Among the great French families of jewelers, the Fouquet dynasty stands out, and notably Jean Fouquet in the third generation, with this magnificent necklace.
Heirs to the great tradition of Parisian jewellery, the Fouquets brought their dynamism, their creative boldness and their ever-renewed links with other artistic disciplines.
Jean Fouquet was the son of Georges Fouquet, a jeweller renowned for his Art Nouveau creations, himself the son of the no less famous Alphonse Fouquet, whose shop can be seen at the Musée Carnavalet.
Jean Fouquet’s style is strongly inspired by constructivism, cubism and futurism. The artist opts for a simple style with geometric shapes, triangles, semi-circles and pyramids.
He uses white gold and silver, prefers lacquer to enamel, plays with shining and matt surfaces or flat, chiselled surfaces like the disc of this lined necklace as well as large semi-precious stones, of which the aquamarine used for this necklace, imposing in weight and shape, is a perfect example.
Before he started making jewellery, Jean Fouquet studied literature and wrote novels. He was a friend of Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon. He wanted to become a lawyer, far from the world of luxury. Parallel to his literary activities, he started working with his father in 1919 and created avant-garde jewellery with revolutionary materials that were not used at the time, such as ebony, silver, chromium steel and white gold.
The city of Paris chose him to make a piece of jewellery for Princess Marie-José of Belgium, a tribute to the success of his creations. From 1925, during the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels and from 1926 to 1928, when he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, his pieces were the most innovative created by the Fouquet family.
Jean Fouquet was a master of the juxtaposition of geometric elements with strong colours to achieve a harmonious balance. His work has the same aesthetic approach as that of his contemporaries Raymond Templier, Paul Brandt and Gérard Sandoz, or Suzanne Belperron, he was one of the founding members of the UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes), a major movement in the history of art at the time, which brought together artists of various specialities.
After the war, his style evolved towards more rounded shapes, reflecting the style of the time tending towards softer curves and volumes. At the Brussels World Fair in 1958, the artist received a gold medal for his creations. In 1960, he stopped making jewellery altogether. He died in 1984 after having gifted his archives to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
It is exciting with this piece made around 1925 - 1930 to present a piece of jewellery from the most interesting period in the artist’s creative work, when he was awarded the prize at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels of 1925, a major event of the Art Deco period.