Transcript
Speaker: Roni Lalique stands apart from all other jewellers in that he is quite widely regarded as the genius of Arnavur jewellery.
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by Rinalda House Museum of American Art, one of the nation's most highly regarded collections of American art, on view in the unique domestic setting of the 1917 R.J.
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Speaker: Browse the art and decorative arts collection at rinaldahouse.org, that's R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-A house.org, and visit in person in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Speaker: Welcome to another episode of Curious Objects and the Stories Behind Them, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm your host, Ben Miller, and I've got a great show for you today.
Speaker: I'm talking with Catherine Purcell of the firm Wortski in London about a fascinating necklace by the Art Nouveau jeweler René Lalique.
Speaker: Catherine is a phenomenal storyteller, and what she has to say about this piece really brings the people and objects of Art Nouveau and the Belle Epoque to life.
Speaker: In some ways, it's really changed how I think about this whole period, and I really think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker: So I encourage you to visit themagazineantiques.com, where you'll find an image of the necklace and some other images and links.
Speaker: Finally, as the host of a new podcast, I'm relying on you guys to tell me what you like and what you don't like and what you want to hear more of.
Speaker: So please, if you have any comments or questions, send an email to podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
Speaker: I'll read it.
Speaker: I'll respond to you.
Speaker: I really appreciate it.
Speaker: Okay, let's get started.
Speaker: Catherine Purcell, thanks so much for talking to me.
Speaker: It's a real pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker: We're talking about a piece of jewelry, although to call it a piece of jewelry is maybe giving it short shrift because it's really, it is a, it's a necklace, a pendant necklace, but it's also, I think anyone would agree, a work of art.
Speaker: It's a piece by a French jeweler from the 19th century.
Speaker: And I'm wondering if you can give a physical description for our listeners.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, it takes the form of a pendant on a long chain.
Speaker: The pendant itself is centred with a female bust portrait of a young woman.
Speaker: Most striking is the fact that she is enveloped in branches supporting pine cones and needles.
Speaker: The pendant is suspended with three pearls and the chain work echoes the motifs, also bearing pine cones and needles interspersed with pearls.
Speaker: The piece doesn't have a single gemstone in it.
Speaker: It is entirely decorated with enamel in terms of the female portrait.
Speaker: The enamel is principally in dusky shades of blue to grey.
Speaker: and her hair is very dark, almost black in colour.
Speaker: And the pine cones themselves are of enamel, which has been etched to give them volume.
Speaker: The branches so envelop her as to almost reveal her face amidst the branches.
Speaker: She's actually clasping one of the branches in her hand.
Speaker: So that is the first appearance of the piece, if you like.
Speaker: I want to come back to the physical form and the design and the aesthetics, but who is the woman?
Speaker: Well, that is the key question because I've discovered that the woman in question was actually his muse.
Speaker: Her name was Augustine Alice Ledru.
Speaker: They met in her father's studio because...
Speaker: Her father was actually the bronze foundry maker to René Lalique's bronze works and at the time that this particular pendant was carried out they had not yet married.
Speaker: They actually met in 1890 but married in 1902 and we
Speaker: fortunately have this particular jewel recorded in contemporary periodicals because it was featured at the 1900 Paris exhibition and evidently caused such a stir then that it was reproduced in a number of contemporary journals including L'Exposition Universelle de 1900 by Gustave Jeffroy
Speaker: which was published in 1902 but was a resume of the entire exhibition.
Speaker: And equally well, Henri Vever, in his three-volume history of French jewellery, chose to illustrate it.
Speaker: Which I should interject, we have in English thanks to your work.
Speaker: Yes, I did translate the three-volume history into English, that's correct.
Speaker: So were these publications, how did you discover the identity of this woman?
Speaker: Is it because of those publications?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It wasn't the publications that actually held the key.
Speaker: The first clue that I had is the fact that at the base of the pendant, the actual little cut-out form from which the centre pearl is suspended is actually a cut-out heart.
Speaker: And I'd actually never seen this feature in a duel by René Lalique before.
