Precious Brooch with 0.70 ct Diamonds & Emeralds, Art Déco ca. 1925

"Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring" - loosely translated: A reverse homesickness, the longing for yet another strange land, became especially strong in spring... This is what the great novelist Vladimir Nabokov made his hero Ganin think on the very first pages of the novel Mary, in German Maschenka. It was his debut novel, which the Russian writer was able to publish in 1926 after moving to Berlin. The present brooch, whose shape and colouring remind us of this quotation by Nabokov, of the spring-like, strange flickering that always seems to be in the air in each of his sentences, also dates from precisely that period. For on the one hand the brooch seems familiar, with the white-flowered green branch, the diamond-studded tendrils on one corner. But diametrically opposed to it in the upper left corner is an abstract ornament that vaguely takes up the form of the tendrils, and yet is completely alien to nature. The brooch thus shows us impressively how strong the Art Deco will to abstraction could be - and at the same time, how much this effect could be heightened by juxtaposing the abstract with a figurative element. A whole 54 diamonds gleam frostily on the white platinum, and only the branch set with calibrated emeralds is a coloured element. The brooch thus appears as if spring flowers were slowly bursting forth from the still icy ground - and make us dream of warm foreign lands and their blossoming fields.

Estimate:£3,022.94

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