Nathalie Verdeille talks about her design of Blue Book collection Céleste

Tiffany & Co’s chief artistic officer NATHALIE VERDEILLE talks to Prestige about her love for the work of Jean Schlumberger, handling the world’s most beautiful gemstones and designing her second Blue Book collection, Céleste.

Born in France but now based in New York, Nathalie Verdeille joined Tiffany & Co in 2021 following stints at Cartier and Chaumet, where she also worked in design leadership roles. As Tiffany’s chief artistic officer, Verdeille is responsible for leading the creative vision for all the brand’s jewellery and high-jewellery designs, and most remarkably has injected the rarefied Blue Book collections with new perspectives and innovations, while honouring its past. Notably, she continues to pay tribute to the vision and dynamism of Jean Schlumberger, Tiffany’s first named designer, who worked for the house in 1956 until his retirement in the late 1970s and whose designs, including the famous Bird on the Rock, remain some of the most collectible jewels today.

Verdeille’s respect and love for Schlumberger’s work is palpable; our conversation is peppered with references to the way the late designer worked with jewels and his penchant for yellow gold.

Céleste is your second Blue Book collection for Tiffany. Can you tell us more about it and its inspirations?

We’re inspired by our history and by what we’ve done in the past. So in Out of the Blue, last year’s Blue Book 2023 collection, we explored Jean Schlumberger’s works and reinterpreted his fantastical vision of the aquatic world. It was really a rich part of what Schlumberger did in the past, and so we thought: how can we be again inspired by more of his works for another collection? Céleste is really about the constellations and the stars, and also a bit of mythology. And so for Blue Book 2024, it really is a new way to rediscover the extent of Schlumberger’s fantasy world through a new lens.

In the six distinct chapters of the Céleste high jewellery collection – Wings, Arrow, Constellation, Iconic Star, Ray of Light and Apollo – is there a piece that’s a particular highlight for you?

I particularly enjoy the Wings necklace because of the diamonds we cut in different shapes. Another detail is that we’ve invented a new setting for the diamonds. It’s like a real feather, because we engrave the feather motif on the platinum all around and set the diamonds into it. And all the pieces are signed with a touch of yellow gold, which is a peculiarity of Schlumberger. We included the rope motif in his style to accentuate the piece. And the whole necklace is very articulated as well – we really wanted to showcase the lightness of the piece and the beauty of the diamonds in its movement.

Which Schlumberger inspirations have you particularly drawn from for this collection?

We really enjoyed working on the savoir-faire and techniques that I believe he used in the past. It’s great, because all the motifs we used remind us of his oeuvre, and we put a lot of attention into the details, even on the back of the pieces. There’s so much poetry in this collection, with symbolism that we’ve brought back from our past. But it’s not always a literal interpretation of Schlumberger’s designs. We look at his sketches, but we also study his vocabulary, his words, as he also wrote a lot. We’re inspired by the entire universe of Schlumberger.

How closely did you and Tiffany’s chief gemmologist Victoria Reynolds work together to source stones for the new collection?

We started with some images of Céleste and some inspirations from nature and colour, and afterwards I’d go with Victoria to buy the stones. Together we travelled around the world so we could define the colours and the stones we wanted. After we received all the stones, sometimes we’d further cut or polish the stones to refine them and add sensitivity to our designs. For the pieces in the Ray of Light chapter, for example, we were inspired by faisceau lumineux – light beams – and we wanted to create an explosion of stars in space. We played with different levels of diamonds in the piece and we also complimented it with red spinels to express the inspiration – but red spinels of this shape and colour are really difficult to find. This necklace is also super-versatile, because the pendant can be converted into a brooch and worn separately from the necklace.

Aquamarine is also such a signature Tiffany colour and it’s used extensively in the Iconic Star chapter. Can you tell us more about the special cut of aquamarines used in these pieces?

The Iconic Star designs are such unique pieces for us – and yes, it’s the first time we’ve used such an original cut of aquamarines. I love the way they remind me of clouds. We bought these stones this way, and they’re organically shaped, and we added a mix of faceted blue zircon to create something quite unexpected, as we’re using semi-precious stones in high jewellery. This is quite an ambitious piece to make, because for all of the aquamarine stones we had to make different baskets that are adapted to each stone in order to set them. And we include the iconic star motif with mother-of-pearl marquetry, which is inspired by archival Schlumberger sketches. But he never made an aquamarine necklace like this in the past; he created a design using sapphires. So this is how we’re inspired by his work, but we also add more modernity and creativity into the new collection.

This article was first published in Prestige Hong Kong