3 Likes
6 CommentsArt Deco was an innovative design style popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Its sleek, streamlined forms conveyed elegance and sophistication. It was the age of the Flapper, the Jazz and the Machine Age.
Materials used ranged from rubies, gold, and pearls to plastic, chrome and steel. Platinum was the new luxury metal used with opaque stones like coral, jade, onyx and lapis lazuli. Costume jewelry became even more popular and outrageous.
Influences were Pharaonic Egypt, the Orient, tribal Africa, Cubism, Futurism, machines and graphic design. However, the biggest trend in jewelry of the 1920's and 30's was the shapes of geometry: circles, hearts, arcs, squares, rectangles and triangles and so on.
Costume jewelry was made from bakelite, lucite and silver. Animals and people inhabit the world of 1920s and 30s costume jewelry, from gentle playful fawns and playful plastic Scotty dogs to paste, turquoise and marcasite Chinese fantasies, and elegant, gilt metal cloche hatted vamps. Flowers or hearts in every possible color, combination, and variety, sprouted on gilt metal or silver brooches and pendants, their paste petals glittering shamelessly.
Amethyst Art Deco rings make a treasured gift for any occasion. The skill of jewelers from the art deco period, 1920-1940's are unsurpassed even today and like most jewelry of today, art deco rings vary in price.
The Asian influence can be seen by the carved jade and coral in pendants, bracelets, and earrings, as well as carved rubies, sapphires and emeralds from India. Well known French designers were, Cartier, Bucheron, Van Cleef and Arpels, Fouquet and Mauboussin. For the Americans, it was Tiffany and Company and Harry Winston.
This dolphin bracelet shows use of animals combined with marcasite -- 2 recurring themes in Deco jewelry.
