With the Impermanence collection, Claire Choisne recounts the fragile beauty of nature

Claire Choisne: It is a tribute to nature, which is disappearing before our very eyes. I chose to express this through six plant compositions inspired by Ikebana, and in order to make the notion of disappearance noticeable, I used a gradient of non-colours. The first composition is transparent, the second is white, and gradually black takes over until the last one, which is in Vantablack, and therefore completely black.

Absolutely, it’s a bit of an obsession (laughs). As jewellers, our creations are made to last forever, and I wanted to freeze this impermanence forever. I like to work with the concept of time and capture ephemeral things that I find beautiful, in order to try to capture their beauty and stabilise it through jewellery. And that’s something we know how to do at Boucheron.

Yes, as well as the compositions. It’s important to note that Frédéric Boucheron took nature as it was; he didn’t compose it to make his jewellery. So by choosing to create an entire collection like ikebana, which are very structured bouquets, I was initially off topic. But when I went to Japan to a school of ikebana that has been around for over 500 years to learn this art, I understood that Boucheron and the Japanese shared a common vision and a love of nature. Nature is not a means of creation: Ikebana means giving life to flowers once they have been cut. So it is not a story of still life that we have told with this collection, but of living nature. We have designed very light compositions with only two plants. We love nature, every plant, and we want to showcase them.

For me, the jewellery is already alive, and when you see the magnolia necklace that seems to grow out of the shoulder, I think of life rather than a cut flower. The body is in the background: humans come after nature, which is the main subject of this collection. It’s a question of priority. Between nature and humans, I’ve made my choice (laughs).

I’m sad when jewellery is kept in a safe. So many hours are spent making it! Customers can, of course, leave the composition as it is at home and, if they feel like it, choose a day to take out the tulip and eucalyptus and wear them as brooches.

Craftsmanship and art are often contrasted, but I love both and don’t want to choose between them. The notion of a work of art somewhat negates that of craftsmanship, but I am extremely proud of the craftsmanship that went into this collection. Let’s say it’s a hybrid, somewhere between the two.

Perhaps the large thistle flower. It’s an extremely complex piece: we had to find the right person to make it, and there’s only one such person, who lives in the United States. This flower is a feat of engineering and a bridge between innovation and craftsmanship. What I asked the workshops to do was almost impossible: I had a thistle flower in my hand and I wanted them to reproduce it in a hyper-realistic way, with the same delicacy as the real thing, but without the prickles and set with diamonds. They managed to find a former MIT researcher, the only person in the world capable of 3D printing using bio-based plant resin. Each of the 600 diamonds set in the flower is held in a two-prong setting with a small ring at the end. Julie, one of the workshop’s gem setters, had the idea of sewing them with fishing line inside the spikes, one by one. The large thistle flower can be worn either as a brooch or as a crossbody necklace with a long cord. As for the small thistle flower, it can be detached and fitted onto a ring band.

When working on the Carte Blanche collections, we learn new things and master new materials and techniques. Like a toolbox, this allows us to go further and avoid future constraints as much as possible, such as having to scale down a design. We will always find a metal, a material, a technique that will enable us to create the jewellery in the scale we have chosen.

To create the 600 or so hairs on the little caterpillar in Composition No. 3, my favourite, I asked for some Japanese brushes to be sent to me, which we cut and assembled. We also used borosilicate glass for the tulip in Composition No. 1. This is a very strong glass used for test tubes in physics and chemistry. I love rock crystal and whenever I can use it, I don’t hesitate to do so, but in the case of this collection, it would have given a thicker and therefore less realistic result. Borosilicate glass allows us to respect the actual volume of the setting. Before starting a collection, you have to take the time to understand what you’re looking for, and once you know, you have to give it your all to achieve that goal, allowing yourself to try new things or old techniques to get closer to your dream.

There are two sides to this licence. On the one hand, it’s the best gift I could have received. Without it, you can have great ideas, but they don’t go any further. On the other hand, when you have no framework and you start the creative process knowing that you can do anything, there’s a moment of vertigo. I know I can’t go wrong because this is fine jewellery, but I find myself wondering whether what I have in mind is a good idea or not. Anything is possible. Fortunately, the dizziness passes quickly and I can get down to business. It’s both brilliant and not easy.

I don’t ask myself that question. I always start by thinking about what I want to do, the message I want to convey, and a collection is built from there. I wanted to pay tribute to nature, to show its impermanence, and I thought it would be interesting not to make jewellery straight away, but ikebanas, in shades of colour. Then we asked ourselves how they could be worn. Nature is not a tool: it is the end goal. Jewellery has adapted.

The thistle, which is worn cross-body, is a new way of wearing jewellery. A cord is clipped onto the piece, and then the large branch and its flower are worn across the chest. There is also the magnolia branch necklace, which rests on the shoulder and extends outwards from the body. We would never naturally design a piece of jewellery like this, but as we were inspired by nature, its shape served as a starting point and a new way of wearing it emerged. As for the butterfly, which looks as if it has landed on a shoulder, it is held in place with a magnet that is slipped under the garment.

That’s what I strive for every time: a Holy Grail. Looking back at what I’ve done in the past at Boucheron, we see this same quest: how to question the precious. I’ve come up with several possible answers, and each time they resemble the Holy Grail: making flowers eternal, immortalising the beauty of water, warding off the impermanence of nature… I hope I never find the ultimate Holy Grail, so that I always have the desire to continue searching for it with the same motivation.

When I talk about the collection, it’s part of an observation: nature is not respected for its true value. I see it disappearing and I want to encourage people to see its beauty, perhaps in the hope that they will then want to protect it. Then, in general, I find it difficult to come to terms with the notion of impermanence. It is something that can be frightening and at the same time it gives value to things. If we had the guarantee that everything would remain the same forever, nothing would have any value.

This is my means of expression: I wanted to raise this issue through jewellery design, and that is what I want to convey with this collection. Jewellery is my means of communication. I don’t know if people expect this of me or not, but it doesn’t matter, I’m doing it anyway. I don’t know what kind of response this collection will get, but I feel it’s important to get this message across.

I worked on this collection for a long time and I know it by heart, yet I can’t get enough of looking at it. It’s addictive. It calms me. When I saw the pieces come out of the workshops for the first time, I felt a sense of relief. They existed: we had succeeded! And the fact that we had achieved this level of craftsmanship makes me proud. I was impressed by the jewellers. When I look at it, I get goosebumps every time. It touches something emotional. It’s like romantic poetry, in the true sense of the word: a beauty that is not sweet but dark.

Because it is 100% black. It represents disappearance, the end of impermanence. It is composed of sweet peas, a poppy flower and a butterfly. The inside of the poppy flower has been lined with Vantablack, a material that absorbs 99.6% of light. Light is lost inside it and it is absolute black. The jewellers have crafted a magnificent poppy, which is entirely absorbed by the Vantablack, which seems to erase its volume. The tips of the flower’s pistils are set with micro-diamonds. They are like stars in front of a black hole before it disappears, before the end of the story.

It is more than that, it is an observation: we must take care of nature because it could disappear. But I see this as very positive because if it disappears, it will always reappear.

Oui, pour moi, les étoiles, c’est le bonheur…