Vintage Hair Comb Transitional Style with Ornate Inlay

CONDITION: excellent.

SIZE: 5½ ins h x 4½ ins w (14 x 11 cms)

APPROXIMATE DATE: 1900s to 1920s

DESCRIPTION:

This beautiful comb shows elements of the so called Transitional style between two major art movements – Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Some of the most beautiful and sympathetic treatments of Art Nouveau and the transitional style appear in combs and hairpins.

It is made in celluloid faux tortoiseshell and the heading design takes the traditional form of the unfurled fan. In the centre of the heading is a panel of scrollwork surrounded by a deep border along the outer perimeter. This incorporates several ornate panels with a narrow gilded border. The panels are inlaid with a crushed iridescent substance which appears to contain fragments of mother of pearl and abalone shell.

FURTHER INFORMATION:

The Art Nouveau influence is indicated by complex intertwined lines, often combined with scrollwork, naturalistic motifs like flora, fauna or winged insects, and the use of designs were are often asymmetrical. Art Deco borrowed extensively from Art Nouveau in its highly stylised and graceful designs.

However Deco took the free-flowing curves and naturalistic motifs and replaced them with more geometric and symmetrical themes which began to emerge about 1910. Naturalism in the representation of flowers, leaves and insects is replaced by stylisation and formalism. Although elements like interlaced lines and scrollwork often persist, but there is a stiffness and artificiality about the form of the general design here which is leading inexorably towards the formalised geometry of Art Deco.

Item ID: C12-11-023