Pearls before Swine

All that glitters is not gold

“Eat your Pearls” Artwork by Ginevra Held

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. Today I am going to talk about beautiful things, rare things, expensive things. Two exhibitions I saw recently that took luxe as their subjects. I have already mentioned the first, an exhibition on pearls at L'ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, a school and gallery funded by Van Cleef and Arpels, located on Blvd Montmartre in the Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau. If you go, make sure you leave enough time to stroll through the nearby covered passages, those early iterations of in-town shopping malls. (Fig 1)

Figure 1. Exhibition Poster, Paris, City of Pearls, École, School of Jewelry Arts, Paris

This week, I saw another exhibition about a luxury product, at the Musée de Quai Branly. It was about gold. The Musée de Quai Branly is Paris’ museum of “the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.” That’s the permanent collection. Their temporary exhibitions don’t always adhere so strictly to that focus. A couple years ago, I saw an exhibition there on the history of the Kimono that had been organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The exhibition on now, organized in-house and as far as I can tell, is not traveling anywhere (which is a shame because it’s excellent) is called, “Au fil de l’or, l’art de se vêtir de l’Orient au Soleil Levant.” (Golden Thread. The art of dressing from North Africa to the Far East) (Fig 2)

Figure 2. Au fil de l’or, l’art de se vêtir de l’Orient au Soleil Levant, Musée de Quai Branly, Paris

Everything in these exhibitions is beautiful to look at but the accompany texts in both hint at a fuller picture, of displacement and prejudice and war. So, after I tell you a bit about those two exhibitions, I am going to introduce the exhibition at the Musée Picasso. Based on the exhibition organized by Joseph Goebbels on what the Nazis called degenerate art. Which was actually modern, non-representational, non-figural art, decried by the Nazis as “an insult to German feelings.” At least they were upfront. (Fig 3)

Figure 3. L’Art Dégénéré, Musé Picasso Paris

But first, pearls. The exhibition takes as its focus the period between the late 1860s and the 1930s, during France's Third Republic. Which began with the Belle Epoque (1871-1914) and included Les Années Folles (Roaring Twenties) and the heyday of the decorative art style known as Art Deco. During this period, a significant number of the pearls fished in the Persian Gulf wound up in Paris. Where the great jewelers, whose shops were on the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme, selected the finest pearls to be paired with platinum and diamonds. To embellish the tiaras, earrings, necklaces and bracelets that adorned the heads, ears, necks and wrists of queens, celebrities and courtesans. (Figs 4-8)

Figure 4. Buffoon head brooch, baroque pearl, brown natural pearls, enamel, gold, René Lalique, 1897/1898

Figure 5.’ Byzantine' comb, natural pearls, enamel, animal material, Georges Fouquet, 1900-1905

Figure 6. Lapel Clip, natural pearls, gold, René Bouvin, 1910

Figure 7. Owl pendant, baroque pearl. diamonds, rubies, gold, 1880

Figure 8. A modern masterpiece: Sheep’s Head, micro pearls on gold thread, star sapphire eyes, and silver head, JAR, 2006, École, School of Jewelry Arts, Paris (sold at Christie’s for €500,000, 2021 (5x more than anticipated),

The disappearance of Pearl Mania in Paris has been attributed to several factors, among them the arrival of cultured pearls from Japan and the abandonment of pearl fishing and production in the Gulf region due to the decline in the supply of pearls and the precarious circumstances in which pearl fishers lived and worked.

The reign of the Parisian pearl was weakened further by the economic crisis of 1929. Whether it would have survived the Second World War if the Jewish pearl merchants hadn’t been deported or forced to flee Pétain’s France is anyone’s guess. One of those merchants was Léonard Rosenthal, (Fig 9) who was made a Commandeur of the Légion d'Honneur in 1925, celebrated as a "natural pearl merchant," by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Among his many contributions to France’s commercial growth was that he "took the natural pearl market that had existed in London … and transported it to Paris…” Like Beatrice de Commodo, Rosenthal assumed that his status and fortune would save him. But it wasn’t going to. He figured it out soon enough and was able to escape to the United States. While she, with her children and ex-husband, was rounded up and murdered in a concentration camp, leaving a townhouse filled with priceless French 18th century antiques that her father had donated to his adopted country.

