The Pure Brilliance: The Boodles Story exhibition opened on 22 October at Liverpool’s Lady Lever Art Gallery and runs until 5 March next year. With the gallery celebrating its centenary year, the exhibition showcases the jewellery and story of this world-renowned brand, which grew over 200 years from a family jewellery business in Liverpool to become one of the world’s leading purveyors of stunning jewels. Boodles is the only high-end jewellery brand to hail from Liverpool, and has remained in the same family for over two centuries.
Boodles’ origins lie in a family jewellery business established by the Kirk family in 1798, which was later acquired by Boodle & Dunthorne. By the late-19th Century, the brand had acquired a reputation for fine jewellery and metalwork in the flourishing Liverpool jewellery industry of the time. Liverpool was then one of the wealthiest cities in the world, with an affluent merchant class desiring and well able to afford good quality jewellery, and Boodle & Dunthorne was at the heart of the industry’s development. In 1921, the brand opened Boodles House on the corner of Lord Street and North John Street (where Bartletts Solicitors is also based) which remains the company’s headquarters today.
Pure Brilliance: The Boodles Story features breathtaking pieces of both historic and contemporary jewellery, charting the brand’s development from its early years as a city jeweller in Liverpool, to the peak of luxury jewellery craftsmanship and design. Visitors can explore the level of craft that goes into creating Boodles pieces, including the sourcing of precious stones and metals and the painstaking manufacturing process.
Visitors to Pure Brilliance: The Boodles Story are invited to pay what they think the exhibition was worth, with contributions helping National Museums Liverpool to continue to stage exciting and memorable exhibitions and events.
