Thursday, March 22, 2012

THAT DARN CAT! Classic felines by Gustav Manz

     

 

Pencil ring design from Gustav Manz jewelry ledger; purchased by Pickslay & Company, circa 1911
Gustav Manz archive, Wintherthur Library 

Before Cartier's Jeanne Toussaint thought of placing a friendly spotted panthère on cabochon emeralds—or having one jump through hoops, as seen in the firm's recent promo video—quite a few jungle cats loped through glittering cases on New York's Fifth Avenue, and Boston's Washington Street, and Jewelers Row in Chicago. A good number of them, such as the panther confronting a snake in the drawing above, were designed and executed in gold or sterling silver by the early 20th century animalier and jewelry maker Gustav Manz. 




Panthere clip-brooch designed circa 1948 by Cartier's Jeanne Toussaint (Duchess of Windsor collection)
Image copyright Cartier

Okay, we'll admit, L'Odyssée de Cartier IS pretty great marketing candy. It reminds us of the sleepy princess in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinder Box"—carried away on the back of a sleek cat rather than a dish-eyed dog... We were equally awestruck when one of Gustav Manz's rare carved panther rings surfaced at Skinner's recent fine jewelry sale this month. 



A Star Sapphire and 14K Gold Panther and Snake ring attributed to Gustav Manz, offered at Skinner's Fine Jewelry Sale, June 14, 2011

Lot 238 carried us back to April 1904, when Manz's hand-wrought gold and sapphire panther ring appeared at the Fine Arts pavilion at the St. Louis world's fair, along with dozens of other pieces he executed for jeweler F. Walter Lawrence's exhibit case. An unnamed fairgoer purchased the ring according to archived correspondence between Lawrence and Halsey C. Ives, Chief of the Department of Art at the expo. 



The gold ring depicting a tiger swiping at a snake in the grass shown above was included in Manz's display at the 8th Exhibit of Industrial Arts held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and appeared on the opening page of The Jewelers' Circular coverage of the show in January 1924. The typesetter inadvertently printed it upside down; nonetheless it was one of his bestselling designs.



Above: Manz sketch for a ring with cabochon sapphire, sold to Moore & Mason, 1925; below, Manz sales record for a panther and snake ring purchased  by Tiffany & Co in 1913; bottom, drawing of a panther stickpin set with a cabochon gem from Manz's design scrapbook 
Image copyright Gustav Manz LLC





Manz's business ledgers from 1910-1925 show multiple variations of jungle cats poised to pounce, stalking snakes and other characteristic poses—on men's rings and sleeve-links and scarf-pins, with cabochon or calibre stones. Buyers included Tiffany & Company, Shreve, Crump & Low, Pickslay & Co, and other bespoke jewelry merchants. Manz's artful evocation of nature tooth and claw evidently spoke to gentlemen and sportsmen of the Gilded Age. You could say they, like Andersen's and Cartier's princess, were carried away.

Check out other historic Gustav Manz jewelry designs on this blog. Below: a transporting moment from Kay Nielsen's circa 1930 illustrations for Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinder Box"


Extracts from Gustav Manz ledgers courtesy of
Winterthur Museum; except as noted, other images and text 
Copyright © 2012 | Gustav Manz LLC 
All Rights Reserved 
Text updated 9/15/2015

Friday, March 16, 2012

LITTLE BIT OF BAD Louis C. Tiffany, peacock suppers and "a preacher's daughter who never orders water..."




Once upon a time, peacocks were all the rage (hats, jewelry, sheet music, men). We fancy Gustav Manz's platinum peacock pendant, below, adorning one of the young lovelies tasked with entertaining the 150 'Men of Genius' during the famous peacock feast hosted by Louis Comfort Tiffany at his Laurelton Hall estate on May 15, 1914. At the feast, diners were greeted by a young woman dressed as Juno, carrying a live bird. 

Platinum Peacock Pendant set with 45 precious stones
 Gustav Manz for Tiffany & Co
Image (c) Gustav Manz LLC



        Peacock Headdress (1913), a gift of Julia Tiffany Weld
 Museum of the City of New York



Gustav Manz design drawing for a peacock pendant 
1890s-1900s 
Private Collection

The peahen was in vogue, as ornament and as repast, all through the Edwardian Age. A few months before Tiffany's bash, Lady Augusta Gregory (co-founder of the Abbey Theater in Dublin) had organized a more intimate peacock roast in honor Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (the bird was culled from Blunt's personal flock). In attendance were the young Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, and several other poets, who presented Blunt with manuscripts of their latest verses ensconced in a marble coffer bearing the figure of a reclining nude woman by modernist sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. 

Really, these poets knew how to orchestrate a memorable party (and made certain the press wrote up the occasion for posterity). 

