The jewelry by Harumi Klossowska de Rola, daughter of Balthus, the result of her imaginative expeditions inside the nature.
Balthus (1908-2001), pseudonym of Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, was one of the most famous French painters of the twentieth century. Of Polish origin, Balthus had an adventurous life and at age of 60 he married his second wife, the Japanese Setsuko Ideta, 35 years younger than him. By the wedding, six years later, was born Harumi, grew up in the Villa Medici, the magnificent French Embassy in Rome, where Balthus for some time was director of the French Academy.
Harumi Klossowska de Rola has acquired the creative attitude of the father, but mostly she transported it in the jewelry world. Let me be clear: are jewels that express a close relationship with the art world. In addition to designed pieces of high jewelry for some of Maison Place Vendôme, Harumi has designed a number of pieces that seem to come from a collection of a science museum, with influences from animal skeletons, cataloged according kingdom, class, order , family, just like a naturalist. On the other hand, is what you should expect from a woman who was photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, she took tea with Federico Fellini and noted David Bowie interviewing his father, as she said to New York Times. His collection was also exhibited in Paris at the Ecole des Arts Joailliers. The jewels, hand drawn in the great paternal wood cottage where he lived for long periods, are made of wood and gold, the delicate balance between Japan and Switzerland. If all the jewels have an imprint of their creator, those retain a double or maybe even triple and quadruple: the different lives that she has so far lived all together.
During 2022 Klossowska de Rola entered into a collaboration with the Parisian Maison Goossens. The result is a capsule collection of jewels with a sculptural flavor, which once again have animals, a butterfly, as their subject (the designer lives in Switzerland in a large wooden house together with a wolf and an African wild cat). The jewels are in gold-plated brass.
