Emily Stoehrer

🤩 Isn’t this an incredible brooch!? An Art Nouveau masterpiece called Apparitions by Henri Vever. It is one of my favorites out of the 160 objects currently on view at “Beyond Brilliance: Jewelry Highlights from the Collection,” the newly reopened jewelry-focused gallery at MFA, Boston. 📣 I can’t wait to “sit down” with Dr Emily Stoehrer, Senior Curator of Jewelry @mfaboston next Wednesday, June 26th @artjewelryforum_org for her FIRST & free conversation about the permanent gallery. 👀 I had the pleasure of attending the opening last month and was blown away by the museum’s encyclopedic collection. This dedicated jewelry gallery presents so many historically significant works plus a number of important new acquisitions. Tune in for a “walkthrough” of “Beyond Brilliant”, learn about the selection process, and future curatorial initiatives. Plus why it’s important for the @mfaboston to feature jewelry through out their galleries. 🎙️AJF LIVE WITH DR. EMILY STOEHRER June 26, 2024, 12 p.m. EST Free, and open to all To register, see link in bio, or visit artjewelryforum.org @jewelcurator @mfaboston #ajfishere #contemporaryjewelry AJF has the largest international audience of art jewelry buyers, collectors, makers, gallerists, and institutions in the world. We reach more art jewelry buyers worldwide than any other organization. 📸💎 ‘Apparitions’ brooch, about 1899, Henri Vever (French, 1854-1942), Gold and enamel, William Francis Warden Fund, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

So much happens #behind-the-scenes to bring an exhibition to life. It’s the work of colleagues like conservators @tsumeian and @emilietrehu ; mountmakers extraordinaire @bangell and Kim McParland; and research associates that can do anything and everything like @tzujuchenjewelry that the jewelry dazzles in Beyond Brilliance! Bravo to team maximum sparkle. 💎

Yesterday was a big day at @mfaboston . We opened Beyond Brilliance, the newly renovated jewelry gallery supported by @nandoandelsaperettifoundations . And, our newest jewelry acquisition made its debut - this jewel by @virenbhagat . This small brooch is designed to look like an Indian jali, an ornamental window screen found in palaces, mosques, temples, and tombs in India and Pakistan. Traditionally made of stone, jalis have patterns made of repeated natural or geometric forms. With slices of diamonds and Colombian emeralds, the window-shaped brooch is a quintessential example of the work of Mumbai-based artist Viren Bhagat. Creating jewelry unlike anything that’s come before, the artist combines the aesthetic of Mughal jewelry and architecture with Art Deco design. Bhagat utilizes innovative techniques in gemstone cutting and metalwork to create a framework so thin it seems to disappear, allowing all the focus to fall on the uniquely positioned stones. This small wonder mimics the larger architectural form, using diamonds to create the sparkling effect usually added by the sun’s rays and emeralds to evoke the greenery that covers many buildings in Mumbai. It combines the trademarks of Bhagat’s jewelry, blending innovative design with expert craftsmanship. Stay tuned! More pics to come. #BeyondBrilliance #jewelryhistory

Symbols of honor and rank, tiaras have their roots in antiquity where they were given to triumphant athletes and warriors. But in more recent history, tiaras have been associated with European courtly life. In March 1938 Alphonse and Clarice de Rothschild traveled from Vienna to London to celebrate the opening of an art exhibition. The English-born Clarice brought this spectacular diamond tiara, which can be worn alternatively as a necklace, with her on the trip. This London visit saved Clarice’s tiara/necklace, and the other jewelry she was traveling with, from being seized in the Anschluss with her other jewels. Amazingly the family managed to keep, rather than sell, the jewelry during World War II, and it subsequently descended in the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family. While unmarked, the tiara was likely made by the Parisian jeweler Boucheron around 1903. The Rothchilds were important clients, and a photograph of an identical tiara exists in the firm’s archives. #BeyondBrilliance #ComingSoon

With strong contrasting colors and a mix of metal and plastic materials, this necklace is an impressive example of Art Deco design. The graphic Cubist pendant is attached to an equally geometric chain. The French house of Auguste Bonaz was known for pioneering the use of synthetic materials. Auguste’s father had manufactured hair combs and related accessories, and his son began working with Galalith, a plastic derived from the milk protein casein. After Auguste’s untimely death in 1922, the business was made famous by his wife, who expanded the firm’s wares to include jewelry that she exhibited at the 1925 Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. The jewelry created under her direction strongly connects to the period’s Art Deco movement and the more costly jewelry being designed by members of the avant-garde Union des Artistes Modernes (UAD), founded in 1929. #comingsoon #beyondbrilliant

Jan Yager’s City Flora/City Flotsam series examines the urban landscape outside her studio in North Philadelphia. Beginning in 1990, Yager began to “beachcomb” the sidewalks returning with bullet casings, crack vials, and shattered auto glass from which she made conceptual jewelry. This Dandelion brooch, sets a fragment of auto glass like a gem at its center to represent the persistence of life in a decaying city environment. The brooch re-creates the dandelion, an unwelcome plant in formal gardens but a common, even charming presence in ordinary cityscapes. As an antidote to this disturbing evidence of poverty, violence, and drug abuse, Yager saw the resilient weeds as symbols of renewal and rebirth. #comingsoon #beyondbrilliant

