The stained glass window effect in the Girl Blowing Bubbles pendant comes from its use of the backless pliqué-à-jour (“letting in daylight”) method, whose French name refers to its translucence. Enameling uses heat to fuse colorful, powdered glass to a substrate like metal, glass, or ceramic. Invented in antiquity, its many complicated variations were developed and refined over centuries by artists in Egypt, Persia, China, France, and elsewhere.

In Spain at the turn of the 20th century, Barcelona was the center of the Art Nouveau movement, which was dramatically represented by the Modernist architecture of Antoni Gaudí. This pendant—an outstanding example of Catalan adornment—is more symmetrical and less flamboyant than Art Nouveau examples created in France or Belgium during the same period.