This past week we spent a couple of hours immersed in "Jewelry for America," a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will run through April 5, 2020. Organized by American Wing curator Beth Wees, the show draws from the Met's permanent collection (including items newly acquired or rarely on display) to peer into the jewel boxes of well-heeled Americans across three centuries.
"A large faceted citrine surrounded by floral sprays, twisting grape vines of chased gold, and grape clusters of seed pearls. The piece is stamped "14KT" and has an applied plaque marked "BELL," representing the Denver gem dealer George Bell. The design of the brooch, however, has been attributed to Gustav Manz."
—The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Naturally, we were excited to see a circa 1905 brooch that the Met's curators attribute to Gustav Manz (as designer and maker), which is marked for Manz's longtime client, New York gem dealer and jewelry manufacturer George Bell (1852-1944). According to Manz's costbooks (archived at Winterthur Museum), Bell purchased hundreds of mountings for resale or, possibly, recasting.
Circa 1905 trade brochure designed for The George Bell Co. (Lapidaries and Jewelry Mfrs.)
Collection of George Bell descendant
Bell—shortened from Uibel—entered the trade in 1877, and first exhibited wares such as sea-bean fobs and other gentlemen's accessories set with alligator teeth at the Paris Exposition of 1889, under the label Uibel & Barber with then-partner Robert Berry Barber. A widower with two young children (after his first wife and a young son succumbed to pneumonia), Bell had married Barber's niece, Mary Porter, with whom he had seven more children.
Pharaoh ring with moonstone marked "Bell"
N. Green & Sons
In the 1890s, at the height of the turquoise and silver mining boom, the family moved out to Colorado where Bell opened a factory that cut stone from local mines. He commissioned pamphlets advertising rings and brooches set with matrix turquoise, peridot, and other "native stones" which he brought to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 (where Manz's Greco-Roman and Egyptian revival mountings for F. Walter Lawrence were also on display) and the Louis & Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon, the following year.
Page from Bell's circa 1910 "Scarabaeus" brochure
illustrating Egyptian revival rings very similar to those designed by Gustav Manz for other retailers
Collection of George Bell descendant
Returning to Manhattan in the early 1900s, Bell briefly paired up with other partners before opening the George Bell Jewelry Manufacturing Company at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, opposite the recently built Main Branch of the New York Public Library. There he was joined by his two eldest sons, Thomas and James, both graduates of Columbia University's School of Mining (a third son, Robert, entered the company after serving in WWI).
Gustav Manz cost ledger archived at Winterthur records sales of his 14K gold panther & snake ring set with cabochon sapphire to George Bell and to the Philadelphia firm Combes & Van Roden, circa 1920
Always attuned to market trends, Bell was cognizant of Manz's fine work for such firms as Tiffany & Co, Marcus, Dreicer, E.M. Gattle, and Black Starr & Frost and promoted his own line of turquoise and Egyptian novelties in artful brochures ("Scarabaeus") and magazines such as Scribner's and The Theatre, earning the tongue-in-cheek sobriquet "The Tiffany of 42nd Street" in local press.
In 1921, Bell and his wife moved out of the city into a large house in bucolic Hastings-on-Hudson. He remained active in the trade well into his 90s: the headline for his obit in the local paper styled him as "Hasting's Oldest Commuter."
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