The Millicent Rogers Heart Brooch: A ruby, sapphire, and colored diamond enamel brooch, by Paul Flato. Estimate $350,000 – $500,000. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2015

Designed as a circular-cut ruby heart, interspersed with red enamel cabochons, pierced by an 18k gold arrow set with calibré-cut yellow diamonds, to the draped calibré-cut sapphire ribbon, inscribed Verbum Carro, mounted in platinum and 18k gold, with French assay marks and maker's mark (partially indistinct), circa 1938. By Paul Flato

Provenance: Formerly the Property of Millicent Rogers Balcom

Literature: Lit. Elizabeth Irvine Bray, Paul Flato: Jeweler to the Stars, 2010, pages 58-59

The “Whimsies” of Paul Flato

Born in Texas in 1900, Paul Flato was the original jeweler to the stars. He founded his company in New York City in the 1920s and opened a Los Angeles store in 1937. His design-oriented style, which was fgurative and often humorous, reached its peak in the 1930s when Adolph Kleaty, George Headley, and Fulco, Duke of Verdura, designed pieces for him.

The 1930s were a time of glamour; America’s most fashionable ladies were not holding back, even after the Great Depression. Paul Flato created bold statement pieces that were avidly sought after by stars and society women. His whimsical style was a refreshing shift from the more austere geometric Art Deco designs. Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress, a “theatrical and extreme”1 woman of fashion, was one of his most photographed clients. She was routinely on the International Best Dressed list as a woman of high fashion and distinctive taste.2 She had many ideas for jewelry designs that Flato turned into inventive pieces, one of which was the creation of the puffy heart. According to Elizabeth Irvine Bray in Paul Flato Jewelry To The Stars, Ms. Rogers was drawing hearts in Paul Flato’s New York offce when the “fat hearts” collection was born.3

The heart, designed and worn by Millicent Rogers, is pierced with an arrow draped with a blue ribbon with the words, “Verbum Carro.” In their article on Flato in Departures, Marion Fasel and Penny Proddow translated the phrase as “A word to my dear one.” The inspiration for the design and brooch may have originated from a visit in the early 1930s to South America with her second husband, the Argentinean, Arturo Peralta-Ramos. It is evocative of the South American milagro, icon related charms that were worn to safeguard the wearer and to heal them (especially from a broken heart).4

Rogers was a well-known socialite and photographs of her were frequently featured in fashion magazines and newspaper gossip columns. She moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1947 and started collecting Native American artifacts that, after her death in 1953, became the cornerstone for the Millicent Rogers Museum.

Millicent Rogers donated much of her fashion collection to the Brooklyn Museum, including dresses by Charles James, Mainbocher, Adrian, and Elsa Schiaparelli. This brooch remains an iconic piece of fashion history and it is as eye-catching today as it was when Rogers wore it in Vogue in 1939, retaining its legacy of beauty and whimsical style.

1 - 4 Bray, Elizabeth Irvine, Paul Flato Jeweler To The Stars. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2010. Page 58.

Christie's. MAGNIFICENT JEWELS, 14 April 2015, New York, Rockefeller Plaza

Millicent Rogers in Vogue, January 1939, wearing the Paul Flato heart. Credit: © Condé Nast Archive/Corbis

Millicent Rogers wearing the Flato puffy heart in Harper’s Bazaar, October 1938. Credit: © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY