Twelve designs for brooches with pearls, ribbons and leaves
Not on view
Drawing with twelve 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. Six of the designs consist of oval frames, framed with different combinations of ribbons, sometimes colored with blue or red, garlands of stylized leaves, mostly colored with green, and pearls of different types. The other six designs consist of different types of bundles of stylized green leaves and round pearls, sometimes with gold scrolls. The green and blue colors would have been achieved in the manufactured jewel through the use of enamel or small (semi-) precious stones of the desired color. A combination of silver and gold might have been used to achieve the different colors of metal in the designs.
