Designs for three bracelets with scrolling branches and leaves
Drawing with designs for three bracelets (?), 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 first design is made up of a quatrefoil frame containing an angel in the center, flanked to the sides by two angel faces on top of smaller oval-shaped frames with scrolling edges, from which emerge two strips of metal that would have formed the body of the jewel; the frames and scrolls are all decorated by small, scrolling, stylized leaves. The design is partially rendered with gray, possibly to suggest silver as the material for its manufacture. The second design is made up of a central, square-cut, bluish stone, flanked by thin, scrolling branches with small pearls and green stylized leaves, framed by scrolls of gold, flanked to the sides by a series of superposing gold ovals with quatrefoil openings in the center, which form the body of the jewel. The final design is made up of strips of gold that scroll in the center to form a knot, which contains a bundle of green,s tylized leaves and oval pearls, and which is flanked by a green, stylized leaf and a thin, scrolling branch with an oval pearl to each side. The green color of the designs would possibly have been achieved using enamel, or small inserts of emeralds or other (semi-) precious stones in the manufactured jewel.
Artwork Details
- Title: Designs for three bracelets with scrolling branches and leaves
- Artist: F. Mellerio Borgnis
- Date: ca. 1830–70
- Medium: Graphite, pen and yellow and green ink, with gold, heightened with gray wash and silver paint
- Dimensions: Sheet: 10 1/16 × 7 15/16 in. (25.5 × 20.1 cm)
Album: 8 11/16 × 12 1/8 × 1 9/16 in. (22 × 30.8 × 4 cm) - Classifications: Albums, Drawings, Ornament & Architecture
- Credit Line: Gift of Raphael Esmerian, 1957
- Object Number: 57.662.3(11)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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