Coming from a family of antique dealers from Lyon, who became a gemologist and an expert in antique jewellery, Geoffray Riondet has built up a library of several thousand documents over the years. What to do with such a corpus? After having signed, at Flammarion, in 2021, a beautiful scholarly book, Old jewelry (1800-1950), he proposed to the Museum of printing and graphic communication in Lyon to imagine an exhibition. The result is to be discovered, enriched with funds from the museum, but also from the School of Jewelery Arts of Van Cleef & Arpels or the mineralogist Christophe Dubois.
No rings or sparkling finery, but a journey that gives a subjective mapping of the jewel through the feelings it provides. It is up to the visitor to admire catalogues, posters, historical plates, gouaches (technical drawing of a jewel), but also original manuscripts of literary works which have placed it at the heart of their stories. Among them, the poem Jewelry, by Charles Baudelaire (excerpt from Flowers of Evil, 1857), the novel Laura. Crystal Journey (1864), by George Sand, or even The Southern Star (1884), by Jules Verne. All mixed with serigraphs around the ornament and minerals signed by the young artist Camille Boileau.
“Bijou bijoux”, Museum of printing and graphic communication13, rue de la Poulaillerie, Lyon 2e. Until February 19, 2023.