LOOKING back at the complex history of 20th century design in India, easy ‘catch all’ phrases don’t summarize a moment of zeitgeist or the spirit of the age. Modernism and its triumph across the world were to influence India in several ways and across several mediums. Consequently, there were several modernisms at play across the subcontinent. While the outwardly visible manifestations like architecture, furniture and visual art have been justifiably celebrated, there are others in the realm of the decorative and plastic arts that have unfortunately been ignored or overlooked. At some levels, this was a reflection of the minor ripples these objects created due to their curtailed movement and viewership within charmed circles and upper class salons. This article is about another group of decorative arts objects that remained within the shadows or even amongst the margins of the modernist movements.

However, in the last decade or so, many pieces from a vast arc of regions across India, and in collections both here and overseas, are slowly emerging. The scale of the material and the intensity of an aesthetic that was considered a fad till recently has now been understood to have been nothing short of a movement and a major moment, albeit within the cognoscenti. This rich group of jewels and jewelled accessories, while fuelling the expansion of many a European Grand Joailliers, remained largely out of sight of the public back home in the subcontinent.

The influence of this major design moment and the several variations that it spawned across India and in evidence till today, is a specialist study waiting to be undertaken. This is an exploration towards that direction, with an overview of the international mood and social make up that allowed for a modernist sensibility to capture the imagination of India’s elite and for the percolation of this aesthetics downwards across society and regions.

For the longest time, jewellery disparaged as the minor arts, was not considered worthy of serious study and engagement. Today India’s jewellery historians can be counted on one’s fingertips with most accepted theories and treatises credited to foreign scholarship. Studies in Art Deco jewellery emphasize the need for much more intervention into our plastic and decorative arts, outside the rubric of tradition and heritage.

 

Modernism, with its spirit of regeneration and revival, was foregrounded in the ideas of iconoclasm. An intrepid group of rulers, landed gentry, and petty potentates, relieved of their traditional duties as Heads of State of small dominions by the British Colonial Raj, led the cabal that went on to create an aesthetic revolution in India. Away from the political churning that was going on in India and the world, this influential group with the benefit of modern education, vast resources, international travel and the propensity to mingle with a western elite on equal terms, were right up front in acquiring sweepstakes.

Connoisseurs first and foremost, many of them rooted in the arts of the East and the West, were influenced, like their European counterparts, by the Art Deco movement that was gathering pace in their social milieu. Art Deco was a cornerstone of Modernist applied arts that hugely influenced the creation of a distinctive aesthetic and visual language that has permeated almost every town and city across India in varying degrees. Many of us may recognize it but not realize what this aesthetic was called and some of the most magnificent examples of architecture and the decorative arts of the Art Deco movement crowd the inner lanes of small towns across Shekhawati in Rajasthan or Chettinad in Tamil Nadu at opposite ends of the country. More easily, they are also visible across buildings in Mumbai and Kolkata, the Raj’s urban outposts, on the seashore and entrepôt, for every kind of revolution, idea or fashion.

Art Deco is conventionally believed to have made its official debut in 1925 at the Paris Exposition Internationale des arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Initially viewed as a style opposing the Art Nouveau, more recent scholarship has clearly proven that Art Deco was in fact a successor to the Art Nouveau movement that had run its course and was no longer the style of the moment. Several important works of this new movement were in fact created in 1914 and in the years predating the First World War. Consequently, pinning the movement to fixed dates has always been a problem. Collective wisdom today assigns it to the decorative style pioneered in a period between the two world wars and as showcased at the hugely influential annual Paris salons.

 

Far away from the scene in India this aesthetic continued to trickle down into the subcontinent, and our Art Deco buildings and material objects sometimes date even as late as the 1960s, when the movement had a major revival across the world. Its continuing influences are visibly everywhere. What is however crucial to remember is that along with the applied arts, Art Deco was a movement that occurred in sculpture, architecture, fashion, product design, industrial arts and photography. While many of these developments were coterminous across the world, some of them were delayed influences that occurred elsewhere in succeeding decades of the movement.

