Maison Gripoix costume jeweller – glass with class

Japan Jewellery Fair
Maison Gripoix costume jewellry

Maison Gripoix, a French costume jeweller, was located in Paris. Around 1890, Maison Gripoix sold glass beads and buttons wholesale. Subsequently, specialised in handmade imitations of precious and semi-precious jewels, including parures for Sarah Bernhardt.

International Jewellery Fair

When the molten glass is poured into a mould, rather than through the kiln-firing of a paste of ground glass and binding agents, ‘Pâte de verre,’ or glass paste, is made. Pâte de verre has long relied on producing pieces of jewellery in various shapes and colours, demanding replicas of their precious jewels; princesses and aristocrats commissioned necklaces to match their fur stoles.

Suzanne Gripoix is shown at her work table. At her left is her daughter, Josette, following in her mother’s footsteps, November 13, 1946.

In what was then the jewellery district of the French capital, Ms Gripoix set up shop on Rue Tiquetonne. The design of stage necklaces for Sarah Bernhardt in the 1890s was her first claim to fame, followed by costume jewellery for the first couture house in the world, Charles Worth, established the same year as Gripoix. She later collaborated with Paul Poiret, whose high-society clients commissioned pieces for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes to go with the evening dresses they wore.

Maison Gripoix Byzantine Crosses
Byzantine crosses for Chanel, Josette Gripoix jeweller. (Photo by Pool HAITMAN/TREAL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The design house, run by Augustine’s daughter Suzanne Gripoix in the 1920s, was connected with the couture houses Worth, Poiret, Piguet, Dior, and Fath, and for four generations, they manufactured costume jewellery.

Suzanne Gripoix collaborated with Coco Chanel from the first half of the 1920s to 1969. Chanel was famous for combining her necklaces with real and fake pearls. Suzanne Gripoix created a particular form of irregular glass pearl for her, giving her a mother-of-pearl sheen.

Over most of the 20th century, the design house, later headed by Josette Gripoix, Suzanne’s daughter, continued to supply costume jewellery to leading fashion houses, including Yves Saint Laurent, Dior and Balmain.

Sources

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL

More Jewellery Designers

  • Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry (hardcover)

    Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry (hardcover)

    Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry. “A new, imperishable beauty,” was how the artist and architect Henry van de Velde described it. European Art Nouveau jewelry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embraced a new aesthetic characterized by sensuous forms, dramatic imagery and vivid symbolism. Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Edward Spenser (1872 – 1938) British metalworker

    Edward Spenser (1872 – 1938) British metalworker

    Edward Spenser (1872 – 1938) was a British metalworker, silversmith, and jeweller. He was professionally active in London. Spencer was a junior designer at the Artificers’ Guild. When Montague Fordham took over the Guild in 1903, Spenser became chief designer. Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Florence Koehler (1861 – 1944) American craftsperson and designer

    Florence Koehler (1861 – 1944) American craftsperson and designer

    Florence Koehler was an American artist, craftsperson, designer, and jeweller, professionally active in Chicago, London and Rome. She was one of the best-known jewellers of the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Chicago, Koehler’s jewellery in a crafts style was fashionable in artistic circles. Koehler became…


    Learn More →

  • Jean Fouquet (1899 – 1964), French Jewellery Designer

    Jean Fouquet (1899 – 1964), French Jewellery Designer

    In 1919, he joined as a designer in the family firm, 6 rue Royale, Paris; he was a friend of Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard. Between 1920—25, he collaborated on Le Corbusier’s and Amédée Ozenfant’s review L’Esprit Nouveau: Revue International d’Esthétique. In his jewellery, he developed a liking for abstract compositions. From 1931, his jewellery…


    Learn More →

  • Maison Gripoix costume jeweller – glass with class

    Maison Gripoix costume jeweller – glass with class

    Maison Gripoix, a French costume jeweller, was located in Paris. Around 1890, Maison Gripoix sold glass beads and buttons wholesale. Subsequently, specialised in handmade imitations of precious and semi-precious jewels, including parures for Sarah Bernhardt.Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Henning Koppel (1918 – 1981) Danish Designer

    Henning Koppel (1918 – 1981) Danish Designer

    Koppel had his debut as a sculptor at the Artists’ Authumn Exhibition in 1935 with an expressive portrait bust. He was also represented with drawings on several exhibitions. His best works as a sculptor are the busts of Valdemar and Jytte Koppel (1938 and 1942, both in black granite) and Tora Nordstrom Bonnier and Karl-Adam…


    Learn More →

  • Louis Rault (1847 – 1903) French sculptor, engraver and jewellery designer

    Louis Rault (1847 – 1903) French sculptor, engraver and jewellery designer

    Louis Rault (1847 – 1903) was a French Sculptor, engraver, silversmith and jewellery designer.Between 1868 and 1875, Rault worked in the Boucheron workshop on the Place Vendôme in Paris. At the end of the nineteenth century, he set up a workshop where he produced silver and jewellery in the Art Nouveau style.Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Marcel Boucher (1898 – 1968) American costume jeweller

