Maison Gripoix

The Art of Poured Glass

In 1869 the Parisian glassworker Augustine Gripoix revived an ancient and demanding technique, pâte de verre, in which molten glass and enamel are poured into a gilded metal frame built around each gem rather than fired from ground paste. The result is a jewel of extraordinary depth and color, every petal and cabochon slightly irregular, holding the light like a stained glass window. It was slow, costly, and entirely by hand, and it could not be mass-produced.

Her first fame came from the stage. In the 1890s she made jewels for the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, then for the world's first couturier, Charles Frederick Worth, and later for Paul Poiret. When high-society clients began commissioning pieces to wear with their Ballets Russes finery, the very idea of costume jewelry as something with creative value, distinct from mere imitation, was taking shape, and Gripoix was at the center of it.

The Hand Behind the Houses

Gripoix is, strictly speaking, an atelier rather than a label, which is why its work is so hard to find under its own name. For most of its history it created jewelry for other designers, and those pieces went out signed Chanel, Dior, or Yves Saint Laurent, not Gripoix. The relationship that defined the maison began in the 1920s, when Gabrielle Chanel met Suzanne Gripoix, Augustine's daughter, and asked her to make jewels for the house. Chanel's love of Byzantine crosses, jewel-toned cabochons, and baroque pearls was realized in Gripoix glass, and Suzanne even devised a special irregular faux pearl, enameled with mother-of-pearl, to give Chanel its signature soft sheen.

From there the workshop became the secret atelier of Paris couture. Across the decades, under Suzanne and then her daughter Josette, Gripoix supplied poured-glass jewelry to Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Lanvin, Nina Ricci, Christian Lacroix, Louis Vuitton, and Yves Saint Laurent, among many others. The bold runway jewels of those houses, the brooches and long necklaces and dramatic earrings, owe their color and craft to this one small workshop.

Because so much of its output was unsigned or carries another house's name, identifying true Gripoix work is a connoisseur's pursuit. The telltale signs are in the glass itself, poured directly into its setting, faintly irregular, and unmistakably alive in a way machine-made stones never are. A limited number of pieces were made and marked under the maison's own name, Gripoix Paris, and these are prized in their own right.

The Atelier Today

The family line ran from Augustine to Suzanne to Josette, and after a period of changing ownership in the 2000s the maison continues as Gripoix Paris, where a small team of artisans still produces every piece by the same painstaking, century-old method near the original workshop. Couture houses have returned to it again and again, a reminder that the technique Augustine revived has never been bettered.

Maison Gripoix at MDVII

At MDVII we seek out poured-glass jewelry in the Gripoix tradition, the pieces whose color and handwork set them apart from anything machine-made, whether marked Gripoix or carrying the name of the house it was made for. The Maison Gripoix pieces available now are gathered below.