Men’s Rings, From Dynastic Egypt to Hells Angels

Silver rings made by Suzanne Gulliver for the Hells Angels include representations of skulls with horns or covered in flowers, and death with a scythe.

PARIS — Retro pop, midcentury modern, vintage eclectic, Wunderkammer kitsch, transitional contemporary. Whatever you call it, the style of decoration defies a single label and yet you will be familiar with the tropes: cocktail-trolley Mad Men, seasoned with Pop Art irony and some signature serious design (just in case anyone was in doubt that aspect had been closely considered).

One of the look’s great pioneers is Yves Gastou, who, back in 1986 — when rich people were still collecting Impressionists and antique furniture — opened a gallery in Paris decorated by Ettore Sottsass where pieces from the 1940s and 1950s were mixed with the masters of Memphis.

What began as a rebellion has, over time, become a sort of religion, of which Mr. Gastou is a high priest. But this impish septuagenarian with his shock of white hair would hate to hear himself described that way. “I buy things ahead of fashion” he said, adding that he has “a need not to be like everyone else.” It is a claim borne out by a new exhibition he has curated — not of Brutalism, not of Modernism or even Postmodernism, but of men’s rings, hundreds of men’s rings dating from antiquity to today.

The exhibition is scheduled to open Oct. 5 at L’Ecole de Van Cleef & Arpels, an educational and exhibition space in the jeweler’s former offices just behind the Place Vendôme in Paris. L’Ecole was the idea of Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef’s chief executive. He describes L’Ecole as “an initiative or platform around jewelry and art,” which offers courses in art history as it relates to jewelry, classes on stones and workshops.

 

He also decided to mount exhibitions of objects and collections, linked to the theme of jewelry, that otherwise might go unseen. Sometimes the exhibits have come from established cultural bodies in Paris. “We started partnering with some institutions like the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which has quite a substantial jewelry collection,” Mr. Bos said. “And we’re partnering with the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, on projects around gemology, and stones.” He also has reached out to private collectors: Earlier this year L’Ecole showed Art Deco vanity cases, powder puffs and cigarette cases from the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection. Now, 500 rings from the Gastou collection will be displayed. (The organization also will offer a varied program of courses, workshops and exhibitions from Oct. 25 to Nov. 9 in New York.)

 

True to his tenet of buying “ahead of fashion,” Mr. Gastou started collecting rings early — during the 1950s. “I remember becoming interested in rings when I was about 9 or 10,” he said, recalling his fascination with those worn by girls. His mother noticed how he coveted her rings, so she bought him a silver signet ring, now lost, beginning an obsession that continues today.

Unexpectedly, given his reputation for an almost provocatively modern taste in furniture and his place at the vanguard of taste where the kitsch becomes the collectible, the inspiration for his collection lies in what he calls the world of the preux chevalier or gallant knight.

Mr. Gastou’s medievalism was nourished by a childhood near Carcassonne, France, the prototypical ancient fortified city, stronghold of the Cathars in the 13th century and restored by Viollet-le-Duc during the 19th century. He recalled that he would walk the city walls, his imagination marinating in the atmosphere of the Middle Ages, and that his mother would take him to see chateaus in the region.

 

Onto this childhood sensibility has been grafted a sophisticated aesthetic sense developed over a lifetime of dealing in furniture, pushing the boundaries of what was accepted as culturally important, helping people see the beauty and cultural significance in unusual objects. He started dealing in Art Nouveau furniture in the 1960s, when most people were still throwing it away as simply out of date and out of fashion, then moved to Art Deco, and pieces from the 1940s and 1950s by Maison Jansen, Emilio Terry, Jacques Adnet and the great decorating businesses and makers of the period. Eventually he arrived at the polyglot riot of period that one might call le gout Gastou, which has found favor with 21st century tastemakers including Lapo Elkann and Lenny Kravitz.

 

His ring collection brings together the academic and mischievous sides of his character and encompasses every period from dynastic Egypt to the world of Hells Angels. But whether once intended as the ornament of a biker or a pharaoh, each piece is submitted to the same forensic academic investigation and classification. At first it is startling to hear him use the language of art history in relation to skull rings.

“The 1960s and ’70s were the high period of the tete de morte rings in silver and white metal worn by motorcycle gangs,” he said with all the gravity of a collector of 18th-century porcelain examining a piece of Meissen by Johann Joachim Kändler.

His haul of biker rings was assembled during the 1980s and 1990s when the hegemony that motorcycle gangs had exercised over popular culture had passed and he found trays of unloved skull rings while trawling the shops near the old Les Halles site in central Paris.

Arguably his greatest coup was finding a cache of new episcopal rings dating from the 1930s to the 1960s among the old stock at the 400-year-old Parisian jeweler Mellerio dits Meller. They reflect a Corbusier-to-Cardin era of French Catholicism with textured finishes and imaginative mounts.

And to shake things up a little, Mr. Gastou could not resist adding a few rings worn to celebrate Black Masses, the kind of pieces that make his collection remarkable.

It is a striking collection, eccentric and compelling, and its exhibition echoes L’Ecole’s mission to demonstrate how much beauty, skill, creativity, history and emotional power can be found in a small item of personal ornament.

But no matter how old or important, whether rings of 17th-century Venetian doges, enameled rings of the 18th century, or 19th-century mourning rings, Mr. Gastou has never seen his rings as lifeless historical artifacts but as personal and intimate objects often commemorating a passion or love.

To him, rings worn by men have a particular significance as objects that are both intimate and visible.

They are, he said, “a provocation, a demonstration of a need or a desire not to be like everyone else. There is something extremely sensual about them.”

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