Beautiful Brooch of Art Deco With Diamonds & Sapphires, Around 1925

"The new woman" was the ideal of the 1920s and early 1930s. The new woman had won the right to vote, she was self-confident in professional and love matters, even part of the nightlife of the Weimar Republic - things that seemed unimaginable barely a decade and a half earlier. The fact that a new self-image could also be translated into aesthetics - indeed, it virtually required a new aesthetic - is attested to by articles in influential German fashion journals such as Die Dame. The women portrayed there wore bobbed haircuts and strikingly made-up lips, loosely cut dresses - and yet the most influential among them were not simply style icons, but active as authors and artists. That the jewellery of the Belle Époque, floral and playful, was reminiscent of the time before the war, of a different social order, is self-explanatory. The jewellery of the new woman deliberately set itself apart from this: Clearly designed and geometric, it deliberately eschewed anything cloying and relied on a powerful, cool formal language full of craftsmanlike finesse. It was a linear, often emphatically austere elegance that characterized the most modern jewellery of the time. Such a modern piece of jewellery is also the brooch presented here, which found its way to us from Vienna and was created in the 1920s. The piece of jewellery presents itself as an openwork shield made of high karat white gold, the front side of which is structured with magnificent saw lines, milgrains and arabesque geometric patterns. The brooch is set all over with diamonds of various cuts. The central navette diamond and the four old European cut diamonds in careau and round settings, respectively, to the left and right of it are further highlighted by two lines of calibré cut natural sapphires in a slightly recessed center field. An elaborately crafted, slightly domed frame, flared to the narrow sides, sets additional old European and rose cut diamonds in equally openwork settings. In total, over four carats of diamonds have been worked in historic cuts, divided among 101 diamonds. This wonderful and unusual piece of jewellery comes with a detailed certificate from the German Association for Gemstone Evaluation of Idar-Oberstein.

Estimate:£9,245.65

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