Of the estimated 5,000 pieces jewellery designer Fulco di Verdura produced in his lifetime, the exhibition The Power of Style: Verdura at 75 assembles an unprecedented 216 of them. They span decades of di Verdura’s design stints, first in Paris, then Hollywood and finally, from 1939, at his Fifth Avenue salon in New York.
Verdura, who was a Sicilian duke, died in 1978 at the age of 80. A long-time employee managed the business for a time until 1984, when it was purchased by present owner Ward Landrigan, the former head of the fine jewellery department at Sotheby’s.
“It was jewellery that wasn’t always polite,” Landrigan says of the pieces di Verdura made for clients such as Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Godard, Millicent Rogers and the Joans – Crawford and Fontaine (the latter bought a pink topaz, gold and diamond Winged brooch in 1939 and later wore it in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion).
After a chance meeting with eventual clients Cole and Linda Porter, Verdura met Coco Chanel in 1920s Venice and joined her in Paris, designing both textiles and jewellery. The exhibition includes a pair of gemstone-studded Maltese crosses set in bone-coloured enamel cuffs. These are Verdura’s earliest and most iconic cuffs for a number of reasons: Designed circa 1930 as brooches and worn in cuffs by Chanel throughout her lifetime, they were subsequently owned and worn by Diana Vreeland. Coco’s cuffs also represent something of a distillation of the Verdura sensibility. He mixed materials such as pearls, shells and cabochons and had an fine sense of colour, even modifying inexpensive chess sets with gemstones and diamonds. One Maltese cuff on display is on loan from its owner, director Sofia Coppola, who, Landrigan says, insisted on determining the placement of coloured gemstones herself (another belongs to Whoopi Goldberg).
Landrigan says the exhibition team spent months “begging, borrowing, cajoling and coaxing.” It was entirely worth it for the suite of galleries that house Verdura’s staggeringly inventive output by theme. The idiosyncratic Verdura drew on nature, mythology, religion and, in some cases, wit and whimsy. A lone jewelled snowman pin, for example, looks delightfully askance. “In our books, we have two concept drawings – a drunk one and a sober one,” Landrigan says. “Whoever chose him preferred the drunk one.”
A 75th-anniversary collection is inspired by these archival designs, including an edition of just 200 black enamel Theodora cuffs, so named because they recall the mosaic of the Byzantine empress Theodora in the chapel of San Vitale at Ravenna, which served as the initial inspiration for di Verdura’s work for Chanel. “It’s what we call the ‘Big Bang’ of 20th-century jewellery,” Landrigan jokes.
Another bracelet of yellow-gold feathers with diamonds is taken from the original moulds of the exhibition’s other key attraction: the Laurel, one of the last important tiaras to be made in the 20th century. Verdura designed it as a mash-up of a Napoleonic laurel wreath and a native headdress for Betsey Whitney’s presentation to the Queen in 1957. (Whitney was one of the three glamorous Cushing sisters from Boston; her sister, Babe Paley, was Verdura’s lifelong muse.) Other private clients included Tyrone Power (who commissioned the now-famous Wrapped Heart brooch), Henry Fonda (who presented his wife with the 30-carat aquamarine ray brooch for Christmas in 1940) and playwright and diplomat Clare Booth Luce, who had so much Verdura (including a miniature Tony Award she could wear) that, like the Whitneys and the Paleys, there’s a display case devoted just to her family’s collection.
Verdura had an old-world aristocrat’s disdain for pecuniary concerns. “He never made much money because he didn’t care about it,” Landrigan says, “but he had rich friends so lived like he was.” A room plays the only surviving record of Verdura’s voice, a 10-minute radio interview from 1957 in which (sounding every inch the acerbic queen you’d want at a house party) he dishes about clients Chanel, Luce and the Duchess of Windsor. (His weekends must have been like something out of Gosford Park.)
Given that every Verdura design was a one-off commission, it’s astonishing that the exhibition also boasts several of Verdura’s more unsettling surrealist collaborations with Salvador Dali – such as the 1941 Medusa brooch of ruby-eyed snakes that swirl malevolently around a faceted morganite, reverse-painted with a miniature by the artist. Under the care of Landrigan and his son, Nico, Verdura continues to offer his original designs, including the yellow-gold chain-link bracelet watch made famous by Greta Garbo, who wore it off-duty throughout her life. One wall showcases Verdura’s framed design renderings. Verdura was prolific – of the roughly 10,000 sketches in the archives, more than half have yet to be produced. “Every time I walk around this show,” Landrigan says, “I still can’t believe all of these ideas came out of one man’s head.”
The Power of Style: Verdura at 75 is open to the public by timed entry through Dec. 23 at 745 Fifth Avenue in New York; in Canada, the exclusive stockist is Mindham Fine Jewellery (www.mindham.com).