Meet Stanley Lechtzin’s Torque #25D . Stanley Lechtzin expanded the vocabulary of metalsmithing by introducing electroforming, a technique associated with industrial manufacturing. A founding member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths and an influential teacher, Lechtzin was also an early proponent of computer-aided design (CAD). He spearheaded research in the use of CAD and rapid prototyping, pushing the boundaries of technology to make jewelry and objects that exist at the crossroads of science, industry, and art. Lechtzin’s interest in innovation is balanced by a deep appreciation for historical jewelry. The ancient torque style is a form of jewelry that Lechtzin has used since 1966. It references the solid or twisted necklaces and armbands made by various cultures across the ancient world, such as the Celts and Gauls. In the late 1960s, he was attracted to plastics for their rich colors and marvelous transparency. To create this neckpiece, Lechtzin shaped acrylic resin using silicone molds and electroformed silver on carved Styrofoam. The result blends the gleam of silver with lush green-colored plastic in sculptural forms that are visually weighty yet physically light. Thank you @tzujuchenjewelry for all the research you did to bring this necklace to life for visitors in #BeyondBrilliant ! #comingsoon #jewelryhistory

Happy Birthday Elsa! A day late but not forgotten. Elsa Peretti recalled that “Portofino in the ’60s was magic. Women in bright silk, each with the gardenia in their hand. The bottle started then, in my mind.” This first design idea sparked a more than sixty-year career that culminated in many considering Peretti to be the most important designer of the 20th century. Born in Florence and raised in Rome, she spent much of her life in Spain. However, she is remembered for her years in New York and her half-century partnership with Tiffany & Co. Peretti created timeless designs that are as sought after today as they were when she first created decades ago. Beyond Brilliance, opening later this month @mfaBoston is generously supported by the @nandoandelsaperettifoundations and will include a version of this bottle pendant – complete with a gardenia! – and many other outstanding examples of Peretti’s oeuvre. #timeless #jewelryhistory #beyondbrilliance

NEW ACQUISITION! Thank you @carolwoolton for sharing this exciting announcement. 🌸💎 Congratulations @annahu_hautejoaillerie 🌸💎 “This month The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), acquired The Enchanted Ania brooch [by @annahu_hautejoaillerie ] designed to mimic an orchid gently swaying in the wind. The #brooch will be on view in the exhibition Beyond Brilliance: Jewelry Highlights from the Collection in the Kaplan Jewelry Gallery from May 18. @mfaboston #spinel #titanium making it light to wear as it’s 19 cm long A #brilliant purchase by @jewelcurator who says, “The large scale brooch follows a thread of naturalism in jewellery that extends back thousands of years, yet the scale and use of new materials is unlike anything made before,” she says.”

The @nytimes featured the @mfaboston renovated jewelry gallery, 💎Beyond Brilliance 💎, on its list of must-see exhibitions this year! The gallery opens May 18 and will feature 160 objects from the MFA collection. We’ve been busy and I’ll post a few glimpses at our behind-the-scenes work in the coming weeks. #jewelryhistory #jewelryinmuseums #jewelrygallery

“It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world” said @dollyparton in just one of the quotes shared in Dress Up, which has now been open for a whirlwind week. Bring your kids, your grandma, your friends to see this dazzling exploration of style. Sometimes playful and sometimes serious, the exhibition offers something for everyone. Through more than 150 objects - mostly of which are new acquisitions that have never been on view - @ms_theotyson and I invite you to think about the blurred lines between fashion and jewelry and the way both are used to express yourself. Thank you @caroletanenbaumvintage for the transformative gift that started it all.

“’Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?” exclaimed Lily Bart, in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905). You won’t find a single jewelry vitrine in @mfaBoston ’s “Fashioned by Sargeant.” And yet, jewelry is all around—especially pearls. From head to toe, Sargent’s sitters wear pearl rings, necklaces, bracelets, and the stone even appears on two of the exhibitions bejeweled garments. In 1893 Kokichi Mikimoto’s spherical, cultured pearls were introduced but the assumption in these portraits is that these pearls are natural. Extraordinarily expensive, and prized for their beauty, rarity, and luminosity, pearls are a cherished family heirloom, handed down from one generation to the next. The Countess of Rocksavage adorns her Renaissance revival dress with strands of pearls that belonged to her mother while Adèle Meyer’s long ropes drape to the hemline of her frothy pink confection. Even Madame X’s famous shoulder strap is adorned with pearls. Sargent’s contemporary, Wharton further explained her protagonist’s feelings, “The glow of the stones warmed Lily’s veins like wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.” In the 20th century pearls became more readily available, but remained a symbol of aspiration and upward mobility. #fashion #jewelry #pearls #wearyourpearlsgirls #fashionedbysargent