Suivez l’incroyable Eric Hamers, Meilleur Ouvrier de France Artisan Diamantaire et quatrième génération de bijoutiers. En compagnie de Laurent Poultier du Mesnil, il vous fera découvrir les coulisses de fabrications des bijoux des plus grands bijoutiers de la place Vendôme.
Vous serez tout sur les secrets de l'art de la joaillerie, qui incarne l'essence même de l'art de vivre et du luxe à la française.
RÉAGISSEZ :
Hashtag #AlaFrançaise
Vous serez tout sur les secrets de l'art de la joaillerie, qui incarne l'essence même de l'art de vivre et du luxe à la française.
RÉAGISSEZ :
Hashtag #AlaFrançaise
Category
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Art et designTranscription
00:00 Bonjour! Et bien pour vous parler de l'art de la haute joaillerie, j'ai le plaisir de vous emmener évidemment place à Place Vendôme.
00:07 Suivez-moi!
00:08 Et plus exactement, rencontrer un meilleur ouvrier de France diamantaire, en la personne d'Erik Amers.
00:14 [Music]
00:37 Bonjour Erik!
00:39 Bonjour Laurent!
00:39 So, you welcome us a little at your home, since here there is not a house on Place Vendôme for which you have not worked.
00:46 Indeed, my knowledge is that there is not one. I worked for all these houses there.
00:50 Whether it's me, my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, then we went up to them.
00:53 We walk a little, you tell us about it.
00:55 Let's walk.
00:56 So, best worker of France, but best worker of France exactly.
00:59 What size of diamond?
01:01 Yes.
01:01 Diamantaire.
01:02 Since my family, we are men or women since 1640.
01:06 Not bad. So 1640, how many generations?
01:10 I even counted since there was the Cadet branch.
01:15 Yes.
01:15 From 1740, the Cadet branch and we arrived in France in 1898 by the good of my great-grandfather, Adrianus Amers.
01:24 And then, the family had been diamond cutters, but where?
01:27 Amsterdam and before that in Broesum, southeast of Holland.
01:32 So, what is the story, the saga of the Amers family?
01:36 It is, for me, simple since we have always cut the diamond.
01:41 Yes.
01:42 Men or women. In 1898, once again, my great-grandfather decided to know the city of light,
01:48 attracted by the bet of the Second Empire, then of the Third Republic, which was born and triumphant.
01:58 And then, France was powerful in its industry, so we wanted to come and see what this famous Grand Paris was.
02:06 And we did it.
02:10 And except for a year, 1910, which allowed him to avoid the great flood, we always stayed in France.
02:18 There is not a house for which you have not worked here.
02:21 Do you recognize your diamonds, your sizes from time to time when you look at the showcases?
02:26 Or is it that generally the stones that you cut are rather discreet inside?
02:31 No, no, I recognize them. The proof is that there, on one of the showcases that I saw,
02:38 I spotted two of my objects.
02:40 And then there are houses for which I have created sizes, like Montblanc for example,
02:46 others still, where there, it is effective.
02:50 It can't not come from my house.
02:53 That is to say that there is a Montblanc size, you created it?
02:56 Absolutely.
02:56 There is a style of size for Montblanc.
02:58 Exactly.
02:59 And how can we talk about this Montblanc size?
03:01 The Gros Prichemont one day did tests in India, in Israel.
03:06 The weight loss was considerable and the game, the given yield was disconcerting.
03:13 We were told about the false stones, whatever the quality that these stones could have, the intrasect quality.
03:21 They therefore asked some big buyers of their largest group, Van Cleef,
03:28 and in this case it was Van Cleef,
03:31 what was the size that was likely to be able to create something by respecting the spirit of the house.
03:38 In their extreme indulgence, they came across me.
03:41 And suddenly you created a size that is specific to them?
03:44 Absolutely.
03:44 That's pretty cool.
03:46 Yes, I even marked the story a little bit.
03:49 Now we have talked about stones, we have talked a lot, I would like to see a little.
03:53 We can go.
03:54 Shall we go?
03:54 Let's go.
03:55 It starts well, Eric.
04:02 There is already a safe.
04:03 There is everything you need.
04:04 And there are the keys on it.
04:06 So we arrive in the Lantre.
04:08 In what is a diamond cutlery shop in La Francaise.
04:11 To know that all the workers are able to do all the work.
04:16 All the different sizes?
04:17 The different sizes, the invisible circle, the laser size, the stone analysis, the calibration, the raw cutting, the old size.
