CategoriesStyles and Movements
Modern Jewelry
Twentieth-century jewellery that broke with traditional precious settings, from Art Nouveau and the Bauhaus to sculptors' and studio jewellers' work.
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About
Modern jewellery began with Art Nouveau around 1900, when René Lalique combined enamel, horn and glass with gold, valuing design over gemstones. In the 1920s and 1930s Art Deco jewellers favoured bold geometry and sharp contrasts of platinum, onyx and diamonds, while Bauhaus-trained makers such as Naum Slutzky made necklaces from chrome-plated brass tubes.
After the Second World War, studio jewellers treated a brooch or necklace as a small sculpture. Alexander Calder hammered brass and silver wire into spirals, Margaret De Patta set stones to play with light and space, and Art Smith in New York made bold, body-scaled pieces. In Scandinavia Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe designed smooth, organic silver forms, many made by Georg Jensen. From the late 1960s the Dutch jewellers Gijs Bakker and Emmy van Leersum made aluminium collars and bracelets that questioned jewellery as status. Look for unusual materials and forms that respond to the body.
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