Speaker: It led me to think that there must be some kind of romantic association.
Speaker: between him and the sitter, if you like.
Speaker: And I started to read further accounts of female figures in his jewels, and it turned out that Augustine Alice did feature in a number of his works of that period, particularly before they got married.
Speaker: And he was obviously very inspired by her.
Speaker: After marriage, it's hard to motivate yourself.
Speaker: Well, we hope that that's not the case, but certainly the majority of the work seem to have been created in those earlier years.
Speaker: During the courtship.
Speaker: During the courtship.
Speaker: And in fact, very usefully, the Corning Museum of Glass has a Bastille featuring her, signed by René Lalique, which we have always known to have been of her.
Speaker: And she had quite a distinctive profile with quite a pronounced chin,
Speaker: And this is borne out by photographs of the two of them together.
Speaker: So this is an incredibly personal jewel and it's by no means incidental that the motifs in the jewel are actually fur cones and pearls because pine cones in the language of botany stands for eternity.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: And the pearl, because Venus was born from a pearl, symbolizes love.
Speaker: So you already have eternal love in this jewel.
Speaker: The heart notwithstanding, rather charmingly, as you turn the jewel over, you actually find a mirror image of
Speaker: the jewel in chased and engraved form, which is very typical of René Lalique's attention to detail, the ability and in fact the priority he gives to all aspects of his jewels, whether, for example, making a piece from plicage au renault, but actually designing it as a choker.
Speaker: So only the wearer would know that
Speaker: it carries this great sophistication of plicage enamel, which is immediately lost when you wear it right against the skin.
Speaker: So in the same way, only the wearer would have known that the jewel was so elaborately finished on the reverse.
Speaker: That's a really special feature, and it makes the piece all the more intimate, to know that there was an element that was reserved only for the person for whom it was made.
Speaker: I don't know if you find that in contemporary jewellery so often.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, as we know in the world of jewellery, the more you handle, the more you know that the first thing you do is actually to turn the jewel over because if it's beautifully finished on the reverse, it's an indication that it's going to be fantastically made.
Speaker: on the front as well, is the attention to the unseen detail, which is always the key.
Speaker: It's like looking under the hood of a car.
Speaker: Yes, that's correct, in another field.
Speaker: So I would say now that we have reached a different age that does not involve years, years of apprenticeships, for example, as happened in the 19th century in all forms of the decorative arts,
Speaker: Now, unfortunately, time is money, and so it is actually quite rare to find pieces that are as elaborately finished on the reverse as they are to the front.
Speaker: Very few contemporary, let's say, artist-jewellers can actually put that time finished.
Speaker: and effort into completing something as fantastically.
Speaker: It may be very beautifully finished, but it wouldn't be carried necessarily to the same extent as he would see it right in front.
Speaker: So this was something that really René Lalique prided himself on.
Speaker: And he stood above his contemporaries even in that regard.
Speaker: He did, although I would say that there were some extraordinarily talented jewelers and enamolers working at the time.
Speaker: And all of them, be they Fouquet, Henri Vivert, Frédéric Boucheron, had known this era of immensely long trainings in the different fields that they specialised in.
Speaker: And therefore, when one reads accounts of Alphonse Fouquet and Fouquet,
Speaker: how at the age of 12 he was literally on bread and water sleeping under the workshops as he trained to become a jeweler.
Speaker: Those stories I'm sure are not isolated and therefore they were trained with this exactitude to detail.
Speaker: It so happens that Rony Lalique had other talents such as an extraordinary imagination
Speaker: He was very lucky in benefiting from some very early patronage that helped his career enormously.
Speaker: But Ronny Lalique stands apart from all other jewellers in that he is quite widely regarded as the genius of Arnavur jewellery.
Speaker: This piece made around 1900, today it's at Wortski.
Speaker: Where has it been in between?
Speaker: Well, that has been a bit of a mystery.
Speaker: We know that it has been in a private collection for a number of decades.
Speaker: Beyond that, we don't know from the time that it was owned by René Lalique's wife until it arrived in this private collection, we don't know.
