With so many fash­ion mag­a­zines declar­ing the designer it bag an anti­quated notion and jew­elry the new black, this Art Nou­veau neces­sity by is most def­i­nitely a lust after. But not so fast, my fair-weather fash­ion friends, there are only so many of these lovelies to go around. In fact, accord­ing to Siegel­son NY, the ven­er­a­ble firm that owns it, Lalique made very few hand­bags and the cat­a­logue raisonné by Sigrid Barten, René Lalique: Schmuck und Objets d’art 1890–1910, pub­lished in 1977, includes only five.

Just to give you an inside tour of this fan­tas­tic object: the sil­ver frame is worked in wasps and clover flowers–depicting the busy, buzzing drone of spring and sum­mer. Each bloom is embod­ied in opales­cent glass gems; dur­ing the Art Nou­veau period, the opal rep­re­sented the kalei­descope of life’s ever-evolving moods; as light shifts, the color of the gem changes.

Take a close look at the body of the bag. Who…who does the mesh link resem­ble (I’ve given you a clue…)? It is the styl­ized head of an owl. Depend­ing on the cul­tural iconog­ra­phy, an owl sym­bol­ized wis­dom, intu­ition, noc­tur­nal omni­science or mor­tal­ity. This grit­tier side of nature appealed to late nineteenth-century poets and writ­ers of the Sym­bol­ist Move­ment, whose anti-idealistic phi­los­o­phy of dig­ni­fy­ing the hum­ble and ordi­nary, had a strong influ­ence over many artists, and Lalique in particular.