For our third curated collection from Réserve, we look to Rover, a color story woven throughout the Jacques Marie Mage archive. First appearing in 2016, over the following decade it would help define some of our most enduring silhouettes, becoming one of our most highly sought after hues.
Rover belongs to a distinctly twentieth-century palette. By the postwar years, this ‘bottle green’ tone had become a familiar presence, appearing in military surplus stores, motoring culture, sporting life, and the broader landscape of everyday design. Long after its practical origins had faded, the color remained attached to a particular world of objects: field watches, motoring accessories, sporting equipment, military kits, and the personal effects that accompanied lives spent moving between city and countryside, workshop and road.
The collection draws from these overlapping histories. The objects gathered here span different decades, purposes, and places of origin, yet all belong comfortably within the landscape Rover has come to inhabit. Together they reveal the surprising range of collectibles that have carried the color forward, from the curiously commonplace to the deeply personal.
"It's said in Hollywood that you should always forgive your enemies - because you never know when you'll have to work with them."
— Lana Turner
BUILDING A DIFFERENT FORMAL UNIVERSE
During the early Sixties, the world seemed to fall under the spell of Italian design. It was a time referred to as the “Italian economic miracle,” designating a period of strong economic growth in Italy after the Second World War to the late 1960s, during which the country transformed from a poor, mainly rural nation into a global industrial power—a period of momentous change in Italian society and culture, as well as around the world.
"An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest."
— Pier Paolo Pasolini
THE ART OF INLAY
There is a rich history of silversmithing and lapidary arts in the American West. Though jewelry-making existed long before, it is believed silversmithing first came to the American Southwest in the mid-19th century. The Navajo are credited with being the first Indigenous peoples to work with silver, and are thought to have gained these skills from Mexican or Spaniard blacksmiths, adapting techniques to suit softer metals.
"Shape is not only a presence, a representation of something, but is itself an event: an event of encounter."
— Kenneth Nolan
THE DANGEROUS ALLURE
The phrase femme fatale belongs to the film noir cycle of the 1940s and '50s, but the archetypal woman herself had been moving through Western art for centuries, from Eve beneath the branches of Eden to Cleopatra as she passed from Roman histories into painting and, later, silent cinema. By the time Barbara Stanwyck fastened a diamond anklet in Double Indemnity (1944) or Rita Hayworth stepped beneath the lights of Gilda (1946), Hollywood was working with an inheritance rather than an invention.
"It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around."
— Anita Ekberg
"The poet is the voice of the people... So poets have always been feared, controlled, and jailed."
— Donovan
BUILDING A DIFFERENT FORMAL UNIVERSE
During the early Sixties, the world seemed to fall under the spell of Italian design. It was a time referred to as the “Italian economic miracle,” designating a period of strong economic growth in Italy after the Second World War to the late 1960s, during which the country transformed from a poor, mainly rural nation into a global industrial power—a period of momentous change in Italian society and culture, as well as around the world.
"An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest."
— Pier Paolo Pasolini
"It's said in Hollywood that you should always forgive your enemies - because you never know when you'll have to work with them."
— Lana turner
"All i can do is to be me, whoever that is."
— Bob Dylan
THE ART OF INLAY
There is a rich history of silversmithing and lapidary arts in the American West. Though jewelry-making existed long before, it is believed silversmithing first came to the American Southwest in the mid-19th century. The Navajo are credited with being the first Indigenous peoples to work with silver, and are thought to have gained these skills from Mexican or Spaniard blacksmiths, adapting techniques to suit softer metals.
"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."
— Federico Fellini
THE DANGEROUS ALLURE
The phrase femme fatale belongs to the film noir cycle of the 1940s and '50s, but the archetypal woman herself had been moving through Western art for centuries, from Eve beneath the branches of Eden to Cleopatra as she passed from Roman histories into painting and, later, silent cinema. By the time Barbara Stanwyck fastened a diamond anklet in Double Indemnity (1944) or Rita Hayworth stepped beneath the lights of Gilda (1946), Hollywood was working with an inheritance rather than an invention.
"It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around."
— Anita Ekberg
"The poet is the voice of the people... So poets have always been feared, controlled, and jailed."
— Donovan