Un Art Nouveau : Métamorphoses Du Bijou, 1880-1914 A New Art: Metamorphoses Of Jewelry

Exhibition at the École des arts joailliers, Paris, 2 June - 30 September 2023

Jewellery occupied a central place in the profound changes in aesthetics that began in the 1880s, and played a part in the radical renewal of an imagination fertilised by the expansion of scientific knowledge and its dissemination in a widely shared visual culture.

Free of any practical purposé, the precious object lent itself admirably to all kinds of experimentation, authorising the most varied combinations. Artists such as René Lalique, Georges Fouquet, Élisabeth Bonté, Victor Prouvé, Jean Dampt, Jules Desbois, Edward Colonna and Eugène Grasset took hold of an art whose primary source of invention was the material.

By the early 1910s, artists were turning to a more geometrically inspired aesthetic, but the fertile legacy of Art Nouveau had been definitively established: the decompartmentalisation of the arts, contact with science and the assimilation of a vibrant visual culture had definitively opened up the art of jewellery to modernity.

Through a selection of 100 pieces, this exhibition catalogue provides an insight into the extraordinary development of the art of jewellery in France between 1880 and 1914. The book is accompanied by a glossary of materials and techniques and an extensive bibliography.