Saturday Sparkle: The Georges Fouquet Brooch, 1903

Brooch
Georges Fouquet
1903
The Victoria & Albert Museum

We wrap up our week-long celebration of beautiful brooches with this amazing French piece by Georges Fouquet. The brooch, which dates t 1903, is a work in gold and silver with a subtle relief of young women, framed by diamonds and decorated with a sprig of mistletoe in enameled gold and pearls. 

This is the perfect example of Edwardian era jewelry as designs transitioned from the florid pieces of the Victorian era to the more stylized Art Nouveau and Art Deco. This piece is firmly in the middle of these design trends and shows both the sentimentality of the past century and the stylization of the Twentieth.