"As I walk in the streets I see ideas for jewellery everywhere, the wheels, the cars, the machinery of today"
Raymond Templier, Goldsmiths’ Journal (1930)
Parisian jeweller, Raymond Templier, was a mouthpiece for his generation when he described the influence of industrial modernity and the urban cityscape on his designs. Indeed the 1920s and 30s saw many jewellers across Europe and the United States captivated by the aesthetic of the so-called Art Deco movement.
Short for Arts Décoratifs, the movement got its name from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes – a hugely influential design exhibition of a new modern style hosted by the French government in Paris in 1925 and attended by 16 million visitors during its run.
At its heart, the movement was a celebration of modernity and innovation. Jewellers of the era embraced a fusion of form and function, taking inspiration from machinery and urban architecture as well as the decorative arts. For the latter, many of them looked to the East incorporating, for instance, the floral motifs of Persian carpets or mimicking the lines of Japanese calligraphy.
As well as blending the geometric with the ornate, Art Deco jewellers often experimented with mixing ‘high’ and ‘low’ materials, juxtaposing diamonds and precious gemstones with coral, onyx or other semi-precious stones.
Our collection offers a breadth of exemplary and important Art Deco creations that are no less iconic today than they were 100 years ago, during this revolutionary period of design.
