Poetry in Jewelry: An extraordinary necklace by René Lalique

Please click on the image above to hear Wartski director Katherine Purcell in conversation with New York based silver specialist Benjamin Miller for The Magazine Antiques. They are discussing this extraordinary necklace by René Lalique which was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900.

Click here for details of the jewel

Katherine Purcell specialises in French nineteenth century jewellery and works of art. She has written a number of articles for The Antique Collector, Apollo and The Magazine Antiques on subjects including the Parisian firm of jewellers Falize, the master of Art Nouveau René Lalique, and on the influence of Japanese art on Western jewellery and goldsmiths’ work. She has contributed to ‘Master Jewellers’ (1990), the ‘Dictionnaire International du Bijou’ (1998) and ‘Bejewelled by Tiffany, 1837-1989’, focusing on Tiffany and Paris.  Her definitive study ‘Falize: A Dynasty of Jewellers’ was published in 1999 by Thames and Hudson and her translation of Henri Vever’s three-volume ‘French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century’ printed in 2001.  Amongst the exhibitions Katherine has curated for Wartski are ‘French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century’ (2001), Fabergé and the Russian Jewellers’ (2006), ‘Japonisme from Falize to Fabergé’ (2011) and ‘Fabergé – A Private Collection’ (2012).