Designs for Hair Ornaments, Brooches, and a Necklace

Hand-colored engraving with designs for hair ornaments, brooches, and necklace, part of a 1804 publication of the magazine "Magazin des Luxus und des neuesten Geschmacks der vornehmen und feinen Welt" (Magazine of luxury and the newest taste adapted to the Beau Monde), which were copied from "La Mesangère", a French magazine published in the late-18th century. The designs in the plate consist of two haircombs, one with a frame containing two hexagonal plates with side portraits of a male and a female, facing each other, surrounded by scrolling, stylized acanthus leaves, and the other with a thinner frame with two side portraits of a male and a female, facing each other inside a small oval frame, with strips of small beads and blue lozenges to its sides, bordered above by a strip of square-cut diamonds, flanked by vertical arrow-tails made up of gold and with a vertical strip of square-cut diamonds running vertically down their center. The third design consists of a brooch or tiepin made up of an arrow motif, with an oval frame in the center, containing a side portrait of a male head over a blue background.

Two more desins are for hair ornaments: one consists of a half-moon plate with a hexagonal frame with a side portrait of a female, surrounded by four C-scrolls, and flanked to the sides by stylized, blue, scrolling leaves, and the other, for an aigrette, consists of a blue roundel with a thin, gold frame, surrounded by a strip of small, round, white pearls, flanked above by a palmette made up of alternating blue scrolling motifs and strips of white pearls; the blue scrolls are flanked above by quatrefoils of small, round, white pearls, and the strips of pearls end on a blue star motif.

The design for a necklace consists of a central oval frame with two side portraits of a man and a woman facing each other; half of the frame is decorated with a strip of small gold spheres, and half is decorated with a strip of small, stylized leaves. One side of the necklace is made up of two strips of small, round, white pearls, which join at the clasp of the necklace, the upper one containing a gold roundel with a side portrait of the woman. The other side is made up of two pairs of gold cable strips, separated by an oval gold frame with a side portrait of the man, and ending on the hasp of the necklace. This kind of illustration shows the different variations of the design that could be executed in order to personalize a general design to the personal taste of the customer.