04:26 Very particular shapes thanks to machines such as this one.
04:30 Which allow you to make all the shapes that are known.
04:34 Yes.
04:35 Or even invent some.
04:37 Gabriel, here, takes care of setting my desires.
04:43 He puts the USB key, the machine works, it makes the exterior shape of the stone.
04:49 If I had had that at the time of the white cutting, I would have saved a considerable amount of time.
04:53 This machine, this machine which is a Sarin laser, allows you to analyze the stone in the state.
05:00 Then to project into what it could be.
05:04 Depending on the taste of the client, the need for a blow, a shock that he may have had or an impurity that is inside.
05:12 What is the stone worth?
05:13 When it has its symmetry, the quality of its size, the quality of its polish, it analyzes absolutely everything.
05:21 Not the color, not the purity.
05:23 That's something else, it's a machine.
05:25 Okay.
05:25 What are, precisely, how can you define the different sizes of the different houses?
05:32 What is a size?
05:33 You have the shiny size.
05:35 Yes.
05:35 Basically, these are the shapes.
05:37 Yes.
05:37 It's a question of vocabulary.
05:39 Yes.
05:40 You have the shiny size, the round size, the emerald size, the navette size, the pear size, heart, everything you want.
05:51 Yes.
05:51 Everything that could have been created.
05:52 Yes.
05:53 Everything we created, Montblanc sizes, through Vuitton sizes, everything you want.
06:00 How do you define them?
06:01 Vuitton sizes, Montblanc sizes, etc.
06:03 These are sizes that are deposited by the houses whose names appear very often on the right.
06:10 There was a size that I had presented on TF1 at the end of the 90s, without a facet.
06:17 It was more of a curiosity than anything else.
06:19 Basically, what you need is to get into the customer's mind.
06:24 We don't size for Chanel like we size for Van Cleef or other companies.
06:29 What is the Chanel spirit when you are going to make the size?
06:34 When I created, for example, Chanel, the Camellia, I emphasized the outer edges of the petal.
06:41 It shouldn't be too shiny.
06:43 It had to be relatively neutral, pastel, discreet, not cold, not frigid.
06:50 We try to take into account the DNA of the house.
06:53 We understood through your example, which is very Chanel-like.
06:56 You take inspiration from the DNA of the house in the work of La Pierre.
07:03 That's exactly it.
07:04 My job evolves, adapts.
07:06 Nothing is ever frozen, nothing is ever acquired.
07:10 Foreign countries, without French know-how, have outdone our workers a lot.
07:19 Why? Because they have remained on an acquired level.
07:24 This famous "acquis" that blocks and lobotomizes a lot of our compatriots.
07:31 They have been literally swept away by history, these great workers who were our ancestors.
07:37 I thought it was out of the question that a family like mine disappear.
07:41 And then there was a challenge to be faced.
07:45 It is not possible that the French cannot adapt.
07:49 We have shown it in our history.
07:51 So I committed myself to doing it.
07:53 Thanks to an associate, the Hadad, we set up the H&H tailoring.
07:59 And the latter bought the material, put a lot of money into the training of the workers,
08:06 like David, like Nicolas, like Hugo, like Lindy, like Gabriel.
08:11 And we came up with people who did not necessarily have a specific talent.
08:19 A gift that was born thanks to the material, to make them rise in power and sometimes to reveal them.
08:25 Could the size of the diamond be made by computer only tomorrow?
08:30 It is already for what is called cavalry.
08:35 All the small round stones, all the paving.
08:39 Many things that you see in small jewelry,
08:44 or even in large jewelry companies, are cut in India by machine.
08:50 Wherever, whatever the worker behind it, it is very often a machine.
08:55 You should know that out of 15 stones that are cut in the world, 14 come from India.
09:02 We talked about the story of cutting a log.
09:05 We follow the thread.
09:07 And you said for the stone, it's the same thing.
09:09 You have to find, as there is a resistance, it is the strongest stone in the world.
09:14 The hardest.
09:15 Well, you have to find the, what, the nine fibers.
09:20 That's exactly it.
09:22 This stone remains frozen in its raw state.
09:25 My job, when I go to carve, is to cross these senses of crystallization very precisely.
09:31 This is what is called the sense of size.
09:33 If you do not respect these sizes, you can stay on the stone for 10 years,
09:37 10 years on this same facet, you will not carve the least of the world.
09:42 On the other hand, you will have ruined your plateau, your place, your basement.
09:46 You will end up in the cellar.
09:48 But...
