On researching these Newark manufacturers the last few days came across your article, Mr Dietz, "Beaux-arts jewelry made in Newark, New Jersey" on the Find Articles website - very interesting!
quote:
Beaux-arts jewelry made in Newark, New JerseyBeaux-arts jewelry made in Newark, New Jersey
Magazine Antiques, April, 1997 by Ulysses Grant Dietz, Janet Zapata
In recent decades collectors and jewelry historians have paid most attention to the art nouveau jewelry inspired by the work of Rend Lalique (1860-1945), which captured the imagination of designers and jewelry makers at the turn of the century. However, equally if not more popular than its modernistic contemporary was what we call beaux-arts jewelry, the design of which is derived from academic or historicizing sources not necessarily restricted to the Renaissance or Middle Ages.
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century New York City was the undisputed national leader in glamorous gem-set jewelry, under the guiding influence of such powerful marketers as Tiffany and Company. Providence, Rhode Island, and the Attleboros in Massachusetts became the centers of gold-plated costume jewelry production. And Newark, New Jersey, became the center for the design and production of solid silver and ten- to eighteen-karat gold jewelry aimed at an affluent middle-class market that only began to develop around the middle of the nineteenth century. Wearing jewelry regularly was then still a novelty, and the newly rich were provided with guidelines both on what to wear and what to buy in a flood of etiquette books and fashion manuals.
With incredible inventiveness jewelry makers designed forms to fulfill, or even create, the needs of the prosperous, salaried citizenry - from collar buttons to gold-mesh chatelaine purses, from sleeve buttons to wedding rings. At their peak, from 1890 to 1929, the jewelry makers of Newark produced as much as 90 percent of the solid gold jewelry in America, including 50 percent of the eighteen-karat gold jewelry.(1)
In the trade Newark was known as "The City of Gold and Platinum and Precious Stones."(2)
Newark's production closely followed the style of jewelry being made for the middle class in Pforzheim and Hanau in Germany, and in Paris, the major jewelry centers of Europe. Publications such as the weekly Jewelers' Circular and Horological Review provided Americans with the latest styles and fads in European jewelry, and there appears to have been little time lag between European trends and American adaptations of them.(3)
The historical roots of the beaux-arts jewelry made in Newark's workshops can be traced readily enough to the rather generalized Renaissance revival of the 1850s and 1860s in American design. A particularly important jewel in this style is a testimonial to Newark's mayor Thomas B. Peddie, made in 1868 (Pl. IV). Like nearly all Newark jewelry of this period, the piece is unmarked. However, newspaper articles show that it was made by Durand and Company, the foremost Newark jewelry manufacturer at midcentury.(4) Although at first glance the piece appears to be a die-struck medal or military decoration, the medallion in fact demonstrates the collective skills of Newark's jewelers after the Civil War. The applied wreath exhibits the skilled work of a master engraver, as do the chasing and engraving of the arms of the city of Newark and the beribboned beehive that forms the loop for the chain.(5) The beading on the medallion and the spiral braided chain were already specialties of Newark jewelers by this time. The conservative design of this object betrays little that could not have come from earlier decades with the exception of the ornate typography of the mayor's initials.
