Art Nouveau jewelry flourished from about 1890 to 1910 and broke sharply with the gem-heavy jewelry before it. Designers such as René Lalique cared more about artistic effect than the value of materials, so they set horn, glass, enamel, opal and moonstone alongside gold and diamonds. Their subjects came from nature and from the female form, drawn in flowing, curving lines. The style peaked at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900.
A reaction to mass production
By the late 19th century, much jewelry was factory-made and centered on displaying diamonds. Critics thought it dull. English design reformers, led by figures such as William Morris, called for hand work, honest materials and good design. Japanese art, newly seen in Europe after Japan opened to trade, showed artists a new way to look at nature: asymmetric, close-up and detailed.
Art Nouveau drew on both. Its name comes from Siegfried Bing's Paris shop, La Maison de l'Art Nouveau, opened in 1895. The style went by other names elsewhere: Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria, Stile Liberty in Italy and Modernisme in Spain.
Nature as the subject
Art Nouveau jewelers took their themes from the natural world, often the parts earlier jewelers ignored. Common motifs include:
- Dragonflies, butterflies, beetles, bees and grasshoppers
- Orchids, irises, lilies, poppies, thistles and wisteria
- Peacocks, swans and owls
- Snakes and bats
- Seed pods, pine cones and leaves in decay as well as bloom
Designers showed the life cycle, with buds, full flowers and wilting petals in the same piece. They used the whiplash curve, a sinuous S-shaped line, throughout.
The female form
The other great theme was the woman, often shown with long, flowing hair that turns into tendrils or waves. Women in Art Nouveau jewelry are sometimes nymphs with wings, half-human creatures emerging from flowers, or femme fatale figures. The actress Sarah Bernhardt commissioned stage jewelry from Lalique and posters from the designer Alphonse Mucha, who also designed jewelry for her.
The style also reflected changing roles for women at the turn of the century, and many of the designers' clients were women buying for themselves.
René Lalique
René Lalique (1860 to 1945) was the leading Art Nouveau jeweler. He trained as a goldsmith in Paris and studied in London, then opened his own workshop in the 1880s. At the 1900 Exposition he showed a display of jewelry that drew huge attention.
Lalique's pieces combine unexpected materials. His Dragonfly Woman corsage ornament, now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, shows a woman's torso emerging from the body of a dragonfly with huge clawed wings of enamel. Gulbenkian, an oil magnate, bought a large group of Lalique's jewels directly from him, and that collection is the best place to see his work.
After about 1905, Lalique turned increasingly to glass, and he became best known later for glass perfume bottles, vases and decorative objects.
Plique-a-jour enamel
Plique-a-jour is the defining technique of Art Nouveau jewelry. It is enamel without a backing, so light shines through it like a stained-glass window. The jeweler builds a frame of metal cells, fills them with enamel, and fires the piece on a temporary backing that is later removed, or relies on surface tension to hold the enamel in open cells.
Dragonfly and butterfly wings in plique-a-jour enamel glow when light passes through them. The technique is difficult and fragile, since the enamel can crack if the piece is bent. Our cloisonne enamel page compares plique-a-jour with cloisonne and champleve.
Horn, glass and other materials
Art Nouveau jewelers chose materials for color and effect:
| Material | Use |
|---|---|
| Horn | Carved, bleached and stained for combs and hair ornaments, often in translucent amber tones |
| Glass | Molded or cast for faces, flowers and insect bodies |
| Opal | Its play of color suited the dreamlike style |
| Moonstone | Soft blue glow for flowers and moons |
| Enamel | Plique-a-jour, champleve and painted enamel |
| Baroque pearls | Irregular shapes as flowers or bodies |
| Ivory | Carved faces and figures |
| Gold and silver | Settings and fluid frames |
Opal, from newly opened Australian fields, was a favorite. Moonstone and chalcedony gave soft, milky colors. Diamonds appear, but usually in small sizes as accents. Our page on glass in jewelry covers glass as a gem material.
Other Art Nouveau jewelers
Georges Fouquet commissioned designs from Mucha, including a famous serpent bracelet and ring for Sarah Bernhardt. Henri Vever and his brother Paul ran a leading Paris firm producing Art Nouveau pieces. Lucien Gaillard, influenced by Japanese art, worked in horn. In Belgium, Philippe Wolfers made Art Nouveau jewelry. In America, Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of Tiffany & Co., designed jewelry with enamel and colored stones in a related style. The English firm Liberty & Co. sold Celtic-inspired silver and enamel jewelry, made by designers such as Archibald Knox.
Decline and legacy
Art Nouveau was expensive to make and hard to mass-produce well. Cheap imitations flooded the market in the early 1900s, and fashion moved toward the cleaner, more formal lines of the Edwardian "garland style" and then Art Deco. By World War I the style was largely over.
Collectors rediscovered Art Nouveau jewelry in the 1960s, and signed pieces by Lalique, Fouquet and Vever are now museum pieces. Its use of non-precious materials for artistic effect pointed ahead to contemporary studio jewelry. For its roots, see Victorian jewelry.
Frequently asked questions
When was the Art Nouveau jewelry period?
Art Nouveau jewelry was made from about 1890 to 1910. It peaked around the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900.
What is plique-a-jour enamel?
Plique-a-jour is enamel set in open metal cells with no backing, so light passes through it like stained glass. Art Nouveau jewelers used it for dragonfly and butterfly wings.
Who was René Lalique?
René Lalique was a French jeweler and glassmaker and the leading designer of Art Nouveau jewelry. The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon holds a major collection of his jewels.
Why did Art Nouveau jewelers use horn and glass?
They chose materials for artistic effect over value. Horn and glass could be carved, molded and colored to create the natural forms and soft tones the style favored.