But we digress from today's special entertainment: soprano Gladys Rice on an original Edison disc recording belting out a priceless little tune composed in 1916 by two Tin Pan Alley men of genius Fred Fischer and Grant Clarke. Click on "There's A Little Bit of Bad in Every Good Little Girl"


You can follow the words here:






               
Sheet Music courtesy Johns Hopkins University Digital Library (jscholarship.library.jhu.edu)



Gladys Rice in an undated photo

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Copyright © Laura Mathews, 2014 

All Rights Reserved 
 GUSTAV MANZ LLC
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

RAGTIME: A JEWELER'S TIN PAN ALLEY CAT


"Peg O'My Heart" featured in The Ziegfeld Follies 
 (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)

Penciled into Gustav's stockbook is a name matching that of the originator of such toe-tapping tunes as "Chicago, That Toddlin' Town..." (1922), torchy songs like "I'd Rather Be Blue" and "My Man" (1928, with Billy Rose), and kitsch like "Peg O'My Heart" (1913)—which probably rivaled Lawrence Welk in its symphonic Aeolian player organ song-roll form. 

Fred Fischer, the composer of these and other songbook standards, was born in 1875 to American parents based in Cologne, Germany. His father, Max Fischer, was a traveling glove salesman, while his mother, Theodora von Breitenbach, was a writer and journalist involved with the Baron Von Hirsch Institute. Fred ran away from home at 13 and joined the Prussian Navy, served in the French Foreign legion, and worked as a traveling salesman in India and the U.S., before emigrating to America in the early 1900s. He started his songwriting career while working for a Chicago music publisher, went on to became a Tin Pan Alley fixture, then—when radio cut into demand for sheet music—got his second wind in Hollywood writing for silent films and Ziegfeld-esque musical reviews (one of them, "A Tableau of Jewels," featured an exotic dancer in pasties emerging from her art-deco shell...) before moving back to New York. 


Fred Fischer aspired to write serious music but found greater success composing music for Vaudeville stars such as Blossom Seeley known as the Queen of Syncopation

On the 30th of December 1915, Fischer was on the cusp of 40; his wife had just given birth to their first child, Doris. Professionally he'd had a strong year, with a new hit entitled "Siam." Prone to bouts of melancholy, Fischer (who would eventually drop the "c" in his name, probably to make it seem less Germanic) may have needed cheering up before New Year's Eve revels and stopped by Gustav Manz's workshop (then located a few blocks east of Tin Pan Alley, at 37 E 28th Street) where he purchased one of Manz's signature rings—a gold panther crouched over a topaz in a leafy setting. 




Gustav Manz ledger records a Panther and Topaz ring 
sold to Fred Fischer (Winterthur Museum archive);
below, Manz's model for a panther and snake ring, circa 1910-20 (private collection; photo by Ellen Martin for Gustav Manz LLC


Following her dad's path, Doris Fischer grew up to become a popular radio singer-songwriter—her first hit was "Tutti Frutti"; "You Always Hurt the One You Love" became a million-seller for the crooning Mills brothers. After marrying she retired from showbiz and took up a second career as an interior designer, helping First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy locate period pieces for her White House makeover. Doris's brothers, Dan and Marvin, who took over their father's music publishing business, wrote such jazzy standards as "Good Morning Heartache" (Dan), and "When Sunny Gets Blue" (Marvin).



According to the New York Times, Fred Fischer wrote or published a thousand songs. Paramount produced a musical "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" based on his life story (though the title song was written by Irving Berlin)

As for Fred, Billboard's March 1949 Honor Roll of Popular Songwriters noted that he never lost his thick German accent, was a rabid baseball fan and rooter of the Yankees, and had a standing offer of $50 for anyone who could make him laugh. Incredibly prolific, he even wrote his own swan song (plagued by ill health, he committed suicide in January 1942). The chorus ran: "In my ranch 'way up in heaven, with the old gang around/Just the promised land for an old cowhand in my happy huntin' ground..." (More details on this lyrical American family here and here.)

Doris Fisher (photo: San Francisco Jazz Organization

recorded by Billy Murray in Camden, NJ on September 5, 1916
http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/5140/

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All Rights Reserved 
 GUSTAV MANZ LLC


Postscript March 2021

Further research turned up a possible alternative identity for the circa 1915 purchaser of Manz's panther and topaz ring: A diamond setter named Fred Fischer worked for the Newark firm of Sloan & Co. and would likely have been familiar with Manz's work for Tiffany & Co and other jewelry retailers of that era. 

