A story not about an Empire in its prime but about an Empire gone. A failed Empire, because they all do. An Empire crumbled but still alluring us with shining of scattered diamonds and towering of its weathered monuments.
A ghost of Greatness.

greatness gone COLLECTION

I truly love the message and the research and the lore of the collection. This story starts in 2022 when I visited Tskhaltubo, the town of gorgeous abandoned sanatoriums from the Soviet era. It was my first big real-life connection to the aesthetic of decaying architecture.

Tskhaltubo used to be an insanely popular recreational destination for people from all over the Soviet Union, I mean, they had daily trains from Moscow. But after the USSR fell, the local Georgian government just didn’t have the money to maintain all these palace-like buildings. It’s really a very common story.

This experience matched well with me being eager to explore further the 20th century period. I studied the dawn of the era in one of my previous collections and now I was thinking of moving to the 1920s-1930s, and that would be Art Deco.

Art Deco celebrates grandiosity, superiority of man over nature (and, of course, over other men), reshaping the world, lust for power in any sense of the word. This cruel age left a memory of greatness, prosperity, intoxication with power, and reckless fun.

When people think of Art Deco they tend to imagine themselves in diamonds at a Gatsby party, not on a twelve hours factory shift. That’s why imperialistic resentment and nostalgia exist and why people want to make things great again.

"Our Dancing Daughters", 1928

"Waving from Empire State Building Construction Site", 1930

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", 1927

Two women in evening dress in San Francisco, California

What makes this grant age (or rather 20 years)? Let’s start with the exterior.

The skyscrapers — one of the symbols of this style may look even laconic from far away. But when you look closer, you will find that they are actually very carefully decorated. They have statues and bas-reliefs, and ornate entrance groups. What is really speaking to me here, is the verticality: while a ziggurat, their Mesopotamian prototype, looks like a stable, wide structure, the Empire State Building takes itself literally to the sky, and so does the Palace of Soviets, and even their ornaments are all pointing up.

The sun and radiance theme are very much present in this era. The powerful searchlights are becoming available for civil use right around that time, and become a recurrent theme in all types of art: posters, concepts, interior panels, exterior decor. The 20th Century Studios logo is also from that period.

Palace of Soviets concept

Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Oklahoma by katsrcool

Angel sculpture on Hoover Dam

The Niagara Hudson Building, detail of lobby mural

Empire State Building by Minty Sainsbury

Fox Theatre, Spokane, Washington, by Patrick Lordan

Three Fluted Towers, Chicago World’s Fair

Chrysler Building

Eastern Columbia Art Deco building, Los Angeles, California, by Miguel C

Chrysler building lobby

Somewhere in Toronto, by Reddit/DrNancyDrew

What interiors did those people walk?

Frank Lloyd Wright Unity Temple, by J.G. Beruzzi

NoMad in Las Vegas, by Benoit Linero

I could not resist putting more details of buildings and public spaces in the gallery below. My library is bursting and I have to share.

What jewelry were those prosperous people wearing? The 20s era almost doesn’t have designs that would be mostly metalwork, they are always covered with diamonds, with big diamonds or rows of small diamonds, always set in platinum or white gold enhance the sparkle even more. Sometimes there is a splash of bright and deep color, like emeralds, or sapphires, or rubies. Note how the shapes remain the same we saw in architecture: Art Deco is a very consistent style.

Art Deco ruby and diamond pendant/brooch, 1930's. Bukowskis

Boucheron Art Deco platinum, diamond and emerald brooch, Paris, circa 1920

A coloured and near colourless diamond brooch, Christie's

Art Deco Egyptian Revival platinum, diamond and carved emerald brooch, circa 1930

Art Deco brooch, circa 1920s

Art Deco Double Clip brooch

Cartier, a pair of Art Deco emerald and diamond ear pendants, circa 1930

Cartier Art Decor platinum, diamond and sapphire brooch, circa 1930

Art Deco platinum, diamond and ruby brooch

Cupid and Psyche by Anthony van Dyck, 1638–1640

Cupid and Psyche by François Gérard, 1798

The Stalinist Empire is very militaristic, just like the original Empire style, it has weapons in ornaments everywhere, and banners, and victory wreaths. And also it’s very eclectic, especially when you have a look at architecture built not in Moscow but in other former Soviet republics. But it still bears all the imperialistic stamps: the grandiosity that makes a man feel small, the neoclassicism, the, as I said, militarism, and the heavy load of totalitarian state ideology.

And now I would like to divert to the Soviet Neoempire, or Stalinist Empire style. This came later than Soviet Art Deco, after the WWII, when the Soviet Union was in its prime, an established Empire that has just defeated the world’s worst enemy, and more or less recovered from the war economically.

Studying both Art Deco and Neoclassicism inevitably leads to looking into Ancient Egypt. Both these styles took significantly from the newly found remains of a Great Empire of the past. The Egyptian style has all the features that a totalitariarism-inclined style may like: rigid structure, symmetry, straight lines, geometric shapes. This look makes you think about power and command, not about, you know, personal expression, creativity, all those soft and humane things.

It is funny to me that this style is so secondary. This is a personal opinion only but it’s basically a cosplay of Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt mixed up and stripped of any human warmth. These visuals are so perfect and void of any emotion, they give me something close to the uncanny valley vibes because this is so fake, and the fact that art of each era is fake in a way doesn’t fix it. Forgive me for the nerd content but here are two Cupid and Psyche paintings to compare and illustrate my point, am I’m cutting it.

Now let’s dig deeper in history for a bit because Art Deco is only one of the cycles of when some parts of humanity felt the need to establish their dominance and express it through a total style. The other nearest cycle is the era of Neoclassicism, or the Empire style.

How long does it take to create a collection after you already have your concept, and all the sketches and you only need to make it now?
Well, it took me 4 months.

The part where I had to break the stones was really nervous because I wasn’t sure if can get the look I want. I wanted a balanced look, not like one solid piece and a little something that chipped off. And I’m not an experienced gemstone crusher, so I couldn’t control it much. But I guess quartz is one of the easy stones, it went beautiful.