Jewelry Lovers

The world of the twenties was changed dramatically from that of the prewar period. New technologies and materials developed during the war had changed the very nature of the manufacturing industries. The fashion industry in particular took off, and it was catering for women whose role had been changed by the war. No longer were they content to lead formal, restricted lives confined largely to their households. The modern woman wanted sporty, casual, outdoor fashions. In all areas of design, a radical change took place. New bold, streamlined, standardized forms were created and immediately popularized throughout Europe and the United States. The fashion was for abstract, futuristic designs using simple geometric shapes, the circle, triangle and square, in innumerable stylized forms and optical illusions.

The term Art Deco was derived from the Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in 1925, when the new style was at its height. A myriad of stylistic influences contributed to Art Deco. These included images of speed such as the greyhound and the gazelle, and of machinery, such as the automobile and the aeroplane. In addition there was the influence of the interest in Egyptology awakened by the discovery of Tutenkhamun’s tomb in 1922. This led to the scarab beetle becoming a widely used symbol (jewelers incorporated it with tiger’s eyes, turquoise and coloured crystals). The ‘Cleopatra look’ became de rigeur and was promoted by Hollywood actresses such as Anna Held, Claudette Colbert and Helen Gardner.

In America the Art Deco aesthetic was combined with other indigenous styles such as pre-Columbian, Mayan, Aztec and American Indian art. It became transformed into something more luxurious and decorative than its European counterpart, and was known as the zigzag style, epitomized by the tapered Chrysler Building in New York (1928-30).

The First World War had a major effect on the jewelry trade. The precision equipment employed in jewelry making could be adapted with relative ease to gun part manufacture, and the market for new decorative jewelry which had flourished between 1900 and 1914 virtually dried up during the war. There was no importing or exporting of jewelry except on the black market.

During the ‘Art Deco‘ period that followed the war, jewelry design was closely related to fine art, particularly in France, which was the cultural centre of Europe. Many artists and sculptors, including Picasso, Braque and Salvador Dali experimented with jewelry design, bringing the influence of Cubism and Futurism.

‘(Cubism) was a style which had nothing to do with anachronisms, pastiches or worn-out traditions. It was partly an attempt to reconcile art with a world that was speeding up and being fragmented .. . and translated into the prevailing mood of the 1920s (it) produced new conformations, fronds, bubbles, fissures, jagged outcroppings. The style now known as Art Deco was in essence tamed Cubism.’

Another thing to affect the world of jewelry design in this period was that the market had changed significantly. As well as the royal and aristocratic clients of the 19th century, there was now a market among the ‘new rich’ — families whose wealth had come from the Industrial Revolution. Inevitably this new variety of customer for expensive jewelry had a greater taste for modernity and innovation than had the old aristocratic market with its roots in a traditional past.

In response to the fashions and available technologies of the time, jewelers took up the Art Deco style, and started to use geometric shapes and polished surfaces. Precious stones were used less than before, and mainly for decorative effect.

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