For its Bijoux Parisiens: French Jewelry from the Petit Palais, Paris exhibition that opens Saturday, the Taft Museum of Art is offering an obvious tie-in: macarons during three special Saturday afternoon tea services.
But maybe it should also be renting those magnifying eyeglass loupes, some with LED lights, that jewelers and lapidarists wear to better see tiny gemstones they must inspect.
Because, believe me, there are tiny — miniscule — details to the 75 pieces of jewelry in this show that you will want to study carefully. The exhibit covers jewelry by such famous names as Cartier, Lalique, Van Cleef & Arpels and more, from the early 19th to mid-20th centuries.
The oldest piece here is used to establish a reference point for the later objects. It is from the late-16th century and is a “Charity Pendant” using gold, rubies, pearls and enamel. In the center, and it’s hard to see, is the figure of a woman with two small children. They represent the virtue of charity, according to the object label. It’s impressive to think of the work and, literally, vision involved in creating this.
“It’s the earliest piece in show,” says Lynne Ambrosini, the Taft’s chief curator, who oversaw installation of this traveling exhibit. This Renaissance brooch, made in southern Germany, falls somewhat outside the show’s purview, although it’s from the Petit Palais museum’s collection. “This is included to give context to the work to follow,” she says. “In the 19th century, Renaissance jewelry was revived. So we thought it would be especially nice to have this piece to start the show.”
The details of other pieces are just as subtly rewarding, and the show wasn’t even fully installed when I previewed it. In René Lalique’s “Wood Anemone Pendant,” from about 1900, which uses gold, diamonds and enamel, the leaves of the flowers are ever-so-slightly curled as if by the weight of dewdrops. Diamond dewdrops. (Lalique is best known as an Art Nouveau glass designer.)
In Lucien Falize’s “Neo-Renaissance Pendant,” from about 1880, the spectacularly bold object commands attention, like a miniature Christmas tree, with its gold, diamonds, tourmaline, pearl and enamel. But try to savor the small open spaces, the airiness, within the object’s parameters. That’s a hallmark of Renaissance jewelry and was brought back with the 19th-century revival.
“All the elements connect, but between them is a lot of open work, so you have the sense of lacy, intertwining forms circling around in space,” Ambrosini says.
This exhibit is about its isolated individual objects, sure. But it’s also about more — how jewelry design reflects trends in overall art history and how our definition of fine art has changed with time to accept these.
Some may wonder why the neo-Renaissance style just didn’t last forever, since it sold well and jewelry is an (expensive) consumer item. After all, as Ambrosini emphasizes, jewelry was not a “universal” art form — it was for the wealthy.
But around the turn of the 20th century, it was replaced by Art Nouveau, a larger arts movement that looked to nature and geomet”ric shapes — rather than history — for inspiration and came up with objects that in their decorations, colors, curving lines and variety of materials seemed as lushly resplendent as a blossoming forest.
“Art Nouveau truly was a radical design aesthetic that permeated all the arts,” Ambrosini says. “This is where the tide turns and revival jewelry falls off the map.”
But things changed again, shortly after World War I, when the public turned against the excessive flourishes of Art Nouveau and the decadent society that brought on calamitous war. Soon, Art Deco arrived with its streamlined design aesthetic — in jewelry as well as graphic arts and architecture.
There was a time that decorative arts were considered to belong to the lesser category of applied arts. They were made for use rather than contemplation. But that’s changed.
“A piece of jewelry actually is a very small-scale sculpture,” Ambrosini says. “The skill, thought and artistry, the design of these pieces, are as original as the design of a painting. It’s simply another outlet for creativity.”
BIJOUX PARISIENS: FRENCH JEWELRY FROM THE PETIT PALAIS, PARIS runs through May 14 at the Taft Museum of Art. More info: taftmuseum.org.
This article appears in Feb 8-15, 2017.