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 seventy years 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, who took over the reins of Carvin French with her cousin Sylvain Chervin, who had joined the New York branch of the family 40 years ago.
« Success story » new-yorkaise
Photo provided to AFP on September 11, 2023: French jeweler Andre Chervin in New York, in 2014. (Credit: 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 » (“The enchanting imagination: Les Objets d’Art d’André Chervin et 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, admits his daughter.
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 5, 10, 25 years to create “these art objects”.
Works by French jeweler André Chervin and his New York workshop, Carvin French, on display during an exhibition at the New York Historical Society, in New York, September 6, 2023. (Credit: Ed JONES/AFP)
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 (…) when you manufacture for a customer’s order. These are my own expressions. It’s my art, pure and simple. This is 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, (“Ruby of the Frogs) covered with a mini mosaic lampshade of 128 cut and inlaid rubies.
We can see a “Bouquet of strawberries” in coral with nephrite leaves and a “Bird guarding its nest” made up 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”, explained to AFP the commissioner of the exhibition, Debra Schmidt Bach.
“United Nations” of jewelry
But the artist, who managed Carvin French for 60 years, considered himself above all as the “conductor of incredible talents and artisans with extraordinary know-how” from France and Europe, says the expert.
The works of French jeweler André Chervin and his New York workshop, Carvin French, presented during an exhibition at the New York Historical Society, in New York, September 6, 2023. (Credit: Ed JONES/AFP)
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 veritable United Nations of talents” in jewelry, s she marveled.
What future for Carvin French, which only has a handful of employees left, in a luxury sector in full transformation?
“The purchase of the business is possible but not in the news,” Sylvain Chervin furtively declared.
2023-09-15 08:49:28
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