In the Twentieth Century, styles changed so rapidly and so drastically that it is possible to recognize different styles associated with different decades. In previous periods, jewelry styles remained in popular use for so many years that it was difficult even for historians to recognize the difference between centuries at times. Improved production methods in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries quickened the pace of stylistic evolution, but it was not until the 1900s that enormous changes in social, political, technological, and ethical realms forced fashions to be as malleable as the times.
The Nineteenth Century closed with the Arts and Crafts movement, whose practitioners' philosophy was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, bringing individualized pieces to the masses not through department stores or overproducing factories but through the handmade art of the craftsman. The human touch was valued and meaningful. Despite its deliberate attempt to democratize fine craftsmanship, the Arts and Crafts Movement was most appreciated and sponsored by the affluent. Despite its unaggressive and uncommercial business philosophy, the Arts and Crafts Movement had international associations and vast repercussions throughout the world of design and style.
Some of the elements of this movement influenced Art Nouveau, a European design style that also began in the last decades of the Nineteenth Century and continued into the first decade of the Twentieth Century. Art Nouveau literally translates to "new art", and it was indeed innovative for many fields: architecture, fashion, furniture, and jewelry all succumbed to its curving, undulating lines and erotic symbolism. The new relationships between artmaking and diverse industries were coincident with drastic developments in visual art: Pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist work in the 1890s had altered the stress both in subject and technique in painting. The seductive femme fatale is a recurring motif of Pre-Raphaelite paintings that made its way into Art Nouveau designs. These designs were uncluttered by the over-ornamentation of previous periods in jewelry making: graceful and fluid in the way they incorporated natural imagery with avant-garde form. Art Nouveau developed all over Europe and was known as stile Liberty in Italy, Jugendstil in Germany, le style moderne in France and Secessionstil in Austria, but Paris was the artistic capital of the world. The political unease of the period contributed to the asymmetry of many Art Nouveau designs.
Artists like Bonnard, Vuillard and Mucha worked in the City of Light, making paintings, of course, but also furnishings, household utensils, and jewelry. They were greatly encouraged by Samuel Bing, who opened a shop in Paris in the early 1890s called "La Maison de l'Art Nouveau" which stocked new pieces from all over the world. Rene Jules Lalique was another Parisian jeweler whose oeuvre included even a fantastic collection of stage jewelry for Sarah Bernhardt, the famous actress. His specialty was in enameling extravagant and iridescent designs, interspersed with enormous pearls and semi-precious stones set in gold. Faces and bodies were worked into these creations. His work has come to be synonymous with Art Nouveau.
Lalique and others were fascinated with many of the techniques newly available from Japan. Trade links between the United States, Europe and Japan had sparked a productive flow of information back and forth between East and West. Japan had been closed to Western influence since the seventeenth century, and their admirable metalworking had mostly been put to use in ornaments for the hair, netsuke, and ceremonial weaponry. In one generation, their subtle and gorgeous techniques were being applied to jewelry, and some of them were being hired into workshops in Paris or into professorships in London. The Mikimoto Company was a flourishing business, dealing in pearls all over the world. Wood, metals, and horn were worked specially in Japan, techniques that made their way into the European vocabulary, along with motifs from Japanese prints.
In the early Twentieth Century, a kind of economic crisis shifted wealth from one section of society to another and those who had acquired money more recently emulated what they thought of as aristocratic taste by sporting vast quantities of jewelry. American millionaires and Eastern princes cultivated reputations that sparkled with the large and precious pieces they and their wives sported. Cartier, Fouquet, Bulgari and Tiffany were all jewelry houses whose businesses flourished at this time. The Castellani brothers worked in Rome and reproduced gold jewelry in Neo-Classical styles imitating ancient Greek and Roman jewelry. Faberge in Russia opened a branch in London, which went out of business at the outbreak of WWI.
Until World War I, etiquette and social structure dictated many of the styles that were worn upon certain occasions and by whom. Gilberte Gautier writes in 13 Rue de la Paix, of a scene at Maxim, a favorite Parisian cafe frequented by the stylish ladies of the turn of the century: two famous courtesans was sitting at their respective tables, covered in jewels, but a third was absent from her table. She walked in, covered only in a black velvet robe and accompanied by her maid. After a moment, she removed her maid's hat and cloak, revealing all of her own fancy riches, adorning this servant girl. The scene is said to have caused such a stir that the other courtesans left in a rage.
