Orpheus, his body taut, one arm raised dramatically above his head, his knees thrust forth as though in the ecstasy of physical motion, has a certain suggestive quality about him. The tiara is a wonder of rock crystal and cabochon sapphires, and features a winged hat to hold the inevitable ostrich plumes at the back in thr front, the naked figure of Orpheus is flanked by two sinewy golden lions. So we find an assortment of enamelled brooches with neo-Egyptian motifs, which one would think more likely to suit Nefertiti than to suit a Victorian noblewoman strange floral tributes to the dead the dying great necklaces that look like stage props or like armour and beautiful and delicate studies in gold and crystal and precious stones.Īmong the most glorious pieces in the exhibition is a tiara designed by Henry Wilson for Lady Llewelyn-Smith to wear for her début, to be presented before Queen Alexandra. These are pieces designed by Pre-Raphaelites, pieces associated with prominent Victorians, pieces with some interest and significance outside the realm of the ordinary. About 10 per cent of the works included in the exhibition are for sale. The exhibition includes such spectacular loan pieces as the Queen Mother’s jewel casket, the Marquess of Bute’s marriage jewellery, and additional loans from the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Marlborough, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam, and the Ashmolean.
This month, at Wartski, 14 Grafton Street, W1, there is an exhibition to celebrate the publication of Charlotte Gere and Geoffrey Munn’s new book on jewellery in art. Orpheus tiara (with detachable fig-leaf for the central figure), designed by Henry Wilson in enamelled gold and rock crystal with cabochon sapphires. David Bennett speaks with comely distaste of jewellery that is meant to show wealth - a notion he suggests reached its peak in the Seventies - and with warm enthusiasm of the fine sense of spectacle which flourished when restraint could be the most formidable sort of glamour. The whimsy, the delicacy, the sense of high elegance the sense of humour which invest much nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century jewellery with its glint of the fabulous is virtually unknown in our time. The recognisable styles of the houses of the Twenties and Thirties have all but gone, and the generic jewellery from the shops in the high street of today is somehow not very thrilling to most connoisseurs. Value, increasingly, lies not in the actual worth of the stones, but in the design value of the settings. The settings for such specimens of nature’s triumph over art can be touching in their reverence or magnificent in their spirited attempt to warrant such beauty as they have shared. The purity of a pure stone is something unknown in the fine arts there is no such thing as a pure and perfect watercolour. Indeed, even the most reputable specialists apparently want to touch, handle, try on the finest pieces.
But David Bennett finds in perfect pieces of jewellery an “approximation of perfection,” which, he maintains, thrills anyone who ventures into his department. David Bennett, FGA, the charming director of the Sotheby’s Jewellery Department, speaks of his Sotheby’s compeers who scoff at the jewellery sales, persuaded that to negotiate the sale of anything that is not great art is to be virtually a tradesman. In the sale-rooms, there are stones galore in the offing this month and next: diamonds that glitter with a pure white intensity, sapphires in whose blue we learn to speak the truth, emeralds that glow like the end of the ages, and rubies that flame like our unspoken lusts will all be on sale at Sotheby’s on 25 March, and at Christie’s on 19 April.
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