Maquette for a Snake Necklace

Manufacturer Boucheron Jewellers (French, 1866-present)

Place of OriginFrance, Paris

Date1855

DimensionsBody: L: 28 in. (71.1 cm);
Head: L: 1 1/4 in. (3.2 cm)

MediumGold, silver, and glass

ClassificationJewelry

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1998.9

Not on View

Label TextWhile design drawings were commonly used for made-to-order jewelry, important commissions often required a model. This necklace was a maquette (a scale model), created to be approved for a special commission from a French princess. Although glass stands in for the diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, the famed French jeweler Boucheron used gold and silver for the structure. The necklace contrasts sharply with the more typically sentimental use of snakes in jewelry of the Victorian period. The motif of the serpent swallowing its tail, most fashionable in the 1840s, symbolizes eternity and often represented a token of love. Queen Victoria wore a serpent bracelet to her first council meeting in 1837 and was given a serpent and emerald engagement ring by Prince Albert. The more aggressive open coil and mouth of the creature here casts its wearer as a different female archetype of the period: an independent woman of fashion who approved of this design’s shock-value (it originally featured a spring-loaded red tongue, now missing). Snakes continued to inspire elaborately knotted designs for clothing and even hair styles that were not for the faint-of-heart.Published ReferencesPage, Jutta-Annette, "Upper Glass: The Complicated History of Non-precious Jewelry," Glass: The Urban Glass Quarterly, no. 110, Spring 2008, p. 50, repr. (col.).

Page, Jutta-Annette, "Glass as Jewels: An Uneasy Relationship," GlassWear: Glass in Contemporary Jewelry, Stuttgart, Arnoldsche, 2007, p. 65, fig. 8, p. 64 (col.).