Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry

The Flagler Museum’s “Season of Style” continues with an exhibition that shines a light on the inspiring role women played in the creation and design of art jewelry of the early twentieth century. Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry, a stunning exhibition of more than 200 unique pieces of handcrafted art jewelry, celebrates the role of women, both as inspiration and as designers/makers. 

Featuring exquisite works by renowned artists such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Charlotte Newman, and René Lalique, Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry celebrates the impact of women on art jewelry across five regions: Great Britain, France, Austro-Germany, New York, and Chicago. These regions saw the emergence of bold, experimental artists who pushed the boundaries of traditional jewelry design.

Art jewelry developed as a reaction to the conformity of mass-produced goods throughout the Industrial Revolution. Each of the designers represented in Maker & Muse, though inspired by their own individual cultures and surroundings, shared similar aesthetic ideals: they all sought to produce innovative jewelry with semiprecious stones, enamelwork, and dramatic forms. Women influenced art jewelry both as muses to male designers, and for the first time, as designers themselves. The works in this exhibition offer a mesmerizing glimpse into the social, political, and economic realms in which they were created. The exhibition was drawn from the collection of Richard H. Driehaus, as well as from other prominent collections.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Whether or not you go, Maker and Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry offers a new perspective on woman’s role in the world of art jewelry at the turn of the twentieth century—from Art Nouveau in France and the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, to Jugendstil in Germany and Austria, Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York, and American Arts and Crafts in Chicago—and the most extensive survey to date of the sheer diversity and beauty of art jewelry during this period. 

Published to accompany the original groundbreaking exhibition at The Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago, this lavishly illustrated catalog showcases nearly two hundred stunning pieces from the Driehaus Collection and prominent national collections, many of which have never been seen by the public. 

Women were not only the intended wearers of art jewelry during the early twentieth century, but also an essential part of its creation. Their work—boldly artistic, exquisitely detailed, hand wrought, and inspired by nature—is now widely sought after by collectors and museums alike. From the world’s first independent female jewelry makers, to the woman as artistic motif, this jewelry reflected rapid changes in definitions of femininity and social norms. 

Essays by noted scholars explore five different areas of jewelry design and fabrication, and discuss the important female figures and historic social milieu associated with these movements—from the suffragists and the Rational Dress Society in England; to the Wiener Werkstätte and Gustav Klimt; and the Art Nouveau masters René Lalique and Alphonse Mucha, who depicted otherworldly women in jewelry for equally fascinating patrons like Sarah Bernhardt. 

The essays are illustrated by historic photographs and decorative arts of the period as well as the extraordinary pieces themselves: hair combs, bracelets, brooches, and tiaras executed in moonstones, translucent horn, enamel, opals, aquamarines, and much more. As Driehaus writes in his introduction to Maker and Muse, “Essential as these elements are, the metal and gemstones of a necklace—or a brooch or a bracelet—are like a canvas. It is the designer who evokes true greatness, beauty, and value from them. Neither monumental nor mass-produced, the object contains a memory of a particular artist’s skilled hand.”

Select Maker and Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry to learn more, or to place this book in your Amazon shopping cart. Your Amazon purchase through this link generates a small commission that will help to fund the ArtGeek.art search engine.