Jeanne Boivin (1871-1959), born Jeanne Poiret, was the wife of the jeweller René Boivin and, after his death in 1917, the director of Maison René Boivin in Paris for the four decades during which the house produced its most celebrated work. She was the elder sister of the couturier Paul Poiret and brought a fashion sensibility and strict design discipline to the house that, combined with her gathering of an exceptionally talented all-female design team, made Maison René Boivin one of the most distinctive and influential haute joaillerie operations of the twentieth century.

Early Life

Jeanne Poiret was born in Paris in 1871 to the family that would also produce her brother Paul Poiret, the couturier whose Belle Epoque and Orientalist designs revolutionised early twentieth-century fashion. She married the jeweller René Boivin in 1893 and worked alongside him in the development of his Paris business until his sudden death in 1917, when she assumed direction of the house at the age of forty-six.

Direction of Maison René Boivin

Jeanne Boivin directed Maison René Boivin from 1917 until 1954, a period of nearly four decades. She made several decisions that defined the character of the house. She kept the house intentionally small and deliberately unbranded, with no signed pieces and no public showcase, building the clientele through introduction rather than retail. She gathered a design team of exceptionally talented women jewellers, including Suzanne Belperron from 1924, Juliette Moutard from 1933, and René Boivin's daughter Germaine Boivin who joined the firm. The combined Boivin design team produced some of the most ambitious and sculptural haute joaillerie of the interwar period, including the celebrated Boivin starfish brooches, the chimera bracelets and the lions and unicorns that became signature subjects of the house.

Style under her Direction

The Boivin style under Jeanne Boivin's direction was characterised by sculptural three-dimensional form, dense pavé in coloured stones rather than diamonds, and the use of unusual subjects from animal and naturalistic sources. The starfish brooch, executed in coral, ruby and amethyst with a curved pavé surface, became one of the most recognisable jewels of the 1930s and is held in major museum collections. The chimera and unicorn brooches, the marine creatures, and the dense floral spray brooches all derive from this period.

Suzanne Belperron

Jeanne Boivin's most consequential hire was Suzanne Belperron, who joined the house in 1924 and remained for nearly a decade before opening her own studio. Belperron's bold sculptural style was developed at Boivin under Jeanne's direction and went on to become one of the most influential individual idioms in twentieth-century French haute joaillerie.

Legacy

Jeanne Boivin retired from the direction of the house in 1954, transferring control to her daughter Germaine and to Juliette Moutard. She died in 1959 at the age of eighty-eight. Maison René Boivin continued in operation until 1991 in various forms, but the period of her direction is universally regarded as the house's most important. Boivin pieces from her direction are held in the permanent collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and major private collections, and they appear at Christie's and Sotheby's auctions with strong results consistent with the established standing of the house.