TOTEMS

Lady Abdy (Iya Grigorievna de Gay) models Cartier 'Pylon' pendant 
Vogue, December 1928 

One can stare at Lady Abdy's Egyptian ornaments in Sotheby's upcoming sale only so long before needing some kind of elixir to ward off envy. Researching Lady Abdy led us back to a Cartier event that took place in the firm's New York salon at 712 Fifth Avenue. Pierre Cartier, whose wife was American, perched there for a few years before he acquired the firm's flagship building across the street, famously swapping a strand of pearls for the deed. On 11 November 1913, Messrs. Cartier previewed a 5-days-only exhibit of refitted gems acquired "...from the Hindoo, Persian, Arab, Russian and Chinese..."  

          

               One of the 50 pieces exhibited in New York by Cartier in November 1913, shown with the cover of the catalogue

Next door to this grand display of exoticism, at 714 Fifth, shoppers seeking the latest scents from Paris entered beneath a 3-story glass window that Francois Coty commissioned from Rene Lalique, his bottle maker, to dress up the store's facade. Lalique obliged with a vertical cascade of poppies and vines parted like an Ice Queen's drapery by one course of clear panes. No doubt Gustav Manz strolled uptown from his workshop on East 28th to view Cartier's first pieces in the "modern" geometric style. And to gander at those titanic glass garlands catching the light over Fifth Avenue. 

Glass act: Lalique windows over entrance at 714 Fifth Avenue, formerly known as the Coty Buildling (currently occupied by the Henri Bendel department store)

At the time, Manz was one of a handful of artisans in New York doing the fine platinum work Cartier's firm would become famous for. His cost books and business correspondence reference sales of his own work to Cartier, and his design inspirations—particularly Egyptian themes—were fed by the same historical sources. 

Assorted Egyptian designs by Gustav Manz; hand-carved gold bust mounted on gem from a private collection; scarab and carved gemstone pendant shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Eighth Annual Industrial Arts exhibit (Jewelers' Circular, January 30, 1924); Manz drawing, Mathews family collection

In his early twenties, Manz had visited the Valley of the Kings and made detailed sketches of artifacts in the Cairo museum; his hand-wrought mountings for F. Walter Lawrence's line of ancient glass shards and tear bottles (an early type of vinaigrette) received admiring notice at the National Arts Club exhibit of "Old, Modern, and Oriental" jewels in 1903; many of those gems went on view at the international exposition in St. Louis the next year. 

  "Sphinx and Pyramid" charm with iridescent Cyprian glass fragment in hand-wrought gold by Gustav Manz, exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis (The Craftsman, April 1903). Below that, same piece photographed in Manz's studio, circa 1901 (Winterthur Museum)

In the late 1880s, Manz landed in Paris, where Lalique was making his name. By 1913, he'd established his own New York studio and was selling his revivalist designs to Tiffany, Marcus & Company and merchants in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. As a designer/manufacturer supplying mountings for some of the city's most prestigious jewelry houses, he had privileged access to historic artifacts acquired by the Metropolitan Museum and was adapting those motifs into his pieces. In 1924, Manz would exhibit his pieces alongside Cartier's at the museum's 8th annual industrial art show. 

Top: Platinum, gold, diamond, faience and colored stone 'Pylon' brooch, circa 1923, "Property formerly from the estate of Iya, Lady Abdy" (Sotheby's catalog); bottom:

Gustav Manz design for a Pylon-style pendant, circa 1901, Mathews family collection

Cartier has long since moved from No. 712, and the former House of Coty now houses fashion emporium Henri Bendel, now de facto trustee of the window. Coty's gift to the city has given us new respect for vintage perfume decanters offered on eBay, often with desiccated amber residue inside, reminiscent of the ancient tear bottles sought by Gilded Age aesthetes. (More on the history of this fragrant landmark at Daytonian in Manhattan.) 

This week, when Lady Abdy's jewels go on the block, we'll make our own pilgrimage to Bendel's for a whiff of Coty's closest successor to Parfum Styx (introduced in 1911) and a close-up look at the windows that just barely escaped the wrecker's ball when a developer seeking to alter the street-scape was sent packing by preservationists in the 1980s. (People discard perfume atomizers and rework old jewelry mountings, but no one throws stones at Lalique.) 

 

Coty perfume bottle with Lalique-style topper 
in silver travel case, c 1920 (eBay)

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Copyright © Laura Mathews, 2014 
All Rights Reserved 

 GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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MAKING WAVES

Mermaids floating in a lily pond, showing their soon-to-be human knees in Gustav Manz's sterling handbag handle for F. Walter Lawrence, Inc. Photo at top taken in Manz's studio, circa 1903; detail of handle, above, showing clasp set with cushion cut chrysoprase.  