09:48 So much resistance to the...
09:50 It's phenomenal.
09:51 So, unlike what we always hear, the famous scale of Moche,
09:57 hardness 10, it's wrong.
09:59 It's not 10 for sapphire, ru, diamond, 9 for ruby,
10:05 8 for sapphire, 7 for emerald, 1 for talc.
10:08 The reality is as follows.
10:11 1 for talc, 700 for emerald, 900 for ruby, 10,000 for diamond.
10:18 Oh yes, so the diamond is outside all the other stones.
10:22 The small stones are now carved only, you said it, in India, etc., by machine.
10:27 That means that finally your job has evolved and that in the past you would have carved even small stones
10:33 and now you only have the very beautiful stones to carve.
10:36 So that's exactly it.
10:38 So in the end, it has evolved well for you, somehow.
10:40 So it has evolved well, but I had to adapt.
10:42 But it's the niches, the famous niches.
10:45 How did a Renault employee who lived in the 60s, 50s,
10:54 when the CGT was shouting against its poor state of being, inferior?
11:00 Well, being inferior no longer exists.
11:02 Now cars are made in China,
11:04 where this computer, this robot, which has become this man, has disappeared.
11:08 It's the same for diamond carvers.
11:11 Of course, in France we had 400 workers,
11:13 400 workers at the end of the war, 50,000 in reverse.
11:18 In Paris, there are 40, 500 in reverse.
11:22 I have the largest carpentry in France, 8 workers,
11:25 my pendant in India, 4,000.
11:27 So you are condemned to do the exceptional.
11:30 I have no choice, I have to be talented.
11:32 Hence the contest "Criticize the best French worker with a diamond on it".
11:36 You have no choice, that's what you have to do.
11:37 Create something every time.
11:39 Create.
11:40 When, for example, a very, very large jewelry company
11:45 asks Chopard to imagine
11:49 that for the first time in history,
11:51 round diamonds can be pulled out
11:54 without being seen appearing above the gold.
11:58 They try for two years, it costs them 200,000 euros.
12:01 And then this boss, whom I like a lot,
12:03 he's a friend, but he's been beating me cold for three years.
12:07 This jewelry company really deserves it.
12:09 And his workshop manager tells him,
12:12 "Well, that's enough now.
12:13 The only one able to create that is the madman."
12:17 So he finds himself in front of me,
12:18 and an hour and a quarter later, I had found the system.
12:21 And we created the new "Tai Chopard"
12:26 with 3,000 stones in the future.
12:28 You present us this incredible machine.
12:32 Even I, after almost a year,
12:36 continue to be amazed by its capabilities.
12:39 It's the latest laser writing
12:42 that allows you to cut, drill,
12:46 and write on the diamond.
12:48 So writing is great for the insurer.
12:51 Extraordinary for the insurer,
12:53 extraordinary for confirming that the stone
12:56 matches such a certificate.
12:58 It's great because a person who sees himself offering a jewel
13:04 can see the stone engraved in front of them.
13:07 There will never be any more exchanges,
13:09 there will never be any more possibilities.
13:11 And at the same time,
13:12 it doesn't depreciate the stone.
13:14 It doesn't depreciate the stone,
13:15 since the great certificates in the world engrave.
13:18 They even send me stones that I engrave.
13:21 And you should know that you can remove an engraving.
13:27 You just have to polish the stone on the plateau.
13:31 To do this, you need a worker who is able to do it.
13:34 And the weight loss is so derisory
13:36 that we keep the same weight for thousands of carats.
13:42 Welcome to TV Liberté.
13:44 No, it's great.
13:45 But suddenly, there are people who want to write
13:47 the stuff on it, the signatures.
13:49 I do a lot of it.
13:50 What kind of signatures or writing?
13:52 There are a lot of people who have realized that for their own jewelry,
13:57 it was very important to engrave them.
13:59 Because contrary to what we think,
14:01 we have an excellent police,
14:02 and every year there is an exhibition of objects that are found,
14:06 but that are not returned to their owner
14:09 and that remain in good condition
14:12 because there is no name.
14:15 If the police sees a name,
14:17 "Madame un tel", "Tel numero de certificat",
14:21 immediately there is a search.
14:22 The person's numbers,
14:25 his face,
14:26 you can engrave a person's face.
14:28 So we can do like Prince Albert did,
14:32 on these bricks, "Fly to Prince Albert of Monaco".
14:36 Is there a signature that's a bit crazy?
14:38 So it wasn't a signature,
14:39 but it was a figure of Kamasutra.
