Designs for a brooch with a bundle of flowers and leaves
Not on view
Drawing with a design for a brooch, part of an album of drawings in pen and ink of designs for jewelry in the style of the French School of the 19th century,designed for the French jewelry house Mellerio-Borgnis. The brooch is made up of a small bundle of stylized flowers and leaves, colored with thin, vertical, green lines, on a horizontal, undulating branch, colored with gray, flanked above by several round pearls. From the center of this bundle hangs a small garland of similar stylized flowers and leaves, one of the flowers colored with gray and the others with green, and strips of pearls and green stones. At the bottom of the brooch is a stylized, gray flower. The color of the branches might have been achieved by using silver in the manufactured jewel, while the green color of the flowers leaves might have been achieved through the use of enamel or of small, green stones (emeralds?) set into gold or silver. The green stones in the strips of pearls could have been emeralds, green pearls, or other (semi-)precious stones of a similar tone. These brooches were often worn by women to decorate their corsets or skirts.
