Eleven designs for brooches with leaves and scrolls
Drawing with eleven 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. Three designs are oval-shaped roundels with gold frames, with green scrolls and pearls; another oval-shaped roundel is framed by round pearls and a garland of green stylized leaves, flowers, and pearls. Another design consists of two smaller oval-shaped roundels, held together by a gold 8-shape that interlaces around them, and is flanked above and below by scrolling motifs of gold. Two smaller brooches consist of a bundle of pearls, made up of red stones, and stylized, green leaves, and a bundle of stylized leaves with hanging, tiny round pearls. A group of four pearls is framed by a gold quatrefoil, and a larger gold quatrefoil, containing a large, square-cut, red stone in the center, flanked by four green, semi-abstract fleur-de-lis motifs to the sides, and with silver scrolling branches with pearls, makes up yet another design. The final two designs consist of a horizontal oval ring of red color, interlaced by strips of gold that form intersecting 8-shapes, decorated with three small, red rings, and of a golden frame made up of C- and S-curves, and with blue highlights on the sides and in the inner part of the frame. The colors might have been achieved in the manufactured jewel by using enamel or small inserts of stones of matching color; the red stones could have been rubies, coral, or other types of (semi-) precious red stones.
Artwork Details
- Title: Eleven designs for brooches with leaves and scrolls
- Artist: F. Mellerio Borgnis
- Date: ca. 1830–70
- Medium: Graphite, pen and black, green, blue, yellow, red, and gold ink
- 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(15)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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