Design for a Gold Hook Earring with Diamonds, Black Pearls and a Ruby

Drawing with a design for a gold hook earring with diamonds, black pearls and a ruby that is part of a collection of 85 drawings with figurative designs for earrings, brooches, pendants and other jewels, possibly real-sized, created with graphite and gouache and heightened with gold inside lithograph frames. These designs are all characteristic of the period between 1870 and 1900, when jewelry design saw a great degree of innovation and creativity in both style and technique. Some of the most important innovations that took place at this time included the setting of diamonds without metal on the back to reinforce the refraction of light on the cut surfaces of the stones, and the use of gold granules and cannetille (scrolls of metal strips) in the creation of fine metal surfaces. (Semi-)precious stones continued to be used in jewelry design at this time, especially with the discovery of diamond mines in South Africa, although alternative techniques, many of them inspired on ancient jewelry, were also common: Enamel in its different application techniques (including champlevé, cloisonné, and low-relief) was particularly popular. In addition to enamel, colored glass was used to add touches of color to the metallic structures that formed the base of the jewels. In general, jewelry design during this period became more complex, and the colors in nature were mimicked by the color of gemstones used for jewelry design: the designs were elaborate and relied in the natural beauty of cabochon gems, curving, and figurative designs with symbolic meaning, typical of the Arts and Crafts movement. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Art Nouveau movement created sinuous and organic pieces that moved away from conventional stones and put emphasis on the subtle effects of materials such as glass, horn and enamel. The European Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as civilizations of the Mediterranean, and even Japan, became important sources of inspiration for jewelry design at this time.

This design for a gold earring is made up of a gold hook that holds two scrolling motifs that frame the upper part of a thin gold lozenge frame with a smaller lozenge motif with a rotated square-cut ruby surrounded by small round diamonds and flanked on the vertices by four gold roundels with round black pearls that are separated from each other by two intersecting thin gold scrolls. From the lower part of the lozenge frame hang seven thin gold strips that hold small gold rings. The pearls and the ruby could have been replaced in the manufactured jewel by graphite and red enamel, or graphite-colored and red-colored glass stones, respectively, both techniques widely used at the time of the creation of this design. This drawing for an earring was created over a lithograph cream frame with a light-brown ear, to show how the earring would look like when worn.