DO WE DARE?

Art Deco is a style born post-crisis, when boldness was embraced and imaginations were unleashed. The jewelry is marked by fearless lines, irreverent inspiration, and wildly unusual materials. Is it back?

- STELLENE VOLANDES

A Cartier High Jewelry ring made of carved coral bars and an emerald center stone with a small diamond drilled into it is what finally got me to say it out loud. But the thought had been rumbling inside my head for a whole week while I looked at 2022 high jewelry collections in Paris. A white marble pebble and diamond bib at Boucheron. Those enormous Mystery Set ruby bows and the triangular emeralds at Van Cleef & Arpels. All the rock crystal at De Beers. The Messika pieces directly inspired by Howard Carter’s 1922 King Tut discovery. “Are we in some kind of new Art Deco?” I asked. Loudly.

The timing would be right. Art Deco, Charlotte and Tim Benton write in the introduction to the excellent Art Deco 1910–1939 (Bullfinch Press), is “the name given to the ‘modern’ but not Modernist 20th-century style that came to worldwide prominence in the interwar years and left its mark on nearly every visual medium.” They describe the era as one of “dramatic technological change, social upheaval, and political and economic crises, of bewildering contrasts and apocalyptic visions.” Sound familiar?