Gustav Manz was present, in spirit and in sterling silver, at the opening for "Gilded New York" at the Museum of the City of New York. We gulped champagne in the elevator on the way up to the Tiffany Foundation room, where Manz's repousse mermaid evening bag frame anchored one of the display cases. 

House rules forbade our toasting this milestone on horseback, a la C.K.G. Billings' equestrian supper at Sherry's, but the opportunity to ogle Worth gowns worn by the apparently lilliputian wives of those same industrialists, while standing nose to nose with a brace of Tiffany sirens holding up a tureen-sized 1889 Goelet racing cup, was ample compensation.

                

Pausing to admire the portrait of willowy, swan-necked Eleanor Iselin Kane (Mrs. Delancey Astor Kane), with decorative frame by Stanford White, we had a vision of Manz's sirens surfacing in a headline in William d'Alton Mann's Belle Epoque scandal sheet Town Topics: MAIDEN LANE MERMAIDS CRASH MUSEUM MILE!

The show, beautifully organized by curators Jeannine Falino, Donald Albrecht, and Phyllis Magidson will be up through November of next year. An added attraction for visitors is heirloom spotting on the perimeter of the museum, located at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. An actual Paulding Farnham iris brooch, not part of the exhibit but of the same era, flared its nostrils from the shoulder ahead of us at the coat-check. 

"I outbid Tiffany," its current owner replied after we complimented. We didn't doubt her. 

Images from top: Mermaid purse frame, Janet Zapata Collection. Mermaid photos Winterthur Library, Joseph Downs Collection and Magazine Antiques; Goelet cup, MCNY; portrait of Mrs. Delancey Astor Kane, Museum of the City of New York; Iris brooch by Paulding Farnham, Primavera Gallery

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Copyright © Laura Mathews 
All Rights Reserved 

 GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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GIFTS FROM THE SEA

Nautical necklace retailed by F. Walter Lawrence from Yvonne Markowitz and Elyse Karlin's Imperishable Beauty (2008) 

In honor of the crossing of the Santa Maria, Pinta, Niña and, heck, Leif Ericson, and Pocahontas too, we're posting one of our favorite Arts & Crafts era whimsies: a circa 1903 collar depicting a fleet of galleons with dogtooth pearls sails, dolphins, scallop shells and cattails. The necklace was exhibited by F. Walter Lawrence at the National Arts Club in 1903, and likely wrought by his frequent collaborator, Gustav Manz, who modeled and cast many unique jewels for Lawrence's upstairs salon at 41 Union Square.

Providence Art Club Arts & Crafts Exhibition catalog, April 1901, in which Gustav Manz's name was mistranscribed as "Gustave Marez" 
Image courtesy of NYPL

Among the pieces Manz produced for Lawrence’s case at the Providence Art Club’s inaugural Arts & Crafts exhibition in 1901 were a pair of baroque pearl scarfpins figured as a Mermaid and Neptune, for which he received credit in the show catalog as fabricator, though his training as a draughtsman-jeweler as well as drawings from his ledgers leave little doubt he also collaborated in their design. 

A jewelry rendering for a ring from Manz's archive (above) evokes the dolphins circling the galleon on the center plaque of the collar, while the granulated gold cattails framing more distant ships on the sides (detail, below left) look similar to those on a Manz lily pond brooch (detail, below right) from the same period. Some sources say ancients used the the bulrush was used as a symbol of "foolish love"; others associate cattails with "faithfulness and humility"—as well as a signal for sailors navigating shallows close to shore. Ahoy!

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Copyright © 2013 All Rights Reserved 

GUSTAV MANZ LLC

TOGETHER AGAIN

Mermaid ring, pink tourmaline, diamond, and baroque pearl 

in sea-poppy setting, circa 1900. 

Marked "F. Lawr." for F. Walter Lawrence

(Amanda Joy Rubin collection)

Some call it serendipity. We call it making a splash. After swimming apart for a century, a mermaid ring retailed by F. Walter Lawrence in the early 1900s and a matching drawing by the ring's probable maker, Gustav Manz, were reunited at the annual conference organized by the American Society for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts (ASJRA). Neither the ring's owner—who'd acquired the piece from Tadema Gallery after spotting it in the London shop's window—nor the custodian of the gouache drawing (a Manz descendant), had an inkling the "other half" would show up at the event, held at a private midtown Manhattan club last October. 

Gouache drawing of a double-mermaid ring by goldsmith-sculptor Gustav Manz, who frequently collaborated with Lawrence 

(Mathews family collection)

Closer inspection revealed that the ring purchased at Tadema was the near identical twin of another FWL-marked mermaid ring in another private collection (it appears, set with a different stone, in a Magazine Antiques article about Lawrence published in April 2004). Manz is known to have adapted his designs with minor variations for different wholesale clients, making us hopeful that a similar mermaid pair will surface. 

