Monday, September 24, 2012

THE FOURTH DIMENSION

Remember the tempest in 2009 when actress/model Heidi Klum cancelled her signature jewelry line, which included some clover-inspired designs? Lawyers for Van Cleef & Arpels apparently reminded Klum that "Van Cleef owns the clover" (as The New York Daily News reported), and she and her financiers backed off. Klum has since launched a "wildlife" collection on one of the shopping networks; happily for Klum and her design team, no one has yet suggested that VC&A "owns the wildlife"... 


Circa 1975 Van Cleef & Arpels engagement ring 
(image via Erstwhile Jewelry)


It's understandable that a luxury retailer like Van Cleef would challenge a TV personality stamping her name on fashion jewelry resembling one of its most popular motifs. But what about one of Van Cleef's own in-house designers? The question arose last week when the Court of Appeals in Paris ruled that contributions by individual members of a fashion house's creative team must be regarded as part of a company's "collective" archive. 

The back story: Thierry Berthelot, a former VC&A designer, had argued that his output for the 15 years he was employed at the firm was carried out entirely on his own initiative without supervision and, therefore, he had ownership rights to the designs he'd produced. The French court not only ruled against Berthelot (bringing to mind Diana Vreeland's famous commandment about the collaborative process: "Never say 'I! Always say 'we'!"), it scolded him for holding onto design drawings—more than 500, according to news sources—during the 7-year-dispute in order to "enforce the intellectual property rights he claimed"; he was then ordered to pay his former employer 10,000 euros in damages for this "malicious behavior." 

Circa 2003 Frivole earclips in 18kt white gold with pavĂ©-set diamonds 
and larger round brilliant cut diamond centers, 
signed Van Cleef & Arpels 
Image via betteridge.com 


Berthelot, who says he was the designer of VC&Arpels 2003 Frivole collection among others, vows to seek satisfaction in a higher court, though French law apparently favors those who "initiate" and supervise creative work over those who execute it. Sounds like someone may need more than a four-leaf clover to win this case.



An unsigned circa 1910 gold and diamond "Symbolist" Clover Ring 
with one four-leaf sprig hidden amongst the clovers


As William Butler Yeats wrote in his poem "Among Schoolchildren," How can one know the dancer from the dance?  Or, in the realm of adornment, the fabricator from the jewel? Clearly, the presence of a retailer's signature or maker's mark does not tell the full story...



Gustav Manz's renderings of his bronzes and numbered 
jewelry designs were featured in a self-published brochure

While no registered maker's mark has yet been found for Manz & Co, Gustav Manz did sign at least some of his work. On bronzes as well as his small silver one can detect "Manz" in block letter print, as shown, below, in a detail from a circa 1910 brochure he self-published, with 12 plates illustrating his favorite motifs. An independent designer-fabricator, Manz apparently relied on word-of-mouth, and longstanding relationships (coupled with discretion), to generate commissions from boutique jewelers and retail powerhouses like Theodore B. Starr, Dreicer, F. Walter Lawrence, Kirkpatrick, Gillot, Tiffany & Company, J.E. Caldwell, Marcus, Shreve Crump & Low, Raymond Yard, and Black, Starr, Frost-Gorham (a common practice that continues today, as Courtney Bowers points out in her profile of Manz for Magazine Antiques)


Though confident enough to list his profession as "artist" in early city directories, and recognized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1924 for the exceptional design and workmanship of his production pieces, Manz was less focused on developing brand awareness than providing a steady income for himself and his employees. The firm survived the tumultuous years of the Great Depression and two world wars until Manz's retirement in 1944, and continued for another decade under the ownership of George Hartjen, his head engraver and chaser. 

At the Thirteenth Annual Convention on Industrial Art in Washington, D.C. on May 16, 1922, Clara R. Mason, of the Philadelphia Art Alliance, bemoaned the post-industrial practice of paying subcontractors and in-house artists to relinquish ownership of their creative output. Here's the text of Mason's paper, reprinted in the October 1922 issue of The Magazine of Art (via google books).





