Designs for Jewelry

Lithograph with designs for nineteenth-century jewels, a plate that originally formed part of the 1877 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 pendant that consists of a gold roundel containing a rosette made up of a white, round pearl and black diamonds around it, framed with gold scrolls, and with a teardrop pearl hanging at the bottom; a design for a hook earring of the same style is presented to its right. Another design for a hook earring is presented at the other side of the pendant, made up of a stylized shell containing a large, cushion black diamond, framed inside two thin oval-shaped strips of gold, the outer one with small gold granules under it, and held above by a stylized fleur-de-lis motif that hangs from the hook. Under them is a necklace made up of alternating large cushion cut black diamonds framed by stylized leaves outlined with gold, and strips of three smaller cushion cut black diamonds inside frames of gold with small granules of gold, and from which hangs a cross pendant made up of strips of gold and decorated with cushion cut black diamonds. Several other designs for pendants and brooches of neoclassical style, with shells and scrolls, and with pearls, black enamel, and black diamonds, fill the rest of the plate. There is also a design for a bangle bracelet made up of several horizontal strips of gold and black metal, some of them twisted, held in the center by vertical scrolls and an oval of twisted black metal, and a monogram made up of black diamonds with golden outlines with scrolls in the bottom.