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History

Nourbel & Le Cavelier, a luxury jeweller situated in London’s Burlington Arcade specialises in incorporating colourful micro-mosaic remnants from the late 19th to mid 20th century Italy into contemporary jewellery designs, including necklaces and asymmetrical earrings. It also creates sophisticated, entirely hand-made diamond and precious gem jewellery designs in innovative settings and mounts, which are mostly one of a kind.

Nourbel & Le Cavelier opened its first store in 2011 in London.

Founders

Nourbel & Le Cavelier is a joint venture between two second-generation family jewellery creation Houses – high end jewellery designers and manufacturers Nourbel in Geneva, and jewellery designer and boutique owner Nada Le Cavelier in Beirut. Both families can trace their ancestry back over a century ago to the same Lebanese village.

The founders of Nourbel & Le Cavelier are Valerie Le Cavelier, a GIA gemologist and jewellery designer, and Georges Karam, a CFA Charterholder and former financial analyst.

Maitre-Joaillier hallmark

All jewellery from Nourbel & Le Cavelier bears a special Maitre-Joaillier hallmark. The honour of being called a Master Jeweller is awarded by the Swiss jewellery industry to jewellers who have pioneered innovative techniques. An example is the Nourbel diamond bracelet with a flexibility that enables it to twist and turn repeatedly like a rope.

Nourbel & Le Cavelier sources important gems from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including rare Zambian emeralds or Paraïba Tourmalines.

Micro-mosaics Antique Jewellery

The original micro-mosaics used in the Nourbel & Le Cavelier jewellery designs for the Nada Roma collection were made in Venice, Florence and Rome for tourists visiting Italy in the late 1800s to mid 1900s. They are made from tiny pieces of glass paste, some the size of a pin’s head, intricately assembled to form miniature bouquets, birds, frescoes and monuments.

History of Antique micro-mosaïc Jewellery

In the early 18th century, a Roman glass kin owner named Alessio Mattioli experimented on coloured glass paste and developed a high percentage of colouring agents. He made what were called “Smalti Filati”. Depending on the shade of the colour to be obtained, little parts of his master tints were mixed together and then melted over an open flame. The molten mass was then “spun” or drawn with tweezers into threads of the desired thickness. The “smalti filati” technique made it possible for artisans to fashion pieces on very small scale, and eventually even to produce actual “miniature mosaïcs”, with glass tiles called “ tesserae”, which were less than 1mm thick and which gained widespread popularity in the first half of 18th Century.

There are several types of Italian mosaïcs: Venetian, Roman and Florentine.


 * In Venetian designs, the craftsmen used a wide variety of shapes in the glass tiles to form the design.
 * In Roman designs, tiny pieces of colored glass, called tesserae, were assembled to form a picture, and were held in place with cement in a glass or stone background.
 * In Florentine designs, pietra dura (literally, “hard stone”) mosaics were cut, shaped and fitted together, somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle to produce a picture. These normally used a bed of black marble as the foundation so they have a black background. Florentine designs normally used larger tiles.

Composition and Various Types of micro-mosaïc Vintage Jewellery

Micro-mosaïcs vintage jewellery is an art form. The older the piece, the smaller and more intricate the mosaïc pieces are. As the industrial Age dawned and intensive hand labor became much more expensive, the pieces with larger tiles became more common. The later pieces with larger tesserae should rightfully be called Mosaïcs, since the term Micro refers to the very early examples with miniature tiles. These later pieces have their own beauty in the high contrasting bright colors that were used. All types have been referred to as micro-mosaïc Vintage jewellery by jewellery shops.

External links

Official website: www.nourbel-lecavelier.com Burlington Arcade: www.burlington-arcade.co.uk