What’s the value of something created by hand? Where high jewellery is concerned, the question is more or less moot. Handcrafted perfection is both objective and method. A part of the process that is gaining appreciation is the fine art of gouaché illustrations painted by hand. Used since at least the Renaissance, these paintings, in a more opaque form of watercolour, have multiple purposes.
The first is technical, passing from designers and creatives to the craftsmen who will turn ideas into jewelled reality. The second is aesthetic: a design proposition for a client, and records thereafter of what jewels have actually been made, offered, and found their way into the world.
But above all, what is most enchanting about jewellery gouachés is the simple fact that they are beautiful, evocative works of art. In 2025, L’École School of Jewellery Arts staged Designing Jewels: 200 years of French Savoir-Faire (1770 – 1970), an exhibition dedicated to this very form. Though L’École is supported by the grand Parisian maison Van Cleef & Arpels, its programming casts a broad eye across the field of jewellery arts—and in its exhibition on gouachés, it highlights examples from compatriot jewellers like Mellerio dits Meller, Boucheron and Cartier, and artist-jewellers like René Lalique whose draughtsmanship gave his illustrations an artistic dimension.
“The earliest jewellery sketches,” however, “served inventory and inheritance purposes,” says L’École art historian and lecturer Mathilde Berger-Rondouin. Some of the earliest known books or engravings with artistic workshop depictions, she adds, likely date to the Renaissance—in particular studies by Old Master painters and the autobiography of Italian goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini.
Drawings by Louis Vander Cruycen dating to 1770, a prominent Flemish silversmith and jeweller, were the oldest in L’École’s exhibition. Unlike typical studies for costume and architecture, Vander Cruycen’s jewel drawings were created at 1:1 scale and in monochrome to emphasise light and shadow.
Vander Cruycen published a series of precious jewellery and accessory designs, which are now housed at Antwerp’s DIVA museum of jewellery, silver and diamonds. These are a rarity in the art history of jewellery. “The Nouveau Livre de desseins (New Book of Drawings) by L. Vander Cruycen was a significant publication,” explains Berger-Rondouin. In 1770, Vander Cruycen’s second series of engravings served, she says, as a “major reference for the earliest history of European jewellery design.”
“From Mellerio dits Meller to Boucheron, from Van Cleef & Arpels to Cartier,” Berger-Rondouin notes, many of France and Europe’s great jeweller maisons “originated as family enterprises.” It was a system wherein “fathers and sons collaborated based on their respective skills. Some individuals exhibited exceptional talent in drawing and design, while others could integrate drawing with goldsmithing and gem cutting—a rare combination.”
When I ask Berger-Rondouin if a particular talent stands out in the history of the form, she highlights the prolific artist jeweller René Lalique. “Despite his training as a jeweller, he continued to indulge his passion for ‘draughtsmanship’ by designing jewellery for renowned Parisian workshops such as Boucheron, Cartier and Beaugrand.” Lalique’s design talent was evident early (he even designed for New York’s Tiffany & Co.) and after establishing his own atelier in 1885 became one of the leading figures of the Art Nouveau style.
Lalique’s sketches, say Berger-Rondouin, “were executed in pencil, Indian ink, gouaché, or watercolour on vellum. Many feature the ‘BFK’ French watermark of the Blanchet Frères & Kléber company, which produced luxurious parchment-like paper in yellow-ochre tones at the paper mill in Rives, Isère.” What set the designer’s illustrations apart, she adds, are a distinct dual finish: the left typically sketchy, and the symmetrical right side cleaner with the outlines erased. “His compositions, inspired by nature and movement, are truly incomparable and still inspire jewellery designers today.”
In the more than two centuries since Vander Cruycen’s 1770 paintings, the field has seen numerous evolutions and advances. Two key moments mark the evolution. The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century opened up a world of cheaper, more readily available materials. Going from monochrome to polychromatic was facilitated, for example, by the invention of gouaché paint and an expansion of the available materials and palettes. The kind of paper itself has shifted, too, from yellow or black hues to grey and blue tones, which Berger-Rondouin says are predominantly utilised by jewellery maisons today.
Later in the 20th century, the rise of patrimonial departments buoyed the importance of gouachés. “Parisian maisons started to systematically classify their archives,” Berger-Rondouin explains, “from catalogues to sketches for inspiration and record purposes.” Jewellery houses required designers, she says, to produce final gouaché drawings according to each maison’s specific criteria. “All of which mandated handmade gouaché and pencil drawings at a 1:1 scale. To be a jewellery designer has become a profession in itself with institutionalised methods and schools.”
One aspect that’s evolved: contemporary sketches, she says, more accurately depict the manner in which a jewel is worn. Outlines of fingers, wrists or the neck give a hint of an image of how the finished creation will look.
What remains unchanged, though, is the ownership that maisons have over these sketches when they commission them from designers. Gouachés, essentially, are not signed by individual designers, “but are stamped with the mark of the maison that commissioned them.”
If the Industrial Revolution and the advent of patrimonial archives were two past moments of change, Berger-Rondouin says that today we are in a third chapter of jewellery sketches. That’s thanks to the digital era, when precision design and prototyping of jewellery happens on CAD (computer-aided design) software. CAD software often comes with the ability to render and visualise a finished piece of design in ultra-high resolution. All without needing to scan a physical painting, or worry about the limited scale and resolution of a life-size painting. “A commission for a ‘gouaché’ rendering could be perceived as obsolete,” admits the art historian of these digital realities.