14:41 Ah, sir or madam had ordered this.
14:44 I don't remember.
14:45 Discretion, man!
14:47 You wanted to show me?
14:48 A stone that is relatively exceptional
14:51 and that will be more and more,
14:52 since it comes from a mine that closed,
14:55 which will never produce again,
14:57 the Argyle mine in Australia.
14:59 Okay.
15:00 An intense pink diamond.
15:01 It's super pretty, the color is beautiful.
15:04 Oh yes.
15:05 Yes, yes.
15:05 Why is that?
15:06 Is that it?
15:07 Is that it?
15:08 Okay, well then.
15:10 But one of my favorites.
15:11 Yes.
15:12 It comes from Africa.
15:14 That's beautiful, wow.
15:16 That's a very special color.
15:18 Yes.
15:18 Almost brownish orange yellow.
15:20 I've never seen a color like that.
15:22 And if we put it under the real light.
15:27 Wow.
15:28 It turns gold-clover.
15:30 It's incredible.
15:31 Officially certified orange yellow.
15:34 The colors of the land of the Asterix,
15:35 finally, somehow.
15:36 Yes, I love you.
15:37 I wouldn't have liked to sell it.
15:38 And I wouldn't know either,
15:40 what color to put it on.
15:40 Do you have an anecdote?
15:42 We're attacked by my great-grandfather.
15:44 Yes.
15:45 He's cutting,
15:49 it's the French period.
15:51 So it's after 1898.
15:53 He's facing his board.
15:55 And exceptionally,
15:57 but he himself recognized it.
15:58 Because we probably have the disadvantage
16:01 of having a slightly unconfirmed character.
16:05 But we willingly recognize our mistakes.
16:07 Yes, really, it's very surprising.
16:09 But when we listen to it.
16:10 And there he makes one.
16:11 That's what the stele sucks.
16:13 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
16:15 He had his doping.
16:18 And he didn't pay attention.
16:21 End of the day.
16:22 He pushes with the power of his two thumbs.
16:26 The stele breaks.
16:29 The doping falls on the board.
16:31 A 10-carat stone.
16:32 Boom.
16:33 Exploded.
16:34 Exploded.
16:35 And there, in the sense of crystallization,
16:37 impeccable.
16:38 The stone is dead.
16:40 He gets up.
16:41 He's still very upset.
16:43 He goes to see his boss at the time.
16:47 And he says, "I had a problem."
16:50 The boss looks.
16:53 "He's stunned by the decontraction of my great-grandfather's era.
16:58 What happened?
16:58 I made a mistake."
17:01 He throws the stone.
17:02 He buys it.
17:02 He buys it.
17:03 It was dead.
17:04 He buys it.
17:05 It's good.
17:06 He would have lost money by throwing it away.
17:08 By throwing it away, by putting it in the unemployment,
17:12 he made him earn a lot of money.
17:13 It happened.
17:14 Why is the diamond this price compared to gold or compared to other things?
17:21 When you get out of the earth, two tons of earth.
17:27 In general, the diamond is inside an earth called the kimberlite.
17:32 You need two tons of earth for a diamond square, that is, 0.20 grams.
17:39 In this 0.20 grams, there are only 20% that are usable for jewelry or high jewelry.
17:48 Inside these 20% of the square of the two tons, there are four groups.
17:57 First group, 1A, 98% of the stones.
18:02 White, it can be nice.
18:04 A little bit of colored diamond, a little bit of tint, 98%.
18:11 Group 2B, we are at the Golconda stone, extraordinary whites,
18:17 colors that go to intense.
18:20 What do you call intense?
18:21 In yellow.
18:22 You should know that the colored diamond is classified into four color intensities.
18:28 Light, fancy, intense, vivid.
18:33 2A, sorry, it's very high white color and up to intense in colored diamond.
18:40 It's 1% of the 20% of the square of the two tons.
18:46 1B, it's all the diamonds, pink, red, green, orange, 0.8%.
18:55 2B, it's the blue diamond.
18:57 I followed a stone of 70 carats recently, green.
19:02 If it is really natural, there is no price.
19:06 It does not exist.
19:08 Imagine that we found an ultimate Van Gogh, an ultimate Monet, a Degas.
19:16 There is no more, there will be no more, there is no more.
19:19 We talked about your title, Best Worker of France in Diamond.
19:27 The competition is obviously in size, but it also consists of knowledge.
19:33 How does it happen exactly?