A similar conservativism is evident in the continuing popularity of cameo jewelry during the nineteenth century. The group shown in Plate VII traces the Newark work of the German-born Ferdinand J. Herpers, and the firm that survived him, from about 1865 to 1900. The suite of pendant and eardrops incorporating onyx cameos exhibits all the hallmarks of the neo-Renaissance manner of the 1860s and was probably made early in Herpers's career. He came to Newark in 1846 and worked as a journeyman for Durand, Carter and Company (1857-1869) and others before establishing his own small shop in 1865, where he made settings for other jewelers as well as his own complete jewelry. The pink chalcedony cameo sleeve buttons and round brooch in Plate VII date from the 1880s, when Ferdinand Herpers's sons Henry F. and Ferdinand Jr. were carrying on the business as Herpers Brothers after their father's retirement. The buttons show a romanticized Elizabethan or Renaissance lady with a high lace ruff. The round brooch depicts a more standard classical profile while its gold collar is engraved with scrolled foliage in the Renaissance manner. In both shape and style the brooch is an 1880s version of the cameo jewelry of the 1860s, which itself was based on early nineteenth-century cameos. The oval pink chalcedony cameo with its surround of pegged seed pearls dates from the turn of the century and has always been owned by members of the Herpers family. The romanticized neoclassical lady mimics eighteenth-century cameos in a sort of throwback to Georgian times.(6) However, the pegged setting for the pearls, the safety catch on the pin, and the swivel pendant loop are all characteristic of jewelry of about 1895 to 1905.(7)
One of the most important surviving examples of early beaux-arts jewelry from Newark is the splendid brooch shown in Plate V, which was designed to show off the newly available diamonds that were flooding out of South Africa by the 1860s. The cartouche-like shape and scroll and strapwork frame are Renaissance in derivation, but the brooch owes its impact entirely to the use of the pronged setting that Ferdinand Herpers patented in 1872 - the earliest known American patent on such a setting for diamonds.(8) The stones are gripped in the tiny set-back tips of the prongs and the circular center cluster is raised above the rest on a gold ring decorated with black enamel. This was designed to allow light to play on the stones as it never had before in diamond jewelry.
Many of the skilled jewelry makers in Newark were of French or German birth and brought their design ideas with them when they immigrated.(9) However, periodicals and design books also introduced European designs to America. Outstanding among the latter is Die Perle, a compendium of European (and some New York) jewelry designs published in German, French, and English by Martin Gerlach and Charles Schenk in Vienna in 1879. An American edition was released in New York in 1881 by Schenk.(10) Relying heavily, but not exclusively, on Renaissance-inspired motifs, Die Perle was an encyclopedic source. The copy of the book in the Newark Museum was originally bought by Ferdinand Herpers's sons. The title page of the book [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED] is a paean to the art of the Renaissance jeweler. At the top, Renaissance nymphs hold a swag from which is suspended a large baroque pearl, while below there are a nautilus shell mounted in silver, a drinking horn in the form of a fish supported by a harp-playing mermaid, a chased wine cup, a jewel casket, rings, clasps, and pendants.
The jewelry designs in the book are presented as modern, but there is little question of the self-conscious sense of heritage that the publishers, and presumably the jewelers, brought with them to such a publication. It is also no surprise that these motifs can readily be found in the beaux-arts jewelry produced in Newark.
The rare gold matchsafe shown in Plate III was made by Unger Brothers, a firm known for its many silver novelties and, today, for its art nouveau designs. On first glance one might therefore assume that the partly draped woman holding a harp on the matchsafe is in the art nouveau style. However, on closer inspection it is dear that the decoration owes more to the beaux-arts aesthetic. The oval cartouche frames the image symmetrically, and the shell-like motifs at the four corners parallel those found on Renaissance revival furniture as early as the 1850s. Nowhere does the piece exhibit the whiplash line or sinuous hair that Unger Brothers made such good use of in their art nouveau objects. The lady on the matchsafe probably represents a siren perched on her rock in the ocean, luring unwary seamen to their doom with her song.
Even more obviously in the beaux-arts mode is the work of Unger Brothers' best-known competitor, the William B. Kerr Company, the maker of the grand car-touche-shaped brooch set with a jade scarab shown in Plate II. It closely parallels the architectural cartouches in stone and wood that abounded in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although oval rather than lozenge shaped, it is similar in conception to the title panel of Die Perle. Because they symbolize fidelity, scarabs were used in jewelry given as tokens of affection between men and women.(11)
Some of the designs by Carl Winkler of Hanau in Die Perle have quite direct parallels with a Kerr belt clasp (Pl. I). The paired griffins or chimeras on Winkler's pendant No. 753 appear paired again on the Newark clasp, where they have merged with great volutes of foliage, more in the manner of Winkler's bracelet plaque No. 757 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. On the other hand, the pendant bowknots and the large bow that joins the griffins on the Kerr clasp are a typically late nineteenth-century nod to Louis XVI design, but that too was a popular beaux-arts mannerism, as we shall see.
