September/October 2003 • Style: The Alchemy of Beauty • Selling: Living the Online Dream • Sources: Sparkle in Peace • Fall Show Guide Exhibitor Lists and Floorplans • Books: Tahitian Pearl • News & Updates • In This Issue

	Above left: "Ruby" illustration from Erté's Precious Stones Suite; photo © Sevenarts Ltd. Above right: "Salome," enlarged below. Left: Erté, himself.
The art of Erté is touching a new generation through his jewelry.

Erté, the flamboyant pioneer of Art Deco, is remembered for many things: his 240 Harper's Bazaar magazine covers, his dazzling costume and set designs, his stylized drawings of the feminine form that epitomize Art Deco style.

But 23 years after his death, consumers may best know Erté from his limited-edition jewelry, recently back in production after several years' hiatus. That would probably have pleased Erté, who wanted to achieve two things with his artwork: make women beautiful and make art available to everyone.

Erté, who began his career as a fashion designer in Paris in 1912, came late to jewelry design. He was 82 and known worldwide as an icon of Art Deco when he was first encouraged to design jewelry.

Erté had always been interested in jewelry, but was afraid his designs were too complicated to produce. As early as 1922, he had made designs for armlets inspired by the jewelry worn by the actress Sarah Bernhardt in her role as Cleopatra. Jewelry, like elegant clothing, beautified women — and that was Erté's primary goal.

One of Erté's many Harper's Bazaar covers; photo © Sevenarts Ltd.

"I firmly believe that every human being has a duty to make himself as attractive as possible," Erté wrote in his 1975 autobiography Things I Remember. "Not many of us are born beautiful; that is why I have always attached so much importance to clothes. Clothes are a kind of alchemy; they can transform human beings into things of beauty or ugliness."

Erté's first gown was produced when he was six years old; his mother was so impressed with an evening gown he had drawn that she had her seamstress sew it. Born Romain de Tirtoff to an aristocratic Russian family in 1892, Erté made it clear from a very young age that he preferred fashion and drawing to toy soldiers, dashing any plans his father, an admiral in the Imperial Fleet, may have had for his son's career.

He moved to Paris at the age of 20, where he soon was hired by the famous couturier Paul Poiret. A theatrical personality, the young artist took the name Erté, the French pronunciation of his initials R.T.

He was a hit from the start. Within a year, his first two signed designs, for hats, appeared in a leading Parisian fashion magazine, and he had designed an exotic costume for Mata Hari, the oriental dancer turned German spy. Within three years, his drawing of Scheherazade appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, starting a 22-year association with the magazine and launching his career in the United States.

Erté's "Aphrodite" necklace with black onyx and diamond detachable pin/pendant; photo © Silver Seasons.

Erté also created costumes and sets for stage and opera productions, including the Ziegfield Follies and the Folies Bergere, and even designed functional objects such as combs, parasols, fans, muffs, and luggage. Hollywood came calling in 1925; he was recruited by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to work on several films, but soon returned to Paris.

Erté's stylized drawings defined Art Deco for his generation, but he refused to be pigeonholed as an Art Deco artist. He insisted that his style sprang from his imagination, and that the only works of art that influenced him were the Persian and Indian miniatures and Greek vases he saw at the Hermitage Museum as a child.

"Although I strongly reject the idea that my work is necessarily tied to the Art Deco period of the '20s, because it is entirely personal and has, as I have said, its roots in the Eastern miniature painting of my heritage, neither is there any direct connection between my graphics and the world of today," he wrote. "My work is not realism at all — it expresses only dreams. It may very well be this that accounts for its popularity."

Erté may have distanced himself from Art Deco, but when the movement receded in mid-century, so did his own thriving popularity. However, he was to experience a remarkable revival from the 1960s on, thanks to canny promotion and graphic reproductions of his work.

In 1967, Grosvenor Gallery exhibited his prints at their galleries in New York and London and launched the limited-edition lithographs that boosted his fame, including the six-part series "Precious Stones," based on sapphire, ruby, diamond, emerald, amethyst, and topaz.

Erté was delighted that lithographs made his work readily accessible to the public. "The basic idea of this new form appealed to me greatly. Lithography was a means whereby many people of limited means, who could not afford originals, were able to buy one or several prints."

"Beauty of the Beast" 14K gold pendant with black onyx, diamonds, and mother of pearl; photo © Silver Seasons.

