Unjustly little known to the public, Jean Vendome revolutionized the world of jewelry, elevating it to the status of an art form during his sixty-seven-year career with over 30 000 outstanding, often unique jewels. He was continually blurring the boundaries between sculpture, photography, painting, and the world of jewelry.

Born on 18 April 1930, Ohan Tuhdarian (Jean in Armenian) spent the first years of his life in Lyon. At the age of 13, he started an apprenticeship at his maternal uncle’s, jeweler in Paris, where he acquired irreproachable technique and expertise. At the age of 18, now as Jean Vendome, he opened his first workshop in 1948 in Paris, where he honored commissions for his colleagues on Rue de la Paix and worked on timepieces. His name began to circulate.

Jean Vendome stood out as a true pioneer of jewelry. He invented a whole new avant-garde language and showed his works alongside the greatest names in art. With Georges Braque, Vieira da Silva, Jean Degottex, Salvador Dalí, or the fashion designer Paco Rabanne. Jean Vendome exhibited across the globe, thus an active participant in the important artistic revolution of the 1960s–1970s.
Architecture was an important source of inspiration for the jeweler who, in his early days, carefully scrutinized the brutalist and modernist vogue, represented by architects such as Le Corbusier: as with his straight lines and wide openings to let in the light.

Entering the collections of the greatest museums in the world, notably the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris or the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and highly prized by collectors, Jean Vendome passed away in 2017 at the age of 87.