Lacloche Frères

Cf.: Laurence Mouillefarine, Vérinique Ristelhueber, Lacloche Joailliers, Paris, 2019, pg. 215.

Egyptomania

In the 1920s, the vocabulary of luxurious jewellery was largely spelled-out in diamonds and precious colored stones, and the shapes, forms and iconography were thematically influenced to a great degree by various ancient cultures. Vogue magazine published a number of features in 1921 on fashions in ancient Egypt, Greece and the Near East.

The discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 inflamed a fascination with the land of the pharaohs that spread across the globe, and jewellers turned to symbols from ancient Egyptian art as a source of inspiration for their creations of glittering statement pieces. It is a period when trends in fashion and jewelry were inextricably linked. Bias cuts and tunic shapes proliferated. Couturiers such as Doucet, Lanvin and Vionnet created evening dresses which perfectly complemented the latest fashions in jewels such as elongated pendant earrings and panel bracelets. Scarabs, sphinxes, pharaohs, scribes, musicians and archers along with gods in their animal forms such as Anubis and Nekhbet, were often accented by hieroglyphics in undecipherable narratives using diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and onyx to tell the story.

Jean-Marcel Humbert, who was curator at the Musée du Louvre during the 1994 exhibition titled Egyptomania accurately observed that “Egyptomania” is more than a simple mania for Egypt. It is not enough to copy Egyptian forms, artists must “re-create” them in the cauldron of their own sensibility and in the context of their times.” This was surely the goal of Lacloche and they successfully achieved that goal. In 1925, at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, Lacloche exhibited at the Grand Palais and was awarded a Grand Prix.

The production of Art Deco Egyptian-themed jewellery was short-lived, lasting until the onset of the 1930s, and it is important to note that these Egyptian-themed examples were fewer in number compared with other types of jewels created during the same period. The rare pair of earrings by Lacloche offered here can be considered among the finest examples of Egyptian revival Art Deco jewellery.