Bijoux Parisiens

The exhibition “Bijoux Parisiens” has been produced by the Petit Palais, City of Paris Fine Arts Museum, Paris Musées, in cooperation with the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, with additional loans for this showing arranged by the Taft Museum of Art. This audio tour has been made possible through the generosity of the Docents of the Taft Museum of Art.

Worn on a chain, this pendant presents at its center a woman embracing two children, symbolizing the Christian virtue of charity. Some of the gold structure has been decorated with enamel, which is made of ground glass and pigment that produce vivid color when fired in a kiln. French creators also worked in the typical Renaissance style of this German pendant, linking diverse elements together.

During the reign of Louis XV of France (1715–1774), his courtiers preferred jewelry marked by symmetry and shining white gems. In this piece imported from Portugal, semi-precious stones—quartz and tourmaline—replaced diamonds. Like Pouget’s engravings nearby, this brooch features ribbons, flowers, and pear-shaped drops.

In this necklace, the artist elegantly suspended a medallion depicting Athena, goddess of wisdom, from two swans, a symbol associated with Napoleon’s first wife, the Empress Joséphine. Bolstering his own empire, Napoleon I set a new taste for objects based on ancient Roman art. He especially adored antique cameos, small hardstones with figures carved in relief. This enamel plaque replicates a cameo design.

The restored monarchy and its court could more easily afford semi-precious stones, such as these amethysts imported from Brazil, than the much costlier rubies, emeralds, or diamonds. The creator of this jewelry set placed amethysts within wide frames of embossed and delicately chiseled gold, which he treated with economical milled edges.

In each of the linked gold medallions that compose this bracelet, finely worked silver busts emerge from emerald-green engraved enamel fields. Jules Wièse, the maker of this bracelet, drew inspiration from early Italian Renaissance sculptural busts. Wièse began his career as goldsmith for François-Désiré Froment-Meurice.

This necklace shows fine workmanship in the techniques of filigree (intricate patterns made from thin strands of metal) and hand-embossing (hammering out a design in relief). At the 1867 Universal Exposition in Paris, Eugène Fontenay won praise for Neo-Greek jewelry like this. In admiring and emulating the remarkable skill of ancient goldsmiths, Fontenay helped initiate the 19th-century archeological style.

This bracelet represents a joint product of the jeweler Eugène Fontenay and an enamellist, Eugène Richet. Venerating antiquity, they featured small painted enamel panels with scenes of an ancient Greek procession based on the Parthenon sculptures in Athens. Musicians lead the caravan, followed by the figure of Victory in a chariot—led by cherubs on leopards—and a bull to be sacrificed.

This Renaissance-revival necklace features an enamel portrait of Diane de Poitiers (1499–1566), the mistress of Henri II and an art patron in Renaissance France. Both the gold frame of this enamel portrait and the style of the chains allude to Renaissance models. Further, like Renaissance pendants, which often featured initial letters and monograms, this work intertwines enameled Hs and Ds in several places to indicate the lovers’ close connection.

The sections of this Gothic-revival bracelet recall the vertical spires of a High Gothic cathedral or picture frame. The 1825 opening of the Musée de Cluny, which housed spectacular medieval art, launched the Neo-Gothic style. A national effort to restore Gothic churches commenced in the 1840s and lasted through the century.

Pierre–Georges Deraisme was the first of his generation to draw inspiration from the 18th century pictorial tradition of frolicking and music-making angels and cupids. Within a few years, Léopold Gautrait and Charles Jacqueau would also turn to the 18th century for design ideas for jewelry, as will be seen later in the exhibition.

In the 1880s, Octave Loeuillard created a series of designs for the jeweler Frédéric Boucheron that were noted for their technique and originality. The elegant and airy Fern Brooch, which could also be worn as a hair ornament, was among them. Boucheron founded his very highly regarded jewelry house in Paris in 1858; it is still in business on the Place Vendôme in Paris.

Georges Fouquet sometimes collaborated with the designer Charles Desrosiers, who conceived this unusual bracelet. Encircling a central opal, the thorny thistle leaves have iridescent enameled surfaces that echo and accentuate the shimmering colors of the opal.

George Fouquet's hairpin illustrates the Art Nouveau aesthetic: it consists of organic forms punctuated by diamonds, enamel, and pearls, all used sparingly and in service to the overall design. Fouquet’s father Alphonse had founded the business in 1862, but the dynasty’s great stars were Georges and his son Jean Fouquet, whose Art Deco works appear later in the exhibition.

Georges Fouquet selected delicately colored aquamarines for this headband. Between the gems, he colored the gold structure with equally pale plique-à-jour enamels, then lined the band with small diamonds. Like most of his colleagues, Georges Fouquet moved away from Art Nouveau designs by about 1910. Hair ornaments comprised an important field of jewelry after 1910, as can be seen in this section of the exhibition.

Jacqueau drew a design for a magnificent Indian headpiece from one viewpoint. This evening bag displays the taste for Indian design that often informed Parisian fashion in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Like other daring Art Deco creations, this bold necklace shows its designer breaking rules of symmetry that were centuries old: he placed a large rectangular aquamarine off-center on an engraved platinum disk. Unconventionally, the necklace also combines multiple metals. Jean Fouquet designed innovative jewelry beginning about 1925. Fouquet was the equally admired son of the celebrated Parisian jeweler Georges Fouquet (1862–1957), whose Art Nouveau jewelry also appears in this exhibition.

The panther remains an icon of Cartier design. Charles Jacqueau launched the motif, using panther fur for the first time in 1914 on a wristwatch. When Jeanne Toussaint (1887–1978) became director of Cartier’s luxury jewelry department in 1933, she also created a number of panther–inspired designs and earned the nickname “la panthère.”

During World War II, French jewelers had great difficulty securing supplies such as precious metals and gems. Boucheron’s ingenious designs for cases disguised the shortage of materials. To provide an illusory sense of luxury, the jeweler used mirrors covered with thin gold leaf, which they then engraved with decorative motifs and studded with tiny colored stones. Capturing the light, the mirror created the glimmer of more expensive materials.

In 1935, Cartier presented a “gas pipe” necklace made entirely of joined gold rings. Jacqueau had conceived this design, modeling it on the flexible tubing used for piping gas into buildings. Other jewelers, too, adopted the modern-looking chain, which they could ornament with decorative clips in floral or geometric shapes. In the post–World War II years, jewelers employed more precious stones in forming such clips, and often made them three-dimensional, like the elegant, diamond–studded arabesque that ornaments the front of this necklace.