Speaker: Indeed, it has been lost for a number of decades because when Sigrid Barton wrote her catalogue raisonné on René Lalique,
Speaker: It is simply featured in black and white photographic form and the photograph is actually the very one that was illustrated by Henri Viver in his book, which was published in 1908.
Speaker: So there was no colour image available of this work.
Speaker: So to discover, first of all, the palette in which it was carried out was a real revelation.
Speaker: It's in absolutely perfect condition.
Speaker: Now, you mentioned that there are no precious gemstones in this piece, and that's typical of Art Nouveau jewelry, is it not?
Speaker: That is, but I have to say that René Lalique was one of the very first to embrace this particular aspect of Japanese art.
Speaker: One can't talk about René Lalique without talking about Japan.
Speaker: Japanese works of art were first seen in Paris in 1867 at the Exposition Universelle, when for the first time the Japanese were able to organise their first pavillon, truly representative of their works of art.
Speaker: And this was a real revelation to fellow artists from all over the world, but particularly the French, who fought over these Japanese works of art.
Speaker: And not least for...
Speaker: the sense of artistry that was imbued in the most modest materials, so be it basket weaving, be it the carving of common cow horn, it applied itself into every single type of material and this was something that was not at all lost on René-Lanique.
Speaker: And as you rightly say, this particular jewel
Speaker: It doesn't have a single precious stone in it, not even a semi-precious stone.
Speaker: It is literally just enamel and pearls.
Speaker: And he was so inspired by this that he himself started exploring the use of ivory and common cow horn in his jewellery, as well as tortoiseshell.
Speaker: he exhibited for the first time in 1897 his display almost entirely devoted to combs carved from tortoiseshell and Ivory and horn which caused a sensation nothing had ever been seen like this before really such artistry in very very modest materials and
Speaker: I think that this certainly led the way for an awful lot of other artists, such as Lucien Gaillard, who equally well started creating combs made from similar materials.
Speaker: I also think the whole attitude shifted in terms of the appreciation of different types of very time-consuming techniques
Speaker: such as different types of enamel which were certainly not intrinsically valuable but commanded a huge amount of time.
Speaker: The technique of plicageur enamel for instance, the building up of many many layers of enamel from a specific contour is hugely time consuming and as I said is
Speaker: very difficult to actually wear in such a form that it's instantly revealed.
Speaker: So one could have, for example, a comb made of pliquet-jour enamel.
Speaker: This would be the perfect jewel because worn high in the hair and they had very large coiffures at the time.
Speaker: One would see the daylight coming through the enamels and of course you then had that rich panoply of vibrant colors immediately to be seen as you walked into a room.
Speaker: However, plique à jour enamel is a very difficult form of jewellery to wear, but obviously it's also quite fragile.
Speaker: It's instantly lost if you wear it as a choker, but equally well if you wear it as a bracelet or a pendant, because it will be constantly against a surface.
Speaker: So it was nevertheless something that was very much explored, as were other types of enamels, such as chanlevé enamels and so on at that time.
Speaker: So I think this use of...
Speaker: non-intrinsically valuable materials was very much something that was symptomatic of Arnaud, you're quite right.
Speaker: I would just perhaps like to just emphasize once again why René Lalique was really a precursor in everything he did.
Speaker: And to go back to the influence of Japan in his work, because it wasn't exclusively the use of non-intrinsically valuable materials that actually was so influenced by Japanese works of art, but also, I would say, the scrutiny of the world in all its forms.
Speaker: The sense of the duality of nature, for instance,
Speaker: In Japanese art, whether you take a netsuke or a bronze, none of the craftsmen were shy about showing the decay of the natural world.
Speaker: And this is something that René Lalique,
Speaker: in his close scrutiny of nature of a child would have very much taken on board.
Speaker: But I think to take it into the field of jewellery was something quite unknown.
Speaker: And therefore when he, and I'm talking about Lalique now, shows, let's say, a tiara that consists of branches of fern,
Speaker: and he's showing them under the weight perhaps of water.
