Eight designs for brooches with pearls, scrolls, and stylized 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. Most of the designs consist of scrolls of gold with garlands of stylized leaves, mostly colored with green, and pearls; one of them contains a blue, 8-shaped motif interlacing around the gold scrolls, and another contais a red, oval ring around which the gold scrolls interlace. One of the design consists of a roundel, left empty on the design possibly to be personalized for the customer, framed by interlacing gold branches with stylized, green leaves and small, round pearls. The final two designs consist of a gold C-curve holding a stylized, green leaf, from which hang strips of gold with small, round pearls. The green, red and blue accents in the designs might have been achieved using enamel or (semi-) precious stones of the desired colors in the manufactured jewels, and a combination of silver and gold would have been used to achieve the different colors of metals in the designs.
Artwork Details
- Title: Eight designs for brooches with pearls, scrolls, and stylized leaves
- Artist: F. Mellerio Borgnis
- Date: ca. 1830–70
- Medium: Graphite, pen and black, green, 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(21)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
More Artwork
Research Resources
The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.