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Antique Early Victorian Necklace with Coral Cameo in Gold, c. 1845

€ 1,890.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

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Antique Early Victorian Necklace with Coral Cameo in Gold, c. 1845

Description

This description was automatically translated from German. If you have any questions about this piece of jewellery, we will be happy to help!

After the barren and uncertain years of the Napoleonic Wars, jewelry design gained new courage around 1840. Magnificent, sculptural pieces of jewelry made of gold captured the hearts of the ladies. From the small pieces of jewelry made of gold filigree that had been worn from 1820 onwards, the fashion evolved towards voluminous, floating pieces. This was a fitting expression of the newly established bourgeois affluence: precious jewellery was no longer only worn at court. Jewellery of that age found its motifs particularly in the world of plants and in the Baroque and Rococo eras, as a contrast to the classicism of the Napoleonic era. This necklace from the 1840s also shows this characteristic design language. It consists of a series of decoratively embossed links with a large pendant in the middle. This consists of rococo-like curves of gold and is set with a cameo of Mediterranean coral depicting a woman in antique garb. Playfully movable chains with tassels are set underneath. The necklace is made of embossed sheet gold, known as "foam gold", typical of the period. The popular large and voluminous formats could thus be created with little use of material, while at the same time the first mass-produced work was possible, which developed at this time in Germany, in the later jewelry metropolis of Pforzheim in the Black Forest. The necklace is thus both modern and sentimental: the cameo as the showpiece of the design refers to antiquity as the starting point of the arts, as a place of longing for wandering travelers and as an Arcadian counterworld to what was increasingly perceived as a restless time. The detailed forms of the necklace, with their references to the Rococo period, also hark back in time. And yet the necklace is modern for its time - in its workmanship and overall design, with the attached chains and its bold colors. Perhaps it is precisely this contemporaneity that is at the heart of the era. Necklaces like this were among the most popular designs of the period and were produced in different variations. For dating, see Brigitte Marquardt: Schmuck. Klassizismus und Biedermeier, 1780-1850, Munich 1983, p. 172 (see also our illustration).

Size & Details

Yesterday & Today

€ 1,890.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

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