carving and casting

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

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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Wednesday, April 6, 2016

HOMAGE TO LALIQUE

Gold, opal, pearl and diamond cloisonne pendant in the form of two peacocks confronting one another, circa 1901

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum

In honor of Rene Lalique's day of birth (April 6, 1860), The Met posted an image of this double peacock pendant on Instagram.

A peacock regarding its own reflection or kissing its twin (because who else would?) is pretty amusing. But the way the enameling reflects the gem-set tail feathers draped around the opal takes your breath away.

The jewels Lalique exhibited at the Salon de Paris from the late 19th century until he turned his focus exclusively to glassmaking in the early 20th were widely published for the trade in places like Jewelers' Circular—as in the image below, which appeared on the front page of the August 17, 1898 edition—and were also "a sensation" at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

As a journeyman jeweler in the 1880s before setting up his own business in New York, Gustav Manz (1865-1946) worked in Paris, where he likely saw Lalique's pieces at the Salon or at his shop on rue de Quatre-Septembre. One of the items Manz later recalled when his only granddaughter interviewed him about his accomplishments was the bracelet he'd crafted for Lalique's great muse Sarah Bernhardt (unfortunately no date or descriptive details were preserved).

The peafowl has strutted its stuff through every era but particularly fascinated jewelers of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts period. Manz was no exception. For his take on this flashy creature, check out our earlier post "Birds of a Feather."

A black and white photographic print of an illustration ("Homage") by John Hassall, British watercolorist and advertising artist of the Edwardian period

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Thursday, March 17, 2016

LUCKY CHARM

LOOKING FOR A WAY TO

HELP ELEPHANTS

AND OTHER WILDLIFE?. . .

Photo: Gustav Manz LLC

We're chipping in at TuskUSA's online auction. To place see other views of this classic Gustav Manz elephant coin necklace pendant, visit gustavmanz.com.

Bidding for Tusk's 2016 silent auction has closed. For more on this event visit nysocialagenda.com.

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Copyright © 2016 All Rights Reserved
GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Thursday, March 3, 2016

BUSTING FREE OF GILDED CAGES

Two women born in the early 1880s. Both possessing good jewelry. And some nerve. One entered into an arranged marriage and founded a community newspaper; the other inspired headlines like this 1918 blurb in the Iron County Register: "Notorious Bandit Escapes Most Famous Detectives of Four Continents..."

To find out their identities, click here.
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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

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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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Thursday, December 31, 2015

RING IN THE NEW YEAR

"Only connect...."
—E. M. Forster

Gustav Manz design for "Diana" ring mounting

Sold to George Bell, December 1919
Winterthur Museum Archives

NEW YEAR'S EVE

By D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930)

[From Look! We Have Come Through! 1918]

THERE are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.

This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.

Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat!
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious
Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

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GUSTAV MANZ LLC

Friday, December 11, 2015

TURN HEADS THIS HOLIDAY

STILL DECIDING ON THAT

PERFECT GIFT?

Our double-sided Elephant Pendant is cast in sterling silver from an original design by Gustav Manz. We share a percentage of proceeds on every purchase with TUSK to help turn the tide on wildlife crime.
So whether you call "heads" or "tails" the elephants win.

For our current price list, or to place an order, visit gustavmanz.com.