{"id":243538,"date":"2026-05-26T05:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T05:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/243538\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T05:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T05:11:08","slug":"boucherons-belle-epoque-queen-was-born-in-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/243538\/","title":{"rendered":"Boucheron’s Belle \u00c9poque Queen Was Born in Brooklyn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf the Maharajah of Patiala is a king whose fantastic orders shaped the destiny of Boucheron<\/a>, then the American clients of the Place Vend\u00f4me cornerstone are undoubtedly its queens.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrightest among them was Marie Louise Mackay, the grandest of Belle \u00c9poque society ladies in Paris whose second husband John Mackay\u2019s billion-dollar wealth had sprung from the discovery of silver in the Nevada desert.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the summer of 1876, when the couple moved to the City of Lights and settled in a h\u00f4tel particulier overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, \u201cMadame Mackay\u201d appeared no less than 102 times in the jeweler\u2019s commission books for the following a quarter of a century.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Extract<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tExtract from the commission book mentioning the special order of the necklace.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Boucheron<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tCoincidentally, that was the year when Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Boucheron began courting the New World\u2019s wealthy clientele on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, taking part in the Philadelphia World\u2019s Fair \u2014 a move that would net him a grand prize and the Legion of Honor.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile back in Paris, Mackay was a regular visitor of 26 Place Vend\u00f4me. Earrings, necklaces, and even a tiara went into the treasure chest of this society lady, who had been born in Brooklyn in a modest Irish Catholic family.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong her treasures was a dog-collar necklace with plastron set with 621 diamonds for a total of 237 carats, documented in the 1899 commission book.<\/p>\n

\n\tMost of her pieces no longer exist. Some were transformed several times during Mackay\u2019s lifetime, such as a piece featuring a 159-sapphire centerstone that had no less than two incarnations, starting as an original 1878 delicate festoon of florals that was reworked into two successive bow-inspired designs in 1889 and 1890.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany were taken apart after being dispersed following her 1928 death.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne that survived was a ruby and diamond necklace that would eventually find its way into the hands of a wealthy compatriot \u2014 Mona Bismarck, as French writer and journalist Vincent Meylan revealed in \u201cBoucheron: The Secret Archives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\n\tBoucheron chief executive officer H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Poulit-Duquesne said the jeweler\u2019s transatlantic links ran through such individuals of taste, as she rediscovered ahead of the jeweler\u2019s installation on New York\u2019s Madison Avenue in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile some major clients\u2019 taste left a mark on the jeweler\u2019s creative vernacular, what Americans came for was to be on-trend. \u201cThey came to Boucheron to be current,\u201d said Poulit-Duquesne. That meant returning to update and rework important sets, like Mackay had done.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoucheron was the ideal house for this, having laid the groundwork for transformability from the very beginning. The first traces of jewels that can be worn multiple ways date back to August 1859, with the mention of a bracelet that can be turned into a brooch mentioned in the very first order book.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder Poulit-Duquesne\u2019s decade-long tenure, she and creative director Claire Choisne have pushed its designs more into multiwear pieces, driven by a desire for the house\u2019s jewels to accompany clients as often as possible.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Americans still are among Boucheron\u2019s most fervent collectors, snapping jewels up at auction \u2014 or new creations such as the \u201cEaux Vives\u201d shoulder brooches, unveiled in July 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Maharajah of Patiala is a king whose fantastic orders shaped the destiny of Boucheron, then the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[95144,98,100,99,55425,95145,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-243538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-boucheron","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-comitu00e9-colbert","tag-high-jewelry","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}