Designs for Jewelry

Lithograph with designs for nineteenth-century jewels, possibly a plate meant to form part of an edition of the "Jewelers Circular and Horological Review," a publication established in 1869 as a trade journal dedicated to jewelry, clocks, watches, and silverware. The designs, which include a necklace, pendants, brooches, bracelets, and rings, present the aesthetic of the French Second Empire (1852-1870), which was characterized by extravagant motifs with complex compositions of naturalistic jewelry, composed of clearly recognizable foliage, flowers and fruit, and often presenting frames or roundels with female figures dressed with draped, neoclassical clothes. In many cases, the colors of gemstones used in the creation of the jewels were meant to match those in nature; cabochon gems were popular elements to create complexity in curving and figurative designs, often with symbolic meanings.

The plate contains a design for a necklace made up of a strip of golden rectangles bordered by golden chains, from which hangs a pendant made up of an oval frame of gold with three strips of platinum, the central one framed with gold and surrounded by scrolling motifs where it stands over the oval. Another design consists of a pendant made up of a black oval with a bust of a female wearing a neoclassical necklace and her hair tied up in the fashion of the time, framed by a strip of small, round, white pearls. Other designs include brooches, cufflinks, rings, and tieclips, all executed with gold, some containing details in platinum or black ink, likely to simulate enamel, and some also with white pearls.