—The Editors


Monday, March 12, 2012

PEEPING THROUGH PIN HOLES: GUSTAV MANZ'S FLAPPER JEWELRY


Gustav Manz's jewelry archives at Winterthur record many of the pieces he produced for Tiffany & Company from the Edwardian period through the Jazz Age. Shown here is a jade, enamel and seed pearl bar pin fabricated in spring 1923—about two years before Fitzgerald finished his Great American Novel. Sufficiently vintage, we'd say, for a stroll down the red carpet. (If you have information on where this "broche" might be found, please write to us!)  

Raising the bar: jade and enamel brooch 
Gustav Manz for Tiffany & Co, circa 1923
Photo (c) Gustav Manz LLC 

The Tiffany & Co jewelry archives recently proved an invaluable resource "in looking back at this Golden Era of affluence..." according to costume designer Catherine Martin, who is collaborating with husband/filmmaker Baz Luhrmann on a remake of The Great Gatsby. Tiffany & Co has been tasked with recreating period bling for the film's star-studded cast led by Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan), Leonardo DiCaprio (Gatsby), and Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway). 




Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan) having what appears to be a bad wig day on the set of The Great Gatsby; but love her pearl and diamond ear-vices 
Photo via CelebBuzz 


While jewelry hardly gets mentioned in Fitzgerald's novel ("It's the funniest thing, old sport"), one of the saddest, most memorable scenes in the book occurs when Daisy smoothes her hair with a brush from Gatsby's "toilet set of pure dull gold..."



An Edwardian lady's gold toilet set
(image courtesy of Christie's) 

Women of the pre-World War One decade began to shift away from the oversize collars favored by stylish turn-of-the-century ladies: "It may be surprising to hear that Dutch collar pins have gone," observed The New York Times' fashion correspondent.  It is only the name, however, that has passed. Pierrot pins have taken their place. The fan-shaped Pierrot pin has the advantage of following the lines of the frock where it meets the throat. Bar pins are in the ascendancy."



This silk crepe dress from the 20s, advertised on Etsy (@ Veronica in Canada), has small holes at the neckline and on the front left side—brooch stigmata


By the 1920s, fussy collars were totally out and dress brooches or clips became popular, sometimes offered as door prizes or, if a hostess was particularly generous, as party favorsPin stems in any era inevitably do damage to garments, so it probably took a Daisy Buchanan mentality to wear them on diaphanous flapper dresses and not worry about rending the fabric ("They were careless people, Tom and Daisy...")... 



On the red carpet at the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony, Michelle Williams cinched the Oscar for Best Accessory with a diminutive diamond bow pin 


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Copyright © Laura Mathews, 2014 

All Rights Reserved 
 GUSTAV MANZ LLC
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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

GUSTAV'S NEXT GIG: Stan Hwyet Museum

Stan Hywet Hall, Akron, Ohio
Paid a visit to site of Gustav's next gig this weekend. No, not Yale's Harkness Tower—though this venue in Akron, OH was built just a year or two before the old quad, in 1912-1915. Stone castings of heraldic lionesses and carved motto 'Non Nobis Solum' (Not for Us Alone) were just the amuse bouche of our private tour through Stan Hywet, former home of the Seiberling family (founders of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.). The house takes its name from the abandoned quarry on the property, which landscape architect Warren Manning flooded to create picturesque lagoons. The music room—where "Finer Things: Jewelry & Accessories from the 1880s-1930s" will soon open to the public—was outfitted with an Aeolian player organ, built for an age when horse drawn buggies outnumbered automobiles. Walking through folded-linen wood paneled hallways and bedrooms with lead pane windows and inglenooks, it was easy to forget that this was the spot where rubber really hit the road (with apologies to Firestone—also founded and originally based in Akron). 
To hear an Aeolian played, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7gjby5_7Us
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Copyright © Laura Mathews, 2014 

All Rights Reserved 
 GUSTAV MANZ LLC
__________________________________________

Thursday, March 1, 2012

RAINDROPS KEPT FALLING ON THEIR HEADS: GUTSY WOMEN OF THE GILDED AGE


Gustav Manz and Martha Bachem, circa 1899 
Family collection

The bride was not yet eighteen, her husband approaching thirty-five. The couple's wedding portrait, taken at J.B. DeYoung's photography studio in fall 1899, is revealing. Gustav Manz, bespectacled and short of stature, is slouched back into an ornate chair, wearing what appears to be a sapphire and diamond signet on his right pinkie; Martha Bachem, dressed in a dark shirtwaist with ruffled collar, has one hand on his forearm while the other holds the chair, as if bracing herself for gusts ahead. 