Speaker: He's not showing them in the way that one might traditionally think of a botanical motif, when he also will take a leaf and shown it gnawed away at by insects.
Speaker: This is something that was entirely new, and this close observation of nature was miles apart from the full-blown roses that one might have seen in diamond-set jewelry in the 18th and 19th century.
Speaker: Sure, the heavily romanticized depictions.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It was this immense study of nature that was very much part of him, and I think stimulated by seeing...
Speaker: Japanese works of art and equally well in some of the landscapes that he showed.
Speaker: This duality was shown in everything.
Speaker: He showed a very poetic looking winter landscape for example with a landscape of fir trees with snow on the branches.
Speaker: the contours of the actual pendant would consist of the nulled branches and tree trunks, but right down to the roots that would be shown at the base of the pendant from which a pearl was suspended.
Speaker: This showed both sides of the natural world, if you like.
Speaker: You didn't just stay with the beautifully snow-capped mountains.
Speaker: There was always something going on underneath.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: In the same way that one could see the beauty in the savagery of the animal world, this duality was also shown in the female figure.
Speaker: One of his most famous pieces in the Gulbenkian collection consisted of a woman turning into a dragonfly, but very menacing in that she appears to have claws for fingers and becomes almost monstrous, if you like.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: This was something that had never been explored before in jewellery and was something completely new.
Speaker: And that's a stark contrast to, for example, Louis Comfort Tiffany, who also drew heavily on Japanese inspiration.
Speaker: But his glass, the famous stained glass windows that you can find at museums around the world, these are beautiful garden scenes.
Speaker: These are unblemished depictions of nature.
Speaker: These are perfect sunsets where...
Speaker: every bird is properly placed, every flower is at the right proportion.
Speaker: Why do you think Lalique, drawing on some of these same sources of inspiration, went to the raw, unbounded,
Speaker: brutality of nature alongside the obvious romantic and aesthetic attraction of it?
Speaker: That's a very good question.
Speaker: Certainly when he was very young, he's known to have been spending the majority of his childhood drawing nature as he saw it.
Speaker: He felt that the truth to nature was very, very important.
Speaker: And his early drawings do show all kinds of insects and plants that had never really been shown before.
Speaker: But he is trying to really show that there are two sides to nature.
Speaker: It's going to take a certain type of woman to wear something that doesn't show necessarily the beauty of nature.
Speaker: But would have probably appealed to certain...
Speaker: people like Sarah Bernhardt because they did not want to wear jewellery that was harking back to what had been made centuries before.
Speaker: They wanted to make their own mark.
Speaker: And this was a way of doing it, not just through their behaviour, but immediately announcing through what they wore that they were with the new fashions, with the new designers, and particularly with René Lalique.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: The influence of nature on his work is hugely important and in fact the introduction of pine cones as a motif in this particular duel is interesting in terms of date because in 1898 René Lalique acquired a property in Paris, to the south of Paris, called Clairefontaine which was populated with fir trees and it's from that date that he started to incorporate that motif in his work.
Speaker: There's a watch case in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs entirely decorated with pine cones.
Speaker: There's a series of drawings by him showing them.
Speaker: And his first attempts at photography, in fact, take place at Clairefontaine, where, interestingly, he...
Speaker: takes images of the lower part of the tree trunks and the lowest branches.
Speaker: He doesn't take the entire tree.
Speaker: And this, of course, is very reminiscent of the fragmented depiction of nature and images as seen in Japanese art.
Speaker: That strange perspective in which one doesn't see a whole image but a fraction of it, and then that draws you in.
Speaker: This is very much how his first photographs of the pine trees are taken.
Speaker: The motif was introduced from about 1899, I'd say a year after he bought the property.
Speaker: So yes, I have to say that's probably why I also consider René Lalique to be the genius of Art Nouveau, because it's to do with imagination and materials.
Speaker: And of course,
Speaker: a quality of craftsmanship that is pretty much unequalled.
Speaker: We're just going to take a quick break now.
Speaker: I really hope you're having as much fun listening to this as I did talking with Catherine.
