There are certain obsessions jewellery never quite relinquishes. Ancient Egypt is one of them. Its symbols, colours and mythology have travelled across centuries, resurfacing through architecture, painting, cinema and the decorative arts. For Van Cleef & Arpels, however, the fascination is particularly personal.
The Maison’s relationship with Egypt can be traced to the 1920s and the fever of Egyptomania that followed Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Within a year, figures in profile, papyrus flowers and scenes of everyday life were appearing across Van Cleef & Arpels cuff bracelets, brooches, long necklaces and watches. Emeralds, rubies and sapphires punctuated diamond settings with the vivid colour and graphic precision characteristic of Art Deco.
It became more than a passing aesthetic fascination. In the decades that followed, the Egyptian royal family acquired several Van Cleef & Arpels creations. For the 1939 wedding of Princess Fawzia of Egypt, the Maison created a diadem, necklace and pendant earrings, as well as a spectacular diamond suite for Queen Nazli.
Almost a century on, Fascinating Egypt returns to this history without becoming beholden to it. Across some 180 abstract and figurative pieces, ancient iconography is filtered through Art Deco, cinema, contemporary art, science fiction and design. The result feels less like an archaeological exercise than an act of world-building: Egypt as memory, mythology and imagination.
The collection's palette is appropriately intense. Rubies, sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, rubellites and tourmalines meet lapis lazuli, turquoise and rock crystal in combinations chosen as much for emotion as rarity. The historical symbolism of colour lingers beneath them: blue for the heavens and gods, green for vegetation, yellow for the sun and life, red for strength, black for fertile earth.
Some pieces speak to Egypt through sheer scale. The Beauté légendaire necklace reinterprets the breastplate jewels of ancient Egyptian royalty around a 10.02-carat Fancy Vivid Yellow diamond. Its articulated structure is crossed with polished yellow-gold garlands and graduating diamonds, while a sapphire-set lotus conceals the clasp.
The Rivage égyptien necklace takes a more abstract route. Thirty-seven pear-shaped Zambian emeralds, totalling 41.58 carats, tumble across the neckline in an imagined landscape of water, papyrus and birds. Seventeen relief motifs recall the palmettes of Egyptian frescoes, each setting made specifically for its individual emerald.
Elsewhere, mythology becomes miniature sculpture. The Bénou Mystérieux clip depicts the Bennu bird, its plumage assembled from mother-of-pearl, turquoise, lapis lazuli and Mystery Set emeralds. Bastet Mystérieuse transforms the cat-headed goddess into a jewel in her own right, complete with articulated pendeloques that move with the wearer. The Griffon Mystérieux, meanwhile, holds a 3.94-carat diamond between its paws, its wings rendered in lapis lazuli, turquoise and emeralds.
There is wit, too. A trio of articulated cuff bracelets turns the wrist into a miniature fresco: pyramids appear against a science-fiction sky; pharaoh masks arrive in almost Pop Art colour; columns recall ancient temple architecture. On the Paysage secret bracelet, hieroglyphs conceal a message translating to “horizon of eternity”.
And then there is the Déesse ailée Mystérieuse. Inspired by the wings accompanying deities in Egyptian mythology but influenced equally by comics and science fiction, its ruby-and-diamond wings wrap graphically around the neck. A 14.05-carat pear-shaped diamond sits dramatically to one side and, true to Van Cleef & Arpels’ tradition of transformable jewellery, can be removed and mounted onto a corresponding ring.
What holds these disparate fantasies together is craft. Stones have been individually recut for their settings; gold is sculpted, engraved, hammered and polished; Mystery Set techniques allow gems to appear almost uninterrupted by metal. Each creation is even hallmarked with a cartouche in hieroglyphics reproducing the Van Cleef & Arpels monogram.
Fascinating Egypt ultimately feels less concerned with recreating the ancient world than with understanding why we remain so captivated by it. In Van Cleef & Arpels’ hands, history becomes something fluid: a source material to be studied, played with and transformed into objects of obsession.