A circa 1900 gold, enamel and pearls clover brooch, marked for Bippart, Griscom & Osborn. According to the Newark Board of Trade's 1912 directory, the firm employed over 100 workers, 
among them "the highest class of skilled workmen engaged in this line of manufacturing."
Image via Two Nerdy History Girls Pinterest board 


From October 1910 through the 1920s, a young woman in Portland OR collected over one thousand four-leaf clovers and pressed them in whimsical patterns between pages of ledger albums. Her name was Alda Carlson, and she lived until the age of 93 according to provenance supplied by the original eBay seller (whether she signed her creations or worked unassisted remains to be determined); more on Alda's creative output here and here
(image via anonymousworks.com)

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Copyright © Laura Mathews, 2014 

All Rights Reserved 
 GUSTAV MANZ LLC
__________________________________________

Monday, September 17, 2012

BIRDS OF A FEATHER


                                   
Design for a silver or white gold peacock ornament, c. 1900
Gustav Manz design book (Mathews family collection). Manz's costbooks include a production sketch of a similar pendant fabricated for New York decorator and jeweler Edith Douglas Deane
Design (c) Gustav Manz LLC

During the years preceding World War I, beauty was the thing with feathers—especially in iridescent peacock shades (except in millinery, where ostrich plumes ruled, and fetched nearly as much as diamonds by weight until the global trade crashed in 1914). In 1904 Charles Freer had purchased the Peacock Dining Room his friend James McNeill Whistler had designed for a client, then had the chamber and its appointments dismantled and shipped home to Detroit to house his art pottery collection. In 1911 D.H. Lawrence borrowed the title for his first novel, The White Peacock, from the rare pale Indian Blue bird. 


Manz's production sketch for a carved diamond set platinum peacock pendant with colored stones. Made for Tiffany & Company 1910 -1915
Gustav Manz archive, Winterthur Museum Library

In the jewelry trade, Gustav Manz was sculpting peacock feathers in gold, platinum, and silver, embellishing the vanes with diamonds or colored stones or both. He carved peacocks into pendants and rings for Tiffany & Company as well as for private customers. F. Walter Lawrence's display for a jewelry show at the National Arts Club in 1903 featured a large case of articles mostly executed by Manz including: “... a fine conventionalized peacock for a breast ornament, the eyes in the separate feathers formed of colored jewels...” (De Kay, "An Exhibit of Jewelry," NYT, November 20, 1903; also featured in F. Walter Lawrence, "Symbolism in Jewelry," Town & Country, December 12, 1903). When Lawrence sent three dozen pieces to the St. Louis World's Fair the following spring, Manz received credit in the official catalog as the goldsmith responsible for the work—a rare acknowledgment of the craftsman on whose skills the firm's reputation depended. 


Peacock ornament, circa 1903, created by Gustav Manz for F. Walter Lawrence, a salon jeweler formerly associated with Marcus & Company, The pendant shown above and below appeared in an article about jewels featured in Lawrence's salon, the majority of which were produced by Manz. Image from Irene Sargent's "A Goldsmith-Sculptor" :The Keystone July 1905



In May 1915, Edith Douglas Deane, a prominent New York interior decorator and designer of "particularly artistic jewelry" (Who's Who of America, 1914) ordered or picked up a silver peacock pendant from Manz's workshop at 37 East 28th Street. A production sketch of the pendant pasted in Manz's costbook illustrates a peacock with tail feathers partially encircling a blue-green oval Amazonite cabochon. 


