More than 80 years later Art Deco’s life in fast lane

Agence France-Presse

The Musee des Art Decoratifs in Paris has mounted a major retrospective to celebrate Jean Despres, one of the fathers of modern jewelry, and others working in the Roaring Twenties and Thirties.

"Life was going faster. Cars, planes, trains Ğ everything was going faster. They wanted things to be monumental, so they could be seen from a distance," explained Laurence Mouillefarine, the associate curator of the show, picking out some big, showy brooches to illustrate his point. "Lacquer, which the Chinese brought to Europe during the war, when it was used as glue on aircraft propellers, was also a popular material.

The new style was known as "sports jewelry" or "travel jewelry" and tended to be worn only by an elite, avant-garde set.

"It's hard to appreciate how very daring this was at the time," Mouillefarine said. "Costume jewelry didn't exist." Despres had 80 of his pieces rejected by the jury for the Salon D'Autumne trade show in 1928 for being "too modern," said Melissa Gabardi, who wrote the first monograph on the jeweler ten years ago.

Despres was very influenced by Cubism; the painter Georges Braques was his best friend. During World War I, he worked on aircraft engines and his early jewelry, like his camshaft ring, was openly inspired by machinery and engine parts.

He initially used silver, in combination with coral, onyx, enamel and lapis lazuli, because he didn't have the money for more expensive materials.

The ring remained his favorite: "What I enjoy mostly and that I can do in a different way from the others," as he told the engraver Etienne Cournault, with whom he collaborated.

The Paris exhibition contains a showcase with a chronological display of rings from the 1920s to 1970s and a small room wallpapered with his designs, which "are very easy to wear even today," says Gabardi, who added, "He was very successful in his lifetime. His work was collected by stars, like Josephine Baker and Andy Warhol."

But because he didn't have children to carry on the business, Despres had largely been forgotten by his death in 1980.

Art Deco had ın fact already fallen out of fashion by the 1940s. It wasn't until 1969 that the term was coined by the British historian and journalist Bevis Hillier to refer to the geometric style of the ’20s and ’30s.

Apart from the Despres pieces, which the artist himself donated to the museum, 80 percent of the exhibits come from private collections, more than half of them housed abroad. One of the major contributions came from the American model and face of Victoria's Secret, Stephanie Seymour.