Editor’s Note
This exhibition marks a century since the 1925 Paris Exposition birthed the Art Deco movement. It showcases how Van Cleef & Arpels translated the era’s bold geometry and luxury into exquisite jewelry, offering a glittering retrospective of a defining style.
Approximately 250 pieces of high jewelry from the Van Cleef & Arpels archive and private collections are on display at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum – an exhibition celebrating the art of Art Deco in jewelry and interior design.
A century after the opening of the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris – the event considered the birth of the Art Deco style – Van Cleef & Arpels has opened an extensive exhibition of its pieces from the mid-1920s to the 1930s at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. The museum was originally built as a residence for Prince Asaka. Its impressive Art Deco interiors were created immediately after the prince’s trip to Paris in 1925, where he visited the exhibition. He and his wife were so inspired that they hired the same man who designed the interior decoration of the Paris exhibition: Henri Rapin.
The Tokyo exhibition begins by showing the difference between Art Deco and Art Nouveau design.
Two of the most symbolic pieces are likely the Entwined Flowers bracelet and the award Van Cleef & Arpels received for its design at the original 1925 exhibition. The wide diamond bracelet combines many characteristic features of Art Deco: bold colors and strong contrasts, coupled with groundbreaking innovations like the “Mystery Setting” of gemstones – a technique patented by the house at the same time, which remains iconic to this day.
Other patented designs are on display, including Minaudière cases and the versatile circle brooch designed for lapels, hats, scarves, and handbags. Dedicated rooms feature jewelry and watches set with white diamonds, while others show the era’s gradual turn towards increasingly larger precious and semi-precious stones – including a statement necklace of diamonds and 165-carat emeralds, and a clip brooch of jasper and onyx.
The transformability of high jewelry, so valued today, began during this period, most visibly in the diamond sautoir necklace, which could be worn at the front, to the side, or across the back.
The combination of the exhibited jewelry and the museum’s Art Deco interiors allows for deep immersion into the style movement and shows how profoundly Prince Asaka and his wife were influenced by their 1925 trip to Paris. The museum houses around 250 pieces of high jewelry from the Van Cleef & Arpels archive and private collections.
Maviel-Sonet hopes that visitors to the exhibition will recognize the central role jewelry plays within the decorative arts.
The exhibition runs until January 18, 2026, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.