MASRIERA

The story of Masriera begins in 1839, when Josep Masriera Vidal opened his first workshop on the Carrer dels Vigatans in Barcelona, fresh from completing his apprenticeship. The following year he established a wholesale operation from the same premises, and the business grew steadily through the second half of the 19th century, winning prizes at the Exposició General Catalana in 1871 for its enamelled pieces and a medal and diploma at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889. By this point the firm, now trading as Masriera Hermanos, had built a formidable reputation across two generations.

But jewellery tells only part of the story. By the time Lluís Masriera was born in 1872, the Masrieras occupied an unusually broad place in the artistic life of Barcelona. His father, Josep Masriera i Manovens, and uncle, Francesc Masriera, were both successful painters as well as members of the family jewellery business; their circle extended across the city's painters, sculptors, architects and decorative artists. Another branch of the family established Masriera i Campins, an important artistic bronze foundry capable of casting monumental sculpture at a time when work of this scale had often been sent abroad. Its workshops produced sculpture, architectural metalwork and decorative objects for artists and institutions across Spain.

The surviving photographs of the Masriera studios give some sense of this world: rooms crowded with paintings, sculpture, textiles, furniture and objects, less the surroundings of a conventional jeweller than those of an artistic dynasty. Collaboration between disciplines was commonplace. Sculptors supplied models, artists contributed designs, and the boundaries between painting, sculpture, metalwork and jewellery were remarkably fluid. Lluís therefore did not arrive as the solitary artistic exception in a family of jewellers. He grew up surrounded by artists and craftsmen for whom jewellery formed part of a much larger decorative and artistic practice.

The transformation of the jewellery house nevertheless came with him. Lluís — grandson of the founder — trained as a painter and studied enamelling under the celebrated Edward Lossier in Geneva before travelling to Paris, where his encounter with the work of René Lalique proved decisive. What he saw there provided a catalyst for ideas already being formed within this unusually fertile environment. He returned to Barcelona, took his place as the firm's artistic director, and did something remarkable: he sold off or melted down the bulk of the existing stock and set about creating an entirely new body of work. The collection took six months to make and was unveiled to the public on 21 December 1901. It sold out immediately.

What followed became the defining expression of Catalan Modernisme in jewellery. Lluís combined his mastery of plique-à-jour and basse-taille enamelling with a vocabulary of nymphs, insects, birds, flowers, fantastical women and sinuous gold forms, caught in translucent enamel of extraordinary colour. Stones became part of the composition rather than its reason for being: a diamond might articulate the edge of a wing, a pearl hang like a drop of water beneath a flower. The jewel was conceived as a complete work of art.

Nor was this the work of Lluís's hand alone. The surviving Masriera archives reveal a sophisticated collaborative workshop. Designs were recorded in albums and workshop books; drawings, models and moulds were retained; motifs were revisited and adapted into different jewels. Lluís worked alongside specialist enamellers, goldsmiths, setters and engravers, as well as artists from outside the immediate workshop. His genius lay not simply in making jewellery, but in directing this accumulated artistic and technical expertise towards a remarkably coherent vision.

In 1906 the house was commissioned to make a tiara for Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain as a wedding gift from Catalan monarchists — a spectacular piece set with diamonds, pearls and enamelwork. It was one indication of the position the firm had attained only five years after Lluís's first Modernista collection.

In 1915 Lluís orchestrated a merger with another of Barcelona's great jewellery dynasties, the Carreras family, forming Masriera Hermanos y Joaquín Carreras. The combined house moved to grand premises at 26 Passeig de Gràcia, one of the most prestigious addresses in the Eixample, and was awarded a prize by Barcelona City Council for best establishment in the city two years later.

By the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, exhibiting as Masriera y Carreras, the firm had evolved again. The work had become more geometric and increasingly Art Deco in character, with platinum appearing alongside gold and a decorative vocabulary responding to the changing fashions of the period. Their display at the Grand Palais — three showcases containing 41 jewels and 14 pieces of silverwork — earned the Grand Prize.

Lluís's own restless creativity increasingly carried him beyond jewellery into painting, theatre, writing and stage design. Seen in the context of the family from which he emerged, this seems less a departure than a continuation. The Masrieras had always moved between disciplines. What distinguished Lluís was the extraordinary synthesis he achieved between them.

In 1969 the firm of Bagués acquired a 50% share, completing the purchase in 1985 and renaming the house Bagués-Masriera. The Masriera name survives in Barcelona today, together with the enamel techniques and many of the historic models developed during Lluís's remarkable period of invention at the beginning of the twentieth century.