Designs for Jewelry

Lithograph with designs for nineteenth-century jewels, a plate that originally formed part of a volume 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 brown tubes with interlacing golden strips that hold them together, with three pendants: a cross in the middle, the edges formed by overlapping red and golden scales, a golden escutcheon on the left, with kite-shaped black stones, and a black escutcheon on the right, with a small oval shape with a left bust of a male, framed by white, round pearls, standing on a base made up of scrolling strips of white, round pearls. Under the necklace is a bracelet made up of a golden bangle with Green scrolls, and a ring vertical ring around its center, made with different shades of golden-brown, and with borders made up of granules of gold. Other designs in the plate consist of earrings, rings, brooches and pendants, most with different types of frames, gemstones, and some featuring a monogram and a woman side bust.