Designs for enameled watchcases with birds, butterflies, and branches with flowers and leaves

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 10 designs for enameled watch cases, all containing scrolling branches with small leaves, some with red flowers as well, and with birds or flowers standing on them: in some cases, the birds come in couples, their wings open or closed, and one also contains a couple of chicks in a nest; the butterflies sometimes are alone standing on the branch, sometimes flying, framed by the scrolling branch, and sometimes fly around the birds. All the watchcases are colored with gray, possibly to suggest silver or some kind of steel as the material for manufacture, and the natural motifs are in front of bluish-green grounds.