Speaker: One of the great perks of talking to antique dealers is they're natural-born storytellers, and Catherine is no exception.
Speaker: When we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about the context behind Lalique's work and some of his contemporary artists, Hauden and others who had strong influences on Lalique's work.
Speaker: I want to encourage you and remind you to go to themagazineantiques.com and look at some of the images that are posted of the necklace and other Lalique work.
Speaker: As wonderful and colorful as Catherine's descriptions are, you deserve and you owe it to yourself to see a picture of this necklace.
Speaker: It's a truly stunning object and you will never forget it.
Speaker: So go to themagazineantiques.com, look at the images.
Speaker: We'll be right back.
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Speaker: This is something I haven't really thought about before, but
Speaker: What kind of prices did these jewels, this one of course was made for someone he had an intimate relationship with and so not presumably on the private market, but jewels that Lalique was making, these were a new form, they were a new idea, they didn't incorporate stones that carried value intrinsically.
Speaker: What kind of prices were these pieces fetching?
Speaker: They certainly commanded high prices even in their day.
Speaker: I have to say, so at this early point, I was talking about the patronage that he was fortunate enough to attract.
Speaker: It was very fortunate for him that the great actress Sarah Bernhardt discovered his work.
Speaker: in the early 1890s, in fact in 1892, because it allowed him to make not only theatrical jewels for her, but also very personal pieces of jewellery that would make his name better known to a wider clientele, who would also perhaps not be frightened by the more avant-garde aspect of his jewels, because certainly for a woman to be wearing a female form on her as a piece of jewellery...
Speaker: must have been quite auze at the time.
Speaker: Whereas previously one was quite happy to wear botanical motifs, which really were the most common form of jewellery ornament in the 18th and 19th century.
Speaker: The idea of actually a woman wearing
Speaker: a sort of naked female figure carved from ivory as one found in works by René Lalique or by Gaillard or Vévert, would have seemed extremely bold and would certainly not have suited every woman.
Speaker: And I think it took a particular type of person who was prepared to make a statement
Speaker: in public about how avant garde she was in terms of wearing something like this.
Speaker: This being Sarah Bernhardt.
Speaker: I think also the fact that the artistic world was very much a close one at that time.
Speaker: And for example,
Speaker: René Lalique and Auguste Rodin knew each other.
Speaker: One found, for example, certain subjects in each other's work echoing the other.
Speaker: Everyone is familiar with the Rodin sculpture entitled The Kiss.
Speaker: Well, René Lalique himself carried out two or three jewels in which the center section are male and female kissing.
Speaker: It's fascinating for me to hear about these relationships between a jeweler and artists.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which, again, you don't necessarily think of as being very closely connected feels.
Speaker: But at this time, at least for Lalique, it was.
Speaker: And they do know each other.
Speaker: I mean, I've read a book of correspondence...
Speaker: of René Lalique's in which he talks about going to Rodin's studio.
Speaker: So in fact it's no coincidence that Rodin and Lalique should have known each other given they both did work in bronze, Rodin obviously so, but Lalique did create works in bronze and they shared amongst others the bronze foundry maker Le Dru.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Interestingly enough, Sarah Bernhard herself carried out works in bronze too and was very interested in sculpture.
Speaker: So one has this great connection between different art forms, different artists.
Speaker: And similarly, it's not a coincidence that Sarah Bernhard's theatrical posters were all carried out by Alphonse Moura.
Speaker: because interestingly, the very flattened form that you see in the jewel we're looking at now, with the very curvilinear treatment of the hair, which helps you date it to about 1900, is very much the echoing of the flattened form one finds in the graphic arts of the period.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yes, the theatrical posters that Alphonse Mourat created for
Speaker: Sarah Bernhardt.
Speaker: And once we look at this pendant in complete isolation, it's that line of the hair that would be the total giveaway in terms of the dating of the piece.
Speaker: Because it's not the palette itself that would tell you that it was necessarily 1900 or her attitude.