Peacock fever spreads to readers of 
Good Housekeeping (February 1902)

A graduate of New York School of Applied Design for Women (founded by Ellen Dunlap Hopkins), Deane was the daughter of lawyer and realtor John Hall Deane, who served as a trustee at Vassar (Edith's alma mater) as well as the University of Rochester (his alma mater), and was a major benefactor to Calvary Baptist Church—where he once dropped $100,000 into the collection plate (no doubt following Andrew Carnegie's dictum that "It is a crime to die rich"). At her Madison Avenue showroom Edith traded precious and semi-precious stones as well as decorating hints, and was the source for turquoise scarabs set into a collar Manz created for another well-heeled client, Elinor Evans Klapp, who also designed jewelry as well as interiors.

By the early 1920s, Deane was associated with the Manhattan decorating firm of J.C. Demarest & Co., contributing occasional pieces to The Modern Priscilla and Today's Housewife and lecturing at Women's Clubs on topics such as "Historic Influences on Modern Furniture in the American House" and "The Use and Abuse of Period Rooms and Furniture"...perhaps wearing the feathery pendant carved by her go-to jeweler.


Deane served as contributing editor for Today's Housewife (cover illustration by Ruth Eastman Rodgers); a 1925 advertisement in The New Yorker promoted Deane's lecture series (probably placed by the James B. Pond bureau, which booked her speaking engagements) 


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Text and scrapbook images copyright © 2016
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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

IN THE ARCHIVES: GUSTAV MANZ'S BRONZE AGE




Bronze Egyptian revival desk suite by Gustav Manz, circa 1921 (Private collection). Image Gustav Manz LLC

Established at the turn of the 19th century by Riccardo Bertelli, Roman Bronze Works was the first bronze foundry in the United States to devote its business to the lost-wax casting method—a process that offers a more exact replica of the artist's original work than any other. From its Brooklyn location and subsequent factory in Corona, Queens the foundry cast sculpture and decorative hardware (floor registers and door jambs, etc.) for virtually all of the architects, sculptors, and other metal artists associated with the American Renaissance, including artist-jeweler Gustav Manz (1865-1946).

In the late 1980s, Roman Bronze closed and its sculpture inventory was auctioned. The business archives—77 linear feet of them—were acquired in 1990 by the Amon Carter Museum in Forth Worth. At this time, records are not yet digitized, but an index of names culled from ledgers, account books, and client/customer index cards is searchable online. And the library staff welcome research queries (though serious data diving still requires an on-site visit). The scope of Manz's dealings with Roman Bronze may never be known—a good chunk of the foundry's records were destroyed when one of its Brooklyn buildings (275-289 Green Street) caught fire in 1921; additional records were lost during a later move to Queens. 




Bronze bulldog plaque signed by Manz, possibly cast at Roman Bronze Works, circa 1912
 (Private collection) 

In the early 1900s, when he was actively pursuing a career as a sculptor, Manz may have retained RBW to cast some of the statuary he would later exhibit at the National Arts Club. He would have been familiar with the foundry's scaled-down replicas of neoclassical sculpture and animal figures by Barye, and western vignettes by Remington; as a designer-manufacturer he may have ordered castings of artistic metalware he produced as a sideline to his jewelry.




Future delving in the archives may provide answers. 

But what a snapshot of an era just one page from a 1905 ledger provides! A record for Manz—who was by then residing in the Leonia artists' colony in northern New Jersey—abuts one for B.E. Dahlgren, chief model-maker (originally trained as a dentist) for the American Museum of Natural History, and later curator at the Field Museum in Chicago; as well as hardware vendor Henry Frank Jr.—whose mail-order catalogue stocked iron, brass and steel nuts and bolts, tools and other supplies for maritime, factory, railroad, plantation, and general contracting. These days, an art gallery occupies street level at 23 Warren Street, the cast-iron-fronted building where Frank conducted his hardware business—a reuse some of the neoclassical architects in RB's ledgers might have appreciated.


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Copyright © 2014 

All Rights Reserved 
 GUSTAV MANZ LLC
__________________________________________

Ledger image courtesy of Amon Carter Museum Library in Forth Worth