VAN CLEEF & ARPLES IL TEMPO, LA NATURA, E L' AMORE

In February the Palazzo Reale in Milan, when the city was not yet closed due to the Coronavirus, it hosted a magnificent exhibition of Van Cleef & Arples jewels. Today that museums are closed all over Italy because of the pandemic, we retrace the exhibition from home.
In the Van Clef&Arples. Time, Nature, Love exhibition, time reflected in each of the 500 works on display and it is the true protagonist of the Maison's history. We enter and are greeted by a riot of creations that combine artisan excellence with harmony. From the brooch to the diadem, creations that express the spirit of the time. The symbol of this concept, and icon of the exhibition, is the famous Zip which seems to have been born from a whim of Wally Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor. Beauty, genius and skill coexist in this zipper studded with precious stones and sublimated with gold teeth, fully functional. Three other rooms are then dedicated to Nature, Botany, Fauna and Flora.
Van Cleef & Arpels is a French luxury jewelry founded in 1896 by Alfred Van Cleef and his father-in-law Salomon Arpels in Place Vendôme, Paris . Celebrating the unparalleled ability of the jewels to unite savoir-faire, beauty and art, the exhibition has been curated into three sections – Time, Nature, Love – conceived using Italo Calvino’s ‘Lezioni Americane’ (American Lessons) as a starting point.