Eight designs for brooches with scrolling branches, flowers and leaves
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 interlacing rings of gold with scrolling branches with stylized, green leaves and round pearls. The second design consists of a wreath of stylized, green leaves and rosettes of small, round pearls as petals around a round, red stone. The third design is made up of a bundle of scrolling branches with pearls and rosettes of pearls, and scrolling, elongated leaves, colored with green. The fourth design is made up of a bundle of three stylized, green leaves, with three hanging strips of pearls. The fifth design is made up of a green C-curve around which scroll branches of gold with round pearls, and with a large oval pearl hanging at the bottom of the brooch. The sixth design is made up of scrolls of gold and interlacing green leaves, a scrolling silver branch with a large, stylized leaf, and strips of round and oval pearls. The seventh design consists of an oval roundel framed by a garland of small, stylized leaves colored with green and gray, and small, round pearls, with S-curved motifs of gold. The final design is made up of a frame of blue scrolls with golden outlines, with a small bundle of stylized, silver flowers and leaves, and an oval pearl, hanging from the bottom of the frame. The green and blue areas of the designs might have been achieved using enamel or small (semi-) abstract stones of matching colors in the manufactured jewels. A combination of silver and gold would have been used to achieve the different colors of metal in the designs.
Artwork Details
- Title: Eight designs for brooches with scrolling branches, flowers and leaves
- Artist: F. Mellerio Borgnis
- Date: ca. 1830–70
- Medium: Graphite, pen, and black, green, blue, yellow, red, silver, 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(19)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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