Cutouts of prints of Second Empire jewelry designs pasted onto sheet

Sheet with cutouts of printed jewelry designs pasted onto it. The designs include a Tiara, four rings, three pendants, two hook earrings, a necklace, and two bracelets, and present the style of the Second Empire (1852-1870), characterized by extravagant motifs with complex compositions of naturalistic jewelry, composed of clearly recognizable foliage, flowers and fruit, and often presenting frames or roundels with female figures dressed with draped, neoclassical clothes. In many cases, the colors of gemstones used in the creation of the jewels were meant to match those in nature; cabochon gems were popular elements to create complexity in curving and figurative designs, often with symbolic meanings.

The tiara is made up of a thin headband decorated with a Greek-inspired scrolling strip, flanked by three spade-shaped frames, each containing an oval made up of square-cut diamonds, flanked above by a palmette, and containing a three-quarter female bust, her curly hair tied up and decorated with strips of pearls (?). The spaces between the oval of diamonds and the spade frame is filled by smaller frames with scrolling motifs, and the frames are separated by bundles of stylized, scrolling leaves made up of pearls, and a stylized flower bulb made up of a teardrop pearl.

One of the rings is made up of three thin rings, linked by a transversal rectangle of the same width, and with a square frame on the center, possibly to be engraved with a monogram or some kind of neoclassical motif. Another ring consists of an oval frame, possibly also to be engraved with a monogram or some kind of neoclassical motif, and figurative branches that scroll around it and make the band. Another ring contains a central square frame, and two smaller squares to each side, formed in front of the band. The final ring is made up three pearls, flanked to the sides by a small brilliant, around which the band is formed.

The design for a necklace is made up of a chain formed by small cylinders linked together by thin strips of metal, with a hanging pendant made up of a large diamond rosette surrounded by a strip of diamonds inside a strip of diamond rosettes, which is flanked above by a palmette with diamonds, from which hang two branches of laurel leaves that enclose the rosetted, and from which hangs a thin strip of rosettes that holds three other rosettes and three teardrops with brilliants.

Two of the pendants are oval-shaped and framed with diamonds: one, with alternating triangles and semi-circles decorated with diamonds, contains a three-quarter view of a female bust, her hair up and her neck adorned with a ruff of a garment and a necklace; the other, with square diamonds, contains a woman declining on a vase that pours water onto a pond or river, in front of a bush with elongated leaves. The third pendant is made up of an oval frame with dancing female, wearing a draped, neoclassical dress, inside a frame made up of a strip of pearls, flanked above by a bow with diamonds and a pearl in the center and with two strips of stylized lilies hanging to the sides, each ending on an oval pearl, and flanked below by a smaller ribbon with diamonds and a pearl in the center, and a larger oval pearl hanging from it. The hook earrings present the same design, without the strip of pearls around the oval frame.

The two bracelets are made up of metalling bangles, one of them decorated with scrolling motifs, and the other with scales containing palmettes.