eople should think of these matters before they trust themselves on a pleasure-party into the realm of Nowhere.* Step into Sarah Mugnier’s world and immediately Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words spring to mind. She is exactly the kind of character the American writer could have imagined, transported into the twenty-first century to bring a welcome touch of unreality. This young 42-year-old is wilfully extravagant, down to her suit whose emerald-green hue mirrors that of a favourite precious stone.

Maison Belmont, the brand she launched in December 2022, could be nothing more than a charming utopia, except its founder has the good grace to ground her quirkiness in practical common sense. Her jewellery resides not on Geneva’s Rue du Rhône but in a townhouse in the city’s Eaux-Vives district, at n° 5 Clos-Belmont, hence the Maison Belmont name. Built in 1911 by Edmond Fatio in the Heimatstil style, it has been sympathetically renovated. Certain items of furniture and the decoration for the entrance hall are the work of Parisian designer Vincent Darré, with whom Sarah Mugnier has co-created a capsule collection of artists’ jewellery.

A townhouse for home

Vibrant shades of emerald, turquoise, red and violet, gold and leopard print recall Madeleine Castaing’s exuberant interiors. They are the colours of Sarah’s beloved gemstones: “Coloured sapphires, because where there is colour, there is life. Spinel, too, because it has a brilliance and an intensity that I adore. And I always go weak at the knees when I see a beautiful emerald.” Part cabinet of wonders, part waking dream, this fantastical setting is Sarah Mugnier’s home and also where she welcomes her clients.

Despite its fanciful appearance, Maison Belmont wasn’t plucked from thin air but took root in Sarah Mugnier’s childhood. “My passion for jewellery began when I was a little girl,” she says. “My mother would open the drawer of her dressing table and take out her jewellery. I still remember the sound of her rings knocking together. It was like a dream. Jewellery should always be magical. I was twelve when my father gave me my first piece of antique jewellery. It was an owl-shaped ring which he’d bought at a flea market. At that moment, I realised an object could connect us to a person or an event, or to ourself.”

In the centre: the Arche ring features an electric blue emerald-cut topaz weighing 6.5 carats “cut” into two symmetrical parts, crowned with 3 apatites and 65 brilliant-cut diamonds. Fashioned from 18K rose gold and blackened 925 silver, the Grand Bal cuff bracelet features a silver plate lined with emerald green silk, protected by a sapphire crystal. The octagonal elements and clasp are set with 1,275 coloured gemstones and diamonds. ©Daniela & Tonatiuh

After studying communication, Sarah Mugnier worked for six months at Christie’s, as a cataloguer. “I organised photo shoots for the jewellery. Every single piece passed through my hands. For someone who loves jewellery, there is no better place to work than an auction house.” She spent the following years surrounded by watches, at Breguet, then Léon Hatot, then Bovet, before deciding that jewels were her true passion in life.

The Arche ring features a vibrant duck-egg blue emerald-cut 5.76ct topaz “cut” into two symmetrical parts, set with 36 brilliant-cut diamonds in an arch-shaped mount made of 18K white gold.

Her next move took her to New York, returning six months later with a diploma in gemmology from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). “For five years I worked for a dealer in precious stones and antique jewellery, where I learned to appraise jewellery and developed an eye for gemstones.” Then, two years ago, an idea began to take shape. Sarah Mugnier didn’t carried out any market research before deciding to launch her brand. She just went ahead with Maison Belmont.

Nothing is impossible

Inspiration is all around her, in the curve of a staircase, a porcelain teacup, a Renaissance painting, an architectural detail or a swatch of fabric. She understands jewellery but hasn’t learned its techniques, preferring to leave the making of her designs to specialist workshops in Geneva. She sets them impossible tasks, although “impossible” is not in her vocabulary. Her Le Grand Banquet ring draws its inspiration from coloured crystal glasses by Saint-Louis, which can be turned one way or the other to suit the mood. “It’s a kinetic ring that twists on itself. Inside is a ball bearing which I had made in Germany,” she explains. “The hollow forms are in coloured titanium and I added tiny diamonds around the edge, like sugar on the rim of a cocktail glass.”