But the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the Russian Revolution in 1917 put everything into perspective, including jewelry. Glittering social scenes disappeared and jewels were put into vaults or bartered for their owners' lives. Precious metals were scarce and craftsmen were enlisted into armies like everyone else. Patriotic pieces were popular, made of silver, copper, aluminum or iron. Personal jewelry became all the more meaningful as so many people were separated from loved ones.
As people all over the world began to recover from the war and again look to decorate their lives, they were in no mood for the fantasies of Art Nouveau. The naturalistic forms left over from that period were first stylized and simplified, then further abstracted, and with an addition of a kind of geometry, Art Deco was born.
The style was named at the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1925. Architecture, furniture, fashion and jewelry were shown in all their bold, basic, and utterly new-fangled simplicity. Jewelry chosen for exhibition in this show was selected anonymously, just for its innovation, but the names of the exhibitors have lived on since then: Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron and Lacloche were just a few of the designers highlighted. Other companies were careful to adapt to the new taste for streamlined elegance. Decorative lines on buildings and jewelry alike tended to follow the outer edges of structures, emphasizing them rather than embellishing them. Painters and sculptors in Paris in the mid-twenties brought the era to its apex of stylization, using an enormous variety of materials and sparing no expense.
These were the Roaring Twenties: motorcars, air travel, flappers, and jazz were the signs of the times. Entrepreneurs were making money and employees were fighting for their rights. Gala events were constant and those who could not attend loved reading about them in the papers. Diamonds were popular, but so were semi-precious stones like 
amethyst and 
onyx. The new luxury metal of the time was platinum, but silver was common as well, lacquered in strong colors and shapes. Some characterize the jewelry and indeed the fashions of the time as androgynous: the industrial tenor of a lot of the work, with its frank geometry and dark stones can indeed be read that way, as women found their personal and political lives more liberated.
Parallel to the Art Deco trend in Paris was the fun concept of costume jewelry. For some women who were working out of the home or for whom the memory of war made fancy stuff seem frivolous, non-precious materials were a pleasant solution to ornamentation. Paul Poiret was the first of the couturiers to fashion costume jewelry. He had designed theatrical jewelry for Diaghilev's Ballet Russe in 1910, but began to actually accessorize his collections of clothing with silk tassels and semi-precious stones soon after. Schiaparelli and Chanel were close behind in this trend, and by the mid 1920s, the fashion magazines were all for what Chanel called "junk jewelry"". Exotic motifs were popular: images of Japanese swordsmen or Native American portraits adorned clips and liberty pins. Other motifs were somewhat silly: playful Scottie dogs with googly eyes and cherries and flowers made of paste. Americans were especially in favor of this fun craft and began to experiment with new technologies to design their own jewelry. Plastic bracelets, beads and pins abounded in American flapper fashion, and Bakelite became popular as well. A plastic made from synthetic polymers, it was used to imitate all sorts of colored stones, from coral to ivory. Plastic could be molded into sharp, specific shapes, and the geometry that was so popular within Art Deco styling made its mark in costume jewelry as well.
Around Europe, other Art Deco traditions were somewhat derivative of the Parisian style, but Mexican silver techniques continued to develop on their own and to influence European tastemakers. Other movements were afoot as well: in Germany in 1919 the Bauhaus emerged in the midst of the country's post-war crisis. Founded by Walter Gropius, it continued under Mies van der Rohe, employing Moholy-Nagy, Klee, and Kandinsky among others to teach its leading principles. The Bauhaus taught a return to formalism, function, and above all a return to basic processes in all mediums. It taught at once an individualistic artistic pursuit and a welcoming of industrial aesthetics and modes of production. Though the school itself was shut down in 1933, many of the artists from the Bauhaus moved on to work together in other countries. Gropius, Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy worked in England and then in America, and their aesthetic objectives traveled with them: rational beauty, an art allied with technology and a return to the first principles of every medium. These priorities had ramifications for jewelry that resonated throughout Modernist jewelry making and into the minimal, streamlined looks so popular today.
