About L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts
Established in 2012 with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts aims to introduce the public to all aspects of jewelry culture through various activities: courses, workshops, talks, exhibitions, books and podcast.
Activities at L’ÉCOLE cover three main areas: the history of jewelry, the world of gemstones and the savoir-faire of jewelry-making techniques. The courses are open to everyone, with no prerequisites: complete beginners as well as enlightened amateurs, collectors and those with a curiosity for the world of jewelry. Students experiment with gestures, skills and tools, guided by their lecturers – art historians, gemologists and craftsmen.
L’ÉCOLE now has four permanent addresses: in Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Dubai. Moreover, since its inception, L’ÉCOLE regularly travels abroad, in Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East, for talks, exhibitions or travelling course programmes that can last one to three weeks. L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewellery Arts therefore contributes to the promotion and visibility of jewellery culture on an international scale.
About the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle
A research centre, museum and university, the Muséum has over the last four centuries remained committed to studying geological, biological and cultural diversity and the relationship between humans and nature. With more than 68 million specimens, its collections are in part exhibited at twelve locations throughout France: its museums, libraries, geological and prehistoric sites and botanical and zoological gardens.
The Muséum’s collections of minerals, rocks and precious gems are the oldest in the world, and it has provided a forum for the emergence of major fields including mineralogy, crystallography and gemology since the eighteenth century. Preserving this rich heritage is central to the Muséum’s mission, which hosts collections of figures who revolutionised the approach to these objects, including that of the writer Roger Caillois.