Gems & Jewellery
Spring 2024
Smitha Sadanandan
Over the years, the design, execution and popularity of brooches and clips has changed course. Some ingenious minds have created these beloved ornaments into beguiling jewels in forms including ballerinas, monkeys, koalas, parrots, seahorses and bugs. Veering away from the traditional style, form and even the way the jewel is worn, today’s designers are feeding the collector’s insatiable appetite for quirky, whimsical designs, offering brooches and pins with a fashion-forward approach.
“Brooches are the boomerang jewel,” stated Josephine Odet, a fine jewellery, diamond and gemstone specialist who is currently working with Bonhams Paris on their auctions. “They keep going out and coming back into style! In the auction market, there always has been a steady demand for brooches from collectors but recently, there has been a notable peak in interest from a new generation of buyers. In March 2023, a Bonhams social media post featuring a Cartier Tutti Frutti brooch was a top performer in terms of engagement.”
At the December 2023 jewellery sale at Bonhams’ London location, brooches performed particularly well. The soughtafter pieces included the Cartier artdeco Giardenetto Brooch (circa 1925) in sapphire, emerald, diamond and onyx; and a René Lalique enamel, pâte de verre, sapphire and diamond brooch/pendant combination (circa 1900).
A Brief History of Brooches
Elaborating on the history of the jewel, Ms Odet explained that “As a style of jewellery, brooches have an incredibly long, rich and symbolic history. The first recorded brooches were practical and fashioned out of flint, wood and thorns. From the Bronze Age there are surviving examples in copper alloy, with the more decorative featuring deceptively modern geometric and coil motifs. Roman men and women used a fibula (Latin, meaning ‘brooch’), made from silver, gold, copper alloy, bronze or iron, to secure their robes in place.” Although the majority of the creations were utilitarian in design, the late second-century brooches feature bird and animal designs.
Ms Odet believes that the versatility of brooches and their adaptability to personal style is at the heart of their renewed popularity. “They can be pinned onto clothes, into the hair, on hats, sleeves, shoulders, scarves, bags, above pockets on trousers, on the waistline, on lapels, pinned onto grosgrain ribbons or velvet and tied in the hair, wrapped around the wrist or worn as a choker,” she elucidated, adding that her own last jewellery purchase at auction was a diamond-and-emerald bar brooch.
Brooches are also appealing to many people because they are incredibly collectible. Symbolic icons of their eras, bejewelled insects as ladybirds (considered lucky), butterflies (related to transcendence), dragonflies (indicated courage) and scarabs (symbolised eternity) were a thriving style in the Victorian era. The nineteenth century also saw the introduction of cameo and portrait-engraved brooches. “In fact, brooches have been at the centre of innovative, period-defining trends,” pointed out Ms Odet. “For example, Cartier’s geometric clips with highcontrast colours were first introduced at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925. In 1954, Van Cleef & Arpels launched La Boutique, a collection of jewels with accessible price points that included brooches with naturalistic and whimsical themes. In the 1960s, Boucheron also embraced adorable animal designs. And we can’t really talk about collectible brooches without acknowledging VC&A’s ballerina, fairy, bird and floral spray collections.”
The brooch is definitely a favourite with royals, nobles, the rich and the powerful. It would be challenging to find a royal portrait from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries without a brooch prominently featured, an appreciation that continues into the present day.
“Queen Elizabeth II had a penchant for a great brooch, from her impressive brooch set with the 94.4 ct Cullinan III and the 63.6 ct Cullinan IV to her GRIMA yellow gold, diamond and carved ruby brooch. In 2022, she chose a diamondand-platinum brooch designed by David Marshall and commissioned by the Goldsmiths’ Company, to celebrate her Jubilee,” remarked Ms Odet. And the British royal family is not alone.
“Brooches have often been used as statement jewels – bejewelled messengers.” For example, Madeleine Albright, first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, used brooches as part of her ‘personal diplomatic arsenal’. Harriet Hedges, gemmologist and founder of London-based jewellery specialist Harriet & Hera, indicated that “over the last few years, we’ve seen men experiment more and more with jewellery pieces in general, in support of shifting gender norms and self-expression. This growing demand means that brands have expanded their jewellery offerings to cater to the male client and target them with popular genderfluid designs.” Men have noticeably been the trendsetters on the red carpet this year, she added. Aside from normalising the men’s jewellery trend, brooches have offered brands a great way to showcase their men’s jewellery and bejewelled unisex offerings. Her favourite brooch sightings on the red carpet included Simu Liu’s pearl-and-diamond jabot pin at the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards. “A great way of Assael giving us a cool and contemporary way to wear pearls,” she noted. At the 75th Emmy Awards, host Anthony Anderson had no less than four pin changes; Hedges’s favourite was “the colourful Haute Joaillerie collection brooch by Chopard, set in gold and titanium with 20.78 tcw of yellow diamonds and the cutest little ladybug.”
NVW Jewels
Natasha Wightman is committed to keeping traditional crafts alive. She therefore works with ancient English materials such as Whitby jet and moorland boxwood, along with precious metals and gemstones. Enchanted by ravens in the skies above her Sussex home, Ms Wightman began sketching their movement and form. “I embarked on an unexpected journey when two wild ravens became part of her everyday life and through this experience, I gained a deep understanding of their characters and abilities.” Coupled with a lifelong fascination with the design of rarecraft objects, the notion of a jewellery collection formed. She works with some of the most revered master craftsmen in Britain. “I wanted to work with British heritage experts because their skills and particular methods are rare,” she confirmed.
Ms Wightman translates the ‘power and other worldliness’ of ravens into one-of-a-kind pieces. When Midnight Blooms is an artful brooch realised in hand-carved Whitby jet. “The raven’s powerful black wings are outstretched to reveal their full glory, and in doing so, they encircle an antique, enamelled gold rose which holds a white diamond, glistening among its petals.” The bold piece is finished with a detachable handmade platinum chain.
