A New Release From Falize

This hinged bracelet, a creation by Alexis and Lucien Falize, exemplifies the striking Neo-Gothic style championed by these Parisian jewelers in the second half of^{the 19th-century}. Crafted c. 1878, this piece of jewelry has remained in the same family ever since.

It was the grandfather of the bracelet’s current owners who commissioned it—presumably in late 1877—from the Falize company as a gift for his wife to mark the birth of their fifth child in July 1877. Each link bears the initial of each child’s first name in Gothic script (the sixth being the mother’s), paired in a speech bubble with their date of birth: “G.H.O.N.L.M” alternating with “May 2, 1870,” “May 3, 1872,” “May 6, 1873,” “April 9, 1875,” and “July 3, 1877.” Still housed in its original leather case monogrammed “H.T.” from the firm “Falize Aîné et Fils, 55 Avenue de l’Opéra, Paris,” it has been in this family for five generations. In the Neo-Gothic style, this piece of jewelry evokes the historicist fashion of the second half ofthe 19th-century as well as the highly complex techniques of enamel work—inherited from Byzantine and medieval art —in which the Falize house specialized as early as the 1860s, on the initiative of Alexis Falize. He began his career at Mellerio Frères before founding his own jewelry business in 1838, and took his son on as an apprentice in 1856. Lucien continued his training through several trips, notably to London in 1861–1862, where the World’s Fair was being held. There he discovered Oriental and Asian arts. After becoming his father’s partner in 1871, then director of the company in 1876, he brought the art of enamel work to its zenith in pieces inspired notably by the Middle Ages, such as this bracelet with its fabulous design of six chimeras alternating with foliage motifs. This piece, dated c. 1878, also highlights the influence of Germain Bapst— Lucien Falize’s partner from 1880 onward— on this type of work. A similar bracelet, from 1881 by Bapst and Falize, sold for€ 143,000 in Montpellier on November 23, 2024 (Farran Auctions). However, another bracelet, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2018.447.3), is dated c. 1875—that is, before Alexis Falize’s retirement and Bapst’s arrival as a partner. Lucien Falize cherished these “intimate mementos… as precious as illuminated manuscripts.” Father and son thus created these romantic pieces of jewelry together, inspired by the enameled and gem-set necklaces of the^14th-centuryperiod.