Fantastic Art Nouveau Gold Brooch with Natural Pearls & Enamel, c. 1900

Reverie From the Bottom of the Sea

Fantastic Art Nouveau Gold Brooch with Natural Pearls & Enamel, c. 1900

€ 6,980.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

Description

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

The large brooch has an almost round design. A gnarled edge of gold frames a plate of enameled silver that shimmers blue and green and turquoise in places. A network of golden branches and leaves arches over the plate, between which four large, shimmering gray-violet natural pearls are set. The design draws our gaze into the depths of a mysterious body of water. The vastness of the sea is shimmering and alien, unreachable. Branches of seaweed, however, block the way into the depths - and they also block our grasp of the treasures of the sea: we can only see the large, precious, shimmering pearls, but we can never reach them. Seaweed, along with other plant forms, was a popular motif for jewelry designers around c. 1900. Its bizarre shapes inspired artists, as did the fact that seaweed had rarely been depicted in art before: it was the allure of the new that attracted them here, and at the same time referred to the strange, mysterious world of the submarine - the parallel to the newly discovered subconscious is certainly no coincidence here. But while the treasures of the submarine in this brooch still seem quite harmless, the subconscious symbolized in the deep sea is much more prominent in other works. Compare, for example, the impressive brooch by Louis Aurcoc, Paris c. 1900, now in the Pforzheim Jewellery Museum, see online here. Incidentally, this brooch is also adorned with seaweed! Leafing through catalogs of Art Nouveau jewellery, French designers seem to have had a preference for creating jewellery with seaweed. The wonderful catalog Parisian Jewellery. Vom zweiten Kaiserreich zur Belle Epoque, published by the Bavarian National Museum, Munich 1989, has a number of examples, including a large mantle gaff by Boucheron, Paris 1903 (p. 146, cat. no. 76) and a belt buckle by Vever, Paris c. 1900 (p. 201, cat. 122, see also here), or a large corsage ornament by Georges Fouquet, circa 1902 (p. 297ff, cat. 235, in a further version also here). However, marine motifs also made their way into the minds of contemporaries in Germany. Famous are the designs by Wilhelm Lucas von Cranach, such as his hair comb with algae motif in the Bavarian National Museum, see here, or his famous large brooch with the name Octopus and Butterfly, today in the Pforzheim Jewelry Museum, see here. Unfortunately, our brooch is not signed. It bears only fineness marks, one possibly indicating that the brooch was made in Germany, and import marks showing that it was imported to France sometime between 1893 and 1984. We think that it was made in Germany directly for the French market, as it is so much in keeping with the taste of French Art Nouveau. We date it to the c. 1900's. We discovered it, appropriately enough, in Hamburg.

Size & Details

Reverie From the Bottom of the Sea

€ 6,980.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

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Reverie From the Bottom of the Sea

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