my kids the pyramids and behind those pyramids, you have a quest for
beauty, you have a quest for eternity, but at the same time, you have very
sophisticated engineering knowledge, just as you would fi nd in a Bvlgari
high jewellery necklace. This is the kind of beauty that appeals to several
senses and so we didn’t want to do a jewellery exhibition; we wanted to
provide, for the fi rst time ever, the artistic context of our main jewellery
symbol, the Serpenti, through the ages.”
Subsequent SerpentiForm exhibitions have been held in Singapore and
Tokyo, but when it came time for this year’s event, the maison shifted its
focus to China and the context it could bring to the project. “We realised
that this topic of the snake could be extremely meaningful in China
because of the cultural relevance of the snake, and so we started to
expand and deepen our research,” explains Lucia Boscaini, Bvlgari’s
brand and heritage curator.
And in the search for a local partner that could source the Chinese
artwork and provide a suitable venue, Chengdu Museum emerged as the
most logical choice. Not only is it located in one of China’s ancient
capitals, a noted centre of art and heritage, but the museum itself shares
qualities of the snake, having shed its dated 1980s-era form to reopen as
a striking, modern building in 2016.
“Chengdu Museum has a permanent collection that’s really amazing
and has a lot of snakes coming from really interesting artworks of the
past,” Boscaini says. “We met them several times and of course they
knew us as a commercial brand, so it took a while to get to know each
other and understand the real potential of the message. We worked
together for several months, identifying unique items from both sides,
and this is defi nitely the most sophisticated exhibition we’ve had so far.”
Having sampled some of the city’s artfully presented fare – Chengdu
is famous for its teahouse culture and appreciation of leisurely pursuits- and spent an afternoon watching giant pandas sleep, roll over and
occasionally saunter in search of bamboo, we arrive at Chengdu
Museum to be greeted by an army of security guards and by waiters
bearing trays of champagne.
It’s nearly time for the grand opening ceremony and in true Bvlgari
form, we’re graced by the appearance of singer-actor (and former boy
band member who still makes young fans scream and swoon) Kris Wu as
well as Hollywood icon Uma Thurman. But once all the excitement has
died down, attention shifts back to the exhibition and the treasures to be
found past the neon-lit SerpentiForm entrance.
First are the Chinese and Italian antiquities, ranging from a
representation of the mythical Xuan Wu (an entwined turtle and snake) to
a statue of a young Hercules grappling with two snakes and underlining
the fact that the snake has carried cultural and religious meaning for
“We wanted to provide the artistic
context of our main jewellery symbol
through the ages” — Jean-Christophe Babin
Above: Root Of All Life —
Jade (2017) by Kang Chunhui
Left: A pottery fi gurine from
the Cheng Han kingdom
(304 — 347AD)PHOTOS: CHENGDU MUSEUM (POTTERY FIGURINE); COURTESY OF TIANCHEN TIMES (ROOT OF ALL LIFE – JADE); MUSEI CAPITOLINI, PALAZZO NUOVO(STATUE OF YOUNG HERCULES); PRIVATE COLLECTION (SERPENTI BRACELET-WATCH); BVLGARI HERITAGE COLLECTION (MELONE EVENING BAG)IN SIGHT
154 PRESTIGE J U LY 2019