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MiriamHaskell 1945 CrystalRosesMontees Filigree Glass Enameled ClimberEarrings

About the Item

Before the brand signature was added in 1947, Miriam Haskell's first designer Frank Hess since 1926 designed these asymmetrical Baroque-style climber earrings with hand-painted white-and-ecru enamel leaves, crystal and glass beads, and Russian-gold gilt metal flowers, which are attached to a thick filigree branch that launched the post-war style of covering wires used to attach roses montees and beads behind an additional filigree plate. A similarly constructed and shaped pale-blue pair of climbers dated 1945 are in the renowned Barbara Berger museum-exhibited costume-jewelry collection. Characteristic of the materials favored by Hess for his designs, the clear rosette-cut rhinestones, intricate gilt-metal decorations, and white round glass beads were handcrafted in France by Parisian Louis Rousselet, who was among the first paruriers for Coco Chanel's couture clothing since the 1920s. In contrast to bold costume-jewelry by Chanel using similar materials, the arrangements by Hess for Haskell appear delicate and dense with small overlapping organic shapes. Also distinctly Hess is the way he set sparkling roses-montees with wires within cups surrounded by different decorative-metal pins to create multiple kinds of flowers linked to a decorative filigree frame. These relatively large earrings are significant because, while epitomizing the hallmarks of early Haskell/Hess, they are also among only a handful of climber styles that follow the curve up the ear at an angle as if a cuff. Also, their decorative gilt-filigree frames are intensionally visible as if a corsage, while in later years less-costly filigree plates were merely structural and typically overshadowed with overflowing decorative beads and metalwork. Supported by the museum-authentication of the similar pair, we priced these earrings higher than later ones with signatures and standardized round filigree plates on the backs. For more information about early Haskell-Hess jewelry, please see our other listings, such as for the unsigned peacock-colors parure whose earring clips are a match to these.
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