Jeweled Splendors of the Art Deco Era: The Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection

A visual celebration of jeweled masterworks from Paris in the Art Deco era

One Christmas Eve, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan gave his wife, Princess Catherine, an exquisite jeweled box made by Cartier in the 1920s, thus starting the most magnificent collection of objects created in the Art Deco era by jewelers, at a time when the jeweler’s art was at the height of beauty and creativity.

In the 1920s, rapid changes in society and technology were rejected in art through striking contrasts of line, color, and material. The innovative luxuries in this book―breathtaking bejeweled vanity and cigarette cases, timepieces, jewelry, and a photograph frame―take their inspiration from varied sources, including the natural world, exotic locations, and industrial design. Chinese dragons, Persian birds, and Japanese plum blossoms appear on boxes created with an explosion of colored gemstones and enamel juxtaposed with boxes in black, white, and gold stripped of excessive ornamentation. The exuberance of the boldest pieces contrasts with the starkly elegant machine-inspired designs, but both are equally considered and iconic of this era of excitement, change, and creativity.

Smoky nightclubs, with flappers drinking cocktails, and exotically decorated apartments, resplendent for chic dinner parties, provided a new landscape for the designs of the great jewelry houses of Europe and America, with Paris as the undisputed center. In Jeweled Splendors of the Art Deco Era, published to coincide with an exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum, New York., expert authors explore the development of this new artistic world by considering the exotic influences of the important jewelers―including Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, Boucheron, Lacloche Freres, and, above all, Cartier―as well as the process of design and making, and the impact of changing femininity. Well over 100 pieces are accompanied by detailed descriptions and were specially photographed for this publication by the renowned photographer Doug Rosa. This collection from the most important period in the history of jewelry and the decorative arts is unsurpassed in quality and is beautifully shown here with a wealth of context and detail.