On the Wings of Angels – Sparkle this Holiday Season

Written by: Donna Pulese-Murphy

Apropos for this holiday season, Andrew & Peter Fabrikant’s featured jeweled piece this week is a haltingly lovely 20th century stylized diamond angel wings.

Diamond Angel Wings

Magnificently crafted, these winged clips are encrusted with pave set old cut diamonds with an approximate total weight of 20.00 carats mounted in platinum with a yellow gold back.

Dress Clips were the novelty of its age!  In vogue in the Victorian, Belle Époque and Art Deco period, they were very versatile jeweled objects.  One could invariably see a lady of means sporting a dress clip singly or in pairs on a cloche hat, as a decorative hair ornament, on a handbag, to frame the lapels of a tailored suit or grip the back of her plunging dress.

Hollywood played a major role in influencing how women wore their clips. Particularly when actresses like Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West were seen wearing dazzling diamond clips in their movies. Adrian, a fashion designer for Hollywood stated, “Motion Pictures are becoming the Paris of America. There, when women see the stars in pictures they can see them as fashion guides.”

The ethereal intent for the wing motif in jewelry was meant to be symbolic of hope, peace and faith. But In the Deco period where the theme of “flight’ was ubiquitous, winged clips represented the never-weary, spontaneous movement and the flight of thought.  And then there’s our personal favorite- the power to transcend the mundane world.