The ephemeral art of luxury window displays

Katja Schaer - One of San Francisco’s oldest watch and jewellery stores, Shreve & Co has mastered the art of visual merchandising.

Cherry blossom with jewel © Jim Cardosa, Kat Soto, Bruce Henderson

Fashion fairy © Jim Cardosa, Kat Soto, Bruce Henderson

Flower fairy © Jim Cardosa, Kat Soto, Bruce Henderson

Woodland fairy © Jim Cardosa, Kat Soto, Bruce Henderson

Night fairy queen © Jim Cardosa, Kat Soto, Bruce Henderson

Sea fairy © Jim Cardosa, Kat Soto, Bruce Henderson

One of San Francisco’s oldest watch and jewellery stores, Shreve & Co has mastered the art of visual merchandising.

Katja Schaer

Exhibited and flaunted, luxury is made to be seen, as the admiring and sometimes envious looks it inspires confirm. But luxury is not enough by itself. Luxury has to be staged, and it is a very special breed of artist who makes window-shoppers’ eyes sparkle as brightly as the jewels they admire. He or she raises the curtain on the desirable, fashioning a case in which these most coveted objects can shine.

For the past 14 years, Jim Cardosa has imagined and created the window displays at Shreve & Co, one of San Francisco’s oldest watch and jewellery stores. Each month he invents an ephemeral backdrop, taking inspiration from everyday scenes, shared moments or the objects he comes across around town. "All kinds of things can give me ideas, from advertisements to museum exhibitions to ordinary, everyday occurrences." Such as the day the wind that blows through the city whispered the idea for a display of multi-coloured kites with pearls and jewellery streaming from their tails.

"I make a point of doing simple things which the public can relate to," he adds, although he will admit to sometimes slipping a touch of irony into his miniature tableaux. Always discreetly though, as a kind of "in joke" that will raise a smile on the face of those who take time to look.

Catching the eye of passers-by

Suspended between the merchandise and potential customers, the display is the eye-catcher, the link between the two. "My job isn’t to sell. My job is to catch the attention of passers-by and invite them to step into the store. A little like the cover on a book," Jim Cardosa explains. And when a display has only a fraction of a second to catch the eye, beauty is essential. But not just beauty. Perfection too. "The worst mistake we can make is to neglect the details. If the spectator sees a spot of glue or something out of line, even the most inspired concept is ruined."

While Jim Cardosa spends twenty hours each month preparing Shreve & Co’s windows, the displays that take centre-stage for the Christmas and Easter holidays are far more demanding: the much-awaited Christmas displays take almost a year to prepare. Last year, Shreve & Co devoted its holiday windows to fairy tales, with a tiny winged creature alighting in each of the store’s 14 windows, nestled inside her very own world. A fairy fast asleep in a poppy, a little wax mermaid, vintage lace, silk, flowers and velvet drew passers-by into a magical miniature universe. "These windows conjured up different things for different people, maybe a childhood memory. In fact each of these miniature worlds told its own story, had its own life really," comments Kat Soto who worked with Jim Cardosa and Bruce Henderson on these creations.

Continuing the magic

Jim Cardosa remembers last year’s Christmas windows at Shreve & Co as quite simply extraordinary. "We have only a few seconds to get the attention of passers-by who are bombarded with visual stimuli. And we succeeded." Nor did these enchanted worlds stay behind glass at Shreve & Co. The store, which was founded over a century ago and is still proud of its "family" spirit, intends to stay close to the public in a slightly different way. As though luxury shouldn’t ignore the harsher realities of life. When the time comes to take down the Christmas windows, these delicate scenes are sold and proceeds donated to charity, including research into AIDS and breast cancer. In its own way, Shreve & Co has learned to carry on the magic of these ephemeral worlds. ■

BORN WITH THE GOLD RUSH

Shreve & Co opened its doors during California’s golden years… literally. It was founded in 1852, four years after gold was discovered in the region, by brothers George and Samuel Shreve who had come west in search of new wealth. They opened the Shreve Jewelry Store, selling European and Californian fancy goods and manufacturing fine quality silver jewellery. Forty years later, after the two brothers’ deaths, George Rodman, the son of George Shreve, took over at the helm with business partner Albert J. Lewis as the majority stockholder. The store was incorporated as Shreve & Co.

Boosted by its early success and driven by the region’s prosperity, in March 1906 Shreve & Co moved to a new building in downtown San Francisco… barely a month before the disaster that would bring these golden years to an end: the great earthquake that shook San Francisco on April 18th 1906. However, the Shreve & Co building remained standing and, despite the fire that raged for days after the earthquake, the store’s precious jewellery was recovered intact from its vault.

Some sixty years later, after being sold first to George, son of Albert Lewis, then to the Hickingbotham family, in 1967 Shreve & Co was acquired by the Dayton-Hudson Corporation and, finally and after several transactions, by the Schiffman family. Not that there has ever been any question of forsaking the historic and family character of a store which, alongside jewellery, sells watches by Rolex, Patek Philippe, Girard-Perregaux and Jaeger-LeCoultre, among other prestigious brands. ■

© 2008 All rights reserved

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