Design for a Haircomb with a Bundle of Iridescent White Flowers and Three Small Ladybugs

Drawing with a design for a haircomb, designed around 1900, part of an album of drawings by various artists for individual pieces of jewelry, containing a variety of designs in the Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as well as some pieces in historic period styles. The haircomb in this drawing consists of four golden teeth, joined by three arches, each with a small, red and black ladybug. From under the central arch scrolls upwards a green stem with two large, stylized leaves, colored with shades of green and brown, which stand over the two arches on the sides, and a large bundle of stylized flowers with four petals, colored with purple and white to suggest an iridescent, purplish-white surface, bordered with golden outlines executed with metallic paint, and with small, white round pearls as pistils, and smaller, greenish flowers of similar shape. This design reveals the aesthetic of late Art Nouveau jewelry style, designed, among others, by Rene Lalique, which drew inspiration from antiquity and japonism, abandoning the exclusive use traditional precious stones in the manufacture of jewels, and using, instead, a combination of gold, gemstones, semi-precious stones, mother-of-pearl, ivory and horn, enamel, and glass, to create colorful, powerful, and sinuous designs, often presenting animal and other figurative motifs.