Figure 9. Léonard Rosenthal, aka ‘The King of Fine Pearls’

The passion for pearls died down but didn’t disappear. Pearls could always be spotted encircling the necks of dowagers and debutants. Lately though, pearls have started popping up in unexpected places. Specifically around the necks of young men. Harry Styles (from the boy band, One Direction) began wearing them in 2019. He started with a single pearl earring and now wears a strand of pearls around his neck no matter what else he is wearing. More recently, Timothée Chalamet began wearing pearl necklaces on the Red Carpet and elsewhere. (Figs 10, 11) What’s with boys and pearls? Androgyny. One commentator suggests that guys “wearing pearl necklaces is a trend that challenges gender norms and breaks stereotypes by allowing individuals to express themselves creatively and confidently.” Does this smack of ‘wokeness’ to you? Is a Trump administration ban on boys and pearls coming? Who knows but during Paris Fashion Week 2025, pearls were everywhere, especially at Chanel (Fig 12)

Figure 10. Harry Styles wearing pearls

Figure 11. Timothée Chalet wearing pearls

Figure 12. Pearls are everywhere at Chanel Paris Fashion Week Womenswear

“Dinner Pearls” Photographic Artwork by Ginevra Held

The exhibition at the Musée de Quai Branly takes as its focus gold as garment and gold as ornament rather than gold as I am more familiar with thinking about it - as gold leaf used for the backgrounds of the most expensive religious paintings. (Fig 13) The exhibition’s approach is chronological, geographical, exhaustive and frankly, exhausting. It was basically a history of the world from 5th century BCE until right now, I mean really right now. The history of gold is the history of the world. In this exhibition, gold is the thread that seamlessly weaves disparate places and people together over time.

Figure 13. Maésta, Duccio. Gold leaf as background to establish Holy space

There is a short video at the beginning of the exhibition in which a guy tells us about gold dust, tiny bits of which are in all of us. It was around before our solar system, before our sun. Before God created the earth and separated light from dark, before he made the sea creatures and animals and humans, before he took a day off!

I can only tell you a few of the things I learned, hopefully enough for you to get an idea of the importance of gold in the history of the world. Okay, here goes. As early as the 5th century BCE (Before Common Era) people were attracted by gold's unique appearance and malleability. They began transforming nuggets of gold into ornaments that could be sewn onto clothing, by beating the metal into bracteates. In the 3rd millennium BCE, Syrian goldsmiths created the first flattened braids of gold thread. In the 1st millennium BCE, gold-refining improved and it was possible to produce almost pure gold and then extremely fine gold thread that was incorporated into fabric through embroidery or weaving. In the 1st century CE (common era) the innovation was gold thread created by winding a gold strip around a textile core.

After gold thread was invented, weavers developed new techniques to make thread lighter, more malleable and less expensive. This led to the idea of replacing the strips of precious metal with strips of animal (leather or gut) or vegetable (paper) matter and coating it in gold. In 1946, thread made from polyester film called Lurex was created in the United States. This revolutionized the concept of metallic thread by making it widely available. And now as everyone knows - all that glitters is not gold.

What else - weavers and goldsmiths in the Near and Far East developed techniques to combine gold with textile fibers through weaving, embroidery and printing. In the process, cloth was transformed into fabulous fabrics and then glorious garments. Because of the organic nature and fragility of textiles, very few ancient ones survive. And when they have been found, they are in one of two places - either the tombs of royals and nobles or in church treasuries. Those from the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic World and China reached Europe during the Middle Ages as trade goods and diplomatic gifts.

I was happy to learn about all the ways in which gold has been used over the millennia. I suppose, as someone who called San Francisco home (and who sometimes still does), I have a particular interest in gold and the way it can change everything. San Francisco, for example, was a tiny settlement before the gold rush. The city’s population went from about 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by 1850. Mining for gold offered no certainty of success, but making clothes for miners did. That’s how Levi Strauss made his fortune.

Here’s something else I learned, in the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia), the idea of incorporating gold into fine garments was imported from Spain. Not intentionally but because of prejudice. The year was 1492, a year all Americans know as the year that ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue.’ Queen Isabella the Catholic of Spain was a busy women that year. In addition to paying for Columbus’ journey to find a more direct route to the East and inadvertently ‘discovering’ the Americas, she was hard at work expelling Jews and Muslims from Spain. Some exiles found refuge in Morocco.They brought their customs and lifestyles with them. Here’s one example, the wealthy women of Granada introduced the wealthy women of Morocco to their garments made from precious fabrics embellished with gold. Since gold embroiderers were among the exiles, the women of the Magreb soon had their own textiles embellished with gold.