Speaker: It is really this extraordinarily stylized treatment of the curves in her hair
Speaker: which really does remind me of the treatment of something one would see in a poster.
Speaker: That's fascinating.
Speaker: So there are influences both from the most three-dimensional art form, that is sculpture, and then the most two-dimensional art form, which is graphic design.
Speaker: That's absolutely right.
Speaker: What I have omitted to say regarding this jewel is that quite apart from the decoration which is borne on the back of the pendant, it also bears a
Speaker: brooch fitting.
Speaker: So the jewel can be worn in its detached form from the chain work as a brooch.
Speaker: by removing the two bolt rings at the top of the pendant.
Speaker: One can wear it as a very long sautoire form of chain work.
Speaker: This chain is over a meter long, and it is definitely the longest chain I have ever seen in René Lalique's work.
Speaker: And interestingly, it can be worn as both, because one of the great fashions at the time was to wear jewelry in such a way that the chain work could create
Speaker: rather artistic loops to it.
Speaker: And what one can also do is actually hang the chain work around the neck and rather than let the pendant hang, actually raise it to the throat and pin it there.
Speaker: Because by so doing, you would then create two very artistic arches either side of the brooch.
Speaker: It also means that it
Speaker: would be seen at a height where it could be admired because obviously in its long form it hangs so low that one really misses out on the iconography.
Speaker: And it's very possible that that is how it was worn in its time.
Speaker: That's interesting because to see a jewel made that way today, one would think it was convertible, that it was intended to be worn either as a brooch or as a pendant.
Speaker: But in this case, maybe it was both at the same time.
Speaker: I believe it could have been born as both at the same time.
Speaker: It's also intriguing that this very long type of chain work would have been very suited to the new fashions of the day because with the very fashionable designer Charles Worth who started creating dresses that did not require the
Speaker: wearing necessarily of corsets and actually were straight down to the ground, these very elongated forms would have been perfectly adapted to wearing very long necklaces.
Speaker: And when one looks at the fashions of about 1900, 1905, it's exactly that, almost a kind of Greek style dress in terms of no wasting.
Speaker: And therefore, perhaps this is very much the precursor of those long sort of necklaces one finds.
Speaker: during the annual file of the 1920s as well.
Speaker: So there's an awful lot going on in the design of this jewel and the iconography of this jewel.
Speaker: The way it relates, in fact, in terms of art, be they painting or pastel, I have to say there's something very much about this attitude of this female figure with her eyes open
Speaker: closed in a kind of mystical mood, which reminds me very much of the pastels of the symbolist artist Audino Rodon, actually created some five, ten years later.
Speaker: And similarly, in his pastels, you find female figures to about, drawn to about this length, bust length, but totally enveloped with floral motifs, very vivid colors, but they have a mystical presence to them.
Speaker: And he was one of the foremost symbolist artists, if you like.
Speaker: And it's almost as if Lalique was a kind of precursor to this,
Speaker: I can only assume that Rodin would have been familiar with Lalique's work of art because everybody knew Lalique in 1900.
Speaker: His display caused such a sensation.
Speaker: It was something that the world had never been seen before and the fact that so many artists actually chose his stand as a basis for some of their most famous works of art.
Speaker: There's a particular graphic artist called
Speaker: Félix Vallotton, who actually created this extraordinary black and white rendition of people just literally looking into his stand.
Speaker: And what you see is his stand in the background and all these bodies literally staring into the showcase in total astonishment.
Speaker: And one can understand why it caused such a sensation then, because the descriptions...
Speaker: at the time are very, very detailed and speak of bats hanging from the ceiling of his stand and gauze backdrops and furthermore, the front
Speaker: balcony area of his stand, as it were, consisted of several bronzes of female figures that appeared to be turning into something far more grotesque, carried out in the entire work.
Speaker: These are pictured in Vivera's book.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: They're very striking.
Speaker: They're very striking.
Speaker: And one's had the opportunity to actually see some of them come up separately for sale.
Speaker: And I believe there might be one even in the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: They are monumental.
