Lx Jewellery Store Blog

Art Deco is much more than architecture. For investors in particular, the most enticing and lucrative legacy of the early twentieth century design movement is its jewelry due to it unmistakable geometric, almost architectual look.

 “Of the periods, Art Deco’s value has held its own the best,” states Ann Lange, vice president and director of jewellery at the auction house Doyle in New York, of the era which began in the teens of the twentieth century and lasted into the early 1940s.

“It’s the jewelry is quite wearable, it’s classic, it’s stylish, and the workmanship is extraordinary.”

Art Deco fit into the time when commercial air travel was new and women were shedding their frilly, constricted duds and complex hairdos and replacing them with sleeveless chemises, such as flapper dresses, displaying bobs, and adorning themselves with sparkly bangles and lengthy strands of pearls.

The jewellery, hand-made using the most exquisite of materials—diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and onyx, generally set in platinum—suited that new era of speed, flexibility and experimentation.

Where To Find Art Deco Jewelry

Nowadays one can locate Art Deco items in several places, including on eBay, from jewelers who deal in classic jewellery and at the auction houses, like Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams and Doyle.  A excellent place to begin the search is Antique and Vintage Jewelry Store. The site is affiliated with eBay, Amazon and other sites and can almost guarantee the lowest prices available.

Costs can hit $100,000 and more, but the beginning collector can get in for $1,500. Truly outstanding pieces—made with precious stones and designed by top creative designers—can go for significantly higher.

Rarity additionally accounts for its enduring cachet, states Kadakia, noting that in the course of a year, only 100 to 150 truly unforgettable things go up for sale.

For instance, at a September auction at Doyle, jade-and-diamond pendant earrings, set in platinum, from 1930 and signed by Parisian designer Janesich, sold for $43,750—more than $13,000 over auctioneer’s top estimate. That very same month, an emerald ring, circa 1920, made with a stone given to Cartier by a royal family of India, commanded more than $100,000.

On the lower end are items like a man’s dress set, which are cuff links, a tie bar and shirt studs, in one of the most identifiable and preferred Art Deco styles—black and white colored geometric. It sold for $3000, double the top estimate. The set’s individual pieces are medallions of black onyx, edged by very small diamonds, with a bigger diamond in the center, and set in platinum and gold.

Art Deco designing was at its peak throughout the 1925 world’s fair in Paris, named the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, an event set up by the French to showcase what they viewed as their supremacy in making luxurious goods and avante-garde place in industrial design. Everything from jewelry to little personal things, like vanity sets and ornamental boxes, to furniture was on display there. It was later on that the period became known as Art Deco, shortened from the phrase arts decoratifs in the fair’s title.

What You Need to Know about Art Deco

When evaluating Art Deco jewellery, there are a number of aspects to keep in mind.

“So much is dependent on quality, the strength of the design. And if the pieces are signed, the prices go up,” states Lange.

Top designers include Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Mauboussin, who are French, and the Americans Tiffany, Yard, J.E. Caldwell, Schlumberger, David Webb and Marcus and Co.

Other key aspects in establishing value are a dog’s head stamped inside a piece, used by French creative designers solely, and for all, the visibility of scant metal on the underside of bracelets, necklaces and earrings. The less metal used, the far more skillful the artisan, and the more valuable the piece. Pieces made using jade are especially valuable today too, owing to interest from Asian collectors.

Within the larger Art Deco category are subcategories, such as Egyptian and Japanese revivals, which mimic the urbane aesthetic of those cultures, the American streamlined design, which is an additional identify for American Art Deco, and Tutti Frutti, a style in which precious stones of contrasting colors—rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds—were used. Cartier, who produced the style, nicknamed it tutti frutti due to the fact he thought the colors mixed together resembled fresh fruit salad.

The legendary 20th-century French garment designer Coco Chanelalso designed Art Deco jewelry, but hers was costume quality to be worn with her ensembles, according to Jane Adlin, curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.

The museum is now exhibiting Masterpieces of French Art Deco,that showcases a dress ornament of jade, onyx, diamonds, enamel and platinum, created in 1923 by Georges Fouquet.

After considering different Art Deco items to buy, it’s smart to keep in mind that the customer’s own senses ultimately will tell her or him which jewelry is the best.

According to Christie’s Kadakia: “Look at the workmanship and the balance of the designt and the stones and colors, and run your fingers over it. And, in the end, see how it looks on you.”