In 2023, Sice Previt was involved in an ambitious Tiffany&Co project related to the renovation of its shop at le Bon Marché, the famous shopping centre on the Rive Gauche, in Paris. Specifically, the task entrusted to us was to create a spectacular new shop window reminiscent of a diamond seen from the front.
Conceived as the ‘focal point’ of the point of sale in its new guise, the ‘Diamond Eye’ or ‘Vitrine Diamant’ or ‘Diamond Showcase’ is a unique shop window, designed to be hung on the wall and contain the main jewel of the collection. In its relatively small thickness, it therefore contains an automatic and secure opening system (which allows the central part of the showcase, containing the jewel, to emerge from the diamond), as well as a hanging system and an articulated internal structure that includes a sophisticated lighting system. Made of glass and metal, the showcase’s aesthetic and at the same time engineering peculiarity is that it is designed to reproduce the typical luminosity and reflections of a diamond.
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From this point of view, it is a project that perfectly embodies the strengths of Sice Previt, as a company that combines high technological and engineering skills with care for the quality and aesthetics of its products, making itself a contemporary interpreter of the tradition of high Italian craftsmanship. Producing the first example of the Vitrine Diamant, starting from designer Hugh Dutton’s sketches to a detailed working design and then realising it with the available technology, was therefore a challenging but exciting experience.
It took several months for the complex production of the prototype, including initial study phases to define the construction details, tests on the workmanship and experiments on the finishes, but the final result was truly satisfactory. The prototype thus became the first in a long series of diamond display cases, which helped to renovate Tiffany shops around the world.
Fundamental to the aesthetic result was, beyond the design idea supported by accurate optical studies, the high degree of engineering of the production process, which relied on the different expertise cultivated at Sice Previt and the use of innovative and robotic machinery.
Particularly sophisticated, for example, is the construction of the crown (the part of the display case all around the central heart), composed of glass elements on the front and mirrored steel trays on the back, modelled and assembled to recall the faceted structure of a diamond. Each ‘petal’ on the front, in the Bon Marché showcase, is composed of three layers of glass – two flat and one convex – shaped using an advanced pressurised water cutting machine and then glued together using a UV system.
The excellent aesthetic result was achieved thanks to Sice Previt’s specialisation in glass processing – crucial, for example, to flawlessly realise the complex chamfering (engraving) of the petals, designed according to a precise pattern so as to obtain the play of light necessary for the diamond effect. For this purpose, an innovative five-axis robotic machine, guided by a specially developed computer programme, was used, capable of producing gradual flaring engravings.
Several other aspects of these special showcases are interesting for the engineering care they conceal. Essential to their final appearance, for example, is the study of the method of assembling the various components. In order to fix the glass ‘petals’ to the reflective metal base, invisible mechanical clamps have been designed, obtained ‘by subtraction’ from a steel block thanks to a numerically controlled milling machine which, guided by software, is able to control the size of the pieces to a tenth of a millimetre, ensuring a perfect fit.
The lighting inside the Vitrine Diamant was also meticulously designed, in cooperation with HDA and Ponctuelle. A computer model made it possible to simulate the reflections of a real diamond in the best possible way, also taking into account the other light sources in the shops. The solution found required the installation of as many as 48 micro-facets of different types: 32 in the crown for the light effects, 16 in the actual shop window to illuminate the jewel.
Once the prototype was consolidated, we moved on to the development of some variants. In particular, Sice Previt created a chromatic variant of the diamond display case: again in polished steel, but in this case gilded by means of the chemical process known as galvanising. The metal components have been immersed in an acid bath which, thanks to an electrolytic process, is able to adhere gold particles.