After the stock market crash in 1929, cities all around the world were hit hard. In 1934 the Gold Reserve Act was passed, through which the U.S. Government made those citizens who possessed gold coin exchange it with the government for paper money. Gold in the form of jewelry was not outlawed however, and as such could not be taken by the government. People clung to their jewelry, both to hang on to what fortunes they had left and as sentimental proof of better times. If they bought jewelry in the 30s, it was more conservative in its design, and represented security in insecure times. Women wore diamonds and fashions became more feminine.
There was a lot going on politically between World War I and II: many new countries had been created in Eastern Europe after the First World War and Fascism was taking hold, especially after Franco's rebellion in Spain in 1936. With the Depression, democracy was weakened all over the world as economies struggled to right themselves and dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini gained ground, helping to set the stage for WWII. It became fashionable in America took to wear badges and emblems that represented a person's political affiliations.
In 1939, World War II broke out and the jewelry industry came to a standstill. Even costume jewelry was not available. Production was disrupted in Europe as it had been in the First World War, and then the very means of production, the premises of factories, began to be destroyed, as industrial centers in Britain, Germany and France were bombed to pieces. Precious metals were scarce anyway, and craftsmen were being drafted into the army, so women began wearing second-hand jewelry, pieces with patriotic flair, and brooches that related to their loved one's regiment. Precious jewelry was used as currency at times, since bank notes meant little in the changing economies.
Relief from war came after six years of hard fighting, and people were confident that such devastation would never recur. The early 1950s were a time of hope; economically that meant a post-war boom and stylistically that meant chipper, relatively conservative clothing. Dior and Courreges were fashion designers that promoted the "New Look", with miniskirts, bright patterns, and a somewhat casual, workforce flair. Fashion and jewelry houses had fewer customers willing to pay for haute design, basically because it seemed gauche to spend money on finery in the wake of worldwide catastrophe; during this period the houses began to produce product lines that could be sold by other retail outlets besides their own.
Divisions within the jewelry industry and the retail market that had been years in the making were truly codified during this period. There was fine or precious jewelry, which continued to include one-of-a-kind pieces, or pieces with a limited run. There was costume jewelry, which was extremely accessible and often made of plastics or other imitative materials. Thirdly, there was unique jewelry made by individuals who considered themselves craftsmen and who were sometimes self-taught.
What made these new categories of distribution possible were diverse production resources. Mass production techniques enabled the accessibility of the middle caliber of jewelry, both in terms of price and in terms of rapid response to trends. The aesthetic of machinery influenced the form of even high caliber jewelry and that made by hand, which tended to incorporate chunkier shapes, contrasting metals and at times, moving parts.
Plastic was in fact a highly popular material in the 1950s and 1960s. It was of course less expensive to work with and to purchase and was also washable, which made for ease of wear amongst the highly practical 1950s woman. Natural materials had been depleted during the war and plastics could be interspersed with other more valuable materials such as gold or small set stones. Since many designs incorporated funny or whimsical figures such as clowns, dancers in draped gowns, animals, and the like, plastic was popular for its malleability as well it took to molds with ease and did not weigh down the conceptual lightness of the designs with heavy value. Its lightness reflects the determination of the American people to remain carefree after years of conflict.
Elegance was not about ostentation during this period, so that even scrutinizing the chicest stars of the period turns up a string of pearls here or 
diamond studs there - simple designs that seem only to highlight the composure of the women wearing them. Bauhaus simplicity still influenced the jewelry that was being made, even as other avant-garde art traditions began to garner interest among jewelers.
Picasso, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, and Dali were among the leading visual artists who tried their hand at making jewelry in the 1950s and 1960s. While their forays into jewelry, with the possible exception of Dali, were not among their greatest contributions, their participation in the world of design represents how intimately art and design were related at the time. Craftspeople had really begun to consider jewelry making among the most expressive of trades. In the field of fine art, Abstract Expressionism gave way to pop art, then op art and assemblage; jewelry making followed close behind, moving through materials and forms that mimicked high art's trajectory.
