Sterlé | Pair of Diamond Earclips, France

Born in 1905 into a lineage of respected financial officers and public servants, Pierre Sterlé entered the jewelry trade as a protégée to his uncle, a well-known jeweler at the time. After working for a handful of different jewelers around Paris, Sterlé set out on his own in 1934 just shy of his 30^th birthday and established premises in the rue Saint Anne. After two subsequent moves, Sterlé eventually closed his business in the face of financial hardship and, in 1976, took on the role of creative advisor to Chaumet, the long-standing Parisian jewelry house.

Having been greatly inspired by the beauty and simplicity of nature, Sterlé’s work sought to mimic those virtues that we associate with flowers, leaves, fauna and especially birds. The feather motif, specifically, is one that is highly sought after and often found recurring in Sterlé’s oeuvre. Not unlike Constantin Brancusi’s groundbreaking Bird in Space, Sterlé, using gold and diamonds, aptly conveys the feather’s more abstract qualities such as movement, flight and air. The example included in this sale contain these elements in spades and clearly demonstrate Pierre Sterlé’s mastery of the craft.