Collection: dinh van

dinh van was founded in Paris in 1965 by Jean Dinh Van, born in 1927 to a Breton mother and a Vietnamese father. He studied drawing at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, trained in metalwork, and joined Cartier in 1950, spending roughly a decade there working on high jewelry alongside Jeanne Toussaint. In 1965 he opened his own studio on Place Gaillon.

What set the house apart was its starting point. The maison states that Jean Dinh Van worked without preliminary sketches, beginning from the material itself and building one prototype after another until the shape was right. His subjects were ordinary objects - apartment keys, a padlock, a chain link, a razor blade - rendered in 18-carat gold. "The jewel must not be ostentatious," he said. "It must reflect the personality of the woman who wears it."

dinh van mostly works in 750 thousandths gold, the French high jewelry standard, in yellow, white and rose, with platinum in parts of the Menottes line and sterling silver in entry pieces. Every creation comes with an authenticity certificate.

Jean Dinh Van opened his studio on Place Gaillon in 1965, after roughly ten years at Cartier. Recognition came quickly: in 1967 he was selected as one of the four best French jewelers at the Montreal World's Fair, and the same year he created a two-pearl ring for Pierre Cardin - a piece the maison calls "the key to everything that came afterwards." His first point of sale was not a jewelry salon but the Drugstore Publicis on the Champs-Elysees, which suited a house making jewelry for the street rather than the vitrine.

From 1967 to 1977 he supervised jewelry manufacturing at Cartier's New York workshops, and pieces from that period carry both houses' signatures - an unusual arrangement between two independent names. A Madison Avenue boutique followed in 1977.

The signature designs. Le Cube Diamant arrived in 1971, setting a diamond within a cube and balancing the round against the square. The Serrure bangle, which the maison dates to 1975, closes with a mechanism drawn from a lock. Menottes dinh van, from 1976, is the house's best-known design: Jean Dinh Van intertwined the heads of two identical apartment keys, and the clasp that resulted looked so difficult to undo that it took the French word for handcuffs. Maillon, which the collection page dates to 1968, takes its square-section link from the ornamental chains of the Place de l'Opera. Pulse, the most recent of the signatures, followed in 2017.

In 1991, responding to a change in French import law, Jean Dinh Van began working in 999 thousandths pure gold and created the Pi collection, drawing on Chinese art. The house opened its Left Bank flagship on rue Bonaparte in 2000 and marked its sixtieth anniversary in 2025 with an exhibition, a book and a film. dinh van remains headquartered at 15 rue de la Paix in Paris.

• Menottes dinh van - the 1976 handcuff clasp, drawn from two apartment keys
• Maillon - the square-section chain link, after the Place de l'Opera
• Le Cube Diamant - a diamond set within a cube, since 1971
• Pulse - tubular forms paved in three rows of diamonds, from 2017
• Maillon Perle - a single Akoya pearl turning freely inside a Maillon link
• Serrure - a bangle that closes with a lock, dated by the maison to 1975