The four griffin brooches by three different Newark makers shown in Plate VIII illustrate the popularity of the motif at the end of the nineteenth century. Riker Brothers made their griffins in at least two sizes and both with and without diamond and enamel enrichment, the latter being one of their specialties. Griffin brooches were being produced by the Paris firm of Plisson and Hartz (1872-1904) between 1898 and 1904, but the motif probably dates to the Renaissance revival broches chimeres (chimera brooches) designed by the Parisian jeweler Alphonse Fouquet (1828-1911) in the 1870s and 1880s.(12) All four brooches shown in Plate VIII have on the back an S-shaped hook that allowed the wearer to hang a small watch, a chain, or a pendant jewel from the pin. Indeed, many brooches of the period had this feature and were known generically as chatelaine pins.
The suspender buckle and belt clasp by Kerr shown in Plate IX also demonstrate the influence of Die Perle on Newark jewelry makers. The laughing grotesque on the buckle echoes those on Winkler's necklace No. 759 in Figure 3. More startling is the belt clasp with its goatlike horned masks with rubies for eyes. Because of their demonic quality, such motifs are often associated with art nouveau and its use of occult imagery. However; these masks, perhaps alluding to satyrs, clearly fall into the beaux-arts tradition of grotesque masks based on ancient Roman prototypes. It might be hard to imagine a middle class housewife buying such a buckle for daily wear, but one must remember that when worn the masks would have been head to head and thus less easily recognizable by a casual observer.
Newark jewelry, whether made of gold or silver, shared a high level of quality and finish. Casting was little used because it made the metal more brittle and because die stamping produced finer details on small pieces. Fine enameling and handwork such as engraving and polishing are typical of even the smallest piece of jewelry from a Newark workshop. Fourteen-karat gold objects were boiled in an acid bath, somewhat akin to pickling silver, to remove the alloys from the surface. The result was a twentyfour-karat gold surface known at the tune as a Roman gold finish. Since karat marks were not required by law in the United States until 1906,(13) Newark jewelry relied on its national reputation for quality.(14)
The frontispiece to Die Perle (Pl. VI) shows designs by Anton Seder dated 1881. The pendant shown as No. 505 and the necklace that is No. 507 incorporate winged putti, as do Winkler's designs Nos. 757 and 762 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED], and it is easy to see how Krementz and Company of Newark might have used such sources for their own exquisite putto chatelaine pin of the 1890s (Pl. XIII). Baroque fresh-water pearls were often used in Newark jewelry both because they were fashionable and because, in the days before cultured pearls, they were far less expensive than perfect round pearls. (In France, Lalique favored baroque pearls for the same reasons.) The pearl on this pin is disproportionately large, and is a clear reference to the Renaissance jewelers' love of similarly large baroque pearls. Characteristic of Newark jewelry are the use of two tiny diamonds to add brilliance and the subtle enameling in opalescent tones of white, pink, and green.
Kerr made the silver chatelaine hook adorned with a putto shown in Plate XII. Chatelaine hooks were attached to a belt or sash and held mesh bags or other useful accessories. In this instance the asymmetry of the putto's pose seems reminiscent of seventeenth-century baroque design, although the architectural nature of the over-all shape would certainly have fitted the late Victorian concept of Renaissance design. The chatelaine hook is a good example of the craftsmanship Newark jewelers invested in all of their work, be it this five-dollar hook or the pin in Plate XIII, which could have sold for as much as seventy-five dollars.(15)
The close-fitting dog-collar necklace was a form popularized by Alexandra (1844-1925), princess of Wales. As made by Bippart, Griscom and Osborn of Newark (Pl. X), it is a simplified version of the Renaissance revival models designed by Seder (see Pl. VI, No. 507) and Winkler (see [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED], No. 756). The paired foliate plaques are closely related to those on Winkler's bracelet design, while the square-cut orange citrines parallel those illustrated on the title page of Die Perle. The enameling on the necklace is similar to that found on Krementz jewelry of the period. Both Newark firms seem to have favored softer, opalescent enamels to the richer, jewel-like tones characteristic of Riker Brothers.
