Eugene Fontenay gold parure

A very rare yellow gold and  miniature demi parure by Eugene Fontenay. Composed of a pendant/brooch with greek inscription PANDORA and a pair of earrings. This lovely set  has the original box and is realized with the granulation technique.  Paris, 1864

Eugène Fontenay is one of the most skilled and accomplished goldsmiths in history. in 1906, Henri Vever had dedicated twenty-three pages of text and numerous illustrations to him in his monumental "La Bijouterie Française au XIXème Siècle". The style of Eugène Fontenay - as well as that of many other famous artists and goldsmiths throughout Europe - developed precisely based on the Campana collection and on the remakes elaborated by the Castellani in Rome and, subsequently, by Carlo Giuliano in London.In March 1858, when he was called to make an important piece of jewelry for Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III. It was an elegant diadem whose central stones could be interchanged with diamonds, sapphires, or pearls, according to the occasion or the type of clothes worn. The French designer was a great perfectionist, he used a few precious stones, preferring the wide choice that hard stones offered him (he was the first to use jade in the West) combined with enamels, cameos, and even micro-mosaics. He used engraving, embossing, chisel, filigree, and granulation to adorn his creations, always trying to find the right measure in everything.
Fontenay mainly worked with 22-karat gold (very delicate, composed of 920 parts of gold out of a thousand) or he composed the object from 18-karat gold (more resistant, 750 parts out of a thousand) and then covered it with pure gold to give the final piece that brilliant, special and precious shade.
One of his masterpieces was produced for the 1878 Exhibition: it consisted of an amazing egg-shaped perfume burner supported by four sirens and two dolphins in gold, diamonds, lapis lazuli, and splendid enamels of great effect. It is conceivable that Fabergé may have been inspired by this when, in 1885, he began to create his famous Easter eggs for the Russian tsars.