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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