Another challenge, duly accomplished, is a ring that recreates the illusion of a magician sawing his assistant in half. “I wanted to slice a stone in two, which in jewellery circles is a sacrilege!” she says, still smiling at the idea. “I chose a topaz and gave it to a cutter in Geneva.” As the latter explains, “Normally we cut a stone in a way that will keep as much of the rough as possible, so this was quite an unorthodox request. The main difficulty was to make the cut at exactly 90 degrees for a perfect alignment.”

The concept is to have several rings set with different half-stones which can be worn together or on separate fingers. “I like to think of them as candies whose colours you mix and match,” says Sarah Mugnier. “It’s fun and why not? We should do things differently from time to time!” Creating the ring – the first of its kind – required a purpose-designed setting method, with a slim band of white gold along one side creating the illusion of a complete stone when the two halves are united. “When Sarah Mugnier explained her idea, we were surprised to say the least,” admits the Geneva jeweller who made the ring. “Nobody in the studio had seen anything like it. It was a pleasure to work on. The hardest part was setting the stones. They slide inside a ‘door’ that is so fine you can’t see it and so delicate we had to be especially careful when soldering.”

A motif inspired by the ceiling

Several pieces by Maison Belmont look to details within the house itself. The Le Grand Bal bracelet, for example, reprises the octagonal motif of the coffered ceilings. “My idea was to combine interior design with jewellery,” says Sarah Mugnier. “I wanted the inlays to be in fabric. I talked the concept through with my jeweller and my upholsterer, discussing how they could work together. Satin is glued to a silver base then covered with watertight sapphire crystals that protect against water splashes, although it shouldn’t be worn for swimming.”

Fantasmagoria Collection. The Neptune Necklace is made from 18K yellow gold and silver. Its fire-enamelled pendant is set with diamonds and sapphires. A baroque freshwater pearl highlights Neptune’s torso as he holds a purple chalcedony cabochon in his hand. ©Calypso Mahieu

The octagon, a recurring motif in her designs, returns in a more accessible line of beautifully simple rings, pendants and earrings. They encapsulate the very essence of the brand’s aesthetic.

Maison Belmont x Vincent Darré

Sarah Mugnier knows that beautiful things can happen when different worlds collide. Why not a collaboration with artists? For the inaugural collection, she immediately thought of Vincent Darré and asked him to design a capsule line of jewellery; the decorator jumped at the chance. “Designing precious jewellery has been a dream of mine for a very long time,” he says. “I’m a decorator and a designer, having first worked in fashion for twenty years when I used to design fancy accessories for runway shows. Here we’re talking fine jewellery. By giving me carte blanche, Sarah Mugnier has made my fantasy come true, through the perfection of craftsmanship.”

Fantasmagoria Collection. The Callipoe Earrings are made of 18K yellow gold and silver. Their fire-enamelled creatures set with diamonds hold the world in their hands, represented by two Akoya pearls. ©Calypso Mahieu

“This line gives artists from disciplines outside jewellery a new means of expression,” adds Sarah Mugnier. “I wanted to see how Vincent Darré would express himself on such a small surface. A jewel isn’t a piece of furniture or a wall or a suit. We share a love of craftsmanship and the Renaissance, and so we embarked on a challenge, a project that would combine precious stones, miniature painting and enamel.” The result: jewelled representations of fantastical characters – a god of the oceans, a naiad, a wonderful seahorse – in a style suggestive of early 1700s Rocaille. The enamelled elements were crafted by Inès Hamaguchi at her studio in Travers, in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel.

Says Darré, “I’m obsessed by the Italian Renaissance which, for me, is where Surrealism, one of my inspirations, originated, and by Baroque with its mix of grotesqueries and mythological figures. I’ve always loved looking at the extraordinary jewellery conserved in museums, in the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre for example. Chimerae whose bodies are baroque pearls, sirens formed from arabesques of gold and precious stones, and other lyrical jewels. Building on this idea, in what I wanted to be a resolutely modern tribute, I thought about my artistic icon, Jean Cocteau. The poet’s favourite black and white became the starting point for the enamelwork and for the constellations of diamonds that light up the night of this dreamlike allegory.”

Each piece in this compact collection is a technical tour de force, but that would be missing the point. Ultimately, all that matters is what we feel on seeing jewellery that transports us to different worlds – decoration, fine art, film – and different times. Like precious vessels, they carry us through time, away from darkness and into the light.

*A Select Party, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), first published in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review (July, 1844)