Lawrence and Manz collaborated on other marine-inspired pieces including a baroque pearl "Mermaid" ring exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair—described on the entry form as having been "first modeled in wax [and] cast in gold with hand chasing". The modeling on a sterling silver and chrysoprase purse frame that was recently exhibited at Forbes Galleries has also been attributed to the German-born sculptor/goldsmith who, judging from drawings and archival records, co-designed many of Lawrence's showpieces. 

Above: Works in progress photographed on top of Manz & Co business stationery bearing the firm's circa 1901 address "41-43 Maiden Lane, New York"; the lotus clasp held by one of the mermaids has not yet been set with a stone (photo Winterthur Museum)

An article Lawrence contributed to The Craftsman and a subsequent profile in The Keystone featured images of finely carved gem mountings depicting a cast of exotic, historical, and mythological figures from Manz's repertoire, including a trident-bearing mermaid and sea serpent ring set with natural pearl. 

From top: A swimming mermaid carries a trident to defend her pearl against a sea serpent rounding the opposite shoulder (FWL, The Craftsman, June 1903); a publicity still of four rings from Lawrence's studio includes views of a mermaid figure ("Amphitrite") and sea serpent ring, second from left in both rows; detail of goldwork on the mermaid-serpent ring (Sargent, The Keystone, July 1905)

The theme for this year's conference is the symbolic meaning of jewelry across the ages. October 12 is just a month away, but you may still be able to snag a seat. For details about speakers, click ASJRA 8th Annual Conference. As past participants will attest, the storytellers in the room are as arresting as the gems. 

An ASJRA member models the Lawrence-Manz mermaid ring 
during the group's Fall 2012 gathering
Photo © Gustav Manz LLC

Copyright © 2014 
All Rights Reserved 

 GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Sources cited:

• "Craftsmanship versus Intrinsic Value" by F. Walter Lawrence, The Craftsman, June 1903
• Louisiana Purchase Exposition , Department of Art records, 1896-1908
• Official Catalog of Exhibitors, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, USA, 1904
• "A Goldsmith-Sculptor: F. Walter Lawrence" by Irene Sargent, The Keystone, July 1905
• "The Jewelry and Silver of F. Walter Lawrence" by Janet Zapata, Magazine Antiques, April 2004
• "Where Credit is Due: The Life and Jewelry of Gustav Manz" by Courtney Bowers, Magazine Antiques, September-October 2010
• "International Art Jewelry, 1895-1925" catalog of Forbes Galleries exhibit by curator Elyse Zorn Karlin, October 2011
• Thanks to Winterthur library, Tadema Gallery, Cleota Reed, NYPL, and ASJRA members for their assistance with ongoing research

GIRLS WITH PEARL EARRINGS

Frau with a pearl earring: Sophie Bachem, 
diamond broker, circa 1890
Photo private collection

Gustav's mother-in-law and longtime business partner, Sophie Bachem (née Müller), emigrated from Germany in October 1892 with four of her five children (her eldest son arrived the following summer after completing his schooling). Sophie's husband, Carl, was variously a manufacturing jeweler, diamond broker and traveling merchant. Before emigrating he'd been associated with Lorenz Bissinger, a Pforzheim fabricator, and patented several designs for jewelry findings. He arrived ahead of his family by a few months and opened a diamond ring factory on Mulberry Street in Newark. 

Sophie's husband Carl (Chas.) Bachem 

with one of his jewelry patents,

Photo private collection

When Sophie arrived, the family moved into a block of row houses in Hamilton Heights, at the northern end of Manhattan. By the late 1890s, Carl, who'd anglicized his name to Charles, was beset with ill health and business difficulties. Sensing her spouse might not recover from his ailment (he ultimately sought treatment in Germany, and died there around 1904), Sophie arranged a hasty marriage between her middle daughter, Martha Magdalena and Gustav Manz, a designing jeweler and sculptor with a studio near Union Square. Shortly before their nuptials Manz was made junior partner at Chas. Bachem & Co at 41-43 Maiden Lane. In 1901, with Carl's retirement and Sophie's backing, the firm was renamed Manz & Co. 

             Gustav Manz and bride, Martha Bachem, circa 1899 
                               Photo private collection

The 34-year-old goldsmith and his 17-year-old bride were a mismatch from the get-go, though their union did produce two daughters (the younger entered the business as a gem-broker and traveling saleswoman). By 1903, they'd built a roomy house in Leonia, an old farming community on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River that had morphed into an artists' enclave. But after a few years—during which Gustav was admitted to the National Arts Club while Martha joined the circle of her socialist-leaning Hungarian violin teacher—the couple were estranged and eventually divorced. (Both would re-marry, more harmoniously.)

