How Art Deco Jewellery Defied Convention: Materials, Gems, Techniques

10 May 2025

GemGenève panel with Laurent Cartier, Kathia Pinckernelle, and Violaine Bigot. May 2025.

From Romance to Modernity: Belle Époque and Art Nouveau

Before the bold geometry of Art Deco, high jewellery lived in a world of romance. The Belle Époque, roughly from the 1890s to the First World War, favoured airy garlands of diamonds, intricate platinum lacework, and light, graceful forms. Inspired by the courts of Europe and a belief in unbroken tradition, these jewels embodied optimism and continuity.

Around the turn of the century, Art Nouveau introduced a new artistic vision. Jewellers such as René Lalique, Georges Fouquet, and Henri Vever abandoned rigid symmetry, embracing fluid lines, symbolic motifs, and the textures of nature. Enamel, carved horn, opals, and glass were valued alongside gemstones, transforming jewellery into wearable art.

But war altered everything. After 1918, the languid sensuality of Art Nouveau and the delicate romance of the Belle Époque felt like relics of a vanished age. The post-war world sought clarity, structure, and modernity. In this space, Art Deco emerged — precise, confident, and forward-looking.

A Style with a Stage: The 1925 Paris Exposition

If the First World War had planted the seeds of change, the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris gave the movement its name and set its aesthetic in stone. The event showcased the most innovative design of the day, from architecture to furniture to jewellery. Parisian maisons — Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chaumet, Boucheron — presented jewels that combined the rigour of geometry with the vibrancy of new materials and colours.

The fair’s success spread Art Deco’s influence across Europe, the United States, and beyond, making it not just a style but a global design language. Ocean liners, now the preferred means of crossing the Atlantic in style, became floating salons where the latest Parisian jewels were displayed on the world’s most cosmopolitan passengers.

The Geometry of Modern Life

The Art Deco period, from 1919 to the late 1930s, was defined by cultural optimism, technological innovation, and a fascination with the machine age. Paris, its beating heart, brought together influences from Cubism, modernist architecture, and industrial design.

Jewels were structured around symmetry and order: bracelets formed from interlocking rectangles, brooches built on circles and arcs, tiaras with stepped profiles echoing the skyline of new skyscrapers. This was a decisive break from Belle Époque garlands and Art Nouveau curves.

Even the most traditional maisons embraced the change. Archival pieces from Chaumet’s 1920s collections reveal diamond sautoirs with tassels, transformable jewels, and rock crystal and onyx combs. One particularly striking example is a rock crystal tiara with diamond motifs seemingly suspended within a frosted crystal band — a perfect study in Art Deco’s fascination with light, transparency, and form.

Materials Without Prejudice

Art Deco freed jewellery from the old hierarchy of “precious” versus “semi-precious.” This was not a rejection of value, but a refusal to be bound by it. Materials were chosen for their aesthetic and symbolic qualities, not their price alone. Platinum, valued for its strength and ability to hold pavé, sat alongside rock crystal, jade, coral, lacquer, onyx, and enamel.

Rock crystal was celebrated not as a diamond substitute, but for its cool translucence; coral for its warmth; lacquer for its depth of colour. The philosophy of materials without prejudice allowed jewellers to compose pieces as if painting with gemstones, orchestrating contrasts in colour, texture, and light.

Global Influences and Archaeological Discoveries

The Art Deco palette was enriched by a growing fascination with “elsewhere.” Nothing captured the imagination quite like the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 by Howard Carter. The press coverage was unprecedented — photographs, newspaper headlines, and even film reels transported the golden treasures of ancient Egypt into living rooms around the world.

Jewellers swiftly translated this Egyptomania into their designs. Lotus flowers, winged scarabs, and stylised pyramids became recurring motifs. The rich palette of ancient Egypt — lapis lazuli blue, carnelian red, turquoise, and gold — found new expression in platinum, enamel, and carved hardstones. Geometry itself took on a pharaonic edge, with stepped profiles and sunburst patterns echoing temple reliefs.

But the fascination with antiquity was not limited to Egypt. Greek, Roman, Persian, and pre-Columbian motifs re-emerged across the decorative arts, part of a broader revival of ancient civilisations. Asian art brought lacquer work, jadeite, and pagoda-like forms; African art inspired bold colour blocking and abstracted patterns. These influences became part of the visual grammar of the period, integrated into jewels that spoke of a world newly connected by travel, trade, and cultural exchange.

From the Workshop to the Wrist

The revolution was as much technical as it was visual. Workshops refined invisible settings, perfected the use of calibré-cut stones — gems cut with extreme precision to fit the exact geometry of a design — and developed articulated bracelets that moved fluidly with the wearer.

Light itself became a design element. Jewels were composed to capture and play with it — diamonds against matte onyx, frosted rock crystal beside polished platinum — creating a rhythmic alternation of brilliance and shadow. This mastery of light effects gave even restrained designs a dynamic, almost cinematic quality.

Colour as a Modern Code

Art Deco’s use of colour could be austere — the timeless black-and-white of onyx and diamond — or exuberant, with high-contrast pairings like red-and-green or blue-and-orange, inspired by the bold palettes of modern painting. Some maisons developed colour codes (codes couleur) as deliberate house signatures. Chaumet, for example, explored vivid blue-and-green pairings; others favoured crisp triads of primary colours.

Monochrome jewels also made their mark: bracelets or brooches entirely set with sapphires or emeralds spoke of confidence and stylistic purity.

Jewellery Beyond the Feminine

Though women’s jewellery dominated the conversation, Art Deco’s clean geometry and refined engineering also transformed masculine adornment. Men’s cufflinks, dress sets, cigarette cases, and wristwatches adopted the same bold contrasts, angular motifs, and luxurious materials. Objects of function became statements of style, extending Art Deco’s influence beyond traditional high jewellery.

Fashion and the New Woman

Art Deco jewellery was designed for a woman who was herself a symbol of modernity. Short haircuts, looser silhouettes, and public life demanded pieces that were both adaptable and expressive.

The link between couture and jewellery was strong. Designers like Paul Poiret embraced exotic fabrics and bold cuts, and jewellers responded with pieces to match — sautoirs to drape over tunics, cuffs to complement sleeveless gowns, and headpieces that mirrored the geometry of cloche hats.

Long sautoirs swung with the rhythm of the Charleston, wide cuffs stacked on the forearm, and brooches travelled from lapels to hats, belts, and handbags. Chaumet’s designs of the period reflected this versatility, offering jewels that could be worn from a luncheon in Paris to a night of dancing without missing a beat.

Defying Time as Well as Convention

A century later, Art Deco remains one of the most recognisable and sought-after styles in jewellery. Its appeal lies in the balance of modern form with timeless craftsmanship, in its ability to be both of its time and outside of time altogether.

The style saw revivals in the 1970s and 1980s, when jewellers once again turned to its confident geometry and bold palettes for inspiration. Yet its originals retain a special power — not merely as historical artefacts, but as symbols of a moment when the world dared to reimagine beauty.

It was, as one panellist put it, about opening the door — to new materials, new techniques, and new ideas. In doing so, Art Deco created a visual language that not only defied the conventions of its day but continues to inspire jewellers and collectors around the world.fairs: