VERDURA MALTESE cross cuff in peridot, blue topaz, diamond and gold. $16,900 at Verdura New York.

This is why some of the hottest vintage jewels these days are the work of an idiosyncratic band of designers who plied their craft during the middle of the 20th century. Notable among them were Pierre Sterlé and Suzanne Belperron in Paris, and Fulco di Verdura, Jean Schlumberger and Seaman Schepps in New York. While their names might not ring the same bell as Cartier, Tiffany or Van Cleef & Arpels, this does not mean their names went unsung. The most discriminating women of fashion—socialites, aristocrats, movie stars—came knocking at their doors.

VANITY'S BONFIRE
That is, until the 1960s, when rock collecting à la Liz Taylor came into vogue. By the glitzy 1980s, the names of these jewelers had largely been forgotten. Only the cognoscenti still valued their artistry, and terrific pieces could be picked up for less than $5,000. Then, in 1987, the Duchess of Windsor’s jewelry collection was put on the block. More than 2,500 people visited the auction. The mania to possess something that belonged to this legend sent prices for midcentury jewels into the stratosphere. A Belperron necklace of blue chalcedony, part of a suite custom-made for the duchess and estimated at $50,000, sold for an astounding $183,000. Collectors have since regained their composure, but prices have nonetheless entered a new realm. Of course, jewelry with a famous provenances occupies the highest echelons. That same Belperron necklace recently sold at auction for $119,500.

Auction houses refer to this mid-century period as “Retro” because it marked a return to a more baroque sensibility. Art Deco, the style that preceded it, was known for its flat, intricate geometric compositions of diamonds in platinum settings, often accented by rubies or emeralds. In contrast, Retro jewelry, especially the work from the late 1930s through the 1940s, is big and sculptural, flashing a colorful abundance of semiprecious stones and lavish swaths of gold—the switch in materials due in part to wartime austerity.
Nevertheless, Retro is really a catchall phrase that fails to do justice to the era’s many stylistic currents. In the 1950s, jewelers again began creating opulent pieces entirely from precious gems, as well as exploring texture through the carving of stones and the intricate weaving of gold into mesh, rope and tassels. While some Retro jewelry is abstract in form, expressive of a new machine-age dynamism, other pieces capture the essence of flora and fauna so uncannily that they seem to quiver with life.

Or flutter and dart, as in the case of some pieces by Sterlé, who used birds and wings as favorite motifs. At Fred Leighton, a characteristic Sterlé brooch, circa 1955, of two stylized swirling wings with diamond brilliants looks so feathery it seems to float upon the wearer. It is priced at $22,500. New York’s Primavera Gallery has a standout example of Sterlé’s fascination with movement and texture: a shooting-comet brooch from the 1950s with a large peridot comet, streaming a gold foxtail chain. It sells for $28,000.

PIERRE STERLE'S comet with streaming gold foxtail chain and peridot at Primavera Gallery, New York.

Some jewelry experts argue that Sterlé’s talent was at its most magnificent when designing diamond necklaces; their fluidity is unrivaled. Collectors have begun paying a premium for this artistry. A stunning Sterlé necklace, circa 1955, of a twisting cascade of diamonds and rubies sold last fall at a Sotheby’s auction for $238,000, more than twice its estimate.

Belperron’s highly organic and sensual forms are the ones most admired by connoisseurs. A woman in a man’s world, Belperron so prided herself on her singularity that she never signed her jewels. “My signature is my style,” she maintained. While she made gorgeous adornments out of precious stones, luminous, malleable chalcedony was the gem she most loved to design for. One lot at the October 2004 Christie’s auction of Fred Leighton’s private jewelry collection included the aforementioned Belperron suite of blue chalcedony pieces that had once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor. The ear clips, each a carved blue chalcedony leaf, with diamond veining and sapphire cabochons, had an auction estimate of $30,000 to $40,000. They sold for $54,970.

The matching necklace and cuff bracelets sold within their estimate, probably because they are too small for most women to wear. The duchess was petite, as were many of Belperron’s clients, making some of her jewelry hard to sell.

Yet the crux of what makes collecting period jewelry so compelling lies in the very dilemma of Belperron’s dainty bracelets. These pieces are not just extraordinary works of art, but someone’s intimate adornments—works often custom-made to be, as Jean Schlumberger once mused, “the bearer of a woman’s desire.” When purchasing works by these midcentury designers in particular, you are acquiring jewelry that adorned some of the 20th century’s most stylish women—women who were defining what it meant to be modern and distinct.