Like his wife's family—diamond ring manufacturers from Pforzheim—Gustav had arrived at Ellis Island in the early 1890s, after training under master goldsmiths in Baden, Paris, and London, plus a year of vagabonding in South Africa's diamond fields. Setting up his bench in Union Square, the young jeweler divided his business between crafting unique gems for retail clients and modeling mountings for wholesalers such as his future in-laws, Carl and Sophie Bachem, who hired him to manage their factory when Carl's health deteriorated. To seal the deal, Sophie arranged the betrothal of her second youngest daughter to their new junior partner. Reconstituted as Manz & Co, the firm became highly respected for its beautifully modeled and meticulously executed work. But the marriage foundered. 


Artist Colony: Postcard advertising Leonia N.J.—"New York's Ideal Suburb"—where Gustav and Martha moved in the early 1900s 
Bergen County Historical Society


By the early 1900s, the couple had two young daughters and resided in a large craftsman-style house in Leonia, N.J., an artists enclave on the western side of the Hudson River facing upper Manhattan. Manz & Co. had also moved: from Maiden Lane to 31 West 31st Street, joining forces with Walter P. McTeigue, a diamond specialist, under the name McTeigue, Manz & Co, Makers of Fine Diamond and Carved Jewelry

While her husband, mother and the younger of her two brothers focused on the business, Martha was drawn in by the socialist clique that included her children's charming red-haired violin teacher, Arpad Rado—who was mutually charmed by Martha—along with his artist sister Ilona (who taught painting at the Art Students League), and brother-in-law Frederick West (a former associate at McKim, Mead & White). Nonplussed by his young wife's radical awakening, her refusal to give up her paramour or to relinquish custody of her children, Gustav moved out. And though he stayed on cordial terms with his mother-in-law and business partner, by the time the dust of divorce settled he'd made a clean split to establish his own house: Gustav Manz, Maker of Fine Jewelry, 37 East 28th Street. He would eventually remarry (a German-born divorcee with a grown son), while remaining close to his daughters, using his connections to help the elder gain admission to nursing school and enlisting the younger as his sales representative.


Manz created most of the jewelry for F. Walter Lawrence's exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Rings from Lawrence's studio featured in July 1905 issue of The Keystone match items listed in the official exhibitor's catalog for the expo

For her part, Martha and Arpad married in spring 1911, and had two children. Martha, who'd sold encyclopedias during her separation, supplemented the family income as a local correspondent for The Bergen Record. In early 1922, with backing from the town's progressive set she launched Leonia Life, becoming one of the first women in the country to publish and edit a weekly newspaper. She added other localities, and wrote most of the editorials—on everything from presidential candidates to local pet ordinances, family planning (she was down with Margaret Sanger) and the impact of traffic from a new suspension bridge over the Hudson River on a bucolic town that had for so long attracted artists seeking cheap studio space in old barns, professors from Columbia, theater folk, and assorted freethinkers. She managed the company for a dozen years (until the Great Depression, when she sold it). 



Martha Bachem in driver's seat of her circa 1910 flivver 
Family collection 

Shortly after Martha and Gustav posed at DeYoung's for their nuptials, another couple passed through the studio for a cabinet portrait en route to Argentina. A while later, Tiffany & Co learned that Etta Place and Harry Longabaugh—aka the Sundance Kid—might have cruised its aisles on one of their New York visits, and released a receipt for a timepiece similar to the one pinned to Etta's blouse in DeYoung's portrait. Purchased for $40.01 by James Ryan (an alias of Robert LeRoy Parker—aka Butch Cassidy), the sale was excellent PR for the retailer, suggesting a shopping environment secure enough to dissuade a seasoned bank robber from staging a heist, yet tempting enough to induce him to pull out his wallet.  


Hole in the wall outlaw colony. Photo alleged to be of (right to left) Butch Cassidy, Etta Place, and the Sundance Kid in front of their ranch cabin at Cholila, Argentina, 1901-1905 
Image True West

Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) with Etta Place at J.B. DeYoung photo studio in February 1901, shortly before sailing to South America with Butch Cassidy
Image Random House, Inc.


Much about Etta's life, including her real name, profession, how and when she died—or what became of her pretty watch—remains a mystery. The Pinkerton Detective Agency noted that she sometimes went by "Ethel." Others speculated "Etta Place" was a pseudonym for Ann Bessett, a Utah rancher and cattle rustler thought to have been romantically involved with the Wild Bunch's ringleader. On a few occasions, Etta and Harry left Butch at the gang's South American hideout and returned to the States, even taking in the 1904 World's Fair at St. Louis—where two dozen of Gustav Manz's hand-wrought pieces were displayed at the Palace of Arts. 

Etta and Martha: Outlaw and "bolter" whose trajectories converged briefly at a society photographer's studio. And never let a drop of rain deter them.  



Morning glory watch pin by Gustav Manz, circa 1900 
Family collection



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