Assume Liverpool, and both the Beatles or English soccer champions sometimes spring to thoughts. However an area museum based a century in the past by a rich industrialist now could be sharing one other slice of the world’s historical past: its ties to the jeweler Boodles.
The exhibition “Pure Brilliance — The Boodles Story” is scheduled to run by March 5 on the Girl Lever Artwork Gallery, a museum named for Elizabeth Ellen Hulme. (The Lever Brothers firm co-founded by her husband, William Hesketh Lever, is now the multinational shopper items firm Unilever, which makes every thing from Dove cleaning soap to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.)
Fiona Slattery Clark, the museum’s curator of ornamental artwork, talked concerning the jewels within the present, the gallery’s a hundredth anniversary and the significance of the Levers and of Boodles to the Liverpool space. Her feedback, made by phone and in e-mail, have been edited and condensed.
What can guests see within the exhibition?
Boodles is taken into account Liverpool’s oldest jeweler, run technology after technology by members of the identical household. Our exhibition showcases the corporate’s 225-year story, demonstrating how town helped form the corporate’s development. This is a chance to see the story behind the jewellery, from the sourcing of valuable stones and metals by to the design and the manufacture of the items. The exhibition options 76 objects — 63 of that are jewellery — in addition to jewelry-making instruments and fashions of diamonds.
What are the highlights?
They embody the Greenfire emerald necklace, made in 2014. It was the topic of a tv documentary known as “The Million Pound Necklace” and was worn by Dame Helen Mirren within the 2021 movie “Quick and Livid 9.” The emeralds had been sourced from the Muzo mines in Colombia and the design was impressed by the natural shapes of entwined foliage. We now have it on mortgage from the proprietor’s personal assortment.
And in 2020, {a photograph} album was rediscovered from a 1962 world tour by Boodles’ then-chairman Anthony Wainwright. This impressed the jeweler to create collections of rings devoted to journey. The three journey rings on show listed below are named after Rome, Florence and Vienna. The Rome ring, made in 2022, has a pear-shaped ruby set in 18-karat single mine origin yellow gold and white enamel.
Was something made particularly for this exhibition?
The Girl Lever bracelet was made to commemorate the centenary of the gallery. The colourful colours of the gallery’s Pre-Raphaelite work influenced the selection of gems: aquamarines, kunzites, yellow beryl, pink morganite and inexperienced beryl. The ornamental motifs between the gems take inspiration from the gallery’s structure, particularly the element on its glass dome.
Why was Liverpool seen as an excellent place for a jeweler like Boodles to arrange store?
By the top of the nineteenth century, Liverpool had been remodeled from a small port right into a affluent industrial metropolis, one of many richest on this planet. Within the 18th century, income from the commerce in enslaved African folks had fueled town’s development. Later, the Industrial Revolution and rising abroad commerce sped up town’s transformation.
Between 1890 and 1914, greater than 20 jewellery companies occupied Liverpool’s major buying streets. Their prospects had been town’s prosperous and well-educated center class. Gross sales of diamond and pearl necklaces and different costly jewellery, at costs that then ranged from 1,000 to 10,000 kilos, weren’t uncommon. Jewellery companies from different elements of the nation had been drawn to Liverpool.
Whereas Boodles’ flagship retailer is in London’s New Bond Avenue, its headquarters and design studio stay in Liverpool. Boodles’ jewellery is designed in Liverpool and made at workshops in London.
