The flower motif, in ring or brooch or other adornment, has been a favorite in many periods. Some of the designs have persisted; others have grown simpler or more elaborate according to the vogue. But in the past few centuries, there have been few jewelers who have not had in work or on display some flower brooches or clips of precious stones.
Among the frequently displayed flowers is the open-petaled pansy, which our grandmothers wore in various colors of enamel, but which is now patterned in stones. Also to be seen is the tiny forget-me-not. The lily of the valley rises on its delicate stem. The water lily seems almost still afloat. Carnations and asters more boldly flaunt their patterns. The daisy, that earlier was often fashioned with white enamel petals and a central stone, may now be suggested wholly by baguette diamonds.
More elaborate flowers and flower clusters were once frequent, building into nosegays of gems. Perhaps the most spectacular of these is the famous Flower Jewel bestowed by the Herzog von Lothringen upon his wife, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Now to be seen in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, this historic piece is both a fine example of the jeweler’s art and a demonstration for the science of gemology: among its thousands of carats of gems—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls—may be counted every existing variety of precious and semiprecious stones.
Current Varieties
A flower is to jewelers as a landscape is to painters; each may look upon the same prospect and produce a different work. Some may fashion a comparatively naturalistic blossom, or a clip of several flowers of different sizes. For these, colored stones will reproduce the color of the flower. Others may work in a more stylized fashion, merely suggesting the flower shape or framing it into a formal pattern, as in the decorations of ancient columns and walls. Some of these, indeed, approach the manner of the abstract design.
Where the flower is suggested rather than caught in its own colors, diamonds in fancy cut may be used for the petals with the leaves fashioned of baguettes. The center may be a blue-white diamond, a colored stone, or—most strikingly—a black pearl. Some such flowers have been made with a central stone that is removable, so that various gems of different color may produce startlingly different effects with the same basic floral jewel. From the surrounding petals and leaves of diamonds, it is surprising how varyingly new center stones can shine.
The Rose
The most outstanding of all flower motifs, both in number and in variety of presentation, is the queen of flowers, the rose. As it ranges far beyond all other flowers in colors and species, so it lends itself to a multiplicity of treatments in jewels. Roses have been made all of diamonds, white or colored; they have been shaped of rubies, of coral, of ivory and of all the precious metals. Notable is a rose clip in which the diamond blossom rises from leaves of baguettes. For simpler costumes, the leaves can be removed and the flower used alone to adorn a neckline or accentuate the lapel of a suit. Together, the leaves and the flower present a corsage that challenges and outlasts any beauty the florist can supply.