The Pat Saling Jewel Collection includes one-of-a-kind pieces from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Retro and Mid-Century eras. The firm specializes in daring and original designs from the past, and is devoted to timeless artistry and beauty in all of its acquisitions. Pat began her career overseeing sales of storied pieces and working with celebrity clients at the famed Fred Leighton, opening The Pat Saling Jewel Collection in 2002. While Pat’s knowledge of all period jewelry is extensive, anyone who knows Pat recognizes that she is completely enamored with designer Suzanne Belperron, one of the most influential jewelry designers of the 20th Century. We had the opportunity to sit down with Pat and gain more insight into her singular passion and we must admit, the more we discover about this brilliant designer, the more we fall even deeper in love with her work….and we thought that wasn’t possible!
USAS: Let’s talk about one of your favorite designers, someone you have been enamored with for over 35 years, Suzanne Belperron. Can you give us a sort of “broad strokes” explanation of why you admire her so much as both a designer and a person?
Pat Saling: Suzanne Belperron was so independent at a time when it was not the norm for women to be independent, especially in a male dominated business. She worked for Renee Boivin for a time, and after he died in 1917, she and Boivin’s widow, Jean, continued running the business; a lot of people don’t realize that women were running that company since it continued to retain his name. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Besançon, and while she did win an award early on in the 20’s for design, and while there were women in the field, they were always in a support position. Women, even in terms of sales people, were the “models” or the “assistants,” they were not touted as sales people, they had a shadow place in the industry, which was true of most industries in those days.
And in fact, most designers, if they worked for a firm, did not get credited for their work, the firm took that credit. Belperron was very young when she worked for Boivin, she graduated when she was very young, and she was a kid when she started designing. Her youth had an influence on her, but it didn’t mold her; she had that independent spirit inside of her from the get go. Without that independent spirit, she wouldn’t have left Rene Boivin at such a young age, especially in the 1930’s when America was in the throws of a depression that was creeping around the world. Her vision was unique and her path was unique.
I’ve always said that I have never thought of her as a jewelry designers but rather, as a jewelry sculptor. Her vision was about shape and color and not paying attention to what the rest of the world was doing. Her designs, especially from the 30’s, were so different than what was being made at the time, and she had this focus that I find amazing for a woman of her age in that time period. As an example, she designed her Coquillage, that rounded shell shape, when everyone else was making pieces that were so geometric.
USAS: When did she leave the Rnee Boivin firm? What did she do next?
Pat Saling: Suzanne Belperron left Boivin in 1932 and she went on to form a partnership with Bernard Hertz, who was a pearl and stone dealer she met when she was working with Boivin. It was at his urging that they formed a partnership where she had great administrative and design control, producing pieces under “Hertz Belperron.” In 1940, when the Germans came into Paris, both Belperron and Hertz were scooped up by the Gestapo. She was able to prove that she wasn’t Jewish and was released, and she was able to get one of her high-power friends to get him released. After this experience, they decided to transfer the firm to her so that she could protect it and it wouldn’t be confiscated by the Germans, which was what was happening to all of the Jewish-owned businesses at the time.
In 1942, Hertz was again taken by the Gstapo, this time to a camp in France and eventually Auschwitz, where he perished the following year. Suzanne kept the firm going throughout the war and then after, Hertz’s son, John, who had been a POW for 5 years returned. She was ready to give the company back to him, she had been basically caretaking the business throughout the war and she was such an ethical person that she wanted to give it back to him, but he refused her offer and instead wanted to be partners in the business.
There’s a story I’ve heard a number of times, I’m not sure if it’s true or not, that when Suzanne was on her way to the Gestapo, she literally swallowed her client list, which had the names and addresses of all of her clients, so the Gestapo couldn’t get to them. I don’t know if it was all of her clients or just her Jewish clients but when I hear that story I think, “You go girl!” She had such an amazing sense of honor and self, which is further demonstrated by the fact that she didn’t sign her work. She said, “My style is my signature,” and didn’t’ believe she needed to sign her work since it wasn’t about her ego. She loved her work and thought it spoke for itself.