COVETED CONVERGENCE
Verdura was another favorite jeweler of the Duchess of Windsor. A Sicilian count by birth, he began his career as a jewelry designer in the 1920s working for Coco Chanel. An iconoclast from the start, he conceived an 18-karat gold Maltese cross studded with precious jewels for Chanel, at a time when setting colored stones in gold was just not done. It caused a sensation. Chic, showy, redolent of history, the bejeweled cross epitomized Verdura’s style.

The fashion empress Diana Vreeland owned a pair of the Maltese cross brooches, made in 1930, which were later acquired by Leighton. When Leighton’s collection was auctioned, the pair was put on the block. The estimate was $80,000 to $120,000; they sold for $192,300, an indication of the power of Chanel, Verdura and Vreeland intersecting in a piece.
 

VALUE JUDGEMENT Retro jewelry of the late 1930s through the 1950s is on the verge of becoming de rigueur for collectors. Characterized by sculptural forms and a colorful abundance of stones and gold, these pieces reflect the birth of the modern age. While values are on the rise, investors should expect more aesthetic pleasure than outstanding profits.

In 1939, Verdura opened his own shop in New York, and he soon turned the jewelry world on its head again with a brooch made from a scallop shell, encrusted with precious and semiprecious stones. The effect was startling and sumptuous. Other houses, from Cartier to Seaman Schepps, soon copied him, crafting assemblages of luxe and low elements into exquisite adornments. The originals of these Verdura brooches are among the most hotly sought-after pieces today. In the rare occurrence one comes on the market, it can command prices of between $38,000 and $75,000, depending on the quality of the stones.

For the next 30 years, Verdura fashioned jewelry that was fanciful, witty and luscious: a pomegranate-shaped brooch with seeds of rubies; a gold necklace that wrapped itself about the throat like a vine, with a garland of citrines dripping from each end. Having grown up near the sea, Verdura was constantly exploring marine motifs. His mermaid brooch, circa 1945, featuring a golden siren aloft a rock crystal wave with a blue sapphire and diamond spume at her tail, sold at auction two years ago at Sotheby’s for $42,000. Its estimate had been $10,000 to $15,000.

Like Verdura, Schlumberger began his career as a jewelry designer in the 1920s in Paris working for Elsa Schiaparelli, a couturier. In those early years, he fashioned beguiling adornments out of unlikely materials: glass beads, buttons, plastic trinkets. When he set up shop in New York in the 1930s, he brought that same whimsy to the fantastical flora and fauna he now designed exclusively out of precious metals and stones. Schlumberger’s lush yet deft handling of these stones—the more colorful the better—within tendrily gold forms endowed his designs with what he liked to call “verve,” a quality almost unique to his work. Signature works by Schlumberger can, depending on their stones, fetch prices from the tens of thousands to the low hundreds of thousands.

Schepps was the only American of this adventurous group of jewelers—and it shows. With its unusual angularities, bright colors, vivid textures and overscale forms, his jewelry is swankier, more brashly modern. Only Schepps could have designed his jazz cuff bracelets from the late 1930s. Fashioned from white and yellow gold, they are adorned with a syncopated assemblage of cabochons and engraved emeralds, sapphires and rubies with diamond accents. If one came up for auction—and they seldom do—Lisa Hubbard, the executive director of the jewelry department at Sotheby’s, estimates it would fetch somewhere between $15,000 and $25,000.

RARE CLUSTER of grapes clip brooch by Suzanne Belperron in white gold, carved agate & blister pearls at Primavera Gallery.

Schepps could also make luscious treasures. In 1941, he fashioned a grape cluster brooch for Doris Duke from an array of multihued purple sapphire cabochons. She paid $2,500 for it. When Duke’s jewelry collection was put up for auction last summer at Christie’s, it fetched $44,215.

A new generation of jewelry lovers has lately discovered Schepps’ eclectic style, thanks to a 2004 retrospective of his designs at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design and a new monograph published by Vendome. In fact, interest has been so great that the Schepps salon has reissued six Retro designs, including the Doris Duke grape brooch ($41,000), and the jazz cuff bracelet with rubies ($39,000). The replicas cost almost as much—if not more—as the originals. This is another sign of just how much jewelry by these designers is undervalued, because contemporary reproductions cannot duplicate the historical aura or workmanship of the originals.

“Up until the 1970s, even unsigned jewels were of great quality,” Audrey Friedman of Primavera Gallery says. “All the little rivets you see to hold things together in the old jewels, that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just too expensive to make.” The outlook for collecting Retro jewels by these exceptional designers seems bright. They are once again celebrated, and their vintage work is in diminishing supply. Nevertheless, if you begin collecting these jewels, it should be, as with any work of art, for love, not mere investment. Unlike equities, jewelry does not pay dividends, except in pleasure. For a growing number of young collectors, that seems good enough. 

Marisa Bartolucci lives in New York and writes on a variety of cultural subjects. misab@rcn.com