Reflections on a Collection of Belle Epoque and Art Deco Jewellery
By Vivienne Becker
The Belle Epoque, sublimely elegant, sensationally cultured, melting as it did into the jazzy dazzle of the 1920s, opened the story of 20th Century style in a blaze of jewelled glory. Not since the 18th Century splendours of the French court, had there been an age of such lavish diamond-strewn luxury. These jewels, so emblematic of their age, added a seductive glitter to an intensely creative part of artistic and cultural innovation. For this was the time when life in the capitals of Europe was enriched by explosive new talent, by miraculous scientific inventions, by the marvel of electricity, the motor car, the cinema, by far-reaching medical discoveries, by a spirit of genius in the theatre, opera, ballet, in the music halls and the Paris salons, by exotic influences from the East, and by wealth from the West. Above all, the Belle Epoque was a celebration of femininity, of art and literature, poetry and music, peace, prosperity and opulent living. The statue of the chic Parisienne welcoming visitors to the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 proclaimed the triumph of the fin de siècle female: the untouchably beautiful society belles, the great dramatic icons, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, Loië Fuller and Isadora, the cocottes and femmes fatales, and the femmes serieuses such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her idealist suffragettes. The Belle Epoque was a brief, breathtaking moment of leisured luxury and sensuality before the 20th century blasted into existence with the turmoil and terror of World War.
It was also a period of utter brilliance in the history of jewellery a time when the design and manufacture of diamond jewels, and the style of wearing them, reached a peak of perfection, never to be recaptured. Belle Epoque jewels are as ravishingly refined, as feminine and frothy as the exquisite creatures who wore them, ladies for whom dressing well was an art and an accomplishment that occupied most of their time. Tightly corsetted into their distinctive serpentine "S" shapes, the bosom thrust forward, the hips thrown back, the languid lady of fashion rustled in silks of palest hues of white and oyster, of eau de nil and lavender, all hand-stitched, foaming with lace and lavishly embroidered. The bosom, the focus of fashion and erotic attention, was literally smothered with jewels, from the neck, encased in a deep dog collar and encircled several times with massive ropes of diamonds and pearls, past the heaving corsage, pinned with a single massive gem-laden ornament, surrounded by a constellation of sparkling brooches, down to the minute waist fastened with a jewelled or enamelled buckle.
Rising late after the parties of the night before, the lady of fashion would devote a large part of her day to her appearance. This included changing clothes several times, lengthy sessions with the lady's maid, fittings with the dressmaker or tailor, and an integral part of the routine, the visit to the jeweller. The great jewel houses which had risen to prominence during the 19th Century, blossomed and prospered in the euphoria of the Belle Epoque. They enjoyed the patronage of an extraordinary cast of colourful characters, stars of stage and leaders of society, tycoons and industrialists, princes, potentates, Grand Duchesses and divas. Never before or since has there been an audience as appreciative, as moneyed, as dedicated to the art of jewellery collecting. For the demi-mondaines, the grandes horizontales, jewels more than decoration, then were the currency of love and symbols of a very particular status; La Belle Otero, famed for the diamond bolero, and Liane de Pougy competed shamelessly over the extravagance of their overflowing jewel caskets. For the new wave of fabulously wealthy Americans, Vanderbilts, Goelets, Astors, opulent displays of jewels, the rarer and costlier the better, served as the equivalent of titles, semaphoring social superiority.
The 18th Century, alter-ego of the Belle Epoque, was the inspiration for decorative design, for architecture, interiors, clothes, silver and jewellery. Lyrical motifs reminiscent of the grandeur of Versailles: ribbon bows, the definitive motif of the era, as supple as silk, the sensual tassel, petit point embroidery, the sun ray, flower baskets, trellises, the neo-classical laurel swag and the honeysuckle were interpreted in the impossibly slender light, white jewels set in platinum, the new material, and diamonds, now in plentiful supply from South Africa. The elegant formality of social life dictated a wardrobe of statement jewels epitomised by the tiara, the quintessential jewel of the age, magically regal, supremely feminine.
For all its refinement and social order, the age was underpinned by a turbulence and restless uncertainty about the future, by the frivolous Bohemian decadence of the fin de siecle. Painters challenged the art establishment; intellectuals, poets, writers and journalists rebelled against bourgeois attitudes, idealists railed against the political systems. These contrasts and undercurrents gave the Belle Epoque its idosyncratic glamour, the potent poignancy of a civilisation on the wane.
At the height of the Belle Epoque, the evening of the first performance of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the Chatelet theatre in Paris in 1909 proved to be a turning point in the story of 20th Century design and lifestyles. A new simplified decorative style had been waiting in the wings, on the drawing boards of artists and designers struggling to find a new artistic expression for the 20th Century. The spectacle of the Russian dancers, the heady exoticism, the stylisation of the costumes, the sensational sets by Leon Bakst, the movements, the pulsating colours, was the catalyst designers had been waiting for. Art Deco was born. Fashion exploded into colour, drama and fantasy, and Paul Poiret, King couture, bravely banished the corset, hinting at the new freedom that women were to claim for themselves after the First World War. Belle Epoque iconography, particularly flowers, garlands, swags, was formalised, flattened and stylised, evolving into the luxuriance of Art Deco.
