Carole Chervin, on September 6, 2023 in New York, presenting works of decorative art by her father André Chervin, 95 years old, French jeweler who has spent his entire career in New York and who is exhibiting his unique works until March 2024. (Ed JONES / AFP)
Lamps made of diamonds and rubies, miniature animals and plants in gold and emerald: at the venerable age of 95, the French art master André Chervin, who started as an apprentice jeweler in Paris, is exhibiting his work for the first time exceptional work forged during seven decades of exile in New York.
Born in Paris in 1927, immigrated to the world city in 1951, founder three years later with another young French jeweler, Serge Carponcy, of the Carvin French workshop, the nonagenarian retired from business remains unknown to the general public in France.
But in New York, André Chervin and Carvin French are revered by major international clients, luxury jewelers Tiffany and Co., Van Cleef and Arpels, Cartier, Bulgari, Verdura and Asprey.
This secular Jewish French artisan, trained after the war at the Paris Haute Ecole de Joaillerie, succeeded in New York, from the 1950s until his retirement in the 2010s, to rise to the rank of master of the art of jewelry and creator of decorative jewels.
But the man was always “secretive, humble and modest”, fleeing worldliness and “publicity”, his daughter Carole Chervin told AFP of him, who took over the reins of Carvin French with her cousin Sylvain Chervin, who joined 40 years ago the New York branch of the family.
“Success story” new-yorkaise
This 1957 photo provided on September 11, 2023 by the New York jewelry workshop Carvin French, shows the jewelry artisans Serge Carponcy (seated in the back left) and André Chervin (standing). Mr. Chervin, 95, is displaying his jewelry and decorative art objects for the first time in New York until March 2024 (Handout / Carvin French Jewelers/AFP)
These Americans of French origin were keen, during their ancestor’s lifetime, to present around fifty unique objects in a small exceptional exhibition at the New York Historical Society (“Enchanting Imagination: The Objets d’Art of André Chervin and Carvin French “, from September 8 to March 17, 2024).
Despite his New York “success story”, the old man was “difficult to convince” to reveal his works, his daughter admits.
Refusing interviews, André Chervin, who will be 96 years old in November, nevertheless confided in a press release that “this collection represented the work of a lifetime”.
In fact, it sometimes took him five, ten, 25 years to create “these art objects”.
Above all, he writes, “I was able to choose for myself what to make, when and exactly how I wanted them. I was freed from the constraints (…) of making for a customer’s order. This are my own expressions. It’s my art, pure and simple. It’s my true freedom.”
Wonders of the decorative arts
In addition to brooches, bracelets, rings, sets and earrings in diamond, sapphire, emerald, ruby, gold or silver ordered by Tiffany, Verdura or Bulgari, Carvin French has brought out from its small workshop, still in operation, marvels of the arts decorative.
Thus, a boudoir lamp, a miniature night light (“My Heavy Heart”), composed of a citrine heart mounted on an 18-carat gold wheelbarrow overflowing with colored diamond flowers. And a bedside lamp, (“Rubis des Frogs) covered with a mini mosaic lampshade of 128 cut and sculpted rubies.
This 2014 photo, provided on September 11, 2023 by the Chervin family and the Carvin French workshop, shows jeweler André Chervin, 95 years old today, who is exhibiting his works of decorative art in New York until March 2024 ( Handout / Carvin French Jewelers/AFP)
We contemplate a “Bouquet of strawberries” in coral with nephrite leaves and a “Bird guarding its nest” composed of more than 700 “straws” in 18-carat yellow gold with enamel eggs on a silver tree branch. and the bird carved in onyx with a coral beak.
These objects, for the first time from the Chervin family in New York, show that “André has a very close, very touching relationship with nature of which he is a great admirer”, explains to AFP the commissioner of the exhibition, Debra Schmidt Bach.
“United Nations” of jewelry
A work by the French jewelry artist André Chervin, 95 years old, who spent his entire career in New York creating his workshop for the largest jewelry distributors (Ed JONES / AFP)
But the artist, who piloted Carvin French for 60 years, considered himself above all as the “conductor of incredible talents and craftsmen with extraordinary know-how” from France and Europe, says the expert.
The key to her father’s “success”, according to Carole Chervin, is to be found in “post-World War II New York, which became a booming cosmopolitan center”.
Of course “many jewelers were in Paris” but New York “attracted an extraordinary wave of jewelers, lapidaries, artisans from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and South America (…) a true United Nations of talents” of jewelry , she marvels.
What future for Carvin French, which only has a handful of employees left, in a luxury sector in full transformation? “The buyout of the business is possible but not” current, sweeps Sylvain Chervin.
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2023-09-13 03:40:00
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