Lavalier

Common card · No. 432628

A lavalier or lavaliere or lavalliere is an item of jewelry consisting of a pendant, sometimes with one stone, pendulous and centered from a necklace. The style was popularized by Louise de la Vallière, a mistress of King Louis XIV of France. A lavalier can be recognized most for its drop, usually consisting of a stone and/or a chandelier pendant, which is attached directly to the chain, not by a bail. According to Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (1984), p. 50: A special form of necklace produced around 1900 was the lavallière, an imaginative allusion to a fashion named for the actress Ève Lavallière, suspending two overlapping pendants, generally of different lengths. The necklace itself often consisted of a simple silk cord with diamond sliding motifs, in which the imaginative end motifs were often intertwined. Princess George of Greece (Marie Bonaparte) received a lavallière with two diamond fir cones, the Tsarina of Russia one with amethyst acorns. Eve Lavallière...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Guy Rose, Public domain