Hermès Pierres d'Orient et d'Occident Cashmere Silk 140

Designer: Hermès
Pattern: Pierres d'Orient et d'Occident
Color: Black
Size: 140cm
Material: 65% Cashmere, 35% Silk
Artist: Zoè Pauwels
First Issued: Original Motif 1988
Condition: In excellent condition. I don't see any notable signs of wear.
Includes: Just the scarf, but will always include signature Abigail Goodman gift wrap

From The Fall-Winter 1988/89 Seasonal Scarf Booklet: This delicate assemblage of fruits, leaves and flowers reproduces the stone motifs which decorated the Medics' Florentine marbles, as well as the great English and French marquetry of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Puzzling though it may seem, it is understandable that masons should choose the most fragile parts of the vegetable kingdom as subjects for their mineral artistry: All creative art is a challenge, and a victory of illusion over matter.

From The Hermès Fall-Winter 2011/12 Seasonal Scarf Booklet: In Renaissance Italy, the collectors and patrons the Medicis, so admired stone marquetry that they dedicated several workshops to it. Some artisans laboured for years on end to make a table top like the one that inspired this scarf. The passion for this art travelled abroad, particularly into England and France. A proliferation of flowers, fruit and foliage envelope multicoloured birds, butterflies and in-sects, pearl necklaces and ribbons in their sinuous curves. The delicacy of the line breathes life into plumage and petal, the plump berries issue an invitation...Life in all its fragile beauty runs through this mineral composition. Silk here takes the place of cut stones.