L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, in partnership with France's Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN), presents a retrospective dedicated to the collection of the great twentieth-century French writer Roger Caillois (1913-1978).
Driven by his insatiable curiosity, scientific precision and boundless imagination, this master of the French language collected stones with passion and erudition for over twenty-five years. Today this invaluable collection, the lion’s share of which is housed at France's Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, in large part thanks to the support of L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, counts more than one thousand specimens.
Roger Caillois’s passion for minerals resulted in writings of an exceptionally poetic nature. From 1959 onwards, he published essays inspired by his collection of “picture stones” including The Writing of Stones, his most renowned work, which was first printed in 1970. He was elected to the Académie Française the following year.
The exhibition “Stones and Reveries: The Poetry and Minerals of Roger Caillois” delves into the writer’s intimate ties to the mineral world. It includes iconic texts penned by Roger Caillois and nearly two hundred minerals from his collection, now part of the France's Muséum national d'histoire naturelle's collections.
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This exceptional dialogue between science and poetry is the work of Pr. François Farges, PhD, curator of the exhibition and scientist in charge of the MNHN’s collections of gems and objets d’art.
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