Jean Ghika
Global Head of Jewellery
Lot 106
THREE GEM-SET BIRD HAIR ORNAMENTS, CIRCA 1890 (3)
7 December 2023, 11:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £20,480 inc. premium
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Jennifer Tonkin
Co-Head of Department UK
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Jewellery (UK)
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THREE GEM-SET BIRD HAIR ORNAMENTS, CIRCA 1890
Each designed as a swallow-tailed hummingbird in flight, the plumage set with cushion-shaped emeralds and rose-cut diamonds, each with ruby eyes, the larger bird issuing long knifewire tail feathers further set with pear-shaped emeralds and rose-cut diamonds, all with engraved detail to reverse, mounted in silver and gold, larger bird with detachable brooch fitting, lengths 2.8-8.6cm, accompanied by four associated hairpins (3)
Footnotes
The hummingbird was a popular motif in the mid to late 19th century with the interest in the natural world flourishing after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and the arrival in Europe of previously unknown, South American species such as the hummingbird. At the 1867 Universal Exposition in Paris, Napoleon III and Eugenie paid the jeweller Leon Rouvenat more than 25,000 francs for a hummingbird brooch of emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds. Soon every wealthy lady was wearing hummingbird jewellery, either mounted in precious metals and gemstones or made from trochilidae skins.
Whilst the fashion to mount real exotic birds in jewellery subsided after the First world War, the late 19th century saw various jewellery houses in France creating realistically modelled hummingbird jewellery set with precious stones in similar designs to this lot, often mounted as an aigrette with a feather.
For other similar examples by Chaumet see 'Chaumet En Majesté - Joyaux de Souveraines Depuis 1780', (Flammarion: 2019), ill.fig.95 and Hardy, J., 'Ruby', (2017), p.220, p.167. See also Vever, H., 'French Jewelry of the 19th Century', ill.p.554. and Wartski., exhibition catalogue 'Falize: A Dynasty of Jewellers', (1999), front cover, for drawings of other gem-set hummingbird jewels by Rouvenat and Falize respectively.