Speaker: And one can understand the surprise of people when they actually first saw these, because this was such a long way from the traditional displays of jewelry at the time.
Speaker: One of the reasons why people so gravitated towards his stand was that Lalique was able to borrow back from one of his major patrons, Kalouskoubenkian, some pieces that he had made for him.
Speaker: Now I have to say Kalouskoubenkian was an Armenian banker who had very quickly recognised the extraordinary talent and imagination of René Lalique and acquired works from him
Speaker: that were not going to ever be worn, they were actually going to be displayed on walls.
Speaker: in the middle of his collection of Holbein's, Ingres, and other such masterly painters.
Speaker: So moving even further now in the direction of art, maybe in contrast to jewellery.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, even Kadosko Beggin himself saw them as works of art immediately.
Speaker: And so not only did he acquire some of the pieces that René Lalique had made, but he was also...
Speaker: able to commission works from René Lalique, where Lalique had full knowledge that he could let his imagination go wild because they actually could be totally unwearable.
Speaker: And this explains, for instance, one of the wilder pieces
Speaker: in the Caduce Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, which consists of a tiara composed of a cockerel's head clutching an amethyst.
Speaker: Fantastic chokers decorated with lakes consisting of opal and the tree trunks shimmering in chase gold.
Speaker: One also found corsage ornaments consisting of
Speaker: intertwined snakes which suspended ropes of pearls from their gaping jewels that measured half a meter long and all these rather macabre types of jewels that I don't think any woman would have liked to wear.
Speaker: Those might fit in on the red carpet these days.
Speaker: Well, who knows?
Speaker: I mean, certainly if one wanted to cause a sensation, this was a huge feather in René Lalique's cap, that he was able to...
Speaker: create these extravagant works of art that were being entirely financed, that were being borrowed back for exhibitions and therefore was a great sort of publicity coup for him, but that he did not have to have his work defined by the fact that it had to be wearable.
Speaker: I think that makes a very big difference.
Speaker: And these are the works, frankly, that are his most famous still today.
Speaker: One of the things that's always been interesting to me about Wortski is how well-researched all of your objects are.
Speaker: And I'll say to listeners that if you have the opportunity to visit Wortski in their shop or at one of the shows where they exhibit, if you pick out a piece that you like the looks of and ask about it,
Speaker: odds are you'll hear a wonderful story about it.
Speaker: And that storytelling, I think, is such an important part of being a dealer in antiques and jewelry, to be able to sell not just the object, but the aura and the history and the people who have owned it and used it.
Speaker: Is that part of what draws you to the discipline?
Speaker: Yes, in fact, my encounter with Walski was a totally chance one because I had studied history of art and I wanted to work with paintings and sculpture.
Speaker: And it's quite by chance that I found myself being interviewed at Wart's Key, which I thought at the time was a picture gallery.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Because we never use the word jewellery in publicizing a position for security reasons.
Speaker: And I therefore thought that's where I was coming to for my interview and was absolutely amazed to find
Speaker: The only work of art in terms of paintings was one of Queen Alexandra.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: And I had never heard of Carl Fabergé.
Speaker: I was a total hippie and had no desire at all to look at jewellery, never mind work with it.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: And was incredibly fortunate in working with two people like Kenneth Snowman and Geoffrey Munn, who was embarking on his first book at the time, because their knowledge was...
Speaker: monumental, but more than anything their passion was contagious.
Speaker: They were incredibly generous with their knowledge and they encouraged me to pursue any form of research that I wanted to in my own time, if I were interested in anything, and slowly began to really look at jewellery for myself, not from a gemological point of view, because I was always very much drawn to the artistry of jewellery.
Speaker: And it was the craftsmanship involved and the techniques that really drew me, as well as the inspiration behind the pieces.
Speaker: I want to wrap up by asking a couple of questions that I ask all of my guests.
Speaker: And one of those is for a piece of advice that you would give to a collector who's just starting out in the field, someone who's maybe just encountered Lalique or Art Nouveau, someone who's just getting interested in jewelry of any kind.
Speaker: What's a piece of advice that you would give to someone who's just feeling their way into this area?
