The plique-à-jour revival is the renewed interest in and production of translucent backless enamel during the Art Nouveau period, approximately 1890 to 1910, principally in France and Russia. The revival took plique-à-jour from a historical curiosity in workshop literature and lifted it to a signature technique of the era, exploited by leading designers including René Lalique, Eugène Feuillâtre, and the Fabergé workshops to render the naturalistic motifs that defined Art Nouveau aesthetics.

Background and antecedents

Plique-à-jour as a technique has medieval and Byzantine antecedents and was practised in Russia and parts of Europe through the early modern period at low and intermittent volume. By the mid-nineteenth century the technique had nearly disappeared from active production. The Art Nouveau revival began with French enamellers researching historical techniques in the museum collections and reverse-engineering surviving examples; the technical understanding was rebuilt during the 1880s and applied at scale through the 1890s and into the early twentieth century.

The French school

René Lalique is the figure most closely associated with the revival. From the early 1890s, Lalique used plique-à-jour extensively in his jewellery, exploiting the technique's translucency to depict dragonfly wings, butterfly bodies, flower petals, and flowing-water motifs. The combination of the technique with naturalistic Art Nouveau iconography produced pieces that defined the visual vocabulary of the period. Eugène Feuillâtre, who trained as an enameller at Lalique's workshop, developed plique-à-jour to a level of technical refinement that some consider the equal of any in the history of the technique. Other French jewellers including Henri Vever and Lucien Gaillard contributed to the revival.

The Russian school

In Russia, the revival took a different form. The Fabergé workshops and competing Imperial-favoured workshops including Khlebnikov and Ovchinnikov produced plique-à-jour work in decorative objects and jewellery, often executed in the more nationalistic Russian Revival style rather than the French Art Nouveau aesthetic. The Russian work tends toward bolder colours, more deliberately decorative pattern, and applications to objects — kovsh ladles, beakers, cigarette cases — alongside the smaller jewellery pieces that dominated the French output.

Decline after 1914

The Art Nouveau period ended with the First World War, and the plique-à-jour revival ended with it. Russian Imperial production stopped with the Revolution of 1917; the Fabergé workshops dispersed and most of their senior enamellers either died, emigrated, or shifted to other work. In France, the rise of Art Deco brought a different aesthetic in which the translucent, organic plique-à-jour played little role. By 1920 the technique had returned to specialist and historical status, where it largely remains.

Legacy and contemporary continuation

The Art Nouveau revival pieces are the high-water mark of plique-à-jour as both technique and design vocabulary. Surviving Lalique, Feuillâtre, and Fabergé examples are studied in museum collections — the Musée d'Orsay, the Hermitage, the Walters Art Museum — and at auction houses where signed pieces command exceptional prices. Contemporary plique-à-jour production continues at low volume in specialist studios including Japanese shotai shippo masters and a small number of European studios working from the historical technique.

In the trade

For the dealer or collector, the plique-à-jour revival period is the source of most fine plique-à-jour available in the market. Identification, condition, and attribution are critical: signed pieces by major makers warrant laboratory verification and provenance research, and condition issues including hairline cracks, repairs, and replaced cells materially affect value.

Further reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — Art Nouveau jewellery articles
• International Gem Society — historical enamelling
• AGTA — antique and period jewellery