Eight designs for brooches with fleurs de lis
Not on view
Drawing with eight designs for brooches (?), 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, likely created for the French jewelry house Mellerio dits Meller, one of the oldest jewelry companies in Europe, which has supplied jewelry to Marie de Medicis, Marie Antoinette, Queen Isabella II, and Empress Josephine, among others. The first design is made up of a horizontal gold oval-shaped ring, with blue on its inner border, decorated with thin strips of gold that interlace around it. The second design is made up of a double-8-shaped gold motif, with blue and gold round motifs in the center, flanked to the sides by trapezoid motifs containing a semi-abstract, blue fleur-de-lis, and with a small, silver chain on their outer borders. The third design is made up of a horizontal garland with stylized, green leaves and pearls, framed by a strip of gold that interlaces around it. The fourth design is made up of a thin branch with a semi-abstract silver flower and two stylized, green leaves, from which hang several strips of oval pearls of decreasing diameters; the upper part of the branch is decorated by two golden rings with red borders on the inside, from which emerge short, thin branches with round pearls. The fifth design si made up of two, horizontal, elongated 8-shapes of gold, decorated with a large, stylized, green leav in the middle, emerging from a thin gold branch that scrolls around the larger 8-shapes. The sixth design is made up of an undulating gold branch with round pearls and two elongated, stylized, green leaves, inside a frame of gold scrolls.The seventh design is made up of gold scrolls decorated with an interlacing garland of stylized, green leaves, and round and oval pearls. The final design is made up of gold scrolls, decorated with two small, round pearls, and with a fleur-de-lis in the upper part.