Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"Ah, the other party mentioned this. The customer said that the reward this time was a French brand Lacloche Frères, which was said to be comparable to Cartier back then." Joan of Arc said while looking at the email.

"Ah, this is not a legend, my dear Jeanne." After hearing Joanne mention this brand, Liang En immediately reacted. “This was indeed a very important jewelry brand back then.”

Lacloche is a jewelry brand established by the Lacloche family in Paris in 1892. It became famous for its stunning exhibits at the 1925 International Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts Fair.

At that time, its reputation was as good as that of now famous brands such as Cartier and Bvlgari. Because of its avant-garde and luxurious design, it is very popular among the upper class.

This brand has played an extraordinary role in the history of European jewelry. It has redefined "luxury" and truly promoted it into a daily lifestyle.

How to do it is also very simple. Those designers combined jewelry with all ordinary items that can be seen and touched to create a rebellious, pioneering, and flamboyant fashion attitude.

In this style, precious gems are no longer just buried in the safes of nobles and rich people, but appear in daily life in an inadvertent way, making the wearers of these gems shine with their own brilliance.

Or to put it more fashionably, this brand gives rich people a way to show off their wealth in all aspects, allowing them to show off their wealth at all times and carry out luxury to the end.

To give the simplest example, their family was first famous for making jewelry boxes. For example, jewelry boxes inlaid with gold and gemstones and decorated with oriental paintings were very popular in the upper class at that time and were a sought-after luxury item.

Later, they also made lipstick and powder boxes, very luxurious ones, hand-inlaid with various gemstones. Compared with this thing, most of the holiday special edition cosmetics now can be called rubbish.

And at that time, the Lacloche store was next door to Guerlain, so those ladies who bought the boxes could go next door to buy lipstick and powder, and then put them in the boxes. It was a very good way to integrate jewelry into life.

In addition to this, this brand also features watches designed as jade necklaces. Because it was a very rude thing for women to use watches at that time, watches only belonged to men.

So Lacloche set an ultra-small watch on the back of the jade necklace, so that women can quietly tell the time while owning a piece of jewelry as an ornament, taking into account elegance and needs.

It can be said that unlike Cartier and Van Cleef \u0026 Arpels, Lacloche wants to create a truly luxurious lifestyle for its guests.

Cufflinks inlaid with diamonds, hat pins delicately carved from rubies and sapphires, even sewing boxes and candy boxes made of gold, walking sticks inlaid with gems, hairpins lined with diamonds, and are also customized for customers in hot climates. A luxurious parasol with a gold handle inlaid with colorful treasures.

This kind of jewelry customization service that you can only imagine and cannot do without Lacloche quickly set off a Lacloche trend in Paris.

More importantly, Lacloche has shown a more international style in design. In jewelry design, Lacloche has used more oriental art styles, created many Buddha-shaped brooches and jewelry, and used a large number of jadeite in its jewelry design. Jewelry decoration designs come in.

Even from today's perspective, the designs of those jewelry are not outdated at all, which was obviously impossible for other brands from the early 20th century to the 1930s.

At the same time, the oriental look jewelry series they released perfectly reproduces Egyptian murals and Chinese landscape paintings with diamonds and colored gemstones inlaid, giving these gorgeous jewelry a bit of ancient and mysterious historical and cultural flavor.

Under such circumstances, a business empire spanning Europe and America was built in just a few decades, but it declined just as quickly, so that now Lacloche's beautiful works can only be appreciated in auction houses and museums.

This decline is related to bad luck. In 1920, the train on which Jacques was riding accidentally derailed and he died unfortunately. The Lacloche brothers had no choice but to close the Spanish business that Jacques was mainly engaged in and turned to development in France.

After his brother Fernand, who had a close relationship with Jacques and started a business in Spain together, moved back to France, although he protected and trained Jacques' son Jacques Jr. well, he became addicted to gambling and owed a lot of money to the family.

With the help of his uncle, little Jacques continued to run the family business in place of his father, but little Jacques was far less interested in the jewelry business than in the decorative arts and gallery business.

In the subsequent World War II, the Jewish identity of this family dealt the heaviest blow to Lacloche's business empire. For example, the descendants of the Gomper family, a powerful shareholder, basically died in Auschwitz.

In 1944, the entire Gomper family disappeared, and the Lacloche family did not fare much better. The persecution of Jews during the war forced the Jewish family to continuously reduce and sell off their business.

The worst thing is that by the time the war ended, the era of kings and queens had passed. The emergence of a large number of investors with new wealth in the jewelry industry made competition fierce.

This situation made young Jacques, who had become the backbone of the Lacloche family's business, no longer interested in the jewelry business and turned to the contemporary art industry, which also announced the disappearance of the entire brand.

This time, it was the Lacloche family who asked Liang En to design jewelry. They now hope to revive the brand, so they invited Liang En to design it for themselves.

Of course, the price they paid for this matter was definitely not a small figure. The so-called giving the brand to Liang En was not a simple joke. According to the email, they were willing to pay half of the shares and the position of chief design consultant. Title as reward.

Many people know that there is an important title in a jewelry company called chief designer. But considering that Liang En was not a professional jewelry designer, the other party even specially designed a title equal to that of chief designer.

I have to say that the other party is indeed very sincere, so Liang En is still very interested in their invitation, because he is temporarily staying in the farm where the palace was previously excavated and cannot go anywhere, so he can coordinate this matter.

"My boss, we can basically determine the situation over there now." It only took a few hours for Elizabeth Bathory to figure out what was going on and report it to Liang En.

"The family you asked me to inquire about really plans to show off its skills in the jewelry industry again, so it started large-scale preparations half a year ago, but they really can't find a master jewelry designer willing to serve them."

"I can't find it. How is this possible?" Liang En asked in surprise, "The top jewelry in their history is of the same level. How is it possible that no one can find it?"

"But the problem is that they have been away from this industry for too long, and almost all their jewelry connections have disappeared." Elizabeth said helplessly.

"So after being busy for the past six months, they have indeed found many craftsmen and designers, and have also prepared storefronts in Paris, London, Berlin, Rome and Madrid, but they still have no core designers."