Category Archives: Art Nouveau

Manuel Orazi Comb

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Manuel Orazi (b. Rome, 1860) illustrated books and posters in France from 1884 until his death. In 1895, he illustrated “Aphrodite,” by Pierre Louÿs and achieved notoriety with his grotesque, occult drawings for Austin De Croze’s Calendrier Magique. Production was halted at 777 copies, giving the Calendrier further cult status.

In 1921, he designed the sets for the silent-film adaptation of Pierre Benoit’s book, “L’Atlantide,” where two French officers become lost in the Sahara and meet the immortal queen of Atlantis, Antinéa. Pictured is French actress Stacia Napierkowska in her Antinéa costume next to the poster Orazi created to publicize the movie.

But of course, in between calendars and movie sets, he also made hair combs.

The idea of three women transforming out of silver, as it luxuriatingly binds 4 independent clarified horn tines incorporates Art Nouveau ideas with a modernist design way ahead of its time.

Ozari’s jewelry, including this piece, was shown in L’Maison Moderne c. 1902, alongside work by Toulouse-Lautrec and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Orazi’s most famous poster, The Lady in Blue, advertised the gallery. At the center is a woman with a small side comb and an elaborate back comb decorating her blue scarf.

The artist died in Paris in 1934.

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For more scholarly research, please examine


Manuel Orazi (La Maison Moderne) Art Poster Print
Aphrodite – by Pierre Louÿs
Art Nouveau: The French Aesthetic

Christie’s: Rene Lalique Diadem

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Carved out of clarified horn, two groups of three fern leaves make up the center, while two smaller sets taper off at the sides. An artist can say many things with one line. Lalique used a curved line of rose-cut diamonds mounted in gold. The beginning of the line forms the base of the diadem and continues to become center-fern stems. On top, the line branches off to form the side-fern stems. Off the base, two smaller diamond branches unite the smaller ferns. The piece, c. 1905, and sold at Christie’s for $66,000 on Oct. 11, 2006.

Its provenance can be found in Sigrid Barten, René Lalique: Schmuck und Object d’Art 1890-1910, Prestel Verlag, München, 1977, page 175, plate 31.

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For more scholarly research, please examine these books, which can be found in our Resource Library.


Christie’s Provenance Book
The Jewels of Lalique
Rene Lalique: Exceptional Jewellery, 1890-1912

The Hair Combs of Lucien Gaillard

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Lucien Gaillard (1861-1942) was a contemporary of René Lalique and achieved equal fame c. 1900, as Art Nouveau and Japonisme swept Paris. However, unlike Lalique, Gaillard’s animals and insects were proportioned exactly. He did not elongate parts of his animals to express Symbolist philosophy. In his famous “Bluebird” comb, he observed the arch of birds’ bodies as they dove in flight and made each bird a slightly different size. You may compare Lalique’s landmark “Two Swallows with a Stalk of Oats” to Gaillard’s “Bluebird,” which sold at Christie’s for $218,000 on Oct 21, 2009.

Gaillard also paid homage to the Japanese use of realistic proportions with cherry blossoms. An Edo artist painted this cherry tree in gold maki-e tortoiseshell comb: The Miriam Slater Collection.

Gaillard carved his cherry blossoms out of horn, painted the tree bark, and depicted flower buds with pearls.

One of Gaillard’s other masterpieces resides in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Two dragonflies fight over prey. They are asymmetrical, but the design is perfectly balanced. In addition, Gaillard mixes translucent stones, semi-translucent wings, and opaque bodies.

Here are some other combs from a 2004 catalogue by Millon & Associés:

A painted horn relief of mulberry branches supports blue-white glass flowers on each end of this comb.

Gaillard spread an orchid and attached a silver ring to the inner petals. The ring sports two ladybugs and two pearls.

This horn comb’s sculpted gold leaves hold a mother-of-pearl bud. Notice how the stem of the center leaf overlaps the middle tine of the comb.

The Creative Museum also has two combs similar to the designs of Lucien Gaillard. One has clear horn leaves embellished with a paste-diamond spray and a green cabochon, and the other is a pair of ginko leaves. One ginko leaf is edged with paste diamonds, while the other has a lighter green cabachon.

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For more scholarly research, please examine the books Christie’s used, which have been added to our Resource Library. They are both by Alastair Duncan.


Paris Salons 1895-1914: Jewellery, Vol. 1: The Designers A-K
The Paris Salons, 1895-1914: Jewellery, Vol. 2: The Designers L-Z

Henri Gillet Hair Comb

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Henri Gillet used Art Nouveau designs to make lithographs, which were used as wallpaper from 1900 to the 1920’s. On one of them, he designed a horn comb. If it were ever made, I’d imagine the flurry of leaves to be plique-a-jour enamel. This lithograph is part of the Album de la Décoration, edited by A. Calavas and printed in Paris c. 1900.

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For more scholarly research, please examine

Design Motifs of the Decorative Twenties in Color by Henri Gillet

Henri Gillet. Le Voleur d’instants

Jen Cruse: Art Nouveau Horn Combs

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By Jen Cruse:

The Art Nouveau period was a turning point in design principals where imagination and free-flowing creativity were of the essence. The emphasis was on a return to hand craftsmanship and away from increasing industrialization. In Europe between c. 1895 and 1910, a revival in the use of horn was led by René Lalique, Lucien Gaillard and their contemporaries.

Clarified horn bleached with hydrogen peroxide, sometimes frosted, was their favoured material. These innovative artists created some of the most imaginative and naturalistic designs ever seen, and their influence spread around Europe to other like-minded artists. Hair combs and pins especially gained enormous recognition owing to their supreme quality and are much sought after by collectors today. The Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal, has a most impressive collection of Lalique’s work, including a great number of his combs.

