Suspended Insects

Pieces designed in France include belt clasps by the firm of Piel Frères, who established themselves after the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 as makers of commemorative Alsace-Lorraine wares, and continued well into the 1920s.

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery has two examples of their output, a single belt clasp of around 1900 showing an idealised face emerging from clouds, and a later much bolder piece: a pair of clasps cast as eagles about a central oval glass cabochon.

Other French pieces include a delicate gold tiepin made in about 1900 showing a female head in profile and butterfly wings set with veins; it is enamelled with almost microscopic precision. Possibly the latest French piece made between 1919 and 1925 is an oval pendant moulded in glass with an insect in relief, as if set in amber. This is a work by Henri Bergé for Almaric V Walter of Nancy who specialised in paté-de-verre, a ground glass paste.