André Chervin, the man who brought Parisian art to international high jewelry

2023-09-13 18:32:00

Miniature lamps strung with diamonds and rubies, animals and plants of gold with emeralds: André Chervin He started out as a precious stone cutter in Paris before arriving 70 years ago in New York, where he became a master jeweler, whose works he exhibited for the first time at the age of 95.

Born in 1927 in Paris, he founded the Carvin French workshop in the heart of Manhattan in 1954, three years after emigrating to the United States, together with the apprentice French jeweler Serge Carponcy.

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André Chervin

Unknown to the general public, Chervin is, however, revered by his clients: the high luxury jewelry represented by Tiffany and Co., Van Cleef and Arpels, Cartier, Bulgari, Verdura or Asprey.

Trained at the Haute School of Jewelry in Paris, This retired secular Jew became between the years 1950 and 2010 the master of jewelers and craftsmen admired by his peers.

Away from worldliness, Chervin was “modest and humble,” tells AFP his daughter Carole Chervin, who runs, together with her cousin Sylvain Chervin, the Carvin French workshop.

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André Chervin: New York success story

For the first time, fifty unique pieces of jewelry and decorative arts can be seen in an exceptional exhibition at the New York Historical Society (“Enchanted Imagination: The Art Objects of André Chervin and Carvin French”) from September 8 to 17 March 2024.

Despite his “New York success story,” the old man, who will turn 96 in November, did not want to expose his jewelry, his daughter says.

In a statement, he assures that this “collection represents the work of a lifetime.” And it is not an exaggeration since it took him five, ten and even 25 years to create some of “these art objects.”

Chervin is proud of his freedom to decide himself “what (pieces) to make, when and exactly how he wanted them.” “I freed myself from limitations (…) like when an order is made for a customer.”

“They are my own expressions. It is my art, plain and simple. It is my true freedom,” he says in the statement.

In addition to brooches, bracelets, rings, ornaments and earrings made of diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, gold or silver commissioned by Tiffany, Verdura or Bulgari, Carvin French produced true jewels of decorative art in his small workshop.

What is found in André Chervin’s exhibition

A vanity lamp, a mini bedside lamp (“My Heavy Heart”), with a citrine heart mounted on an 18-karat gold wheelbarrow brimming with colorful diamond flowers. And a bedside table lamp (“Rubis des Grenouilles”) covered with a mini-shade made from a mosaic of 128 carved and sculpted rubies are some of the pieces in the exhibition.

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You can also see an extraordinary “Strawberry Bunches” made of coral with nephrite leaves and a “Bird that watches over its nest” made of more than 700 fine “straws” of 18-karat yellow gold with emerald eggs on a silver branch and the bird sculpted in onyx with a coral beak.

These objects, which came out for the first time from the private world of the Chervins in New York, show that “André has a very close, very striking relationship with nature of which he is a great admirer,” explains the curator of the exhibition, Debra Schmidt Bach.

But the artist, at the head of Carvin French for 60 years, sees himself above all as an “conductor of an orchestra of incredible talents and craftsmen with extraordinary know-how,” he adds.

André Chervin: The UN of jewelry

The key to her father’s “success,” according to Carole Chervin, was simply to look to the “post-World War II New York, converted into a rapidly developing cosmopolitan center.”

“Many jewelers were in Paris” but New York “attracted an extraordinary wave of jewelers, carvers, artisans from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and South America (…) The true United Nations of talents as my father said,” says Carole Chervin.