Stones and Reveries

The Poetry and Minerals of Roger Callois

L’École des Arts Joailliers

From 6 November, 2025 to 29 March, 2026
Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau - 16 bis, boulevard Montmartre, 75009 Paris
lecolevancleefarpels.com

L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, in partnership with France’s Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN), presents a retrospective dedicated to the collection of the great twentieth-century French writer Roger Caillois (1913-1978) until March 29, 2026.

The exhibition brings together his iconic texts and nearly two hundred minerals preserved at the MNHN. It offers a unique approach combining science and poetry, conceived by Professor François Farges, curator of the exhibition and scientific director of the MNHN’s gem and art collections.

Roger Caillois (1913-1978),
An Erudite Collector

An essayist, grammarian and poet, Roger Caillois devoted part of his work to better comprehending the connections between nature and art.

Driven by his insatiable curiosity, scientific precision and boundless imagination, this master of the French language collected stones with passion and erudition for over twenty-five years. And it was the minute contemplation of minerals that inspired much of his reflections and poetic genius.

Roger Caillois’s passion for minerals resulted in writings of an exceptionally poetic nature.

From 1959 onwards, he published essays inspired by his collection of “picture stones” including The Writing of Stones, his most renowned work, which was first printed in 1970.

Elected to the Academie Francaise the following year, he continued to further his exploration of the mineral world until his sudden death in 1978.

Stones and Reveries: The Poetry and Minerals of Roger Callois

An Extraordinary Mineral Reverie

The exhibition “Stones and Reveries: The Poetry and Minerals of Roger Caillois” delves into the writer’s intimate ties to the mineral world. It includes iconic texts penned by Roger Caillois and nearly two hundred minerals from his collection, now part of the France’s Muséum national d’histoire naturelle’s collections.

« This exhibition is the result of unprecedented research, which has allowed us to foster a dialogue between Roger Caillois’s exceptional stones and texts, many of which are being displayed for the very first time. It provides unique insight into the mind of a man whose collection unleashed a poetic expression of a rare intensity, transforming the mineral into a mirror of his thoughts and deepest aspirations. »

Pr. François Farges
PhD, Curator of the exhibition, professor at France’s Museum national d’histoire naturelle and scientist in charge of the MNHN’s collections of gems and objets d’art

Agate, Likely Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) Paris, Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, mineral and gem collection, photograph by François Farges

Agate
Likely Rio Grande do Sul (Brésil)
Paris, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, mineral and gem collection
Photograph by François Farges

Around the exhibition

Panel discussion : Roger Caillois’s Academician’s sword by Jean Vendome

Tuesday, March 3, 2026, at 8 p.m. – Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau

With François Farges, exhibition curator and scientific director of the gem and art collections at the MNHN, Thierry Vendome, jeweler, Gérard Panczer, professor of geomaterial spectroscopy (Institut Lumière Matière, Université Lyon 1), and Laetitia Gilles-Guéry, gemologist and professor at L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.
Reservations required

Publication: “Pierres anagogiques”

A previously unpublished book by Roger Caillois
Co-published by L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts and Éditions Gallimard
320 pages / in French

This previously unpublished book brings to fruition what could have been Roger Caillois’s last major poetic project on stones, most of whose texts were rediscovered in 2023 by François Farges.