Art Deco was a heady cocktail of the exoticism, luxury, leisure and vivaciousness that was embraced by the world as it came out of the aftermath of two devastating world wars. The moot philosophy underpinning the Art Deco was thus at variance with the more intellectualized Modernism movement which was rooted in concepts of austere and functional design, facilitated by machines and moving towards mass production. However the two movements were fairly analogous and very often assumed to be the same because their spread of influence and heights of popularity coincided around the same time. The overlap of aesthetic directions that affected Art Deco and Modernism have not altogether been resolved.

 

The challenge of unifying design interventions that were meant to cater to a select few, and or to the masses is consequently not easy to settle. By 1919 the Bauhaus strain of Modernism was added to the mix with this direction-finding appeal in America, Scandinavia and other European countries. France, however, maintained its links to ornamentation and consequently most of the examples of Art Deco jewellery popular amongst Indian clientele were the creations of French jewellery houses, with the London offices of Cartier being an exception.

Art Deco’s range of design influences came from diverse sources and included formative modern art movements such as Cubism and Abstraction and the bright colours of Fauvism. Fashion was another major influence in forging a new design aesthetic and this was led by the pioneering work of Paul Poiret that freed the female form from crinolines, corsets and bustles. His lead was soon followed by Madeline Vionnet, Jeanne Lanvin, Worth and Chanel amongst many others.

Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 led to a frenzy of world influences including Mesopotamian, Aztec, Mayan, Persian, Indian, Chinese and Japanese elements being incorporated into Art Deco jewellery. However, West African artefacts with their ethnographic patterns imported into France from the late 19th and early 20th century, appealed to the creative impulses of designers designing in the Art Deco oeuvre. This vast range of influences and trajectories in design thought has also frequently led to questions about the possibility of capturing all of this within the generic moniker of Art Deco.

 

The advent of the use of semi-precious materials in creating jewellery was to affect the popularity of the diamond as a predominant precious stone. Lalique, with his use of glass made the ‘La Haute Joaillerie’ establishment realize that horn, tortoise shell, mother of pearl, ivory and enamel were new mediums that were here to stay. This was followed in quick succession by an ascendency in the use of topaz, aquamarine, rock crystal, amethyst, tourmaline, and turquoise among other materials. Coloured stones had now captured the popular imagination along with the use of more exotic fare such as coral, onyx, jade, lacquer and metals. Amidst this vast coming together of form, material and styles, a distinctly Indian aesthetic found great patronage amongst Indian buyers.

From about the 1880s, Indian who could afford to travel made their way across the seas to Britain, continental Europe, America and elsewhere. During these visits Indian rulers and their entourages were to quickly familiarize themselves with the leading fashions of the moment. Soon every travel overseas invariably meant carrying large quantities of precious stones and jewellery from their respective regions. These were now reset and assembled into the newest fashions and were appropriately adorned not just by Indian rulers and their spouses, but also became exceedingly popular amongst the extended native Indian courts across princely India. India was to soon become a major source for the spread of a variety of coloured gemstones, especially emeralds, sapphires and diamonds which were acquired zealously by European jewellers both from travelling Indians and also from within India during their travels to the subcontinent.

The most celebrated of these jewellery acquisition sojourns was by Jacque Cartier in 1911, the scion of the Cartier family and one of the most enterprising jewellers of his time. His work at resetting Indian jewels in modern settings especially in the Art Deco style was to make Cartier a household name across India and their stores in London and Paris became a magnet attracting well heeled visiting Indians. Other jewellers who were to quickly enjoy Indian patronage included Boucheron, Chaumet, Van Cleef and Arpels, Maubusson and Cardeihac. Some of the commissions by royal Indian courts and native Indian rulers were to continue well into the 1960s and ’70s and Art Deco patterns continued to be created well after the style had moved past its prime.

 

Indian influences in Art Deco jewellery was to emerge from a variety of local decorative techniques and styles and were adopted by European jewellers to create a contemporary aesthetic. This was to appeal to the well travelled and affluent Indian, whose social circle was right amidst the international jet set. Of the several innovations that become distinctive hallmarks of Art Deco designs, nothing is more emblematic than the use of tassels.

