The Maison

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné · Paris 1626 – Grignan 1696

Born on the Place Royale, orphaned at seven, married at eighteen, widowed at twenty-five: Marie de Rabutin-Chantal moved through the Grand Siècle as a free woman — the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the court of Louis XIV, the salons where French wit was made.

For twenty-five years she wrote to her daughter, Madame de Grignan — more than a thousand letters: the court, the trials, the fashions, the jewels one wore and the jewels one sold. Published after her death, they made her the first intimate witness of the seventeenth century.

Her name survives in a jewel: the “sévigné”, the bodice brooch shaped as a ribbon bow and set with diamonds, found in every parure of the eighteenth century. It is this bow that the Maison chose as its emblem — and its first collection.

“One must glide over many thoughts, and pretend not to see them.”

— Letter to Madame de Grignan, 1671

1626

Born in Paris, Place Royale

1671

The correspondence with her daughter begins

1725

First edition of the Letters

18th c.

The “sévigné” bow enters the jewellers’ vocabulary