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The elegance of Art Nouveau jewellery

Posted on: 10/30/2018
 

Author: Martin Cinolter

Who hasn’t heard of Alfons Mucha’s posters, whose replicas once adorned many a Czech home? Mucha was a pioneer of Art Nouveau. Perhaps it’s thanks to his theatre posters for the actress Sarah Bernhardt that most of us recognise the aesthetics of Art Nouveau. But do you also know about Art Nouveau jewellery?

I’ll bet that if you’re familiar with those Mucha’s Art Nouveau designs, you’ll also easily identify a piece of jewellery from this period. After all, French jeweller Georges Fouquet crafted designs based on Mucha’s ideas. Masterpieces from this era are characterised by floral motifs, ornamentation, and linearity. Art Nouveau was an international style (known as Art Nouveau in France and Jugendstil in Germany) that influenced painting, sculpture, architecture, and especially applied arts at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

For jewellers, it was a golden (and silver and platinum) age! Unconventional materials came into play – mixing the cheap with the precious, such as gold with glass. In our region, garnets became prominent. Jewellery began to radiate moods, emotions, and stories. By the way, do you know the Czech-German television series The Necklace? The titular hero – adorning the graceful neck of Libuše Šafránková – was a stunning Art Nouveau necklace and its counterfeit. This unique piece (and its perfectly crafted duplicate) served as a linking element in the fates of people in Central Europe, traversed by history and particularly by two world wars.

Jewellery like this, whose stories you can only imagine, can be found in abundance on the shelves of antique shops. Art Nouveau necklaces, dangling earrings, colliers, and even brooches continue to captivate with their delicacy and artistic elegance. If you long for motifs of dragonflies or butterflies, a combination of delicate filigree with colourful gemstones, then you’ve found yourself in the right historical era. Truly enchanting and very popular with customers are Art Nouveau diamond or brilliant-cut rings. It’s a shame jewellery can’t speak – they could surely tell family sagas. But you know what? Instead, I can tell you more about the jewellery itself.

Martin Cinolter