture of the fabulous Madurai Gopuram complex to create her temple ring, set with colourful cabochon sapphires, rubies and spinel, which represent the stucco figures covering the temples’ facades. The carved emerald evokes the time of Mughal splendour, while the pink, sapphire Naga on the side represents the semi-divine figure who rules over the underworld. Nagas are often portrayed as cobra snakes, guardians of the Earth’s treasures, including gemstones, gold, rivers and lakes.

The emblem of India: a peacock story

The peacock has accompanied Courteille throughout her odysseys along the Silk Road. She first encountered this beautiful bird in Constantinople, then in the symbols of Zoroastrianism on her voyage of discovery to Samarkand and Khiva, and again in India where she saw the famous Peacock Gate of the City Palace in Jaipur.

Saraswati is the goddess of art and knowledge and the consort of Brahma. She is the patron of dialogue, the sciences, arts and music, and is believed to have invented Sanskrit. Courteille renders homage to this four-armed goddess by creating a jewel adorned with the symbols of purity and beauty, a swan and a peacock – two creatures that accompany Saraswati wherever she goes. Saraswati is often shown wearing a crown (karandamukuta) surrounded by a halo. She holds the sacred scriptures in one hand and a rosary (akshamala) in another, while playing a corded instrument, called a veena, with her other two hands. The four hands represent man’s four stages of apprenticeship. She is often surrounded by lotus flowers.

ahara Collection S

After exploring the great wonders of Egypt, Courteille trekked to Assekrem to discover its nomadic cultures. The deep gold colours of the day contrast with the blues of the starlit skies at night. Her odyssey took her to the Sahara Desert in the north of Algeria, into the Hoggar Mountains where she followed the beaten trails forged by desert caravans and the Tuareg people. The same trails that would have been familiar to the Petits Frères de Jésus who lived in a hermitage founded by Charles de Foucauld in 1933.

Heading on through the arid sandstone landscape of the Tassili n’Ajjer mountains, sleeping under the night sky, after days filled with the fiery shadows of the eroded terrain, Lydia arrived on a plateau where she was greeted by engravings of elephants and giraffes, dating back thousands of years. She passed through the cypress valley where only a few Saharan cypresses (or tarouts) continued

osa del Inca R

From the great African continent, Lydia made her way across the Atlantic Ocean to the ‘New World’ of South America, just as Italian merchant and explorer Amerigo Vespucci had done between 1497 and 1504 before Spanish navigators Juan Diaz de Solis and Sebastian Cabot also found their way across (in 1516 and 1526 respectively). Inspired by her own trips to Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, Courteille went in search of exciting gemstones for a new project: the Rosa del Inca collection.

The Spanish name ‘Rosa del Inca’ originated from a South American legend told by the indigenous Diaguita people. It is also the poetic name given to Argentina’s national stone and the starting point for this collection.

The Rosa del Inca legend:

One day a young warrior, Tupac Canqui, dared to walk by a sacred lake, climbing up to a temple protected by the surrounding mountains. Coming across the priestess of the temple, the beautiful

Courteille’s most elaborate jewel in this collection is her Aztec Three Stages of Life cuff. She was inspired by the pottery that she saw on her travels to Bolivia, and the three stages which were a feature of the pottery.

Right and centre: Ovoid Skull à la Courteille ring, ‘Rosa del Inca’ collection, 2016 – purple, pink and orange sapphires, black diamond, 18k rose gold. This was a practice which occurred at birth, changing the shape of the head. Similar rites have been practised in other civilisations throughout the world.

Below, left: Pendant/brooch, ‘Rosa del Inca’ collection, 2016 –rhodochrosite, pink, purple and orange sapphires, ruby, brown diamonds, 18k rose gold. Once sacrificed, the body of the victim was often positioned in a sitting foetal position in its final resting place.

With gemstones and precious metal, Parisian jeweller Lydia Courteille crystalises memories, honours the dead and transports us to the other side of the world. In this striking monograph by jewellery historian Juliet Weir-de La Rochefoucauld, we are invited to join Courteille on her personal voyages of creative discovery.

A Jeweller’s Odyssey is the follow-up to Lydia Courteille: Extraordinary Jewellery of Imagination and Dreams (2016) and contains the stories and secrets behind some of the most idiosyncratic and iconic Lydia Courteille jewellery, as well as tributes to the incredible places and famous women who have inspired her life and work.