There was a section on gold embellished Japanese kimonos and another on gold embellished saris from India. That section included a short video of a young woman putting on a sari. It’s a lot of work to get all that fabric around you without the help of buttons, laces, snaps or zippers. There was a section on China, in which we learn that gold-thread embroidery was a practice in imperial workshops as long ago as the Tang dynasty (618-907). Its real heyday began 700 years later with the Qing Dynasty which lasted from 1644 to 1912, That was the last imperial dynasty in China. For 13 centuries, wealthy Chinese women sought luxurious gold embellished silks decorated with a range of figurative and symbolic motifs, among them, dragons and birds.

In addition to a textile ‘industry’ that flourished in China for 1300 years (618-1912) the work of a contemporary Chinese dress designer, Guo Pei who was born during the Cultural Revolution, was on display. Haute couture and China don’t seem an easy match and yet there were sumptuous examples of Pei’s golden gowns throughout the exhibition as well as a video of her explaining how it was that she even imagined she could be a dress designer. (Figs 14 - 19)

Figure 14. China, Early 20th century Embroidered silk satin, cotton, gold and silver organic yarns, silk threads, mirrors, copper tassels.

Figure 15. Uchikake Kimono, Gifu Prefecture, Japan 18th century
Saie, sash, sash threads, silver paper threads (2), fabric patches, cotton, appliqués

Figure 16. Ceremonial caftans Fez, Morocco, 19th-20th centuries. Silk lampas with gold and silver metallic threads

Figure 17. Moorish woman from Algiers, François Hippolyte Lalaisse (1812-1884)
Wedding Dress, Oran Algeria, late 19th century, silk, flat gold metallic threads, lace

Figure 18. Emily Ruete (Sayyida Salme) (1844-1924), Princess of Zanzibar and Oman 1856-1880

Figure 19. Evening Gown by contemporary Chinese dress designer, Guo Pei. Dress: silk, silk and gold thread embroidery, hand-sewn sequins and Swarovski crystals, rhinestones, metal embellishments; headpiece: copper

I was happy to see a section on Maison Lesage, the French luxury workshop where skilled embroiderers have been transforming European dress designers’ dreams into reality for a century. I visited Maison Lesage last September during the Journées de Patrimoine. Here’s a bit about Lesage. In 1924, Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage bought one of the most important embroidery workshop in France which had been supplying embroidery to the greatest names of haute couture at the time. In the early 1930s, the Lesages began working with Elsa Schiaparelli, who worked exclusively with them until she closed up shop in 1954. Along one wall are swatches of fabrics Lesage embroidered for designers like Saint Laurent, Chanel, Dior, Balmain and Balenciaga. Along with the swatches are two haute couture outfits. There’s a jacket and skirt embroidered with gold by John Galliano for Christian Dior from 2004. And an evening dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel from 1996 which required 1200 hours of needlepoint embroidery and 90 hours in the sewing workshop. (Figs 20-22)

Figure 20. Swatches by Maison Lesage

Figure 21. John Galliano for Christian Dior, 2004. Jacket and skirt embroidered with gold (geometric mosaics of rhodoid plates, neckline composed of scarab wing motifs and vermicelli of tortoiseshell sequins)

Figure 22. Evening Gown. Karl Lagerfeld for Coco Chanel, 1996. Tulle and silk organza, embroidery composed of sequins, cannetilles and gold jaserons by Lesage (Lesage embroidery inspired by a Hindu religious object. Its creation required 1200 hours of needlework and 90 hours of sewing workshop)

I suppose what ‘bummed me out’ about both exhibitions was that so little emphasis was put on the dangers of pearl fishing and the antisemitism that destroyed the livelihoods and cost the lives of Jewish pearl merchants in Paris. And the diaspora caused by Queen Isabella the Catholic’s expulsion of all the Jews and Muslims of Spain. Or even how the American government conspired to keep Asian and Hispanic miners from getting rich in the California gold fields.

