Art Deco Jewelry

Art Deco Jewelry

After the extravagant forms of Art Nouveau, the Art Deco movement represented a return to simplicity and severity. As this book richly demonstrates, in that period jewelry found a virtually unlimited source of renewal. Designers drew inspiration from the entire vivid spectrum of the plastic arts: riotous colors in explosive combinations from the Ballets Russes and the Fauves, geometric shapes from Cubism and Suprematism, the contrast of black and white from Neo-Plasticism, and a fascination with the mechanical world from Futurism. Nor were its exponents confined to the modern European world: an Egyptian vogue was prompted by the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, while other themes were borrowed from the Far East, Persia, and Africa.Art Deco Jewelry displays through sumptuous illustrations, coupled with a lucid and informative text, the creations of the haute joaillerie (jewelers such as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels) and of the avant-garde designers-Jean Fouquet, Raymond Templier, G