The Spider in Silver & Red Bakelite: How a 1920s Brooch Captures the Birth of Modern Jewellery

Some jewels announce themselves quietly. Others stride forward with confidence, full of symbolism, innovation, and a touch of mystery.

This 1920s spider brooch, carved in deep cherry red phenolic resin and set on hammered silver legs, belongs to the second category.

It is an artifact of transition. Ancient symbolism rendered through modern form and made with one of the world’s earliest synthetic materials. In many ways, it is the 1920s distilled into a single small object.

https://www.thirteeninteriors.com/product-page/deco-spider-brooch

The Spider: An Ancient Symbol Reimagined

Long before the modern brooch, the spider occupied a privileged place in world mythology. It is the weaver of creation, the architect of delicate systems, the cunning trickster, the patient hunter, the emblem of feminine skill and creativity.

In ancient Peru, the Moche people cast intricate spider jewels in precious metals. In Victorian Europe, insects, even living ones, decorated lapels and bodices. In Greece, the story of Arachne transformed the spider into a symbol of artistic power.

By the 1920s, this powerful symbol was revived in fashion, but reframed. Not as gothic ornament, but as a modern icon of structure, geometry, and biological elegance.

Modernism Meets Nature

This brooch captures the spirit of the early modernist movements of Central Europe, particularly Vienna, Munich, and the broader German-speaking avant-garde. Designers of the period were fascinated by nature’s forms, but they rendered them differently: bold, simplified, architectonic, stylised rather than literal.

Here, the spider is presented with:

• A sculptural red body

• Sweeping, articulated silver legs

• A balance of abstraction and organic reference

It suggests the spider not as an imitation of life, but as a designed object, something that exists as much in the studio as in the natural world.

Cherry Red Phenolic: The First Modern Material

Before Bakelite jewellery became a household phrase in the 1930s, European artisans were experimenting with phenolic resin, the earliest true synthetic plastic. This brooch comes from that pioneering moment, a time when artists and metalsmiths were exploring new materials with the same curiosity as modern painters exploring new pigments.

The red of this piece is especially remarkable:

• Rich, saturated, and glassy

• Achieved through early industrial dye chemistry

• Not molded, but carved like horn or amber

It is the new material of modernity presented with the handcraft of older traditions. The result is a visual tension that defines the entire object: tradition versus innovation, nature versus industry, symbolism versus modern design.

Hammered Silver: Between Craft and Machine

The legs of the spider are individually hammered and shaped from silver rods. This method is deeply tied to the craft schools of the time:

• The Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshop

• Pforzheim metal ateliers

• Munich Secession silversmiths

• Prague and Brno studios experimenting with mixed materials

The hammered texture makes the legs feel alive, articulated, full of movement. At the same time, the sharp striations and mechanical regularity evoke the industrial world, the machine age just beginning to define the aesthetics of modern life. This dual identity, handmade yet industrial, lies at the heart of early modernist jewellery.

A Jewel of the Transitional Moment

Taken as a whole, the brooch is far more than a decorative insect. It is a miniature manifesto of 1920s design:

• An ancient motif updated for a new era

• A synthetic material treated with the respect of a precious gem

• Craftsmanship that acknowledges both handwork and machine influence

• A form that bridges Secessionist elegance and emerging Art Deco geometry

It represents the moment when jewellery moved from the ornate traditions of the 19th century toward the bold, modern language of the 20th. And it does so with personality, humour, and undeniable presence.

Why It Matters Today

Objects like this are exceptionally rare because they were experimental. They were made before categories existed, before Bakelite jewellery, before Art Deco plastics, before synthetic materials were considered legitimate jewellery mediums.

This spider brooch is a survivor from that creative frontier. It reminds us that modernity did not appear overnight; it evolved through countless small, remarkable gestures like this one, where an artist picked up a new material and imagined something the world had not yet seen.