Corbeille de fleurs brooch
Creation details
- Creation year 1927
- Stone Diamond
- Stone Emerald
- Stone Ruby
- Material Gold
- Material Platinum
- Usage Clip
- Dimensions 40 × 65 mm
This Corbeille de fleurs (flowers basket) brooch marks the apogee of the Art Deco style in the jewelry created by Van Cleef & Arpels. A plant composition centered around three flowers unfolds within an oval frame of platinum pave-set with diamonds.
The petals of the flowers are set with buff-top rubies arranged around a center composed of a brilliant-cut diamond. They are surrounded by ruby palmettes and foliage formed of navettes set with buff-top emeralds. The basket containing the bouquet is depicted by a knurled weaving of brilliants and two rows of baguette-cut diamonds at its base. Two rings set with brilliants link the neck of the basket with the oval frame of the brooch.
Iconography inherited from the 17th century
The flower basket theme, borrowed from eighteenth-century decorative arts, is frequently seen in creations dating from the 1910s through to the early 1920s, most notably in pieces realized at the very start of the Art Deco movement when features of a type of classicism inherited from previous centuries were combined with geometric stylization, as seen in the work of André Groult and Louis Süe1For example, the sofa designed by Louis Süe in 1912, now housed in the musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris (Inv. 990.334)..
A perennial source of inspiration
When the Corbeille de fleurs brooch became part of the Van Cleef & Arpels Collection in 1987, it served as the inspiration for a contemporary version developed the following decade. This piece is proof of the inspiration afforded by a patrimonial collection, as well as the timelessness of certain motifs.
Nécessaire
Nécessaire
To go deeper