Modern methods, however, haven’t entirely killed the old ways. Based on discussions with jewellery designers, Berger-Rondouin found that they tend to use both analog and digital methods according to their clients. A draft might first be created on paper then refined on software for mass market designs, for example. But, she notes, “final renderings for prestigious or bespoke designs are invariably hand-painted on paper.”
Perhaps it’s that touch of the handmade—echoed by the artisanship and craft that goes into the actual jewel—that completes the package in a way that a printout of an image generated on a computer can never really come close to. The original beauty and artistic status of these jewellery drawings are rising, according to Berger-Rondouin. Acquiring gouachés has become a form of collecting and curating a jewellery graphic archive—one way for jewel fiends and art collectors who, entirely fairly, may not be able to afford to collect the actual jewellery. Interest in the form—aided by exhibitions like L’École’s and The University of Hong Kong’s University Museum and Art Gallery, and certainly by maisons and designers who continue the gouaché practice—contribute to the study and preservation of this art form. Says Berger-Rondouin: “Paper archives are no longer discarded, but instead hoarded for artistic display.”
Here, a look at how jewellery maisons of today illustrate and create gouaché paintings for their high jewellery collections.
CARTIER
Tautness of line, interplay of volumes and contrasts of colour have guided Cartier’s style and design for years. In the En Équilibre high jewellery collection, the maison explores this long-held philosophy of fine balance. Pictured here is a trio of masterpiece necklaces that express, in their complexity, how these values walk a tightrope of taste. The Panthères Reflexio necklace is a dense web of tourmalines, with a pair of mirrored panthers framing a 74.10-carat green tourmaline and 14.910-carat coral cabochons at the centre.
The wave-like Haliade necklace is crafted with undulating, openworked volumes—see the detail on the bottom of the gouaché, which shows the piece’s lateral view—and set with a 41.85-carat blue sapphire from Madagascar. Colour, meanwhile, concentrates on a pair of majestic iridescent centre opals on the Cafayate necklace. The opal’s hues radiate outwards—on a trio of coloured sapphires framing the opals, and on a rose gold mesh set with umba sapphires.
CHANEL
In high jewellery gouaché paintings, verisimilitude is crucial for artisans to understand a designer’s vision. Gemstones, in particular, need to be painted with layers of white to simulate their facets and colours. The light, as a practice, shines from the top left corner so there is no confusion. Chanel cited the infinite palette of the sky’s golden hour and glowing dusk as a chromatic inspiration behind its latest Reach For The Stars collection. It showcases a broad spectrum of tones, highlighted by one-of-a-kind gemstones in vivid, saturated colours. Cocktail rings are a forte for Chanel, with signature house motifs—comets, lions and wings—translated into statement designs anchored by exceptional centre stones.
BUCCELLATI
The Italian jeweller Mario Buccellati was a fairly young man when he opened his first boutique in Milan, located near the glamorous La Scala theatre. In the early years, Buccellati had not yet accumulated a wealth of materials like gold and gemstones to put actual jewels on display in the windows. Instead, he put up sketches of jewels he had designed—treasures that did not yet exist, but that expressed his creative vision. When passers-by would stop in to ask what he sold, Mario would reply that he was “selling dreams”.
FRED
The jeweller Fred Samuel was born in Argentina to a family of gemstone traders. When he moved to Paris, he apprenticed at a gemstone and pearl dealer before starting his own business. When Maison Fred was established, it was bestowed with its founder’s eye for rich, sun-soaked colour, a taste imparted from a childhood spent in Argentina. The brand has looked recently to its founder’s story for its new high jewellery designs. In the 1936 collection, arch-shaped designs frame coloured gemstones with pedigreed provenance: Colombian Muzo emeralds, Royal Blue Sri Lankan sapphires and Mozambique rubies. The Soleil d’Or Sunrise collection, meanwhile, re-interprets a cherished yellow diamond from the house’s archives as modern, wearable rays of sunlight.
TIFFANY & CO.
The latest Blue Book collection of high jewellery by Tiffany & Co. took on an oceanic theme, titled Sea of Wonder. The many wondrous creations tap on the elaborate, fantastical style of Jean Schlumberger, interpreted with a modern eye. On paper, and in paint, a high level of detail indicates the Schlumberger style: a preference for platinum with accents of yellow gold, spiked silhouettes that add a touch of drama, and a vibrant palette of coloured gemstones. Pictured here, the Seahorse necklace from the 2025 Blue Book collection with purple and blue sapphires, diamonds and the milky sheen of moonstones; and a selection of Shell jewel designs from the same collection sketched and rendered with pencil tracings of parts of the body to illustrate the scale and size of the pieces.
CHAUMET
The tiara has been a signature Chaumet style since its founding in 1780. Step into any of this Parisian jeweller’s boutiques and you’ll encounter a wall of paper tiara maquette facsimiles of some of its most iconic and famous designs. Even today, the maison’s design studio continues to draw from its archives to reinterpret its varied styles—from naturalistic wheat motifs to fluid, airy, gossamer lines of diamonds—for modern times. Here, gouaché studies of Chaumet tiaras from the 20th century, which would go from paper and paint to a nickel silver prototype to be fitted and adjusted, before finally being crafted in platinum or gold and set with diamonds.
The January/February 2026 ‘Art’ edition of Vogue Singapore is available online and on newsstands.
