Chaumet

Marie-Étienne Nitot set up in Paris in 1780 after an apprenticeship with Aubert, jeweller to Marie-Antoinette. After the Revolution the business flourished, and in 1804 Nitot became official jeweller to Napoleon I. With his son François-Regnault Nitot he made jewels for Napoleon's marriages to Joséphine and to Marie-Louise, set the hilt of the coronation sword, made the tiara Napoleon gave Pope Pius VII and helped rebuild the Crown Treasury.

Marie-Étienne died in 1809 and François-Regnault succeeded him. The house's later Empire pieces include the Marie-Louise Diadem of 1810 and the Napoleon Diamond Necklace of 1811–1812, both now at the Smithsonian. After Napoleon's fall in 1815 François-Regnault, a royalist, sold to the foreman Jean-Baptiste Fossin, whose romantic and naturalist jewels won the family of Louis-Philippe and the Duchesse de Berry.

After the 1848 revolution the house opened a London workshop under Jean-Valentin Morel, who received a royal warrant from Queen Victoria and showed enamelled hardstone goblets at the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1885 Joseph Chaumet married Morel's granddaughter Marie and took control. Tiaras became a speciality, and in 1907 the workshops and boutique moved to 12 Place Vendôme, where they remain.

Marcel Chaumet succeeded his father in 1928 at the height of Art Deco; the house closed in 1934 and reopened after the war. His sons Jacques and Pierre became directors in 1958 and took over Breguet in 1970, and the artistic director René Morin created the Lien ring in 1977. In 1987 the brothers' diamond trading losses led to bankruptcy and later fraud convictions.

The house was bought in 1987 by the Bahrain-based investment bank Investcorp and returned to profit in 1998. LVMH acquired it in 1999 and expanded in Asia, opening 24 boutiques in China in 2006. The bee, an emblem shared with Napoleon, recurs in collections such as Bee My Love, and the Joséphine collection of 2010 takes its cue from the empress's tiaras and diadems.

Fourteen artisans work in the Place Vendôme workshop. Charles Leung, formerly of FRED, became chief executive in January 2024.