Vintage Gunn Trigère Sterling Silver & Blue Lacy Agate Scandinavian Modernist Flower Pendant Necklace

Measurements:  Pendant: 1.6"L x 1.6"W x .3"Thick (4.06cm x 4.06cm x .76cm)

Chain: 24"L (60.96cm)

Markings: Gunn Trigere 925

Weight: 23.2g

Wonderful vintage sterling silver and natural blue lace agate pendant necklace by Swedish designer Gunn Trigère, dating to the Mid-Century Modern era.

The sculptural pendant features a large oval cabochon of beautifully banded pale blue lace agate, bezel-set at the center of an abstract sterling silver flower. Broad, smoothly polished silver petals surround the stone, creating a striking dimensional design that feels both organic and unmistakably modernist.

The soft powder-blue and lavender-gray banding of the agate provides a beautiful contrast against the bright polished sterling silver. Rather than relying on ornate decoration, Trigère allows the natural stone, proportion and sculptural form of the silver to create the visual impact—a hallmark of Scandinavian modernist design.

The pendant is suspended from a sterling silver box-style chain, giving the necklace a clean, substantial appearance while allowing the large pendant to remain the focal point.

Signed Gunn Trigere 925.

A wonderful collector piece for admirers of Scandinavian Modernist jewelry, studio jewelry and important mid-century silver design.

Pendant is in excellent condition, with little to no wear. One note: the center piece of the clasp is missing but could be replace by a jeweler inexpensively if you wanted to wear it as a brooch. The bale is perfectly intact. 

o highly sculptural, one-of-a-kind wearable art.

Trigère was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, where she studied design and literature. She later left Scandinavia for Paris before eventually settling in the United States. She married Robert Trigère, brother and longtime business associate of celebrated fashion designer Pauline Trigère. Robert had helped manage the influential Trigère fashion house in New York, founded by Pauline in 1942.

Gunn subsequently developed her own career in fashion. Gunn and Robert Trigère became associated with the luxury fashion scene of Beverly Hills, California, where Gunn operated an upscale boutique on Rodeo Drive. Her clothing from this period can be found under the Gunn Trigère name, and the boutique became part of the fashionable Rodeo Drive retail community during the latter decades of the twentieth century.

By the late 1990s, Trigère had entered a new phase of her artistic career centered increasingly on jewelry. Business records for Gunn Trigere Jewelry in Palm Desert, California, date the business to 1997, providing an important reference point for her documented work as an independent jewelry artist.

Trigère became an active member of the Greater Palm Springs and Coachella Valley arts community, living and working in Palm Desert and exhibiting her jewelry at regional art events including the Southwest Arts Festival in Indio. A 2012 profile described her as having created one-of-a-kind jewelry for nearly fifteen years, which closely corresponds with the 1997 establishment date of her Palm Desert jewelry business. By 2016 she was still being featured at the Southwest Arts Festival as a Palm Desert jewelry artist.

Her jewelry is characterized by a distinctly Scandinavian modernist sensibility: clean lines, strong sculptural forms and an emphasis on the relationship between metal and natural or artistic materials. Sterling silver became one of her principal media, frequently combined with pearls, gemstones and, later, glass.

Trigère described her jewelry-making process as beginning with sheets of sterling silver. Her designs were transferred to the metal, individually cut out and then shaped and formed by hand. Stones, pearls or her own glass elements could then be incorporated into the finished composition, often using bezel settings. Rather than approaching jewelry simply as ornament, she conceived the finished works as small sculptural objects — essentially forms and shapes intended to be worn.

This fabrication method helps explain the distinctive character of Trigère's jewelry. Broad polished silver surfaces, asymmetrical organic forms, sculptural flowers and bold central cabochons appear repeatedly in her work. Many examples blur the distinction between jewelry and small-scale sculpture, and convertible brooch/pendant designs are an important part of her known output.

As her career developed, Trigère increasingly incorporated glass into her work, eventually expanding beyond wearable jewelry into glass sculpture and other sculptural forms. Her later work retained the same underlying interest in shape, proportion, surface and abstraction that characterized her sterling jewelry.

Today Gunn Trigère's work represents an unusual intersection of Swedish Scandinavian modernism, New York and Beverly Hills fashion, and the modern art culture of Palm Desert and Greater Palm Springs. Her career spans several distinct creative environments — from Stockholm and Paris to New York, Rodeo Drive and finally California's Coachella Valley — while maintaining a consistent emphasis on elegant, wearable sculptural design.