But the octogenarian still had one more unrealized dream: to create jewelry. The problem was that his designs were so detailed that even expert craftsmen said they would be impossible to reproduce.

Then, in 1974, he signed a contract with lithograph publisher Jack Solomon of Circle Fine Art Corp. to produce serigraphs as well as lithographs and etchings of his work.

"[Erté's] aesthetic message is wonderfully suited to the medium of graphics," Solomon wrote in 1982. "The artist's love of blazing color, his taste for the exotic and the erotically tinged, his romanticism and wit, and his lyrical, flowing vision of the human figure, all find expression through the rich, deep inks and bold yet elegant lines that serigraphy and lithography make possible."

Solomon also persuaded Erté to let Circle manufacture a limited-edition jewelry collection. "[Erté] found most jewelry dull, conventional, boring. He envisioned his jewelry as works of art, but unlike jewels created by many other artists, his would be designed to be worn; he would call them 'art to wear.' These pieces would be intricate and detailed and require such fine craftsmanship they would be very difficult to fabricate," Solomon wrote.

But Solomon eventually found a designer he felt was capable of bringing Erté's visions to life — Natalie Kane O'Keiff of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Solomon built her an atelier and created the Art to Wear collection, with jewelry designed by O'Keiff, manufactured by Circle, and signed by Erté.

"Rayonnement" 14K gold ring with diamonds, emerald, and mother of pearl from Erté's Art to Wear jewelry collection; photo © Silver Seasons.

"Our working relationship was successful, I believe, because it was nourished by the care that was taken to achieve excellent realization of his concepts," wrote O'Keiff. " . . . Initially, I turned his designs into technically developed drawings that he reviewed and edited. We talked frequently on the telephone and met several times a year to discuss his ideas. . . . When prototypes were completed, I would go to Paris or Barbados to get his approval. He would say, 'Move this a little to the left and that a little to the right, try diamonds rather than sapphires.' And we did."

Erté was very specific about the colored gemstones in his pieces. "Erté often called for special stones of unusual shape and specific color and quality in order to attain the impact and presence he sought," according to O'Keiff. "This required a constant search for sources capable of meeting our needs. The materials we used had to be absolutely right, and we obtained them wherever in the world they could be found: emeralds and blue topaz from Brazil; rubies from Thailand and Burma; coral from Japan."

Ever the showman, Erté especially enjoyed promoting his Art to Wear line; he would appear at exhibits and previews wearing his signature rings or necklaces transformed into tie ornaments.

"Topaz" illustration from Erté's Precious Stones Suite; photo © Sevenarts Ltd.

"Erté enjoyed creating jewelry, perhaps more than he enjoyed any other project in the last 10 years of his life," Solomon recalled. Circle Fine Art went out of business in the early 1990s, but the Four Seasons Design Group obtained the North American license in 2002 and resumed production, using the original molds and models; O'Keiff remained as a consultant.

At his death in 1990, Erté left 328 executed designs for jewelry and another 179 preliminary drawings of jewelry. Four Seasons is still finishing some of Circle's editions, and hopes to design some of the original sketches as well.

The collection is made with 14K gold; almost every piece features a gemstone — either diamond, ruby, sapphire, mother of pearl, or onyx — according to a Four Seasons executive. The line retails for $500 to $15,000 and is sold at art galleries, fine jewelers, and other major outlets.

Erté took the concept of wearable art very seriously. For example, he would hide necklace clasps. "He would look at a necklace and object to the clasp. That's why he called it a work of art. If you held it in your hand, you would be hard-pressed to say how you put it on," said the Four Seasons spokesman.

Erté watched fashion trends come and go over his century-long life. To him, what mattered most in fashion — as in living — were individuality and elegance. And he immortalized both in his designs.

"Salome" 14K gold and sterling silver pin/pendant with diamonds, rubies, black onyx, and mother of pearl; photo © Silver Seasons.

"Since I was already highly fashion-conscious before I was five, I have had a rather special opportunity to watch the evolution of female fashion," he wrote in 1975. ". . . Whenever designers failed to respect individuality — with male aforethought or otherwise — beauty became the victim of passing fads. As I wrote in Harper's Bazaar back in 1919, 'I do not blindly follow the current fashion. I love clothes that are luxurious and beautiful and I believe they should enhance the good points of the woman who wears them — they should, in fact, be completely individual.' "