19:35 The Best Worker of France competition is really totally different from what a CAP can be,
19:40 or what the attribution of an EPV can be, a living heritage company.
19:45 What are you?
19:46 I am too.
19:47 The Best Worker of France competition is the presentation of a work that takes us a time that is not specially determined,
19:54 and that must, whatever happens when you deliver it, get the grade 16 out of 20 or more,
20:02 grade of excellence.
20:03 It turns out that for the Best Worker of France competition,
20:06 you have historically, since 1924, since Adaria Grandon was the first in the profession to get this title.
20:14 Since then, we have had four titles.
20:16 The Don of Hammers?
20:18 No, Roux.
20:19 Oh, then.
20:20 But on the other hand, the sister of my grandfather,
20:23 I am Best Worker of France in 1949, my father, and myself the last in 1997.
20:27 Well, my dear Eric, the Place Vendôme was good, but I catch a sunburn.
20:34 It happens often.
20:36 So, let's stay on sunny things.
20:39 I would like you to tell us your favorite period.
20:42 First Empire.
20:43 I would say sunburned.
20:45 Sunburned?
20:46 I was putting on a...
20:48 There.
20:48 No, no, no, I'm kidding.
20:51 Of course, no, no, it's not Louis XIV.
20:53 For you, it's the First Empire.
20:54 Why?
20:55 A lot of glory.
20:57 Oh yes, it's for glory.
20:58 We have had...
20:59 I don't know where I am.
21:00 We have had it at all times, but we still have it today, but it is not put forward.
21:06 You should know that the whole world still admires us for many things,
21:12 but our pseudo-elites, servants of low instincts, do not put that forward.
21:19 And yet, France is France only in greatness.
21:22 You're right about that too.
21:24 Your favorite work.
21:26 Cernot de Bergerac.
21:27 No, you could have convinced me.
21:30 It's a bit short, young man.
21:31 You could have said a lot of things in short.
21:33 And what should I do?
21:34 Look for a powerful protector, take a boss,
21:36 and like a dark lily that surrounds a trunk and becomes a tutor by licking the bark,
21:40 climb by ruse instead of getting up by force.
21:42 No, thank you.
21:44 Your favorite artist.
21:46 Erika Mörs.
21:48 No.
21:49 No, no, no, no, no, no.
21:51 Excessively, I will show humility.
21:53 I could easily fall for it by talking about an artist and a work.
21:59 Once again, Marilyn Monroe's time.
22:01 But characters like Eiffel are quite little known.
22:05 Monet, I like him a lot.
22:06 Monet?
22:07 Okay.
22:08 His sense of colors?
22:09 His sense of colors.
22:10 That you find in the pictures.
22:11 He is able to attract friendships,
22:13 especially that of a man I have a deep hope for,
22:19 that is, Sacha Guitry.
22:20 Okay.
22:21 Well, yes, extraordinary.
22:22 So we talked about,
22:24 earlier we talked about the fact that
22:28 finally the French were forced,
22:30 were pushed, like you,
22:32 to do not very beautiful, but exceptional.
22:36 Exactly.
22:36 Because of foreign competition, etc.
22:39 How is this art still fully a French art?
22:45 Because it relies on a momentum given by our ancestors.
22:49 Since what time, you would say?
22:51 Middle of the Second Empire.
22:53 Ah, you wouldn't say before?
22:55 Middle of the Second Empire,
22:57 it was marketed and it was really installed.
23:02 Tastes were put in place.
23:07 They served giants such as Boulle, such as Pigalle.
23:15 So finally, Eric Hammers, in pure illustration,
23:18 he took risks, he took important risks.
23:21 Already with his contest of the best workers in France,
23:23 where he added a spray,
23:25 where he still invested a lot on machines.
23:28 So he still took a real risk
23:31 to continue in a job that is difficult.
23:34 Well, dear listeners,
23:36 Eric, like the other people
23:38 we have met previously,
23:41 they all took risks.
23:43 Finally, the challenge I am throwing at you,
23:46 take risks.
23:47 Take risks for yourself,
23:48 take risks for others.
23:50 Take risks.
23:52 It's a very good challenge.
23:53 It's good, it's validated by Eric Hammers.
23:55 Thank you very much, Eric,
23:56 for this very good and exciting contest.
23:59 And congratulations for what you do,
24:00 because you are finally participating in the radiance
24:03 of French art in French.
24:06 I live in French.
24:07 Thank you very much, Eric.
24:08 See you soon.
24:09 See you soon.
24:10 [Music]