carving and casting : Black Starr and Frost

Showing posts with label Black Starr and Frost. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

ARCTIC GEMS: GUSTAV MANZ'S POLAR BEAR EXPRESS

Anticipating "The Revenant"—a hundred years before the DiCaprio film—an ornament for a circa 1900s sterling card or accessories tray set with rock crystal. Marked F. Walter Lawrence Inc.
Image Dale Howell Antiques

On March 6, 1912, a decade after establishing himself as a designing jeweler and fabricator in New York City, Gustav Manz registered copyright for a sculptured group of polar bears on a hill of ice, staking his claim on the motif when icicles were hot thanks to the expeditions of Peary, Shackleton and Cook. The arctic fantasy shown above carries the hallmark of F. Walter Lawrence Inc. and is most likely also the work of Manz, who created other animal-themed accessories and silver novelties for Lawrence and others through the ensuing decades until Manz's retirement in the early 1940s.

Ink and gouache rendering of ring design by Gustav Manz, circa 1910. Mathews family collection

A scrap of inked parchment pasted in Manz's mountings book. Obscured by ancient glue, but unmistakably arctic. We're guessing 1909-11, when sales of polar bear items to Black, Starr & Frost, Tiffany & Co, Cartier and others are recorded in Manz's costbooks. A popular postcard issued by the New York Zoological Park from the same era shows a probable live model for the jeweler, who often made use of the zoo's caged studios for artists.

New York Zoological Park postcard showing one of two 800-pound polar bears captured at Kane Basin in July 1910. The pair, a male and female known as Silver King and Silver Queen, resided with their offspring at the Zoological Park into the 1920s

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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

In anticipation of this year's Belmont Stakes—where American Pharoah and his rider Victor Espinoza will race to end a 37-year drought on Triple Crown winners—we offer a collage of spirited stallions by Gustav Manz and others.

From top left: detail from manufacturing order for a Manz horse brooch and other jewelry, c. 1911 (Ferdinand Hotz stock book, courtesy Hotz family archives); yellow-gold and water-green tourmaline ring from F. Walter Lawrence's atelier, most likely carved by Manz (The Keystone, July 1905); Rosa Bonheur's iconic painting of the horse market held in Paris on the trued-lined Boulevard de l’Hôpital, completed in 1855 and given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1897. According to the Met's website, Bonheur sketched there twice a week for a year and a half, "dressing as a man to discourage attention."

Buyers for this and other equestrian motifs included Tiffany, Cartier, Shreve Crump & Low, T.B. Starr, F. Walter Lawrence, Udall & Ballou, Marcus & Company, Black, Starr & Frost, Bailey, Banks & Biddle

Image from "A Master Sculptor in Precious Metals"

Arts & Decoration, January 1926

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Monday, October 1, 2012

BOW WOW WOW

Bronze medal carved by Gustav Manz, circa 1905
Jay Heritage Center Van Norden Collection

The handsome mug in the pic above lives at the Jay Heritage Center, a gift from a member of the Van Norden family, who owned the mansion prior to its becoming a museum. The signature of the artist, Gustav Manz, can be spotted just above the second "A" in "America." The Van Nordens bred many champion dogs as well as livestock at their estate in Rye, New York—from Frenchies shown at the 1900 Paris Exposition, to Highland cattle brought to the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.

Numerous canines and felines passed through the Manz household in Leonia, New Jersey in the 1900s (none of them show animals, although on occasion he was said to have smuggled home a wildcat or panther cub borrowed from the Bronx Zoo to sketch). The artist's grandson recalls that Manz was partial to St. Bernards, perhaps reflecting his Swiss-German roots.

Manz design for French Bull Dog scarfpin

from a circa 1910 sales brochure

Mathews Family Collection

Known for his animal miniatures, Manz designed mountings for Marcus & Co, Tiffany, T. Kirkpatrick & Son, Black Starr & Frost and other merchants who catered to the dog fanciers parading their pooches around the Hotel Astor. His arrival in New York in the 1890s more or less coincided with the Frenchie's rising profile at kennel club shows. (Early skirmishes with aficionados of the rose-eared bulldog—preferred by English breeders—spurred the formation of the French Bull Dog Club of America; the bat-ear soon came to be favored by show judges.)

Top: Manz's rendering for circa 1910 diamond-pave English pug or bulldog scarfpin,Mathews Family Collection; Ledger entry for a gold scarf-pin by Manz sold to Tiffany & Co, circa 1910; Joseph Downs Collection, Winterthur Museum

Sometime after the club's inaugural meeting on February 12, 1898, a commission for a special bronze medal carved by Manz was arranged by jeweler F. Walter Lawrence (whose stamp appears on the rim). An avid golfer and founding member of the Canoebrook Country Club near his home in Summit, New Jersey, Lawrence had grown up in Maryland and was plugged into the sporty set.