Sophie's son-in-law Gustav Manz purchased a house in Leonia, NJ the early 1900s. The shingle-style cottage was designed by local architect Fred West, who'd trained at McKim, Mead & White and was an early member of the Leonia artist colony
Photo private collection 

  Leonia train station, circa 1918 
Photo courtesy Leonia Historical Society

Gustav eventually moved back to Manhattan while Martha, whose formal schooling ended in tenth grade, kept the house on Christie Street. While newly separated she'd worked briefly as a department store clerk and sold encyclopedias door to door; as a young mother she earned money as a local correspondent for The Bergen Record. In 1922, buoyed by the Supreme Court upholding of the Nineteenth Amendment—and now married to her violin instructor, with whom she'd had two more children—Martha found investors to help launch Leonia Life, one of the first weekly newspapers in the country published and edited by a woman.

Through all this domestic upheaval, Sophie Bachem maintained her stake in Manz & Co., joining her son-in-law when he and Walter P. McTeigue, another manufacturing jeweler, formed McTeigue, Manz & Co., situating their business in the new Mercantile Building at 31-33 West 31st Street. Sophie's younger son, Hans, served as salesman. When the partners set up independent concerns (Manz's studio specialized in carved mountings for precious and semi-precious stones; McTeigue's factory produced primarily platinum jewelry), Sophie maintained an office in the heart of the Diamond District, buying and selling stones. She retired shortly after Hans' death in October 1912, having been active in the jewelry trade for nearly four decades, and remained the family matriarch for another three, until her death in December 1939.  

Letterhead for McTeigue, Manz & Co., 

Makers of Fine Diamond and Carved Jewelry, circa 1908
Letter, private collection 

In 1914, Sophie acquired property in the coastal Rhode Island town where daughter Martha and her husband, Arpad Rado, were members of a summer music colony. (Sophie also purchased lots in the new Sunny Heights development in Mill Valley, where her eldest son, Carl, had found work as a timber inspector for a lumber company and later for department of the interior and Stephen Mather, head of the fledgling National Park service). Martha's two sisters followed suit. Descendants still remember the large house Sophie built for herself, situated on higher ground than the rest and nicknamed "Up-Home"—evidently to remind young visitors who was The Boss. 

 Sophie's pearl earring has an eagle on it, as does
the matching brooch on her lace-lined collar
Photo private collection

"Copyright by G. Manz" 
Illustration from Manz sales brochure, circa 1910
Private Collection

"Copyright by G. Manz" 
Illustration from Manz sales brochure, circa 1910
Private Collection

Scrapbook images Gustav Manz LLC. All rights reserved. Thanks to the Boyd, Heyder, and Eastman families for sharing artifacts and family memories. And the architectural blog Daytonian in Manhattan which we often turn to for cool info about the business and manufacturing districts where Manz and other jewelers plied their trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Copyright (c) 2013

GUSTAV MANZ LLC

NAMING THE ELEPHANTS

Design for an elephant pendant, Gustav Manz 

Pencil and gouache, circa 1900

On Wednesday evening we walked our Manz elephant bracelets—Gunda and Luna—over to the Explorer's Club for a lecture given by Dr. Joyce Poole, elephant behaviorist and advocate. Her topic was "the power of the crowd" (human and animal) to problem-solve in the ecosystem where she's hung out for four decades. Funds raised at the reception, hosted by Tusk USA, were earmarked for ElephantPartners, an initiative Poole and her colleagues started in 2011 that trains citizens, tourists, and photographers in the monitoring and protection of herds in the Maasai Mara national reserve. 

In her slide show, Poole shared what can be learned "through the eyes and ears of many", i.e. by placing cameras and phone apps in the hands of people from the community, who use them to document the movements of individual animals, entering their unique ear markings and other identifying features into a database, a virtual Who's Who of Mara elephants. An elephant naming program fosters stewardship and helps fund local scholarships and field costs. 

Sadly, most elephant populations on the African continent are more vulnerable than herds on the reserve, and even the Mara elephants are susceptible to brazen slaughter by local poachers looking for tusks to export. On the day Poole spoke in New York City, a Washington Post blog posted a map of the global ivory trade, noting that an estimated 17,000 African elephants had been killed for their tusks in 2011. Soon Poole will travel to China to present her research. If a new generation in Asia can harness social media to reach consumers, and show them the vital connection between their lives and the lives of these animals, Africa's herds may have a chance. 

As Poole commented in a recent blog, "we are told people [there] think that elephants shed their tusks, like antlers. The gruesome message that every tusk costs a life has to reach these buyers."  

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Joyce Poole tracking herds in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park where civil war and poaching reduced the elephant population from 2,000 in the late 1970s to just over 100 in the early 1990s. The park is now home to 300 elephants, including many adults orphaned and traumatized during the conflict 

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Copyright © Laura Mathews, 2014 
All Rights Reserved 

 GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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