Beaux-arts jewelry was not limited to designs inspired by the Renaissance since eclecticism in the name of novelty was the role in all the decorative arts at the end of the nineteenth century. The several Egyptian revivals had both modernistic and beaux-arts swains. In 1890 the actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), aided and bejeweled by Rene Lalique, set off a vogue for scarabs and serpents that endured for decades.(16) Thus Egyptian motifs in jewelry at the end of the century are often assumed to be art nouveau in inspiration. However, as the design for a large brooch in Die Perle ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED], No. 1095) demonstrates, there were beaux-arts roots for Egyptomania as well. An archaeological interest in Egyptian design dates back to the design books of the English antiquarian Thomas Hope (1769-1831), and to Napoleon's Egyptian campaign at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 set off another wave of interest, as did the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.
The splendid gold mesh bag by Sloan and Company of Newark shown in Plate XIV was probably inspired more by a fascination with the mythical splendor of ancient Egypt than by the exoticism of Sarah Bernhardt playing Cleopatra in Victorien Sardou's Cleopatre of 1890. Decorated with turquoise and maroon enamel and set with contemporary scarabs carved of American turquoise, the bag and its chatelaine hook (a rare survival) owe much to the grandeur of the brooch shown in Figure 2. Formal, symmetrical, and fairly restrained, such bags would have been fashionable daytime accessories at the turn of the century, selling for as much as five hundred dollars compared to about twenty-five dollars for a silver mesh bag.(17) It is hard to imagine how common such luxurious trifles were before the cost of gold began to soar in 1980, causing most of them to be melted down for their metal.(18)
For men the Eygptian vogue was manifested largely in scarab rings, sleeve buttons, and scarf pins. One marvelous exception is the watch fob by Carter, Howe and Company shown at the right in Plate XVI. There is no hint of art nouveau influence in the use of the Egyptian lotus blossom and the striking, but inaccurate, sphinx. The bare-breast-ed winged sphinx shown is a Greek mythological creature, while Egyptian sphinxes are male and wingless. The French favored Greek sphinxes,(19) and the mistaken combination of a Greek sphinx with Egyptian motifs had worked its way into the decorative arts early in the nineteenth century.(20) Thus while Bernhardt's role as Cleopatra fueled interest in Egyptian motifs after 1890, there was a strong beaux-arts tradition of using the style for jewelry long before Lalique entered the picture.
The watch fob on the left in Plate XVI at first suggests a rather bland version of the art nouveau whiplash line. However, two designs from Die Perle ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], Nos. 1357 and 1359) suggest a different source - the neo-Louis styles that proliferated from the 1860s onwards in Europe and the United States. Indeed, the ribbon motif, already noted in the bowknots in Plate I, was as common in beaux-arts jewelry at the end of the nineteenth century as the whiplash motif was in art nouveau jewelry. Thus the apparent timidity of the scrollwork on the watch fob is a consciously symmetrical evocation of a revival design and not a watered-down version of art nouveau.
The mimicry of French eighteenth-century motifs is more apparent in objects such as the pendant shown in Plate XI, which is linked by its laurel wreath and beaded frame to the medallion in Plate IV. Such pendants in the Louis XVI style were also produced in platinum and diamonds in New York City and Europe. In Newark the look of Versailles was put within the reach of the American housewife thanks to the richly colored semiprecious stones and tiny seed pearls in a framework of finely detailed gold.
The belt buckle and face-powder case in Plates XVII and XIX reveal how pervasive the neo-Louis inspiration was in beaux-arts jewelry. The trellis motif engraved on the gold buckle and the bowknot, swag, and floral basket on the powder case are all characteristic of Louis XVI design. Kerr, the maker of the buckle, is largely known today for silver novelties. Carrington and Company, the maker of the powder case, was a major producer of cuff links and studs for men's evening clothes as well as many gold cigarette cases. The latter are now very rare, most of them having been malted down for their metal.
