Paris 2024 has revealed the high-concept medals for the upcoming Olympic Video games and Paralympic Video games (following the already-revealed Paris 2024 torch design by Matthieu Lehanneur). ‘It was a little bit of a loopy concept,’ says Mathieu Prigent, Paris 2024’s particular challenge supervisor of the medal idea. ‘We mirrored upon the which means we wished to convey. How a basic ingredient may be completely different, or revolutionary?’ The ensuing concept was to inject a little bit of the Eiffel Tower, the image of Paris since its development in 1889, into each single medal. To do that, the group approached the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel to acquire the ‘puddle’ iron that was faraway from the physique of the so-called ‘Iron Girl’ throughout a number of main renovations and has been secretly preserved.
Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic medals by Chaumet
Paris 2024 Olympics medals
(Picture credit score: Paris 2024 x Chaumet)
As soon as this iconic materials was sourced, Chaumet, essentially the most historic jeweller in France (the primary jewelry home that moved to Paris Place Vendôme in 1812), was invited to affix the challenge to design the medals. The selection was pure, for the home’s essential function in French historical past, its creativity and its savoir-faire. For the final 25 years, Chaumet has been a part of the LVMH household, one of many Premium Companions of Paris 2024.
Paris 2024 Paralympics medals
(Picture credit score: Paris 2024 x Chaumet)
‘For this particular fee, we regarded to our patrimony for inspiration. The analysis was based mostly on two principal concepts. Firstly, to remodel fragments of the Eiffel Tower right into a hexagon and place it within the centre of the medal,’ explains Clémentine Massonat, the top of design at Chaumet. For sure, the hexagon represents the form of France whereas the Eiffel Tower iron is an previous, storied and industrial steel. ‘Secondly, to encompass the hexagon with faceting, like sunbeams – to place athletes within the ray of sunshine and make France shine on the identical time,’ provides Massonat.
Thibault Billoir, Chaumet’s head of archives, cites the nickname of Paris, ‘metropolis of sunshine’. He additionally referenced the Olympic Video games in Paris of 1924, through the artwork deco interval, at a time when the sunbeam was a preferred stylistic motif. Based on Billoir, the photo voltaic motif seems on many items in the home’s archives, notably on head jewelry similar to Chaumet tiaras and aigrettes. (They’re each iconic creations of the home). ‘A tiara lights up the wearer. So does a medal.’
Billoir describes the graphic impact of a tiara design that caught his consideration within the archives: ‘The successive traces that adjust in dimension, form and thickness, create a rhythm and replicate the colourful mild.’ A second inspiration was present in a bracelet challenge from Fifties or Nineteen Sixties, with a hexagon-cut emerald positioned inside a round motif. Billoir continues: ‘Its sunbeam radiance is extraordinarily dynamic, giving the impression that the whole lot originates from the hexagon.’ The iron geometric piece was then encrusted within the medal by a Chaumet’s extremely expert craftsman utilizing a ‘claw-setting’, as if it had been a gem.
Paris 2024 Olympics medals
(Picture credit score: Paris 2024 x Chaumet)
Turning the Olympic Video games Paris 2024 medal over reveals that the Eiffel Tower has been added to the Parthenon within the background, and that within the foreground Nike of Samothrace, the goddess of victory, is featured in keeping with the Olympic Committee’s specs. For its counterpart of the Paralympic Video games Paris 2024 medals, Massonat explored the Iron Girl from a unique angle. ‘The underside view of the tower is sort of graphic and recognisable,’ she muses. Throughout the arched sq., traces of small geometric motifs give an optical impact of infinity, suggesting the highest of the 300m tower. ‘I wished to liven up a static object,’ says Massonat.
Every medal, gold, silver and bronze, of 85mm in diameter and 9.2mm in thickness, weighs round 500 grams, together with 18 grams of iron. After a number of months of intensive dialogue between Massonat and Benoît Verhulle, the top of Chaumet’s workshop, the design of the medals was perfected and its resin completed. Now, the Monnaie de Paris is manufacturing the 5,000-plus medals. Your complete group of Paris 2024 and the home of Chaumet are trying ahead to seeing the medals shimmer within the daylight across the necks of the winners, with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop.
The Olympic Video games Paris 2024 will happen from 26 July via 11 August, adopted by the Paralympic Video games Paris 2024 from 28 August via 8 September
paris2024.org
Paris 2024 Paralympics medals
(Picture credit score: Paris 2024 x Chaumet)
Supply: Wallpaper