USAS: So she continued to design throughout WWII?
Pat Saling: Yes, she actually designed throughout WWII which always amazes me. There were people with money during the war, there was some sort of life that went on during the war. We think of people hiding and in shelters and on battlefield but there was still jewelry being purchased. I’m not sure who those customers were, German? French?
It was different in that you couldn’t buy gold during the war, so if you wanted something made they had to actually give you the gold. A lot of the things Belperron made during that time period were made in semi-precious materials like lapis, jade or coral, as opposed to really precious material that was coming from different parts of the world, such as sapphire, rubies and emeralds, since those were not being freely traded at that point. If there was something very precious done, the client probably would have turned in pieces they weren’t wearing and they may have supplied the stones. My ruby Belperron ring, for example, I know had to be a client’s ruby, she wouldn’t have put that gemstone in a ring, she didn’t use gem quality stones, that wasn’t her thing. Whenever I see a stone that’s really really fine in a piece of her jewelry, I know the stone was provided by the client. I think if you’re the designers, you’re going to be looking to get the absolute best quality, but her thing was always color, if it was the right color that’s what she was going for. She’d combine emeralds, demantoid garnets, tourmaline and peridot to get that subtle shading that she was so famous for and of which she was so fond.
USAS: Speaking of some of the attributes of her pieces, given that she didn’t sign her work, how do you know when you’re looking at a genuine Suzanne Belperron piece?
Pat Saling: Her work has a lot of distinguishing features, you almost get a feeling from it; there’s a certain weight to it, there’s a certain finish to it. There are very subtle things she would do to her jewelry, like her brooches. If you put five different brooches by five different designers on a table, four of them will have a flat plane on the back, while hers are curved, it’s a subtle undulation. If you’re attuned to it, you’ll see how things aren’t always squared off. If there’s a ring of stones around another stone, most of the time other designers would be very precise and have it go around the design with equal spacing, but hers will generally be off on one side to the other, because if it’s a ring, she would know when it gets to a certain part of the finger it needs to be less substantial on that area of the finger.
She made a very specific earring back, which is tricky nowadays because backs have been swapped out. If a man designs an earring he’ll make the back so tight that your eyes will bulge out, whereas she designed an earring back that was a different kind of shape but held on to the earlobe much more securely and was much more comfortable.
And of course, her mélange of colors are distinguishing features. Most other jewelers jump through hoops to make sure everything is exactly the same color, but not her, her thing was using different shades of orange and yellow, that’s always a tip off. These are things that you don’t see right away, but if you’re really looking and studying her things these are the kinds of things you’ll pick up on. There are a few other identifying characteristic that I won’t tell you!
USAS: Can you tell us anything about her personal life?
Pat Saling: She was a very private person and she did not talk about herself or promote herself apart from letting her jewelry to speak for itself, she wanted her jewelry to be her spokesperson. She was very beautiful, even later in life; in her 60s and 70’s people always remarked on what a beautiful woman she was. She was married, I think he was an engineer, and she traveled a great deal. A lot of her inspiration came from her travels, a lot of her jewelry had an African or Egyptian influence because she traveled to all of these places and saw their art and was inspired by it.
I have found over these 35 years that I’ve been enamored of her very little personal information about her. I don’t know if her husband traveled with her or she traveled on her own. I like to think she had a fabulous love life! I think she had an ethic about herself that it wasn’t anybody’s business what her life was like and she lived accordingly. She had a great social life and had a lot of good friends and a client roster that was tremendously interesting and vital for those years. The Duchess of Windsor, Chaperelie, Coco Chanel, all the great movie actresses of the time, the singers, and just plain old rich people; her archives list a lot of clients she made specific pieces of jewelry for.
Her jewelry was so different and in those years, the social set was so separate from the masses that if the Duchess was wearing something that Belperron made and she was out to lunch with the other ladies who lunch, people of that ilk would become clients as well. She was a jewelers to the stars of that period.