Perhaps most startling among the neo-Louis jewels produced in Newark's best factories are pieces with enameled guilloche engraving of the kind most often associated with European firms such as Cartier and Faberge. The two lockets in the Louis XVI manner in Plate XVIII are striking examples, and both retain their matching enameled necklace chains. The high level of workmanship in Newark's shops is evident in these pieces. Even to a sophisticated customer such jewelry would have been indistinguishable from its European counterparts.
Newark-made jewelry was sold in the finest retail shops all over the United States,(21) but the customers almost never knew the maker. Retailers had no interest in divulging such information especially if, like Tiffany and Cartier, they had a substantial reputation for manufacturing their own products. Furthermore, the Newark makers did not particularly care if their names were known to consumers. Their reputation for quality and style was firmly established in the trade and that, after all, was where the money was.
The beaux-arts jewelry made in Newark made its influence felt anonymously but widely in America between 1880 and 1930. Art nouveau jewelry was also produced in Newark in large quantities, and it too owed its inspiration to European sources. However, almost all the jewelry produced in Newark was aimed at a more bourgeois market than the glamorous jewelry made in Paris, London, Vienna, and New York City. To that end designs were modified, simplified, and scaled back to make them economically feasible for commercial production. The long reach of the Newark manufacturers is impressively exemplified in the following excerpt from the Newark Evening News, of January 9, 1917:
Before a jeweler's window in St. Mark's Square, Venice, a Newarker of means listened to his wife. "Dear, please buy me that platinum ring - the one with the ruby in it. I do so want to take back home a typical souvenir of Venice; one that I may keep always and whenever I look at it be reminded of moonlight nights and gondoliers." The man succumbed, but, being a jeweler himself, he examined the ring closely and learned that it was a product of Newark - the platinum had been refined and the setting made here, in one of the best of the city's some 200 jewelry factories. But he didn't tell his wife - he allowed her to keep on dreaming of her Venetian souvenir.
On May 7 an exhibition entitled The Glitter and The Gold: Fashioning America's Jewelry will open at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, where it will remain on view until November 2. The exhibition and the accompanying book written by Ulysses Grant Dietz et al. will survey the development of Newark's fine jewelry industry from the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century.
1 Julia B. Smith, The Jewelry Industry in Newark (Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, 1929), pp. 45.
2 This was part of the tide of an article published in Keystone, May 1925, pp. 161-192.
3 An example is a brooch in the shape of a woman with butterfly wings made by the Paris jeweler Gaston Lafitte in 1904. within the year Whiteside and Blank of Newark produced its own version of the brooch. For the Lafitte brooch see Hugh Tait et al., The Art of the Jeweller, A Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift to the British Museum: Jewellery, Engraved Gems and Goldsmiths' Work (British Museum, London, 1984), vol. 2, Pl. 58. For the Whiteside and Blank version see the Jewelers' Circular - Weekly, vol. 51, no. 4 (August 23, 1905), p. 24; and ANTIQUES, December 1996, p. 819, Pl. XV.
4 The Newark Evening Courier, December 17, 1868, noted: "The whole is most artistically executed. The cost of the medal, which was manufactured by Durand, was some $250." We would like to thank Mimi Cohen for ferreting out this information.
5 The workmanship relates the medallion to a gold and cameo mourning brooch dated 1866 by an unknown maker, probably of Newark, in the Newark Museum.
6 An example in the Newark Museum is a late eighteenth-century Wedgwood jasperware cameo pendant surrounded by paste diamonds set in silver and backed with cobalt blue translucent enamel on silver.
7 The safety clasp bears the mark of the william Link Company for which Herpers presumably made all the findings and marked the clasp with the Link trademark.
8 The original letter of patent for this setting, no. 131,058, dated September 3, 1872, is in the archives of the Newark Museum, the gift of Mrs. Henry F. Herpers. This pronged setting was superseded by others, and the industry standard was developed by Tiffany and Company in the 1880s.
