DROMEDARIES & LAPIDARIES: A JEWELER'S DESERT FANTASY

Gustav Manz's scenic "Desert Brooch" (c. 1901-3) traveled to some notable venues, including the National Arts Club and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. According to the entry form submitted to the Exposition by jeweler and exhibitor F. Walter Lawrence (who commissioned the piece), the fragment of "Phoenician glass" framed by miniature palms and a train of camels came out of the Old City of Jerusalem.

More astonishing, that ancient city itself would be replicated on ten acres of the fairground, featuring 1:1 scale models of the Wailing Wall, Tower of David, and a cast of Moslem, Christian, and Jewish concessionaires hired to walk around in traditional garb herding livestock, enacting ye olde handicrafts, and performing religious rituals!

Perhaps one of their delegation purchased the Manz brooch as a reverse souvenir before heading home, for it has not surfaced publicly since the photo above was shot for a spread in Town & Country magazine a few months prior to the fair's opening day, April 30, 1904.

Click here to read Professor Milette Shamir's illustrated account of the Jersusalem Exhibit. More about Gustav Manz's jewelry at the fair in our earlier post OLYMPIC DREAMS. 

Below: A re-creation of Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem, at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis Public Library)

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GILDED MAIDS: ST. LOUIS, SAINT JOAN, AND GUSTAV MANZ

Opal and gold brooch, Gustav Manz (attrib.) for F. Walter Lawrence, circa 1900. Image from "All That Glitters" by Jeannine Falino, Antiques & Fine Art (Autumn 2015)

The halo and fleur-de-lis tipped tresses suggest the Maid of Orleans; the gold-work and other provenance point to Gustav Manz as maker. The opal and gold brooch shown above is currently on view at the Museum of the City of New York, and may in fact be one of the jewels exhibited by F. Walter Lawrence at The Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904. Formerly associated with Jaques & Marcus (and later a director at Marcus & Co.), Lawrence sold art objects, silver, imported goods, and jewelry from his upstairs salon on Union Square. According to entry forms submitted by Lawrence (now archived at St. Louis Museum of Art), his case—one of the largest at the fair—included an opal matrix brooch labeled "Jean D'Arc" executed by Manz. Like most items for this and other arts and crafts exhibits, the gold surrounding the gem was entirely hand-wrought. Lawrence took design credit, although Manz's output as a designing jeweler suggests he probably collaborated there as well. 

Born into a devout German-Catholic family (his younger sister became a nun), Manz built his reputation carving naturalistic motifs in fine metal, as well as heroic figures from classical mythology and history; he produced more than a few ecclesiastical commissions during his long career, while fabricating jewelry for Tiffany, Marcus & Co, Dreicer & Co, Theo. B. Starr, Black Starr & Frost, and many other retailers during the Gilded Age. Joan of Arc was hardly a new subject in jewelry or any other art medium. Mark Twain, a huge fan, published a volume of his "personal recollections" of Joan in 1895. In early 1900, French filmmaker Georges Méliès directed a popular silent movie based on the life of the Maid that added fuel to the centuries-long fervor to canonize her (it finally happened in 1920). In short order, Edison Studios got hold of a pirated print and distributed dupes in the States. By the time their "Jean" appeared at the fair, Manz and Lawrence were simply riding the wave.

We can't know for certain if the gold and opal brooch in the Museum of the City of New York show is the same piece, but we'd love to see it next to the ornamental comb (below) from the permanent collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, thought to be another one of Lawrence's entries at the 1904 exposition ("Cyprian glass fragment and gold Lotus and Dragon-Fly Com") also executed by Manz. 

Gold, ancient glass, tortoiseshell lotus and dragon-fly comb. Design attributed to F. Walter Lawrence; maker Gustav Manz. Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art

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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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SAY MY NAME... FORGING A REPUTATION AT THE 1901 ARTS & CRAFTS EXHIBITION

Mermaid Ring by Gustav Manz for F. Walter Lawrence, circa 1900. 

Lawrence and Manz exhibited a Mermaid scarf pin with a baroque pearl at the Providence Art Club Arts & Crafts Exhibition in March-April 1901

Mark: 'F. LAWR.' Private Collection 

Early in 1901, the Providence Art Club issued a circular soliciting entries for an exhibition of arts and crafts. We recently unearthed a copy of the original catalog at the NYPL and rifled through in search of the usual suspects. 

And there it was: the earliest reference we've found of Gustav Manz's output as an artist and jeweler's jeweler. The typesetter's misspelling of the craftsman's first and last name are unfortunate, but close enough: shown here with a detail from a Manz drawing in a private collection and the brass doorknocker on the club's entrance on Thomas Street, at the base of college hill....

                

Left clockwise: cover from Arts & Crafts exhibition catalog; door of the Providence Art Club; Manz's gouache design of a dryad holding grape cluster; list of pieces in F. Walter Lawrence's display—all made by Manz

The show's run was only 3 weeks — from March 19 - April 9 — but it featured over 600 objects: an impressive array not only of jewelry but art works in wood, glass, pottery by noted ceramicists such as William Grueby, textiles and furniture, leatherwork, bookbinding. At the center of the hall's upper tier was a display of favrile glass lent by Tiffany Studios. 

Tiffany glass at the 1901 Providence Art Club Exhibition

Courtesy of Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Archives

via Antiquesandfineare.com

According to a circa 1901 review in THE ARTIST magazine, the organizers' main objectives were to give individual craftsmen credit for their work, and "the excluding of works which could not, strictly speaking come under the head of art..." More impressive still, the club "even succeeded in enforcing the mention of the designer's and artisan's names in the case of objects exhibited by commercial firms." In 2001, the Providence Art Club celebrated the centennial of that influential exhibit with a show celebrating work of contemporary artisans.

Despite campaigning by arts associations, crediting individual makers for "added value" was a short-lived experiment. Branding with small plaques, stamps, or boxes bearing the retailer's name remained the norm, and still does. 

Even so, we're keeping an eye out for a grasshopper with baroque pearl and heart-shaped peridot brooch...

Front view of the Manz mermaid ring 

Image Tadema Gallery, London

Special thanks to the Librarians of Room 300 at the Main Branch of New York Public Library 

for assistance in accessing the Providence Art Club exhibition catalog 

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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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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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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

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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