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Mauboussin Paris Carved Rock Crystal, Jadeite and Emerald Brooch
$150,000
This important late Art Deco platinum and diamond brooch featuring carved rock crystal, jadeite and emeralds was created by Mauboussin Paris in the period between 1930 and 1935. The brooch centers a green jadeite plaque with white mottling carved to depict a pollinator feeding from a flowering and fruiting plant, framed by faceted rock crystal bars joined by hemispherical fields pavé-set with round-cut diamonds, outlined in and highlighted by lines of black enamel, with four carved emerald beads. This rare Mauboussin brooch expresses Parisian avant-garde jewelers’ profound post World War I interchange with Asian culture, united with the transformative design power of the Machine Age.
- Product Details
- Curator's Notes
Item #:BO-20597
Artist: Mauboussin Paris
Country: France
Circa: 1930-1935
Size: 2.25” length x 2.00” width
Materials: Carved jadeite jade; Carved rock crystal; 4 carved emerald beads; 62 round-cut diamonds (approximate total weight 4.00 carats); Platinum; 18K grey gold
Signed: Maubossin France 93695, with French assay marls for gold and platinum
Literature: This brooch relates to a body of Mauboussin jewels, including “hammer” brooches featuring carved rock crystal created in the period from 1930-1935, pictured in Mauboussin, by Marguerite Cerval, pp. 120-123.
Mauboussin rose in international prominence under the oversight of Georges Mauboussin. With a visionary program of traveling exhibitions of jewelry in mind, Georges moved the firm to rue de Choiseul in 1923, and reorganized the workflow of the sales arm and the workshops, including designers, lapidaries, and setters. Within their spacious private exhibition rooms, out of view of street traffic, they mounted widely celebrated exhibitions centering, successively, on the emerald, the ruby, and the diamond. The shows featured hundreds of original Mauboussin designs as well as historic gems remounted in their avant-garde style. Critically acclaimed, the ruby exhibition of 1930 was covered in L’Illustration as “intelligence in motion”, and resulted in a strong resurgence of the ruby’s popularity and price. This brooch was created in the afterglow of Mauboussin’s astonishing international success in the Roaring Twenties. Though wealth creation was set back by the 1929 crash, and the firm was shaken, its revolutionary idea flow continued into the 1930s. During the Art Moderne period, Marcel and Jean Goulet, descendants of the original founders, the Noury family, found innovative ways to maintain close relationships with their sophisticated and intellectual international clientele, including royal families, while continuing their focus on strong modernist design.