Assume Liverpool, and both the Beatles or English soccer champions usually spring to thoughts. However an area museum based a century in the past by a rich industrialist now’s 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 via March 5 on the Woman 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 in regards to the jewels within the present, the gallery’s a centesimal 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 era after era 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 via 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 embrace the Greenfire emerald necklace, made in 2014. It was the topic of a tv documentary referred to 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’ve got 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 here 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 Woman 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 gem stones: aquamarines, kunzites, yellow beryl, pink morganite and inexperienced beryl. The ornamental motifs between the gem stones take inspiration from the gallery’s structure, particularly the element on its glass dome.

Why was Liverpool seen as 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 business metropolis, one of many richest on this planet. Within the 18th century, earnings from the commerce in enslaved African individuals 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 principal procuring streets. Their clients 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 components of the nation had been interested in 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.