carving and casting

Thursday, June 19, 2014

SWIRLS

Gold, pearl, and diamond foliate
pendant, circa 1900
Gustav Manz designer/maker

Family collection

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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Thursday, May 29, 2014

We've long been fascinated by Paul Gillot, tFrench-born jewelry designer and longtime Gustav Manz associate who arrived in New York City in 1902, and shortly thereafter joined Marcus & Company as a designer; he remained at the firm, cultivating French expats like Sarah Bernhardt and Marcel Knecht, until September 1914 when he obtained leave of absence to join the French infantry on the battlefields of Verdun—at age 37. Wounded twice before his discharge, he returned to New York in June 1915, and with his Dutch-born wife Mathilda set up Gillot & Co. At his death in 1949, the firm was located at 610 Fifth Avenue, La Maison Française. This diamond and sapphire dress clip is, pardon our French, a corker. Was it set in Manz's shop? C'est possible.

Gillot & Co letterhead from the early 1920s

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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Jewelry images: eBay

Gillot & Co letterhead: National Archives, Petitions for Naturalization
from U.S. District Court for Southern District of New York, 1897-1944

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

HORSE SENSE

Illustration from a profile of designer and manufacturing jeweler Gustav Manz ("A Master Sculptor in Precious Metals") featured in Arts and Decoration magazine, January 1926

In the late 19th century, Harlem River Drive was a popular racecourse for horse-drawn carriages. Known as the "Speedway," it ran along the river from 155th Street under the Washington Bridge (not to be confused with the George Washington Bridge, which spans the Hudson and opened in 1931) and up to Dyckman Street.

We don't know whether Gustav Manz, who lived in Washington Heights at that time, was fond of betting. That he was adept at carving equestrian motifs is clear from his business ledgers, which record sales of figural and diamond-studded items to Cartier, Tiffany & Co, Ferdinand Hotz (owner of the Maximilian Diamond), Udall & Ballou, Marcus & Co, Black Starr & Frost, T. B. Starr, Charlton, and Shreve Crump & Low.

Trotting along the Harlem River, 1903

Image from NYPL

Lucky horseshoes stickpins and brooches were an Edwardian favorite and turn up in Bailey, Banks & Biddle's ledger books, including one manufactured in 1908 by McTeigue, Manz & Co (Walter P. McTeigue and Gustav Manz). An accompanying sketch indicates 25 stones set in a alternating bands of sapphires and diamonds, evoking racing silks.

The lilliputian herd on a circa 1900s ring retailed by jeweler F. Walter Lawrence (shown below), evokes Rosa Bonheur's famous painting depicting the horse market in Paris. Manz's close association with Lawrence, and his own reputation as an animalièr who often placed his subjects in leafy surrounds, points to him as the likely carver.

Inspired by Rosa Bonheur's painting "The Horse Fair," this gold ring set with green tourmaline retailed by jewelry merchant F. Walter Lawrence, here attributed to designer-goldsmith Gustav Manz

Photo from The Keystone, July 1905, p 1073

Completed in 1855, Bonheur's scene of muscular Percherons barely restrained by their trainers as they circle a plaza was already famous by the time Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired the artwork in 1887 from department store magnate Alexander Turney Stewart and gave it to the Metropolitan Museum the following day. When the Met first opened its doors to the public on Sundays in 1891, the gigantic (8 x 16 1/2 foot!!) painting attracted tens of thousands of visitors.

The miniature frieze of stallions on the "Horse Fair" ring surely created a minor sensation when a photo of it ran in The Keystone in July 1905, shortly after the opening of Belmont Park. Another equine ring sold to Lawrence, depicting horse and trainer, is recorded Manz's cost book records in summer 1910. Due to anti-gambling legislation targeting horse racing, Belmont and other New York tracks closed that season. Perhaps, that season, Lawrence's customer wore it to Ascot or Longchamp.

Entry in Manz's costbook for a gold and lapis seal ring with "Horse & trainer group" carved on the mounting, sold to F.W. Lawrence on June 2, 1910

Courtesy Winterthur Museum Library

GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Saturday, December 7, 2013

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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Saturday, November 23, 2013

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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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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Monday, October 14, 2013

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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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

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

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