Event · Midtown West
Boucheron at Christie's New York: "In Focus" Brought 80 Jewels to Rockefeller Plaza
Boucheron's "In Focus: A Monograph of a Visionary" ran October 9–18 at Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Plaza. About 80 jewels were grouped by architecture, nature, couture and innovation, pairing archive pieces with Claire Choisne's recent work, all shown on mannequins rather than in vitrines.
By NBT Editors · 2026-10-16
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Boucheron, the Paris jeweler founded in 1858, took over Christie's New York at 20 Rockefeller Plaza from October 9 to 18 for "Boucheron: In Focus — A Monograph of a Visionary." The show has closed. It gathered roughly 80 creations from nearly 170 years of high jewelry.
The maison chose not to organize it by date. CEO Hélène Poulit-Duquesne said it was conceived as a monograph, a deep look at one subject, rather than a retrospective that simply logs dates. Pieces were grouped under four pillars set down by founder Frédéric Boucheron: architecture, nature, couture and innovation. Jewels made generations apart sat side by side, with archival video projections linking them.
In the architecture section, the house's 1893 move to 26 Place Vendôme set the theme. A 1925 white gold, platinum and diamond brooch from the company's private collection was shown beside creative director Claire Choisne's 2021 Lavallière necklace in onyx and black lacquer. The Question Mark necklace appeared too, along with works from the Histoire de Style and Carte Blanche collections and the Eternal Flowers, which set stabilized real petals onto titanium. The second half turned to Choisne's 2026 Carte Blanche collection, Human Being, shown in dialogue with the older work.
Two jewels carried American ties. Lady Harcourt's 1924 foliage tiara was commissioned by an American-born member of the Morgan banking family; Boucheron bought it back at auction this year. An 1888 necklace that belonged to Mrs. Mackay came on loan from a private collector. The house points out that American names were in its order books by 1865, that Louis Boucheron opened a New York office in 1903, and that its first contemporary U.S. boutique opened on Madison Avenue in 2024.
The display itself broke with auction-house habit. Instead of glass vitrines, the jewels sat on bespoke black mannequins, so visitors could look at them up close. A discreet card with a digital barcode on each mannequin opened archival videos, technical breakdowns and the provenance of the piece. Poulit-Duquesne said a jewel only fully comes to life on a body.
(Details are drawn from points that agree across reports by Galerie Magazine, Luxe Digital.)