At least the exhibition at the Musée Picasso didn’t mince words. (Fig 23) The term "degenerate art" was coined by the Nazis in a public campaign to suppress and destroy modern art from the time Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 until the end of the WW II in 1945. It was to be replaced by "healthy" art in the image of the German race, that is the art that Hitler liked.

Figure 23. People waiting in line to get into exhibition on Degenerate Art, Germany 1937

The Victoria & Albert Museum holds the only document detailing the full extent of the Nazis' systematic purging of German museums and public collections. Created by the Ministry of Propaganda, the document records the confiscation of more than 16,000 works of art which the Nazis deemed ‘degenerate’. Most of what wasn’t sold or traded was destroyed in a bonfire held in the courtyard of the Berlin fire department, just as books considered incompatible with Nazi values had been burned four years earlier.

Book banning is nothing new in the United States. Florida and Texas lead the country in the number of books banned. Book burning hasn’t happened yet, but who knows. As for aesthetics and taste, Trump issued an executive order mandating that federal buildings adopt classical styles, especially Neoclassicism. Also, by the way, Hitler’s preferred style. Art exhibitions that had anything to do with diversity, equity and inclusion, have been canceled. So, I guess an exhibition on Degenerate Art which I’ll explore in detail next week is eerily appropriate for our time. Gros bisous, Dr. B

Thanks so much to those of you who commented upon last week’s post.

New comment from on It’s all in the details:

Is St Frances really holding a bird? To me it looks like he is holding a book -- with the a tear in his garment reveling the fifth wound of his stigmata - the spear wound in Christ's side, Gwen, Virginia

Dr. B: Gwen, you’re absolutely right. It is a tear in the garment St. Francis is wearing that reveals the ‘coup de lance,’ (from the lance of Longinus), the 5th wound of the stigmata. As we all know: the other four wounds are the ones on each hand and each foot.

Beverly, Your blog this week was splendid! It brought back memories of my high school art history teacher prancing around practically shouting :"Cimabue!” over and over as he taught us the importance of Cimabue and Giotto and made the Arena / Scrovegni (another word he adored) Chapel seem the place most worth seeing in the world! He also favored Hagia Sophia, but I don’t recall his dance to that one.) I loved that teacher and not since then have I been so involved in those places until your excellent review. Good work! Melinda, Paris & San Francisco

Ah, Dr. B, you have helped me discover the height of decadence! I was settling in to a lunch of (admittedly cheap) red wine, Bleu cheese and pretzels (I had no good bread available), when hubby came home with a loaf of olive bread from our local artisinal bakery! So I ditched the pretzels, hacked off a hunk of yummy bread, and settled in to check my email. And I discovered an installment from you, extolling the delights of an excellent boulangerie, and how good bread elevates life. So true!! Your latest entry elevated my already-decadent lunch! And I agree with you about the necessity of exploring art history chronologically; art is entwined with history. Although I am only blessed to have studied Art History 101 and 102, even I know it's laughable to expect to study Renaissance Art while excluding Christianity. Most of my ancient college texts are lost to moves and culling, but I've held on to my Janson's History of Art as a basic survey of beauty in our world. Your "I demand a refund" students remind me of my 11th grade (16 year old) American Literature students exclaiming, "You can't test us on this; it's social studies, not English!!" when I quizzed them on Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God" and other Puritan literature. Yes, I can, and I did! They may not have taken away much in the art of literary explication, but I hope my students came away understanding that art/literature/culture/history is all interwoven, just as WE are, as peoples of this earth and time. Thank you for sharing your expertise and broadening my understanding of it all! You are a treasure, enriching us all! Bonnie F.

New comment on Fouquet’s fateful fête:

Going in a few weeks, merci beaucoup for the detailed guidance !! Elena

New comment on How the day of reckoning finally arrives:

Intriguing. The women had gone over to the Other Side and then had to come back to This Side for the rest of their lives, hiding the fact that they had enjoyed their sojourn on the Other Side in the exciting times of their youth.

One of the big schisms in both France and the US -- then and now -- is between Heartland and Cosmopolitan and that plays out between wealthy Paris accents and rural (France Profond) accents. Notice with Trump that all foreigners, particularly economically successful ones, are taking unfair advantage of poor Heartland Americans. Heartlander Trump hates cosmopolitan Europe. Paul Myers

Terrific review. Very well done. Martin, London & Dorodgne