PERY & FILS SAPPHIRE DIAMOND BROOCH

A rare and important platinum, sapphire and diamond bouquet brooch, designed for Van Cleef & Arpels and made by Péry et Fils, Paris, circa 1950s. Two intense blue sapphires form stylized flowers, their saturated color set against a luxuriant field of diamonds. The bouquet develops through diamond-set crescents, sharply angled leaves, openwork platinum ribbons and directional stems. Although floral in subject, its leaves and petals are rendered not as soft natural forms but as crisp crescents, pointed arcs and openwork planes, lending the bouquet a graphic, almost architectural character. Platinum’s cool whiteness intensifies the diamonds’ brilliance and gives exceptional clarity to the sapphires’ blue. The brooch belongs to the lineage of one of the great specialist workshops of twentieth-century Paris. Under Albert Péry, the atelier became a crucial maker for Van Cleef & Arpels, producing jewels for the Maison from the 1920s onward. The atelier's floral work was brilliant enough for Renée Puissant, daughter of Estelle Arpels and Alfred Van Cleef, to call Albert Péry a petit fleuriste (little florist). Péry was responsible for more than 260 of Van Cleef & Arpels’ celebrated Passe-Partout jewels. Founded by Lucien Péry in 1875, Péry et Fils evolved across several generations into one of the major Parisian haute joaillerie workshops. The firm’s work encompassed original design, model-making, gem-setting, technical development and finished production, and its clientele extended well beyond Van Cleef & Arpels to Boucheron, Chaumet, Mauboussin, Lacloche ,Mellerio and other Parisian clients. Péry was part of the infrastructure of fine jewellery at the highest level. The brooch is an expression of the atelier's mastery of sculptural, three-dimensional construction, in which a jewel is built as a composition in space rather than treated as a flat surface for stones. An exquisite accomplishment of post-war Péry composition: botanical in inspiration, but mid-century in its geometry. Which is why the design appears as fresh and sophisticated today as when it first emerged from the Péry atelier. Pery & Fils Platinum Sapphire and Diamond Bouquet Brooch c.1950s