Art Nouveau and Fashion
JEWELRY

JEWELRY Brooches, Necklaces, Rings, Earrings...

the Art Nouveau Feminine Jewelry Collection

the Art Nouveau Enamel Jewelry Collection

the Art Nouveau Nature Jewelry Collection

the Art Nouveau Ginkgo Jewelry Collection

the Venezia '900 Fashion Jewelry Collection

Jewelry was one of the purest, and most successful, expressions of Art Nouveau style, using sensuous organic forms to create a vast range of objects of exceptional beauty and inventiveness.

All the Art Nouveau artists were largely reacting against the Classic aesthetic, a style described as often "fussy and inhibited." They found a freeing vocabulary in natural and organic forms. The movement's signature motif was the S-curve, which might be found in a flower's stem on a brooch or the trail of smoke from a cigarette depicted in a theater poster.

The Art Nouveau style affected all the Jewelry pieces: rings, brooches, necklaces, pendants, bracelets were made in Art Nouveau style but also cufflinks, hatpins, haircombs, belt buckles, tiaras, diadems, and theatrical head or corsage ornaments.

Also the most common production followed the Great Art Nouveau Masters and would change the Jewelry world.

As mentionned, apart from traditional silver, gold, diamonds and the like, New Materials were used as the semi-precious stones like moonstone, opal, amethyst, citrine and peridot. On the other side, also natural materials like: baroque pearls, coral, mother pearl, freshwater pearls, tortoise shell, ivory and horn were very popular but also poorer materials as copper, crystal and carved glass.

On the technical side, the Art Nouveau saw the great use of beautiful Enameling Techniques in jewelry, such as cloisonné (in which gold wire forms partitions into which the enamel is poured); champlevé (in which the enamel fills recesses cut out from the background metal); basse-taille (in which an engraved design in the metal is covered with, but still visible through, a transparent enamel); and plique-a-jour (in which the backing metal is removed from the translucent enamel after firing, resulting in a stained glass effect). Many times a craftsman would combine the use of different methods of enameling on the same piece as this effect gave Art Nouveau jewelry a distinctive appearance much like a three dimensional painting.

The Art Nouveau Jewelry Motifs were quite differents:
- Natural Motifs:
The Victorian and Classical interest in the natural world continued into this era. Butterflies, dragonflies, snakes, poppies, orchids, irises and waterlilies were prevalent motifs but even bats were represented ! On the vegetal side, exotic plants were very succesfull as the Ginkgo Biloba tree leaf or the orchid flowers but also lilies, irises, ferns and ivy were very popular.

- Asian Influence:
As one of the principal sources of inspiration to Art Nouveau artists, the Asian approach to Nature was to influence the new style where the organic motifs were not rendered realistically, but rather in a more stylized manner characteristic of the Asian arts. Sinuous, free-flowing lines were integral design elements.

- Mystery/Fantasy:
Turn-of-the-century uncertainty fostered a sense of mystery and fantasy in design. Accordingly, Art Nouveau jewelry often features mythical hybrid forms and near-colorless translucent stones like moonstone and opal.

- Feminine Motif:
Long haired, scantily clothed women, often portrayed as nymphs or mermaids, were a popular theme for Art Nouveau artists as the posters of Czech artist Alphons Mucha, who worked in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, provide good examples of these types of female forms.