The 2 bleached horn combs featured in the photograph display tinted openwork with daisy flowers and a dragonfly. They are carved in the style of the Parisian Art Nouveau artist/designers. Although unsigned, they have been attributed to Mme E Bonté working in the early 1900s.

Horn Combs of Elizabeth Bonté. Ht 3½in/8.9cm to 4in/10.2cm.

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For more scholarly research, please examine

The Comb: Its History and Development, by Jen Cruse

Paul-Gabriel Liénard and Louis Aucoc

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Paul-Gabriel Liénard was a Parisian Art Nouveau jeweler, who reached the top of his craft when he registered his own mark in 1905. As with Louis Aucoc, Liénard was well known for using pearl sprays. I have not found any documentation connecting Aucoc and Liénard except for these three combs. They were made from translucent horn and seed pearls, so light would show through, and the jeweled accents would keep them lightweight. In addition to philosophical influences, there was a practical purpose to these decisions. The combs would be easy to wear.

Liénard’s example, with his maker’s mark, sold at Christies for $21,600 in 2006.

Aucoc’s comb is on sale at The Tadema Gallery for around $8000.

Both combs are superb expressions of the natural world’s asymmetrical shapes.

Christie’s estimated the value of this Aucoc hair pin at £3000 to £4000 in 2009.

To prove how scholarship creates value, I recorded this sale on E-bay in 2007. Comments are welcome, but I believe these hair pins were made by Aucoc. They were damaged, as all the seed pearls were not present. However, the only identification was “French work, 1900.” The dealer was, shall we say, homework-deficient? I remember this auction well, and when I saw the price, well, it was a lot like the recent auction we have all been talking about.

And just for jaw-dropping fun, I’ll revisit this Liénard tiara, made of gold, horn, pearls, and diamonds, which sold for $60,000 at Christie’s in 2009.

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For more scholarly research, please examine

The Comb: Its History and Development by Jen Cruse, page 35, which I’m proud to say is listed in the Tadema Gallery’s provenance for the Louis Aucoc comb.

Imperishable Beauty by Yvonne J. Markowitz

Fake Lalique: Real Lalique

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This article on Google documents fake Lalique auctions on E-bay.

Beginning collectors, please remember: Lalique, LC Tiffany, Faberge and other great jewelers transformed jewelry with ideas: metamorphosis, symbolism, nature, modernism — the same ideas, which were inspiring Rodin, Redon, Rimbaud, and artists all across the Western World. Japonisme came from welding Edo Japanese art and European philosophy together.

That means a piece made by a visionary’s own hands is unique because it could have never been imagined before. It’s a very different article than combs of a type, such as the two-pronged Victorian hair comb, tortoiseshell back comb, or diamond opera comb. They are beautiful, too. Tiffany & Co. and Cartier produced exquisite representations of popular fashion. They are valid collector’s items, but they weren’t new. They make you admire, not think.

Here are the fakes. The article said someone paid $2000 for one of them.

And here is the real master. This Lalique comb with butterflies carved on tortoiseshell has 18K-gold beetles holding up a banister of citrines and diamonds. It is hinged to a horn comb and sold for $21,800 at Sothebys in 2009.

Here is a similar design on a horn back comb, except Lalique chose dragonflies, so he could drop their tails over the comb’s tines.

In this Symbolist masterpiece, Lalique elongates a woman’s arms to make a triangle and then places a triangular amethyst underneath. c. 1900:

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For more scholarly research, please examine

Rene Lalique: Schmuck Und Objets D’Art, 1890-1910 (Materialien zur Kunst des. 19. Jahrhunderts)

Rene Lalique at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Janvier Quercia Hair Comb

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Janvier Quercia was a French silversmith who worked c. 1900. This hair comb was part of a three-piece silver-gilt parure, which included a belt buckle and necklace. A woman emerging from leaves expressed Art Nouveau’s philosophy of metamorphosis. The buckle was made from a metal die cast from a wax model. A reducing machine altered the size of the die to make the comb. As he was making jewelry, Quercia founded Abdullah, a company that made lighters, which was taken over by his son Marcel in 1948.

Quercia’s hair pin design seems similar to my Elkington and Co. barrette. Elkington invented electroplating silver onto copper in the 1840’s, and my piece was made in England, c. 1900.

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For more scholarly research, please examine

7000 Years of Jewelry

The Creative Museum: E Burlisson Comb

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Mysteriously trolling the streets of Paris, exquisitely dressed, Alain found this: a celluloid comb signed by a heretofore unknown designer, E. Burlisson. The shape of the comb, with its black edge, is pure Art Deco. However, the floral designs that fill in the edge are Art Nouveau. Looking at Ancestry.com, I did find a Burlisson family in London in 1891. If the maker is English, the comb did not come from Oyonnax. Perhaps it came from another company in France, England, or America.

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For more scholarly research, please examine

Art Deco Jewelry: Modernist Masterworks and their Makers

Imperishable Beauty

The Creative Museum’s French Collection

Christies Hong Kong Hair Comb

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A student of jewelry history had a question about this tortoiseshell comb. “Where does it come from?” she asked.





It sold at Christie’s in Hong Kong for $10,777 in April of 2004 and is decorated with baroque pearls, diamonds and enamel. The lot information did not list where the piece was made. Looking at the shape of the hair pin itself, especially the curved tines, I’m thinking 20th-Century France? Frankly the piece looks like Alexandre de Paris could have made it, but of course, they use rhinestones and modern acrylic plastics. I have a hairpin in the same shape with a glass flower on top. Anyway, I’m stumped. Any ideas?