Authentic vintage & estate · Insured worldwide shipping
four locations in the Netherlands · Gemologist checked
Collection
Art Nouveau was a short rebellion, and it produced the most sculptural jewelry of the antique period. For twenty years around the turn of the century, jewelers stopped valuing a piece by the carats in it and started valuing it by what it was: a dragonfly, an iris, a woman's face in profile with her hair turning into a whiplash curve. Enamel, horn, glass, opal and moonstone mattered as much as diamonds, sometimes more.
4 pieces · from $3,864
One of a kindSampleView this piece14K · Pearl
$3,640
One of a kindSampleView this piece14K
$5,486
One of a kindSampleView this piece14K · Opal
$3,271
One of a kindSampleView this piece$7,174
About art nouveau
Art Nouveau (roughly 1890 to 1910) favors line over stone value: plique-à-jour and guilloché enamel, whiplash curves, insects, irises and the female form, in gold rather than platinum.
Every piece here is checked at our own bench before it goes online: metal karat tested, marks read under magnification, stones and settings examined, and condition described as we find it. Anything we cannot verify is left as not specified rather than guessed, and we will show you any piece live on video before you buy.
Pieces from this period typically sit between roughly $900 and $8,000 with us, depending on gold weight, stone quality and condition.
Indicative only. Every curated vintage, antique and estate piece is one of a kind and priced on its own merits, with free insured US shipping.
Personal service
Three ways to go further, all of them with a person on the other side.
One of our jewelers takes any piece to daylight and shows you the hallmark, the setting and any wear, live and in your own time zone.
Book a viewingOur buyers are with European estates and auction houses every week. Describe the piece and we write to you the moment something right comes in.
We will source itOur Atelier pieces are newly handcrafted in our own workshop, taking their cues from the vintage and antique jewelry we have spent decades restoring. New work with a vintage soul, never sold as antique.
Explore AtelierThat makes it the hardest period to buy carelessly. Plique-à-jour enamel — glass held in a metal framework with no backing, so light passes through it like a window — chips and crazes; horn dries; opals need care. Every Art Nouveau piece we list has had its enamel examined under magnification for losses and restoration, and what we find is recorded on the page.
We buy across France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, where the movement ran under different names, and restore only where restoration is honest and reversible. Where a piece carries a maker's mark we research it; where it does not, we say it is unsigned rather than attributing it. Everything ships free and insured to the US with import duties included.
The techniques are the point. Plique-à-jour is checked cell by cell for cracks and missing sections; basse-taille and guilloché enamel are checked for chips at the edges. Losses are photographed and written into the condition report, because on Art Nouveau pieces that is what determines value.
Dragonflies, irises, orchids, peacocks, serpents and the female figure appear again and again, drawn from nature and from Japanese prints. The line is always moving: nothing in Art Nouveau is symmetrical for its own sake, which is exactly what separates it from the Deco years that followed.
Opal, moonstone, pearl, amethyst, peridot and demantoid garnet suited the palette better than white diamonds, and jewelers used them freely. Our gemologist identifies the stones and any treatment; where a stone is a replacement, the listing says so.
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Art Nouveau favorites
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One of our jewelers will take any piece in this collection to daylight and show you the hallmark, the setting and any wear, live and in your own time zone.
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New treasures every week, by email, before they go live here.
Guides and neighbouring collections worth a look.
How to place a piece in this period.
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The stone of Art Nouveau. Opal is soft and full of water, so condition matters more here than anywhere else, a
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Platinum arrives, and with it garlands, bows, pierced galleries and millegrain so fine it looks like lace. The
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