Erté “Lady & Serpent” Gold, Diamond & Onyx Brooch
Yellow Gold, 14k, Onyx
$4,999.95
- Maker
- Erte
- Era
- Erté · 1987 · Limited edition 18 of 25
- Materials
- Yellow Gold, 14k, Onyx
- Condition
- Pre-owned - Excellent
- Provenance
- Wearable Erté: the “Lady & Serpent” from his alphabet series, cast in 14K gold with diamond and onyx, numbered 18 of only 25. The Art Deco master’s line translated into jewelry — a collector’s object as much as an adornment.
On this piece
Erté spent forty years turning the alphabet into women. Beginning in the 1920s, the great Art Deco master drew each of the twenty-six letters as a human form; late in life those drawings became jewels, cast in gold and struck in editions of only twenty-five per letter. This is the letter B — a lady entwined with a serpent — number 18 of its 25, completed in 1987 near the end of Erté’s own long life. It is 14K solid gold set with black onyx and thirty-three diamonds, five anchoring each corner and the rest tracing the woman and the snake. On the reverse: 14K, the Erté mark, the foundry’s stamp, and “18 LTD.” To wear it is to wear a signed sculpture by one of the defining artists of the twentieth century — small enough for the lapel, serious enough for the archive.