From Art Nouveau to 2001
Never has more wondrous invention occurred wilhm 100 years as during the 20th century.
Art Nouveau
Just 10 decades ago a host of ingredients exploded, causing a rainbow of jewellery of previously unimaginable beauty and innovation. Unlike any lime in western history, suddenly at (he beginning of the 20th century, peacocks, insects, butterflies, leaves, flowers, grotesques, mermaids, sea creatures, reptiles, birds and nature and its associations with femininity and fertility were themes for fine jewellery.
By the end of the 1800s. artists and designers were starting to understand that almost anything could become a motif. And though just lasting from the mid 1890s to 1910. Art Nouveau's influence continues today, and it was during that period thai western art evolved from being an art of imitation to one of vivid interpretation. In this way Art Nouveau is often considered as the first truly modern art'.
Partly due to the exciting possibilities that new technology offered - jewellery was one of the most intense expressions of the Art Nouveau movement. The 'discovery' of the free-sweeping grace of Japanese art; the huge interest in exotic flowers and plants, and artists' and designers' tiredness with old rigid styles and their reaction against the Industrial Age are some main factors in Art Nouveau s origins, which are as complex as the beautifully serpentine lines of its designs.
Art Deco
Curiously. Art Deco's origins lie in the reactions against the whimsical excesses of Art Nouveau; after the war lo end all wars' (1914-1918) a new aesthetic style was inevitable, and Art Deco's exponents embraced an exciting new world of modernity with fervour.
Ball-bearings inspired bracelets. Rings unequivocally referred to bits of car engines. Prismatic surfaces and geometrical forms were developed through a 'hard-edged' stylization of decorative motifs. And rapidly jewellery, something customarily associated with aristocracy, became symbols of savvy fashion and technological sensibility.
Often incorporating new materials. Art Deco promoted a form of social art by linking fine-art with the essentials of modern industry Obviously industrialized-production of objects was tending towards the suppression of ornamental elements, but Art Deco artists ensured that celluloid cigarette-cases, and pendants of triangular pieces of onyx and enamel became artworks in their own right. Art Deco's formal, yet free manner was perfectly translated by artisl-jewellers in whose hands traditional jewellery underwent a fundamental change, becoming a completely new kind of ornament, an object more closely related to the period's machinist and geometrical abstract paintings and architecture, than to classical adornment.
This is not to say that Art Deco didn't include the finest art jewellery and was not accepted by royalty and upper classes. Indeed Art Deco jewellery personified the height of sophistication. After its heyday during the Roaring 20s, Art Deco led to the Machine Moderne jewellery of the 1930s and 40s. inspired by gas-pipes, tank-tracks, bicycle-chains, bed-springs, sieves, escalators and gears. Whether these motifs were designed by industrial draftsmen or jewellers is sometimes unclear, but they were turned into moving-staircase bracelets' and other consummate jewellery by Cartier and additional famous jewellery houses, and in many cases still are.
From the 1960s to 2001
Science-fiction becomes science-fact and man walks on the moon. Amazing technological advancement and artistic influences as Op Art. Pop Art. Tribal Art. Minimalist Abstraction. Photo Realism, Post Modernism. Art Deco. Ancient Jewellery, even Junk Art and Punk fashions all play parts in inspiring new styles during this period that often witnessed a complete break-down of Western norms and traditions.
Reminiscent of African tribal jewellery, earrings of huge shoulder-sweeping hoops were made by Yves Saint Laurent in 1962. Pucci's 1967 Flying-Saucer necklace features shiny nickel-plated disks. Swede. Sigurd Persson's 1974 Silver Soap-bubbles earrings looked like the real thing and his chunky, plastic seashell rings couldn't be a brighter red.
Certainly this period was a time of 'alternative thought", though you could argue that the entire 20th century was too. Punk jewellery and fashions of the 70s inevitably found their way to top designers Including the advent of piercing jewellery - men's earrings became fashionable by the early 80s. And undeniably, the fascination and incorporation of new and diverse motifs and materials, and the experimentation and development which began at the start of the century, reached new, unbounded heights.
In many ways the 80s were a distillation of what happened in the 60s and 70s. No less gaudy - in some ways, the 80s were more ostentatious than the 70s. Using wood, synthetics, precious gems, bone, horn, colourful anodized-aluminum and lots of applique in terms of fashion, anything that could become accessorized does. In 1985 Ugo Correani created necklaces with real shower-heads, gas-pipes and taps for Karl Lagerfield of France Designer Urban-tribal-wear jewellery gained populanty. and blobs found themselves exalted in designer earrings.
Then sometime in the early 90s, without warning jewellery became very pared-down, and the antithesis of everything that went on during the past thirty years. A reaction against the excesses of the 60s, 70s and 80s. jewellery of the mid-90s to the present, is often very undiluted and streamlined, worn with no accessorizing. Much of Cartier s most recent work of diamonds, platinum and clean lines reveals this refined sense of classical purity blended with genteel echoes of Art Deco's geometry. Art Nouveaus serendipitous" flowingness. and a leading-edge 21st century discernment of consummate elegance.