Jewelry

PARIS — The world may be on a first-name basis with many high fashion designers, but few names in high jewelry make the cut.

Some that do are relatively new to the most exclusive ranks — Gucci joined only this past summer, for example. But many of the well-known houses, like Cartier and Boucheron, have names that date back more than a century.

Now, the independent jewelry designer Emmanuel Tarpin, just 27, has the rare luxury of making a name for himself while also being recruited to shore up the fortunes of an established house.

Two years ago, Mr. Tarpin’s own brand took shape with a splash when, during a trip to New York, the Paris-based designer made a cold call that led to a high-profile debut.

Shortly before the Magnificent Jewels sale at Christie’s in December 2017, Mr. Tarpin visited the auction house’s jewelry department to present his first design: geranium-leaf pendant earrings, with four overlapping leaves sculpted in green anodized aluminum and gold, rimmed with tiny round diamonds. Christie’s gave the newcomer a last-minute double page in its catalog, among the likes of Van Cleef & Arpels and JAR. The earrings sold by phone to an anonymous bidder for $25,000.

For a then-25-year-old unknown, it was a remarkable accomplishment. Jewelry insiders, collectors and celebrities took note.

In January, Mr. Tarpin emerged as the breakout talent in the 2019 Town & Country jewelry awards and, since then, some of his dozen or so graceful, ultralight designs have been snapped up so quickly that he said he had not had time to have them photographed. One was a pair of black foxglove earrings with white- and yellow-diamond pistils; another, creeping ivy earrings. Prices for Mr. Tarpin’s jewelry start around 15,000 euros ($16,525).

Other pieces have become internet famous, like delicately scrolled earrings in black anodized aluminum edged with diamonds. Rihanna wore them to a 2019 Oscars after-party; they also appear on Botticelli’s Venus on Mr. Tarpin’s Instagram feed. (Those, too, were bought by a private collector, from the United States.)

Such red carpet exposure was bound to produce new opportunities. And last month, the Swiss jewelry house De Grisogono named Mr. Tarpin the first artist in its new “creativity in residence” program. The yearlong collaboration, featuring three capsule collections totaling 40 pieces, is a bid to create new relevance for a house that since its founding in 1993 has been known more for bling than daring design.

For Mr. Tarpin, teaming up with the Swiss house is not as incongruous as it may appear. For one thing, he said that the house’s archives revealed unexpected depth. The two share, for example, a love of gradient color, unusual volumes and interesting stones and textures.

“De Grisogono has always dared to try new things, like black diamonds,” he said. “They cultivate a certain freedom in terms of creativity, which gives me freedom, too.”

Though he now has a broader palette of materials to work with, it falls to Mr. Tarpin to strike a balance between the gem-laden pieces that traditional high jewelry buyers favor and a design-led aesthetic. A purchase decision tends to boil down to choosing between “love at first sight” or an investment — and, he said, the investment usually wins as “a design is riskier.”

Mr. Tarpin really does not like thinking that way.

As a student at the Haute École d’Art et de Design in Geneva, he created pieces inspired by the work of the fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, and transposed classic Cartier necklace designs into Plexiglas, for example. After graduation, he spent three and a half years in the high jewelry studio at Van Cleef & Arpels, where he worked on its hallmark ballerina brooches and some special commissions.

The designer described the experience as “poetic and formative,” yet he yearned to create something new.

“Classic design inspires me because for jewelry to be contemporary, you have to know the classics,” he said. “But perfection is overrated. A perfectly matched lineup of sapphires is not unique. You see them at auction houses, they’re magnificent, rare, and then they wind up in a safe.”

Yet he does love gems. “What interests me in a gemstone is its color, and what that shade evokes for a piece in its globality. I love stones with something going on inside them, a jardin, and the idea that it comes from nature,” he said, using the French term for gemstone inclusions, or flaws.

Nature has always been Mr. Tarpin’s primary inspiration. Growing up in the affluent town of Annecy, in southeastern France, he hiked through the area often so he got to know the mountains and local flora, developing a near-naturopathic passion for plants.

An interest in sculpting surfaced early on: When Mr. Tarpin’s parents, both notaries, discovered that he had been hoarding modeling clay from school, they signed him up for sculpture classes. He became fascinated by minerals and crystallization, scoured local markets for his budding collection and obsessed over royal jewelry in the magazine Point de Vue. Even so, influences gleaned from family vacations in Asia — on the trans-Siberian railway, with home stays in Japan, China, Mongolia and elsewhere — now inform a vision of luxury that he describes as “cultural more than material.” (He also is an accomplished diver, and has been diving in the Philippines.)

Today, Mr. Tarpin creates pieces with a botanist’s precision, initially working mostly in wax or modeling clay and sometimes with paper, trying shapes, folds and layers for new jewelry in a slim corridor of an atelier with a view over the 18th-century Hôtel Biron, otherwise known as the Rodin Museum. When he is not sculpting or playing the alchemist — during a recent visit he was experimenting with finishes on copper dipped in tobacco, vinegar and acetone — he can be found on the balcony, tending to a vegetal wall of clematis and lobelia and the climbing roses he is coaxing up the guardrails.

Though polished and animated in conversation, the designer said: “I’m very shy, and a very poor salesperson. I’m happiest off in a corner doing my own thing.” Or conferring with the artisans in the high jewelry workshop in Paris that produces his pieces.

In his living room, a fragment of black coral he found on a beach while on vacation is now veined with tiny diamonds. A 2005 photograph of the Prado Museum in Madrid by the German photographer Thomas Struth hangs over the sofa. The bookshelf is lined with well-loved coffee table books on contemporary art, photography and, especially, orchids.

For his most recent pieces, Mr. Tarpin has been exploring ceramic-like finishes. A pair of white arum lilies seem plucked from a still life by Georgia O’Keeffe, their pistils set with tiny yellow fancy diamonds. A similar pair in painterly shades of violet was set with Burmese rubies and pink and purple sapphires, with one bloom designed to be worn either as an earring or a brooch, and its mate solely as a ring. It was purchased (and has been worn) by the theater producer Jordan Roth.

“When I was at school in Geneva, we learned that jewelry, at its heart, was originally for men, a display of power and virility,” Mr. Tarpin said. “When I see a man dressed in a classic suit with a brooch, I find that very chic. And since husbands often have a say in what their wives purchase, I find it amusing to think that a woman might share her jewelry with a man.”

Other designs that blend matte, polished, brushed and sandy finishes, such as a pair of wedding rings in gold with one beveled side set with diamonds, show that the designer also is attuned to discreet jewelry for everyday wear.

“Most big houses don’t take risks that stray too far from their base. It’s not that they’re wrong to do it, it’s just that there could be more creativity,” he said. “What I find interesting is being able to do things for myself, on my own, and then turning around and drawing inspiration from a house — a style, an ambience and, of course, the archives.”

That said, he is keeping flowers as the main inspiration of his own jewelry: “If I did them for anyone else, it wouldn’t make any sense. They would not feel at home.”