HERZ BELPERRON: EMERALD AND SAPPHIRE DRESS RING, CIRCA 1990

Footnotes

A Selection of Jewels from a Private UK Collection
Lots 102 - 104

According to the vendor, this ring was purchased from Harry Fane at Annabel's during the 1990s.

Suzanne Belperron is perhaps the most famous and influential female jewellery designer of the 20th Century. Throughout almost fifty years of career, she created stylish and elegant jewels, pioneering an audacious new aesthetic. These designs were characterised by a sensible use of volume, bold organic shapes carved in innovative materials and colour combinations. Believing that her work needed no identification, Suzanne Belperron never signed a single piece of her jewellery and is famously known to have said, "My style is my signature".

Belperron (1900-1983) was born on the French town of Saint-Claude, in the Jura Mountains. She studied drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Besançon before joining the Parisian house Boivin as a designer. During this collaboration, Belperron was instrumental in defining the aesthetics that the house is recognised for in the 1920s and early 1930s. After leaving Boivin in 1934, she worked for and in partnership with her associate Bernard Herz. This was a prolific creative time for Belperron; free from all constraints, she shaped her own artistic universe out of her creative mind.

In a final letter dated February 1943, sent from the Drancy internment camp, Bernard Herz entrusted his affairs to Belperron and asked her to protect the interests of his children, Aline and Jean. In December 1946, Jean Herz returned to Paris and took on half-ownership of a new company called, Jean Herz-Suzanne Belperron, in accordance with his father's last wishes. The company changed names several times; despite of these changes, its essence remained the same throughout the different events that shaped its history.

After Belperron's death in 1983, a new Herz-Belperron company was established. An American firm, using the drawings they had acquired, went on to produce replicas of her jewels, signing them 'St. N. Herz Belperron France' (Société Nouvelle Herz Belperron), distinguishing them from the jewels made during Belperron's lifetime. These jewels were sold through Verdura in New York. The presented ring is an example of this period bearing the signature 'St. N. Herz-Belperron France'.

For jewels of similar design by Belperron, see Raulet, S. and Baroin, O. 'Suzanne Belperron', 2011, pp.285. and Corbett, P., Landrigan, W. and Landrigan, N., 'Jewelry by Suzanne Belperron', 2015, pp.213.