Manz, by contrast, entered the trade at 14 as a goldsmith's apprentice in Germany, then worked in shops across Europe before taking a year to prospect in Africa's diamond fields and sketch the wild animals he would later carve in bronze, gold, and platinum. His medal must have been well received: it appeared on the cover of the Westminster Show edition of the French Bull Dog Club's magazine in January 1913.

That same year Cole Porter—a junior at Yale—penned his famous fight song enshrining the school mascot: a bulldog named Handsome Dan. English not French, but vive la difference!

Bow-wow-wow: Cole Porter's sheet music

for his alma mater's most popular fight song

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Monday, August 13, 2012

THE JEWELER'S DAUGHTER

Born in 1903 on the Fourth of July, Doris Rosalie Manz was the younger of Gustav Manz's two daughters with his first wife Martha Bachem. In a circa 1920s studio photo (detail above), Doris wears a Chinese style dress, and a ring stack that includes one of her father's designs for a bezel-set cabochon jade, as well as a link bracelet with tassels wound around her wrist. By her late teens she'd not only become fashion-conscious but was acting as her father's sales agent, picking up knowledge of gems for mounting from people she called on in the trade, such as young Harry Winston, Witherbee Black of Black, Starr & Frost, and George Frederick Kunz of Tiffany & Co.

Stylish, gregarious, and ambitious, Doris inevitably came onto the radar of Neysa McMein, the illustrator responsible for McCall's magazine's American Beauty series and a friend of sculptor Sally James Farnham, who was a personal acquaintance and customer of Doris's father. The resulting cover portrait—showing Doris with a wavy bob, representing the "The Scandinavian American Girl"—appeared on the magazine's November 1924 issue. (Surely an issue worth splurging a Liberty head dime on!)

Decades after Manz's business archive was donated to Winterthur Museum, one of Doris's business cards was discovered pasted inside her personal copy of George F. Kunz's Rings for the Finger. The author's inscription on the flyleaf reads:

For

Miss Doris Manz,

In appreciation of a

friend of her father

the author

George Frederick Kunz

27 August 1920

New York

Beside his signature, Kunz sketched a hieroglyph or rune engraved upon a stone. We'd give anything to know whether Tiffany's swashbuckling gemologist was merely showing off his calligraphy or offering a secret handshake to a young woman seeking to rise and prosper in the field her immigrant father (as well as her maternal grandparents, diamond ring manufacturers in Newark) had chosen.

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Thursday, June 7, 2012

GUNDA RISES TO THE OCCASION

GUSTAV MANZ™

Her big ears mark her as African. Also her tusks: Only males of the Asiatic species grow ivory. Nonetheless, we nicknamed this bracelet Gunda to honor the spirit of the wild-caught Asian male elephant that was a star attraction at New York Zoological Park (aka Bronx Zoo) in the early 1900s, when William Temple Hornaday was director.

The bangle's ornament, replicated from an original Manz casting, derives from his design for a platinum and pave-set diamond elephant brooch. Variations of the pin were made for Cartier, Black Starr & Frost, Udall & Balllou and others in the 1920s.

Production notes for platinum and diamond elephant brooch,

pave-set with 80 stones, sold to Cartier on September 19, 1925

Gustav Manz stockbook, Winterthur

The Gunda Bangle (top and above)
GUSTAV MANZ™

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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All images (c) Gustav Manz LLC

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

INTO THE WILD, CIRCA 1912: Follow That Bull Moose Pin

"Pinterest" circa 1912: Celluloid and brass campaign button
supporting Teddy Roosevelt's Bull-Moose Party
Maker: Unknown

Around the time Leon Leonwood Bean was developing a market for his duck boot, Gustav Manz's workshop was turning out figural Moose and Grizzly Bear lapel pins by the dozens for the same gents to wear on their return from hunting trips in Maine. Manz's circa 1910, 14k gold moose scarf or tie-pin attracted orders from loyal retail clients like Gorham, Marcus & Co, Tiffany, Black Starr & Frost, Bigelow, Kennard and Chicago jeweler Ferdinand Hotz. Manz's stockbooks allude to elk, deer and mountain sheep as well. An entry form for the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 indicates a gold "Moose" pendant carved by Gustav Manz was sent to the exhibit (the word "Moose" is crossed out and overwritten with "Deer" suggesting a last minute substitution, or perhaps a case of mistaken identity corrected when the piece arrived from New York).

An entry in Manz's ledger, above, shows numerous sales of a moose scarfpin between 1910 and 1912. Below: Manz's gouache rendering of a pendant-brooch design featuring the head of a moose (or perhaps a Black Forest stag) within an oak leaf surround. Drawing (c) Gustav Manz LLC

At the time of L.L. Bean's death, in 1967, his mail-order sporting goods concern was worth $3.5 million; this year, the company celebrates its 100th anniversary while duck boots currently occupy Wall Street... And we wonder: where have all those jaunty Bull-Moose tie-tacks gone?

L.L. Bean grandson Leon Gorman

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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