14 Karat White Gold Men Art Deco Style Ink Ring with Smoky Quartz by the Artist

This contemporary ring is crafted from 14 karat white gold and features a 15x15x8 mm natural smoky quartz. It has been featured in both Harper's Bazaar and Vogue UA. This piece can b...

This collection was selected by fashion editors and celebrities due to the stunning transparent whiskey color of smoky quartz or its darkest variant, morion, which is much darker tha...

Composed of silver, lacquer and reverse painted and engraved crystal, this exceptional ring was a collaboration of two French modernist artists, Després and Cornault. The ring centers a glass crystal prism above a polychrome abstract-design painting in miniature by Cornault, mounted by Després within a silver and black lacquer surround, flanked by stepped and incised chevron form shoulders with subtle dark patination. Uniting an intriguing abstract painting with the geometry of interlocking planes and layered strata, this rare ring is powerful work of painterly and sculptural modernism. Product Details: Item #: R-21132 Artist: J Després and E Cornault Country: France Circa: 1930 Size: 6.75 (this ring can be sized; please contact the gallery for further information) Materials: Glace peinte/Reverse-painted crystal; Black lacquer; Silver Signed: "J. Desprès", "JD" maker's mark, French guarantee stamp for silver. Provenance: Given by the artist to his niece, and by descent in her family. Exhibition History: "Étienne Cournault (1891-1948)" at Musées de la Cour d’Or à Metz, 25 June to 24 October 1994. This ring was presented as number 94 in the exhibition catalogue. Literature: This ring appears in "Jean Després; Jeweller, Maker and Designer of the Machine Age", Thames & Hudson, 2009, by Melissa Gabardi, on p. 197. Macklowe Gallery Curator's Notes: This important ring is one of a small group of “Bijoux-Glaces” or “Mirror Jewels”. These jewels represent the collaboration between two French Modernist artists, Étienne Cournault (1891-1948) and Jean Després (1889-1980). Cournault was from Lorraine, and had been educated at L’Ecole de Nancy in graphic and applied arts. He was active in Paris as a painter, draughtsman, and print maker in the 1920s. Moreover, he was the premier practitioner of the rarified technique of reverse painting on crystal, which he elevated from a traditional decorative art by creating intriguing miniature paintings of Surrealist and Cubist inspiration. Cournault met Després, an accomplished silversmith who moved in the circle of Modligiani, de Chirico, Braque and Signac, when Jacques Doucet commissioned the artists to complete an ornate metal table...

This ring has a mysterious look to it. In some lights the stone looks like a smooth ad glossy stone and when the light hits it you can see the wonderful way in which the underside of...