The peace, morality and elaborate manners of the Edwardian era were shattered forever by World War I: during the war, women had done men's work, they had run offices, driven trucks, gone to the pub for a drink, they had lived with the idea of the imminent death of their loved ones, and those endlessly sunny days of frothy femininity, of leisurely ladylike pursuits were irrevocably lost.
The entire social structure changed. Fortunes had been made and lost; the new rich had more money than ever to spend on extravagant luxuries. In terms of fashion, pleasure, decorative arts, and intellectual pursuits, Paris in the twenties continued to be the centre of the smart universe, a magnificent magnet drawing to it talented free thinking artists and individuals, clustered around the golden nucleus of artistic society, Cocteau, Chanel, Diaghilev, Misia Sert, Christian Berard. Americans flocked to Paris where they could live a much more carefree, sybaritic existence at relatively low cost.
The 1920s and '30s passed in a haze of feverish gaiety, riotous living, constant diversion, in an effort to escape the inevitable growing economic crises and the shadow of War. Life was faster, people moved around constantly, from town to country, from culture to culture, to India in search of harmony and inspiration, to New York in search of jazz. Travel and communication had expanded horizons beyond belief, there were essential seasons in Biarritz, Deauville and on the Riviera, winters in the alps, great costume balls in Venice. Racy flappers threw wild parties, mixed new intoxicating cocktails and learnt risqué dances. Women smoked, cut their hair, wore make up, played sport, they started their own businesses, many of them in the new field of luxurious interior design. And their clothes, accessories, jewels and lifestyles not only reflected this new found liberation, but also conformed to a unified, stylised design for living.
After 1925, Art Deco, which had reached its climax with the Expositions des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, gave way to modernism. Modern was the mood of the moment; influenced by Cubism, by a growing preoccupation with simplicity, with the machine aesthetic expressed in new industrial materials. There was a desire to be rid of the past, of all ancien regime surface ornament and hints of historicism. Streamlined, angular geometry was the order of the day, and women rejected the serpentine Belle Epoque woman, and almost overnight took on a crisp rectangular outline, their heads neat with short haircuts and tight cloche hats, their bosoms bound, their bodies boyish and straight edged in their tubular dresses. Androgyny was all the rage.
The high-priestesses of society and great women of style, wore their fabulous jewels as labels of individuality rather than for conformity or tribal indentification; this was the era of the vampish Nancy Cunard, the devastatingly chic Daisy Fellowes with her fabulous Cartier fruit salad jewels, Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, passionate to the point of obsession over her jade and emeralds and her extraordinary historic pearls. Jenny Dolly, who with her twin sister found fame as a music hall star, was the lively mistress of Gordon Selfridge who lavished her with millions of pounds worth of jewels from Chaumet in Paris, which she then proudly sported and lost in the casinos of Deauville and Cannes.
Cartier had started creating Art Deco jewellery as early as the first decade of the century, using simplified geometrical elements, distilled from Eastern, Egyptian, Indian and generally oriental motifs. Gradually vibrant Ballet Russes colours were introduced, a kaleidoscope of carved gemstones, along with new colour and textural schemes of arctic all-white, rock crystal and diamonds, or contrasts of black and white, onyx and diamonds, mesmerising mixtures of onyx with coral, jade, emeralds, and enamels. Favourite jewels included the ubiquitous clips, worn on hats or fastened together to form a brooch, flexible diamond bracelets like Persian carpets, worn several at a time, long slender necklaces following the form of the body, and finished with a sensual Orientalist tassel, transformed from the earlier, dignified Belle Epoque incarnation. Fabulously valuable gemstones were set with seeming nonchalance in the most avantgarde, decorative designs. New cuts of diamonds, particularly the baguette, suited the geometric compositions to perfection, and as the growing influence of modernism had its way with jewels, designs became more abstract and streamlined. However, by the 1930s, the fickle tide of fashion turned again and the austere angularity of 1920s women, their clothes and their jewels were softening, curving and heading, again, into the dark unknown, into a new era, a new world.
(Vivienne Becker is the author of Antique and 20th Century Jewellery, Art Nouveau Jewellery and the Jewellery of René Lalique)
The Property of
A LADY
An attractive Belle Epoque diamond and grey pearl brooch
Details
An attractive Belle Epoque diamond and grey pearl brooch
Of garland design, the central grey pearl and diamond cluster with foliate and scroll surround to grey and white pearl detail surrounding diamond collet terminals, suspending diamond collet swags with three grey pearl pendent drops with collet surmounts, with millegrain surround, circa 1900, 5.5cm. wide
Of garland design, the central grey pearl and diamond cluster with foliate and scroll surround to grey and white pearl detail surrounding diamond collet terminals, suspending diamond collet swags with three grey pearl pendent drops with collet surmounts, with millegrain surround, circa 1900, 5.5cm. wide