Alexis Falize, an extremely rare varicoloured gold ring, circa 1870

Alexis Falize, an extremely rare varicoloured gold ring, circa 1870, the central band with a scene of dogs hunting a large boar, in varicoloured gold on a blackened steel background inspired by Japanese shakudō, within plain gold borders, size T, French assay mark for 18ct gold, partial French maker's mark for Alexis Falize, case

This intriguing ring embodies Western fascination with Japanese decorative arts in the latter half of the 19th century, following the country's opening up to trade after centuries of sakoku, Japan's policy of closed borders and self-sufficiency under the Tokugawa shogunate. In the world of jewellery, among the biggest exponents of Japanese art was Alexis Falize, who most famously adapted the Chinese and Japanese art of cloisonné enamel to jewellery to great acclaim in the late 1860s. Alongside his son Lucien, Falize was one of the most scholarly and technically sophisticated jewellers of his day, well-versed in decorative styles, metalwork and enamel techniques from across world history. The metalwork technique exhibited here is heavily influenced by Japanese shakudō and shibuichi - darkly patinated alloys of gold, silver and copper which appeared as details on Japanese armaments in the 19th century. Few if any other jewels in this style attributable to Falize are published, but these Japanese metalwork techniques were known to the firm, as demonstrated in their silversmithing, and a broader vogue for the style can be seen from their production in England and France in the late 1870s and 1880s, most notably for Tiffany & Co., who had purchased many of Falize's cloisonné enamel jewels around the time Falize was exhibiting them at the Exposition Universelle in 1867. While the metalwork is certainly of Japanese inspiration, the choice and treatment of the subject matter, a boar hunt, is more rooted in European artistic traditions. Hunting scenes appear in two major commissions later carried out by Lucien Falize: a cuff bracelet enamelled and chased with a hunting scene from an illuminated medieval manuscript, commissioned by Gaston de Galard de Béarn, Prince de Viana, exhibited at the 1878 Exhibition Universelle, and also the inner boar hunting frieze of the Vase Sassanide produced during the firm's collaboration with Bapst, first exhibited in 1889. Alexis Falize's poincon, AF with the symbol of a watch fusée chain hook, which appears on the present example, was registered in 1841 and appears on his jewels and his beautifully rendered design drawings up until his retirement in the mid-1870s, dating this ring to a particularly creative period in this family firm's remarkable history.

Cf.: Katherine Purcell, Falize: a dynasty of jewelers, London, 1999, p.96 and 99, for examples of hunting scenes in commissions by Falize, p.212 for a pommel designed by Lucien Falize in Japanese-style inlaid metalwork, and p.202-6 for photographs of Falize's cloisonné jewels of the late 1860s, bearing his maker's mark.
Cf.: Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe, Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria: A Mirror to the World, British Museum Press, 2010, p.314, no.270 and 271, for shakudo-style jewels made in Britain in the 1880s, and p.315 no.272 for a selection of Tiffany & Co. jewels in a comparable style from the Hull Grundy collection in the British Museum