Eight designs for brooches with stylized leaves, flowers, and ribbons
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, designed for the French jewelry house Mellerio-Borgnis. The first design consists of a bundle of large, stylized, green leaves, and strips of round pearls of different sizes, and another consists of a smaller bundle of elongated, stylized, green leaves and round, red round stones. Four brooches consist of oval-shaped roundels, framed with scrolls of different types, sometimes with accents of small, stylized leaves, colored with green or gray, small pearls, and blue ribbon bows. Another design consists of a gold frame made up of C-curves, with stylized, green scrolling leaves and a farland of thin branches with stylized flowers and leaves, both executed with silver, and small, round pearls. The final design consists of a large C-curve with round pearls and rosettes of pearls, interlaced by a garland of stylized, green leaves and oval pearls, from which hangs a bundle of oval and round pearls of different sizes to fill the center of the C-curve. These designs might have been manufactured using both gold and silver, to create the different colors of metal in the brooches, and the green might have been achieved through enamel or the use of small (semi-) precious stones of green color. The round, red stones might have been coral or rubies.
Artwork Details
- Title: Eight designs for brooches with stylized leaves, flowers, and ribbons
- Artist: F. Mellerio Borgnis
- Date: ca. 1830–70
- Medium: Graphite, pen and black, green, red, blue, yellow, and gold ink, heightened with gray wash
- Dimensions: Sheet: 7 15/16 × 10 1/16 in. (20.1 × 25.6 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(18)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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