    Marcel Boucher (1898 – 1968) American costume jeweller

    In 1925 Marcel Boucher arrived in New York from France and went to work for Cartier as a jeweller. Eventually, he leaves there and makes shoe buckles, possibly for Trifari. At this time, jewellery is all flat, without high modulation. Marcel started his firm in the Thirties, and his first line is an extraordinary group…


    Learn More →

  • Pennino American costume jewellery firm

    Pennino American costume jewellery firm

    In 1928, Oreste Pennino registered a series of 12 trademarks used from 1926 and illustrating signs of the Zodiac. The firm produced bracelets, rings, clips, earrings, lockets, and brooches and, from 1947, watches and watchcases. Its wares were designed in the forms of flower bouquets, fruit, leaves, and trees in rose, pale and dark blue,…


    Learn More →

  • Marius Hammer (1847 – 1927) Norwegian silversmith

    Marius Hammer (1847 – 1927) Norwegian silversmith

    Hammer was head of one of Norway’s largest silversmithies. He was best known for his plique-a-jour enamelled spoons popular with tourists and exported in large quantities. He produced the ‘Norwegian brilliant enamel work’ spoons offered in the 1896 and 1898 Christmas catalogues of Liberty, London. Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Stanley Hagler (1923 – 1996) American Costume Jeweller

    Stanley Hagler (1923 – 1996) American Costume Jeweller

    Stanley Hagler, American costume jeweller. The flamboyant styles of the 1960s influenced his jewellery designs for women. READ MORERead More →


    Learn More →

  • Harry Bertoia (1915 – 1978) Italian sculptor, furniture designer

    Harry Bertoia (1915 – 1978) Italian sculptor, furniture designer

    Harry Bertoia was a sculptor, printmaker, jeweller, and furniture designer. He was born in San Lorenzo, Udine, and worked in the United States professionally. During World War Two he worked with Ray and Charles Eames on moulded-plywood technology. He worked primarily as a sculptor from the mid-1950s onwards. His sculpture was prominently featured in many…


    Learn More →

  • Judith Leiber  (1921 – 2018) American designer of handbags

    Judith Leiber (1921 – 2018) American designer of handbags

    Judith Leiber (1921 – 2018) was a prolific designer whose fanciful minaudières had accessorised royalties, first ladies, and film stars, and entered the collections of art the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While her couture handbags—carried by celebrities such as Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Claudette Colbert, Björk, and Barbara Walters—are widely regarded as works of art,…


    Learn More →

  • Suzanne Belperron (1900 – 1983) French Jewellery Designer

    Suzanne Belperron (1900 – 1983) French Jewellery Designer

    Suzanne Belporren was a French jewellery designer. Her career flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Belperron produced numerous designs of sculptured jewellery for René Boivin’s Paris shop. She subsequently opened her own Paris shop called Herz-Belperron. Her designs often featured glass encrusted with gemstones.Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Georg Arthur Jensen silverware designer and manufacturer

    Georg Arthur Jensen silverware designer and manufacturer

    Georg Jensen was a Danish metalworker. He was born in Faavad. He was apprenticed as a goldsmith. cl895-1901, he studied sculpture, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen. Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Alma Eikerman (1908 – 1995) American jewellery designer and silversmith

    Alma Eikerman (1908 – 1995) American jewellery designer and silversmith

    Alma Eikerman (1908 – 1995) was an American jewellery designer and silversmith. Eikerman was born in Pratt, Kansas, and graduated from Kansas State College in Emporia with a B.Sc. in 1934 and an M.Sc. in 1942. Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Jean Schlumberger (1907 – 1987) French jewellery designer

    Jean Schlumberger (1907 – 1987) French jewellery designer

    Jean Schlumberger (1907–1987), one of the most accomplished artists of the twentieth century, produced objects of unrivalled beauty. He was a man of exquisite taste, a jeweller who created extraordinary jewelled statements with a feeling of depth and life. Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Hermann Junger (b.1928) Bauhaus influenced jewellery

    Hermann Junger (b.1928) Bauhaus influenced jewellery

    Hermann Junger was one of the best goldsmiths in Germany. His creative jewellery had a big impact not only in Germany, but also all over Europe and the U.S. He studied at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie, Hanau.Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Flemming Eskildsen (b.1930) Danish designer and Silversmith

    Flemming Eskildsen (b.1930) Danish designer and Silversmith

    In 1958 Eskildsen joined the Georg Jensen design department making designs for flatware, jewellery and hollowware. He became the foreman of the design department in 1962.Read More →


    Learn More →

  • Boucheron French Jewellery House

    Boucheron French Jewellery House

    Boucheron was a French court jeweller with branches in Paris, London, Biarritz, and New York. Founded by Frederic Boucheron (1858). Famous for elaborate diamond jewellery during the late 19th century. Expensive novelties shown at international exhibitions in Paris (1867 and 1900) and Philadelphia (1876) attracted wealthy customers (mainly American).Read More →


    Learn More →

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.