Bijoux Parisiens

The exhibition “Bijoux Parisiens” has been produced by the Petit Palais, City of Paris Fine Arts Museum, Paris Musées, in cooperation with the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, with additional loans for this showing arranged by the Taft Museum of Art. This audio tour has been made possible through the generosity of the Docents of the Taft Museum of Art.

Like other daring Art Deco creations, this bold necklace shows its designer breaking rules of symmetry that were centuries old: he placed a large rectangular aquamarine off-center on an engraved platinum disk. Unconventionally, the necklace also combines multiple metals. Jean Fouquet designed innovative jewelry beginning about 1925. Fouquet was the equally admired son of the celebrated Parisian jeweler Georges Fouquet (1862–1957), whose Art Nouveau jewelry also appears in this exhibition.

In the 1880s, Octave Loeuillard created a series of designs for the jeweler Frédéric Boucheron that were noted for their technique and originality. The elegant and airy Fern Brooch, which could also be worn as a hair ornament, was among them. Boucheron founded his very highly regarded jewelry house in Paris in 1858; it is still in business on the Place Vendôme in Paris.

“Bijoux Parisiens: French Jewelry from the Petit Palais, Paris” will be on view at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio from February 9 through May 14, 2017.

Worn on a chain, this pendant presents at its center a woman embracing two children, symbolizing the Christian virtue of charity. Some of the gold structure has been decorated with enamel, which is made of ground glass and pigment that produce vivid color when fired in a kiln. French creators also worked in the typical Renaissance style of this German pendant, linking diverse elements together.