Double clip
Creation details
- Creation year 1941
- Stone Diamond
- Stone Sapphire
- Material Gold
- Material Platinum
- Usage Clip
- Dimensions 93 × 55 mm
This double clip illustrates the enduring taste for transformable jewelry, introduced in the 1930s, while highlighting people’s persistent desire to stand out through their finery. As its name suggests, this piece is composed of two clips joined by a clasp system with a spring to form a single brooch.
The first clip is adorned with a spiral motif composed of two rows, one pave-set with diamonds, the other with calibrated sapphires, coiled around a brilliant-cut, claw-set central diamond. Platinum ribbons unfurl from this spiral forming flowing volutes, some of which reveal their undersides. They are alternately pave-set with brilliants and set with baguettes and calibrated sapphires. The second clip is enlivened with ribbons that appear to swirl toward the back of the piece, two of them delicately curled around a claw-set diamond.
The success of transformable jewelry in the 1940s
The double clip, which has two pins in place of the brooch’s one and was more commonly seen from the 1930s onward, prevailed in transformable jewelry in the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed, it met with great success in the 1940s: “Transformable jewelry, which makes up marvelous sets, characterizes our ingenious era quite well”; it offers a “simple set [for a] little town dress, and the motif can be attached to the lapel of a fur coat.”1Paule Malardot, “Les beaux bijoux,” L’Aurore (December 21, 1946): 2.
While this model fulfills this longing for versatility, it stands out for its asymmetrical composition, its flowing lines, and its sense of volume enhanced by the contrast of the gems used. The decoration of double clips from the 1930s was often symmetrical, structured around two detachable parts. This piece, however, is structured around a central motif that is only found on one of the two clips. It is also distinguished by the particularly light and airy volutes of ribbon.
The re-use of old pieces
The design of this double clip reused thirty-five sapphires, three hundred eighty-eight brilliants, and thirty baguettes from a piece of jewelry belonging to a client. It is also a testament to the early days of Van Cleef & Arpels’ American production that was launched in 1939, and which continued to grow in the early part of the following decade, while the Parisian market was struggling during the Occupation.
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