Category Archives: Art Nouveau

Holding Hands

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One of the most beautiful innovations of art nouveau design occurs when an artist translates the relationships between animals and plants into a piece of jewelry: one flower petal leaning over to touch another, birds in an embrace. The relationship is then formed not only into art, but also into function. Here are two combs, which illustrate this beautifully.

On the left is a pair of fan-shaped leaves by Louis Aucoc, c.1900. They are made of green plique-à-jour enamel with small rose-cut diamonds in the veins. It sold for $32,400 on April 25, 2006, in New York. On the right, two silver cranes embrace to make this imaginative comb by Hugue. As you can see, the legs of the crane function as the comb, which sold for 1200 GBP on February 22, 2006 in London. Both came from Sothebys.


Unsold on Ebay

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A few months ago, this set of tortoiseshell hair pins with pearls and diamonds, priced at $1200, went unsold. I understand the jewelry was real, but the design is common. If you value just the pearls and those small diamonds, they don’t amount to very much. Neither do two small shell pins, not $1200 anyway. I think you’d need a great design and a makers mark + the jewelry to command that price. But they were pretty. :-)




This comb’s art nouveau decoration is absolutely gorgeous. The top is 14K gold in a wave ribbon with small enamelled pink flowers and green leaves, set off with pearls. It went unsold at $895. Condition: Perfect. I like $650 as a price for this. Retail? Who knows. There is this shop online called Isadora’s. I saw combs like my gold dragon one with the ruby eyes go for $2200, and someone paid it. Isadora’s markets itself as a wedding shop, and when someone is in wedding frenzy, I guess they will pay anything. ;-) So who is really to say, but this is a beautiful comb.

Final Prices at Sothebys

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We’ve been following a lot of combs sold at Sotheby’s auctions. I thought it might be useful to list their final sale prices to get a sense of the comb market. Like any antique, the highest prices went to pieces that were made by the hands of a master who changed the way the world thought about art. The great masters made combs-as-jewelry and combs-as-ideas. Each thumbnail photo will be linked to the original post, so everyone can see the description.







French Art Nouveau Combs

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I guess our journey is taking us from the stunning frieze-like ivory carvings of Medieval France to the free-form celebration of nature in France at the turn of the century.

. These combs have been documented in Michael Koch, The Belle Epoque of French Jewellery 1850-1910.

Rene Lalique: Art-Nouveau horn, pink sapphire, and gold hair comb, c. 1902: Final Sale Price: $38,400. “The wide rectangular horn comb is surmounted by a curvaceous openwork floral design of gold leaves and stems, with cabochon pink sapphire berries, mounted in gold.” I think the reason the pussy willow Lalique in an earlier post is $330,000 is because he made that one with his own hands. These might have been made for his company.

Georges Fouquet: mother-of-pearl and gold comb, probably from a design by Charles Desrosiers. However, in one book the maker is listed as Aristide-Lionel Le Couteux. Fouquet could have been the retailer, c. 1905: Final Sale Price: $33,600. “Designed as an iridescent pink, green and blue mother-of-pearl fan-shaped panel, enhanced by textured 18k gold organic rays with three baroque pearl accents, to the tortoiseshell comb, with French assay mark and maker’s mark. Signed G. Fouquet.”

Rene Lalique: horn, topaz, diamond, and gold hair comb, c. 1902: Final Sale Price: $21,600 “Composed of a rectangular horn plaque, carved as four dragonflies with gold thoraxes, enhanced by a rose-cut diamond and gold bar, set with rectangular-cut brown topaz, to the horn comb in a Lalique beige suede fitted case. Signed Lalique for René Lalique.”

Charles Boutet de Monvel: Mother-of-pearl, peridot, and tortoiseshell comb, c. 1900: Final Sale Price: $24,000 “Composed of a mother-of-pearl oyster shell, centering upon a serpent set with peridots and green paste, with a cushion-cut citrine head and two cabochon ruby eyes, to the tortoiseshell comb, mounted in silver. Signed Boutet de Monvel for Charles Boutet de Monvel “