Design for a Gold and Enamel Brooch

Drawing with a design for a gold and enamel brooch, part of a modern scrapbook with 38 sheets showing designs for jewelry with pearls, diamonds and other (semi-)precious stones all done in watercolor and heightened with gold, characteristic of the period between 1870 and 1930, which saw some of the most extravagant and innovative trends in jewelry design. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the naturalistic compositions of earlier decades had become more complex, and the colors in nature mimicked by the color of gemstones used for jewelry design. In the last years of the century, designs for jewelry had become even more 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 and through the first decades of the twentieth century, diamond jewelry was re-interpreted to create the new 'garland style', and 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. During the 1920s, the economic boom following the war saw an increased glamour in jewelry design, with sharp, geometric patterns that celebrated modernity and the machine age. Art Deco jewelry is characterized by dense concentrations of gemstones and the use of platinum in place of gold, with inspiration from all over the world, especially from the Near and Far East. Like most of the drawings in the album, this design is fully rendered with gouache, showing not only the styles for the jewelry designs, but also suggesting choices of precious metals, stones, and other materials to be used in the creation of the jewels. It is also possible that these designs are real-sized, allowing the customer to visualize the jewel fully from this presentation drawings before commissioning its manufacture.

This design for a brooch is made up of a frame of scrolls and stylized acanthus leaves, revealing one of the many manifestations of the nineteenth-century European Revivalism. The upper part of the frame contains a ribbon banner upon which the face of a winged child rests, and the bottom of the frame contains a four-petal rosette flanked on the bottom by a stylized acathus leaf of dark pink color. The frame is rendered with golden pigment to suggest gold as the material of choice for the manufacture of the jewel, although some of the acanthus leaves are colored with dark pink and green and the banner is rendered with blue, suggesting the use of enamel to achieve the colors in the jewel. The frame surrounds a circular space that is left blank, possibly to be filled by a cameo. A drawing like this could be presented to several different customers for them to choose a personalized motif for the inside of the frame, while also allowing for a degree of standardization in the design, thus increasing the efficiency of the design process and the manufacturing of the jewel.