Adornment

The Paris jeweller, La Gerbe d’Or (The Golden Sheaf) presented its 1929 calendar suspended from this plaquette. In the Art Deco period, fashion and the decorative arts exploited a taste for the exotic and sensual. One aspect of Art Deco was a revival of Neo-classical art. Its sparse, simple clarity appealed to designers and artists trying to reduce images to their essential form. This medal depicts a woman dancer with a veil. In the early decades of the 20th century, as a result of the changes in production and purpose, medals were no longer so closely tied to their traditional functions of commemoration and reward, and French medals could now be decorative objects in their own right.

Plaquette · Paris · 1928. Bronze, struck, uniface. By Renard, Marcel. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.