1. Monday, June 24, 11:00 AM | Room Rhône 1, Lyon Convention Center, in English
Marie-Laure CASSIUS-DURANTON, Léonard POUY “The Evolution of Color as a Diamond Valuation Criterion from the Enlightenment to the Present-Day”
Today fancy color diamonds are the most desirable gems. Based on descriptions of colored diamonds in auction catalogs since the 18th century, we will trace the evolution of the criteria and vocabulary used on the market to qualify the material of diamonds, in particular their color. The aim will be to show the extent to which merchants appropriated scientific language to qualify the material, and how this language was interpreted, manipulated and used for the benefit of the market from the 18th century to the present day, between the history of science, trade and taste.
2. Wednesday, June 26, 09:00 AM | Room Rhône 3A, Lyon Convention Center, in English
Léonard POUY “Deference and Repetition. The art of molded enamel miniature portraiture under Louis the XIVth”
At a time when substance and multiplicity are opposed by philosophers, where the diamond starts to be more and more rationally faceted and where every portrait of “His Most Christian Majesty” feels sacred, the technique of molded enamel questions through its advent the status of the royal figure “in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction”, a domain previously reserved for prints and the non-precious. This communication shall evaluate to what extent this new type of portrait, as major technical innovation inaugurating pre-industrial jewelry and image of an image shaped as a classicist simulacrum, can be perceived as the symbolic form of a state and a monarch forced to redefine and represent themselves.