Speaker: I would say handle as much as you possibly can.
Speaker: One can read as many books as are available, one can look at as many images on the internet as you'd care to, and of course now that's a very useful tool, but it's the handling of the piece in the end that will give you the most possible information, examine exactly how it was put together, how many
Speaker: techniques are involved in the work, how was it built up, the weight, the choice of materials, nothing is chance.
Speaker: So it's by handling as much as you can and being able to compare pieces that really is how you learn the most.
Speaker: Be brave.
Speaker: Walk into jewellery shops, however intimidating they look.
Speaker: Go and handle whatever you can before auctions that are available to you.
Speaker: It does take bravery because I know that I was very shy about doing such things myself.
Speaker: But that is really the only way to learn.
Speaker: It's the hands-on experience.
Speaker: The more you handle, the more you can also tell whether something has been tampered with in some way.
Speaker: Whether you feel whether the texture of something feels slightly awry.
Speaker: Whether you suspect it may have been re-enamelled, for instance.
Speaker: Whether marks, maker's marks, date marks...
Speaker: may be superimposed, where the certain marks may have been etched out even.
Speaker: The most abominable things happen that you would never guess at when you're starting out.
Speaker: And I think it's only by close examination that you will learn the most.
Speaker: But it does take a lot of bravery.
Speaker: I'm very well familiar with that.
Speaker: But there are plenty of friendly jewellery dealers.
Speaker: Well, we pride ourselves on being friendly jewellers.
Speaker: I mean, I have hugely benefited from that myself.
Speaker: And we've helped so many people in their projects and thesis that they might be writing.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: We feel so blessed ourselves that we were given this chance to work with people who are so generous with their knowledge.
Speaker: the more information that you can give out about things and help people, it always comes back to you.
Speaker: Somebody will remember you and will be thrilled to show you when they have something interesting that you can learn from, that you will feel as passionate about as they do.
Speaker: And that is something that really, I hope, is part of the Walski ethic, is really trying to communicate to people why we are passionate about the pieces that we were lucky enough to have.
Speaker: Now for more experienced collectors who might be listening right now, what's a mistake that you sometimes see experienced collectors make that you would caution against?
Speaker: I think one starts off as a collector, one inevitably starts off fairly modestly because your means are probably quite modest when you start off.
Speaker: And then as you learn, your tastes become more and more refined and one becomes braver about buying more significant pieces.
Speaker: What can then be difficult is actually refining your collection to rid yourself of the first pieces that you acquired.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Because they may have all sorts of rather nostalgic connotations to them, because it's the first piece you bought at all.
Speaker: But there's no doubt that what makes the strength of a collection is the universal strength of the pieces.
Speaker: And sometimes one comes across collections where there are, let's say, five or six masterpieces.
Speaker: And then there are maybe more pieces that are
Speaker: more modest or middling pieces.
Speaker: And I would always urge a collector, if they can, to perhaps just go for the very best, because in the end, it's the very best that will really hold their own in whatever context.
Speaker: Well, Catherine and Prissel, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker: It's been a real pleasure talking.
Speaker: It's been my pleasure too.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by Rinalda House Museum of American Art, one of the nation's most highly regarded collections of American art, on view in the unique domestic setting of the 1917 R.J.
Speaker: Reynolds Mansion.
Speaker: Browse the art and decorative arts collection at rinaldahouse.org, that's R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-A house.org, and visit in person in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Speaker: That's all for today.
Speaker: Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker: I really hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker: I want to remind you one more time to go to themagazineantiques.com to look at some pictures.
Speaker: You won't regret it.
Speaker: And again, send any feedback you have to podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
Speaker: If you like what you heard, don't forget to leave a rating on iTunes or whatever app you're using to listen.
Speaker: It really helps me out.
Speaker: And make sure you're subscribed so that you get all the future episodes.
Speaker: We've got some great pieces coming up for you.
Speaker: In the meantime, Curious Objects is a podcast from the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm your host, Ben Miller.
Speaker: Till next time.
