The Art of Sterlé

RAPAPORT… French jeweler Pierre Sterlé, born in 1905, enjoyed a career that spanned several decades, starting in 1934, when he opened his first studio in Paris at the age of 29. There, says Audrey Friedman, owner, Primavera Gallery, New York City, “in addition to his own designs, he did work for many prestigious jewelry houses, including Boucheron and Chaumet.” In 1945, Sterlé opened a retail shop on the Avenue de l’Opera. Chaumet purchased his business and his archives in 1976, two years before Sterlé’s death.

According to Daphne Lingon, senior vice president, New York jewelry department, Christie’s, “Sterlé was the type of jeweler who didn’t advertise; he prided himself on doing custom work for clients.” He was selective, concurs Lisa Hubbard, Sotheby’s chairman, international jewelry, North and South America, choosing a second-floor atelier “so he didn’t have to deal with walk-in traffic. He thought of himself as an artist, which is very much the way we try to sell his jewelry, as miniature works of art.”

“His designs had a certain humor to them, a certain élan,” says Friedman. “His things are very distinctive — you can look at them and say ‘that’s by Sterlé.’”

Kimberley Thompson, estate buyer, JB Hudson Jewelers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, agrees. “When I see those really lyrical curving lines and it’s something from nature, whether it’s a bird or a flower, I pretty much know it’s Sterlé. It was such an innovative look.”

Creative Timeline

“Sterlé did his most interesting jewelry from the 1940s going into the 1960s, when naturalism became an important theme in jewelry again,” says Friedman.” Lingon sums up Sterlé as “very refined and very restrained, very indicative of the 1950s postwar era.” His work, she says, “has a lot of nature-inspired motifs done in a very abstract way. It’s not going to be what an orchid looks like in nature; it’s going to be much more fluid, more interpretive — a lot of people think of it as a spiky quality. It’s definitely the abstract 1950s, 1960s look.”

In the 1960s, adds Friedman, his designs “become even more exuberant,” with flowers carved out of mother-of-pearl or coral. “In fact, the range and originality of Sterlé’s designs are overwhelming.”

Sterlé’s designs got more abstract as he got older, says Suzanne Tennenbaum, co-author with Janet Zapata of The Jeweled Menagerie and Jeweled Garden, and a longtime collector of Sterlé’s jewelry.

A Quality of Movement

Throughout his career, Sterlé’s designs had, says Lingon, “a dynamic quality.” Ronald Kawitzky, owner of DK Bressler, a jewelry wholesaler in New York City, cites qualities of “speed and abstracted movement — especially when you see his birds made of labradorite, which have that strange feeling of movement in the stone.”

Friedman agrees. “Sterlé’s pieces look as if they are about to become airborne or are already in flight. His flowers seem to blow in the breeze.” To achieve this effect, she says, he used a lot of foxtail chain in his jewelry “to look like the feathers of a bird, the fins of a fish or stamen of a flower that moved with the wearer.” This movement effect gave the jewelry a quality, says Thompson, which celebrated the female form. “With just the slightest movement of a woman’s body, these pieces would shift and move. There’s something extremely sexy about them.”

For stationary pieces, says Friedman, he twisted, braided and hammered the gold wire, “developing his uniquely distinctive ‘Angel Hair’ style during the 1950s.” This unique metalwork technique, she says, created “a meshy quality to the gold. It has a certain texture that’s almost woven.”

The Dazzle of Diamonds and More

While Sterlé used stones “more for their color and texture than intrinsic value,” says Friedman, he did accomplish some lovely designs with diamonds, especially, she says, in the 1950s and 1960s, creating a “restrained grace and elegance, using curved shapes and contrasting elements with round and baguette diamonds — a newly popular combination.” Andrew Nelson, co-owner, Nelson Rarities of Portland, Maine, references the designer’s platinum “waterfall jewelry,” citing as a classic example, “the big necklace that wraps into almost a knot, coming across from one side to another with multi-rows of baguettes that drip, drip down.”

“Most of the things that I have seen at auction,” says Lingon, “have been diamonds and platinum, typical postwar pieces. In April 2000 at Christie’s, we sold a Sterlé piece from the fifties that was so beautiful. It was an abstract, stylized bird set with tourmalines and sapphires and amethysts and diamonds and citrines. It was so colorful. The presale estimate was for $12,000 to $15,000 and it sold for $70,500. I’d never seen a piece like it. Obviously, the intrinsic value was nowhere near the price realized. But the way the stones were set, the movement, the way that it was constructed was very bold and three-dimensional. Whatever angle you looked at, there was an interesting view” (shown at right).

Tennenbaum’s personal collection includes, she says, “some beautiful platinum and diamond brooches that are free-form — one of them is almost like an asymmetric mask, with baguettes set concave end-to-end and side-by-side. There is also a beautiful platinum and diamond bracelet that resembles the body of a snake — it gets fat in the middle and then narrower on the ends. And I have a very pretty diamond ring with a mounting in baguettes intertwined with brilliants.”

Sterlé’s Birds

What really caught people’s imagination more than anything else, says Hubbard, “are certainly his birds. Designed as brooches, they’re very impressionistic, very three-dimensional. They make use of various hard stones and his signature gold mesh detailing, cheveux d’ange (angel hair), and portray birds in flight.”

The most identifiable quality of the brooch designs, agrees Russell Fogarty, Kazanjian & Fogarty Inc., a wholesaler and retailer in Los Angeles, California, “are the charming stylized birds he created. Most of the pieces we have handled have been in yellow gold, with dramatic heads, wings and tails. Often the bodies or other parts have color, such as coral or lapis, and always a few diamonds. All are quite collectible.”

Thompson points out the exotic, elongated quality of Sterlé’s bird designs. “One of my favorite ones had a body that was a large Persian turquoise marquise, easily two-and-a-half inches long, and a long sinuous neck ending in the bird’s head tucked back down toward its breast. The tail swept out in the opposite direction. It was one of the most glorious pieces of jewelry I’ve ever seen.”

Sterlé pieces, Thompson goes on to say, “have that weight, that heft, that touch, that finish — when you flip over the back, they’re gorgeous. You pick them up and you know you have something.” Once you’ve seen his designs, she adds, “you never forget them.”