Followed by a Gourmet Gazette Slide Show

The Palme d’Or prize which is the top prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival is slated to be awarded in Cannes this evening and the trophy itself was once again crafted by the house of Chopard. This year is a special year for the Cannes Film Festival is being held for the 75th time and it marks 25 years of Chopard’s partnership with the festival. The Swiss jeweler has created a unique trophy by placing the Palme d’Or on a rose quartz base and outfitting it with diamond settings in two tiny leaves.

The Maison’s Artistic Director and Co-President Caroline Scheufele decided to revisit the Palme d’Or by studding two of its tiny leaves with diamonds from suppliers certified by the Responsible Jewelry Council. One will be graced with 75 diamonds symbolizing the Festival’s jubilee, while the other will feature 25 diamonds to immortalize the quarter-century of the partnership with Chopard.

The Fairmined-certified 18-carat yellow gold Palme will not be placed on the traditional rock crystal cushion, but instead on a base made of rose quartz – a stone symbolizing love and symbolizing Chopard’s unconditional love of cinema. The process of fashioning the Palme d’Or requires high level art and craftsmanship. It is cast using the meticulous lost wax investment casting technique in which the trophy with its meticulous 19 tiny leaves and stem is cast in plaster which is then broken in the final step of the molding process to reveal the object. The Palme is then washed using pressurized water and an acid deoxidation process.

The jeweler steps in then to clean the surface and to polish the separate elements by hand. The tiny leaves and the stem are meticulously corrected and each gold leaf is adjusted on the stem in the correct position and then soldered with a torch. The work is then polished and the diamonds set into two of the tiny leaves. The block of rose quartz is drilled with a diamond milling cutter in which the small supporting elements will be placed for the Palme to then be attached to its rose quartz cushion. The artisans of Chopard’s High Jewelry workshops devote 70 hours to the making of the Palme d’Or.

Like the Palme d’or itself, the Best Actress Award, the Best Actor Award,
the Grand Prix, the Best Director Award, the Screenplay Award, the Jury Prize,
the Short Film Palme d’or and the Caméra d’or are all crafted in Chopard’s
Haute Joaillerie workshops in Geneva. And the winners are…
©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette
https://www.chopard.com/intl/

A Gourmet Gazette Slide Show