Innovative jewelry became the hallmark of the pursuit of a sense of self. The sexual revolution and the Civil Rights Movement meant further evolution for the decorative arts: jeans became a pervasive element of everyone's wardrobe. Men began to wear jewelry again as well; for the first time in at least a century, men wore necklaces. People made their own jewelry and wore tokens of their beliefs around their necks, as belts, headpieces and earrings. The 1960s saw the return of the talisman, the peace symbol, the symbols for man and woman, rendered in natural materials and sported on the body. This was especially true in the countercultural movements of the time, but even among the more design-conscious element of society, disposability was an interesting new issue, dealt with through new materials such as paper, Plexiglas, and vinyl.
The interest in craft that had come up for artists, artisans and even individuals during the 1960s found inspiration in ethnic traditions around the world, and in the 1970s, this sense of internationalism reached a peak of influence. The U.S. government began to fund special grants to individuals that encouraged cross-cultural exchange: workshops, exhibitions and conferences of artists from all over the world were made possible in the 1970s and 1980s.
In this spirit, the conceptual nature of jewelry was pondered: in what way does a piece of jewelry transcend the emotional bond between the giver and the wearer? How does it transform the body, force the wearer into a new psychological state or even into a new physical posture? In 1974, for example, Gijs Bakker, a Dutch artist-jeweler, fashioned a stainless-steel plate that was worn in the middle of the face and strapped with leather thongs at the top of the head and under the chin. The plate itself was cut into the profile of Fritz Maierhofer, an avant-garde Dutch jeweler still active today in the design world. The stainless steel of the piece, however, reflected half of the wearer's face, and therefore harkened back to the artistic developments of Cubism and at the same time reflected the contemporary development of mirrored installations by Robert Smithson. It was almost unwearable however, and its value was in its conceptual strength, the exercise of the limitations of current definitions of the form of jewelry, rather than in its passive celebration of the beauty of a stone or a metal. The same is true of a piece he created the year before, which was gold wire twisted so tightly around the wrist as to make an imprint on the skin; when the wire was taken off, the mark itself was a piece of invisible jewelry. He successfully stated the case for a dematerialization of the most material of the decorative arts.
Needless to say, a lot of jewelry along these lines ended up in galleries rather than on the bodies of the average woman or man. Sculpture at the time was deeply engaged with a sense of the body as the route to the apprehension of space, as opposed to the optical emphasis of Minimalism or the emotional emphasis of Minimalism and Modernism's predecessor, Abstract Expressionism. Since the body was at issue for both fine and decorative arts, it is no wonder that jewelers began to exhibit their more conceptual pieces in museums all over the world.
In the late 1980s, Communism fell and Eastern and Central Europe were freed from Soviet supremacy. The United States was left a superpower and within the U.S., Los Angeles and New York were capitals of entertainment. With global transportation easier than ever before, with the widespread mindset of internationalism, and with the unstoppable spread of American culture via movies and music, decorative design could not help but reflect a multiplicity of ethnicities and cultural identities.
The 1970s and 1980s were a time when a real sense of fun was re-instilled into jewelry. After the conservative, reserved trends of the 1950s and the cute styles of the 1960s, the '70s and '80s saw women and men alike just letting loose with their personal style.
By the 1990s, the conventional stratifications of the luxury industries had all but disappeared: there were certainly still companies whose names suggested taste and elegance, but there were no unspoken rules as to who purchased from these companies, and so many other companies had established themselves that made good jewelry from good materials at more reasonable prices that the brand names diminished in status.
Made
A place emerged in the retail market for each and every one of the categories that had heretofore established itself as the avant garde. What distinguished the buyer's choice of one design style over another, from classic designs to craftsy ethnic styles, was the individual's taste and the demands of an individual occasion. A piece of jewelry became what it is today: an investment in oneself.
And so while new materials are always being investigated for their aesthetic possibilities, while new techniques are always being tested for their stylistic viability, the twenty-first century is an era in which individuals choose for themselves what suits them. The individual has the power to design their own decorative reality. It is in this liberating context that Jewels for Me emerged and in which we continue to serve the public.