Tassels across various sizes, of pearls and in combination with precious and semi-precious stones, were a distinct feature of jewellery in India. This was to find new uses and became in vogue with pearls and other gemstone tassels frequently culminating as a pendant for long, single strand, slender sautoirs. Elsewhere tassels changed scales, were used to form garland like necklaces, as earrings too, and were frequently used as a an element of whimsy dangling from armlets and bracelets, inspired by their depiction in Indian miniatures and popularized by whimsy theatrics of Leon Bakst’s fantastic costume operas in the West.

 

Other design influences included the adoption of the traditional multi-stone collar type necklace with drops or the Indian kantha which was adapted to use into modern necklaces over several layers, with the patron’s capacity to pay dictating the complexity and exuberance of design. Traditional jewellery forms that influenced the creation of a new genre of European designs in the Art Deco style included the taut and compact guluband or choker, that was frequently elaborated on and worn as a bandeau and placed on the head. The flat straight armlet or bazuband become popular in several gem encrusted styles, including appropriating the traditional South Indian vangi with its snake hood like triangular projection traditionally seen in gold, but realized in the same form in diamonds and rubies.

Ancient bangles that have an animal head or a fantastic beast at the terminals facing-off as they grip the wearers wrist, is a design believed to have originated in Mesopotamia and has been popular across India for centuries. A reinvention of this style in exotic materials was an instant hit amongst Indian maharajas, but the design influence moved down the ladder and today, across India, innumerable versions of this style exist. Wide cuff bracelets across variety of designs and material combinations have taken inspiration from older pan Indian patterns. And finally, the creation of hats modelled on turbans tipped by aigrettes, plumes and tassels were also a nod to Indian influence.

Of the various kinds of stones that were used in Art Deco jewels, emeralds topped the list both in price and exotic quality. Consequently, to this date, Indian emeralds feature across a plethora of important Art Deco jewels commandeering fantastic prices whenever one comes up for auction with its presence being recorded amongst the most celebrated examples of the style. Columbian emeralds had long been sought after in India and with the opening up of old Indian collections, a vast array of these stones reached the European markets, which could barely contain their need for them. Hexagonal, octagonal, cabochon, carved and uncarved stones in a wide variety of sizes and shades of green, feature across the many typologies of Art Deco jewellery.

 

These stones were also frequently adopted for use in the creation of several categories of objet de art and accessories including, clocks, watches and vanity cases. Multicoloured stones and pearls that were the mainstay of several centuries of Indian jewellery design, including the much referenced Mughal period, were adapted and contemporized for use in the Art Deco idiom. The use of multicoloured stones in jewellery design to allude to an Indian connection was later to be immortalized under the name Tutti Frutti. This style was to become a rage with necklaces, earrings, bracelets and even handbags designed with a combination of multicoloured stones. The preference for platinum settings by European jewellers meant that precious stones were emphasized by this robust detailing. This demand for a style could not be answered in India since platinum as a raw material was not easily available or a material handleable by local jewellers.

 

The legacy of Art Deco jewellery in India is much more problematic. The very nature of jewellery and its ownership in India is a closely guarded secret with scant public knowledge or exposure. Our sources of information are greatly dependent on pieces that make it to the international market. However, the scale and quantity of the pieces emerging makes us realize that pieces owing an affinity to Art Deco were considerable. The innovations that jewellers in India made towards Art Deco designs include a few peculiar pieces commonly seen from the styles popular in the 1970s and ’80s. These include the aforementioned bangles with opposing animal terminals, though most often made in gold and enamel. Other examples include a variety of floral and geometric pendants attached to long gold chains often suspended with semi-precious drops.

Some examples of the Art Deco influence on Indian jewellery can be made from a study of prominent jewellery firms based in Mumbai and Kolkata. These include Nanubhai and Gazdar in erstwhile Bombay and Hamilton’s of Calcutta. Small towns across Gujarat and Rajasthan have surprisingly emerged as custodians of Art Deco patterns – perhaps they had access to jewels that local rulers purchased abroad and had repaired or had them copied by local artisans. Clearly local jewellers knew the existence of this style and adapted versions were created. Until some of these great archives share their secrets, we will continue to celebrate the odd piece that makes its appearance on the international auctioneer’s desk.