EXTRAVAGANT ART DECO TRANSFORMATION SAUTOIR

Description:

Paris, circa 1918
Gesamtlänge 80cm, die vier Teilstücke je ca. 20cm
750/000 white gold (French hallmark until 1919). 12 decorative elements set with 12 emerald-cut diamonds, 120 baguette-cut diamonds and 48 brilliant-cut and octagonal cut diamonds in fine - good quality (TW-W/IF-SI), total weight of the diamonds approx. 15.2ct. Double row chain with approx. 288 Burmese ruby ball in finest color connected by an eyelet chain in white gold. The Sautoir is divisible by box locks and can be separated into four parts (bracelets). Weight approx. 76,2g.
From a West German private collection.
Literature:
Judy Rudoe: Cartier 1900-1939, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/ The British Museum, London, 1997. For the type, see p. 136, p. 164, pp. 182 and 183, p. 303.
Sylvie Raulet: Schmuck Art Déco, typus compare p. 99, p. 151.
At the beginning of the 20th century, French artists developed a new style, Art Nouveau. For a long time a new style detached from historical models. With the horrors of the First World War, this movement came to an involuntary standstill. But already at the end of the 1910s, Parisian artists took up this idea again. Corresponding to the great social change in these years, the formal language becomes quite different. The new self-confident woman with a bobbed hairstyle and short dresses demands clear, simple and as angular shapes as possible. Early on, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels took up this idea and developed completely new pieces of jewellery that fit the Roaring Twenties. If you look at Cartier's designs and advertising from this time, you can see that jewelry can be worn in a completely different and new way. Thus, an overlong Sautoir neckcord quickly becomes a wrapped necklace or bracelet. The self-confident woman also likes to throw such a string over her shoulder or wear it as a headdress. The possibilities are endless. The necklace offered here can also be shortened at will or taken apart into individual bracelets.