James Taffin, Playing with Colours

Back in 2003, Nan Kempner, the grand-dame of New York society commissioned James Taffin de Givenchy to design two colourful rings. The French jeweller proceeded to create boule rings in white opal, one with a blue sapphire and the other with a pink ruby. “The colours against the white of the opal was really striking,” he recalls.

A few months later, Kempner called him. “James, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I was at Valentino’s party and when the cake came in and I clapped, both rings chattered. The good news, everybody knows your name,” the French jeweller says with a laugh.

Taffin loves to experiment with materials and he’s had his fair share of “breakage” over the years. This may explain why the New York-based jeweller pioneered the use of hard wearing ceramics back in 2008, when he first created a collection for Sotheby’s Diamonds. Back then, the particular hard-wearing ceramic he favoured was primarily used in watchmaking and came in only three colours – black, white and pink.

While the jeweller first started using the material to coat the inside of gold rings, he has over the years and through trial and error refined the technique while also innovating with other colours.

“Today what you can do with ceramics is really limitless. It does (now) what a pavé surface would do 20 years ago, but it’s more modern, particularly when used with large stones,” he says. In some cases the jeweller uses ceramic as an elegant highlight to create a pop of colour that highlights a shape, in others the ceramic provides a dramatic foil to a large fine stone, reinforcing the stone’s colour.

After working at Christie’s and Verdura, the jewellery house of the legendary designer Fulco di Verdura, Taffin decided to open his by-appointment-only Salon Taffin Jewellery in 1996, focusing on one-of-a-kind jewellery pieces, often on a commission basis.

From the start, he wanted to experiment. “I had seen a lot of interesting creations at auction, and think that made a big difference in the way I approached jewellery. I always had an eye on history, but also wanted to make design more innovative and wearable.

While he’s become known for his ceramic creations, Taffin continues to experiment and innovate with various materials creating sculptural designs that highlight the individuality of the gemstones, inventively pairing them with rubber, steel, silk, wood and even pebbles.

“I like the beauty of imperfection; it’s that wabi-sabi Japanese concept. There is something beautiful about a brushed steel that seems to be not finished, contrasting with a perfect line of gold or a perfect cut stone. This is definitely what I’m interested in at the moment.”