Bijoux Parisiens

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.