Object
Art Nouveau Jewellery & Metal
The line, carried into metal
Art Nouveau treated metal like a drawing surface. Enamel replaced the diamond as the centre of a jewel, horn and ivory replaced gold as the body, and the setting became part of the design rather than a way of holding a stone. It was a deliberate argument against the conventional jeweller, and it did not last.
The same instinct is why the movement produced railings, bronze figures and mirrors: the line was meant to leave the page, and the crafts that could carry it were valued above the ones that could not.
History
The 1890s are the jewellery phase: enamel, horn, and the plique-à-jour work that made colour structural.
Around 1900 the vocabulary moves into architectural metal — railings, grilles, bronze — and into the mirror frame as an object in its own right.
What to look for
Enamel used as a body rather than a coating, a maker's mark from a named atelier, and settings designed as part of the form.
In this group
The searches this object is worth looking at. Each opens the collection for it.