9 Between 1850 and 1860 the proportion of German jewelers in Newark grew to 25 percent and the percentage continued to grow continually for the rest of the century. See Kevin J. Smead's essay, "An intelligent, respectable, well-dressed body of men: A History of Newark's Jewelry Workers from the Industry's Founding to the Great Depression," in the forthcoming The Glitter and The Gold: Fashioning America's Jewelry (Newark Museum, 1997). See also the "Hand's Ledger" (staff payment book) of Ailing Brothers and Company, 1859-1863 (MG435, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark).
10 The date is something of a puzzle. The tide page [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED] is dated 1879, while the frontispiece (Pl. VI) is dated 1881. It may be that the frontispiece was added at the time of the New York publication.
11 "Thirteen Charms Against Evil a Fad," Jewelers' Circular - weekly, vol. 40, no. 8 (March 21, 1900), p. 50, citing the New York Tribune.
12 See Tait et al., The Art of the Jeweller, vol. 1, p. 171; and vol. 2, pp. 282-284, Fig. 107.
13 See Jewelers' Circular - Weekly, vol. 52, no. 2 (May 16, 1906), p. 35; and ibid. (June 20, 1906), p. 43.
14 In 1882 a promotional booklet for Enos Richardson and Company (1841-1969) declared, "While the retailer has not the guarantee of a bureau under the authority of the government, as in France; or of the Hall-mark, as in England, the well-earned reputation and high character of the firm are a sufficient guarantee" (William Bagnall, The Manufacture of Gold Jewelry [Enos Richardson and Company, Newark, 1882], p. 34). A copy of the booklet is in the Newark Museum.
15 The cost given for the chatelaine hook is based on the cost of silver belt pins sold by L. A. Wertheimer Company of New York City as advertised in Vogue, July 1902, p. 367. The cost of the brooch is based on the cost of a similar one produced by Whiteside and Blank as recorded in the company's papers in the New Jersey Historical Society.
16 See Jewelers' Circular and Horological Review, vol. 21, no. 12 (January 1891), p. 41.
17 For the prices of gold and silver mesh bags see Vogue, November 6, 1902, p. 609; December 4, 1902,
p. 802; and December 6, 1906, p. 841.
18 For the ubiquity of precious metal mesh bags see the Jewelers' Circular - Weekly, vol. 58, no. 1 (February 3, 1909), p. 103.
19 A Greek sphinx is shown in Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's painting Oedipus Explains the Riddle of the Sphinx of 1808 in the Musee du Louvre in Paris.
20 We are indebted to Yvonne Markowitz of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for pointing out the confusion of the sphinxes to us.
21 Among them were Tiffany and Company, Starr and Marcus, and Theodore B. Starr, all in New York City; J. E. Caldwell Company and Bailey, Banks and Biddle, both in Philadelphia; Bigelow and Kennard in Boston; Duhme and Company in Cincinnati, Ohio; Jaccard and Company in Saint Louis, Missouri; M.
W. Galt and Brothers in Washington, D.C.; and Samuel Kirk and Son in Baltimore. As early as the 1860s Alling Brothers and Company of Newark record sales to all of the above firms (see Alling Brothers and Company Day Books, 1865-1867 and 1877-1878 [MG435, New Jersey Historical Society]). Newark-made pieces from the 1920s to the 1940s are known that bear the marks of Tiffany, Cartier, and Bailey, Banks and Biddle.
ULYSSES GRANT DIETZ is the curator of decorative arts at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey.
JANET ZAPATA is a jewelry and silver historian.
Also thank you for the info on how sets of jewelry were sometimes made up by retailers. The man my father inherited this "set" plus a few other pieces of jewelry in c1939 was of Boston. He had retired from his own accounting firm a 20 years before. An interesting note about him was that his family (either his parents or grandparents) had lived next door to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, IL. He gave my mother a 3 piece set of brass candelabra girandoles that had been in his family home in Springfield saying he knew she would appreciate them. Nowwww, I am definitely ***not*** saying they were Lincoln's; however, the family always got a kick out of saying "Lincoln looked upon them" - like maybe they were blessed. <LOL> 
I happen to have a pic of them at hand soooo guess I will jazz up this post with it.
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posted 08-17-2007 05:55 PM
posted 08-21-2007 04:22 PM
Will start with the stickpin:
