Van Cleff & Arpels Exhibit

I went to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to see the Van Cleef & Arpel Exhibit. This is one of my favorite exhibits I have seen so far. The picture is the front cover of the pamphlet where it gives a little of information about each of the pieces of jewelry and tells the year it was made and whether it was donated by another museum or is part of a private collection.

 Gorgeous mansion/Cooper-Hewitt Museum

 Van Cleef & Arpels has been around for over a hundred years making jewelry for women and they sure know how to drape women in any type of jewel! I am so glad that I heard about this before it ended. Highlight of my month.

This necklace was my favorite piece (not the blue one of course) it is absolutely GORGEOUS. The necklace was made in 1957 and is made from yellow gold, topaz, and diamonds.

There is so much BLING! I just didn't know what to do with myself.  My two favorite things in one place bling and mansions the museum is in a mansion of Andrew Carnegie!  There is over 300 pieces of jewelry on display! That is a like a girls dream and everything is gorgeous even though most of it I wouldn't wear unless I was playing dress up or something. 

 I had to take these with my camera phone so the quality sucks, but that is a lot of bling whether it blurry or not it just sparkles.

Pictures from the pamphlet.  The Walska brooch is 95 carats! The snowflake is one of their most popular motifs and contrasts gold and diamonds. The ballerina brooch is based on a painting by Nicholas Lancret showing a french dancer known as "La Comargo".  The ribbon wave brooch was formerly owned by a countess.

VCA is famous for their women's watches because back in the olden days it was offensive for a woman to wear a watch. So, VCA made watches for women in the disguise of a bracelet. I just can't imagine walking around wearing a piece of jewelry like these. I would be afraid to walk out of the house.

The pieces in the exhibit span at least 60-70 years from what I could tell and they also had an area dedicated to famous people such as Grace Kelly and the Duchess of Windsor with pictures of them wearing their jewelry.

This was jewelry that was in the gift shop... The necklace on the left is a mere $2,200 pocket change compared to the things in the exhibit.

These pieces were also in the gift shop and the piece in the middle is an ELEPHANT and that is just $4,500.  I really enjoyed this exhibit and it is something that I would see again. There were lots of people there so I didn't get to spend as much time as I would of liked looking at everything, but I loved everything I saw.