posted 08-27-2010 08:19 PM            

In December, 1942, Perelman wrote a piece for the New Yorker called "Any Purple Subjunctives Today?" that was later published in one of Perelman's anthologies called The Rising Gorge. The entire story is based on modernist jeweler Sam Kramer.

In it, Perelman recounts how he was walking in Greenwich Village and came home with "a remarkable handbill thrust on me by an urchin" that advertised Kramer's studio:

"FANTASTIC JEWELRY for People Who Are Slightly Mad. This is vital and challenging stuff -- these pieces of laced and beaten silver -- real adventures in personal decoration. TORTURED AND MASSIVE. Some of the things have a morbid feeling: tortured and massive, they almost cry out with hysteria. Some are mild or wicked satires; many are tantalizing abstractions. NEITHER UNCOUTH NOR OUTRAGEOUS. And yet, there are pieces too, which are neither uncouth nor outrageous, but just distinguished and appealing . . . ideal gifts. BUYING IS DEFINITELY DISCOURAGED. People who come to the studio of Sam Kramer are never pressed into buying. In some cases buying is actually discouraged. . . . HOW DO YOU TAKE YOUR BLASPHEMIES? If you're a cynic with an appetite for subtle blasphemies . . . or if you're a woman in a black gown with a sense of what is stark and dramatic . . . or a man with a ring-finger going to waste for want of something heavy or amazing -- or if you're someone sick through and through of being anyone in a crowd . . . IF YOU'RE ANY OF THESE PEOPLE or if you just like jewelry -- particularly original hand wrought jewelry -- why then you must surely come to the STUDIO OF SAM KRAMER."

The rest of Perelman's story is a screenplay involving a fictional Kramer apprentice named Orestes Munn, a Cantonese henchman named Wing Fat, and the potential theft of Kramer's designs by Black, Starr & Gorham (don't ask).

Kramer (1913-1964) was in fact slightly mad. According to Marbeth Schon's fine book "Form & Function" (also the source of the Kramer portrait shown here), Kramer was an "individualist" who originally worked in Eugene O'Neill's old studio. He and his wife Carol moved to a second-floor Greenwich Village walk-up shop where he sometimes waited on customers in his pajamas.

Kramer collected interesting stones and odd decorative objects that he incorporated in his work, and sold extra copies of these in his shop and through whimsical mail-order catalogs (this one is from 1958):

Schon also pointed out in her excellent "Modernist Jewelry 1930-1960" book that the doorknobs in Kramer's studio were cast bronze hands "one of which wore a pigskin glove in winter." She also notes that he "hired dancers in black tights with their skin colored an 'unearthly' green to distribute handbills around the Greenwich Village streets at night. He called them his 'Space Girls.'" These could have been the urchins Perelman described.

The catalog included everything from green diamonds to coco-bolo heartwood to giant Gabon porcupine quills to carved ivory skulls to 13th century coins, Japanese bone spoons, Indian ankle bells, and moose teeth. He also sold two items that became trademark components of his jewelry:

"21B—STARING GLASS EYES—from stuffed animals, birds and fish. Irises of orange, brown or russet with black pupils. Make surrealistic jewelry. 10 asstd. $1.00.
21A—TAXIDERMIST EYES—the eyes of sad fawns and big, wary birds. Amber-colored irises and black pupils. 1" diam. solid glass and strong as any stone. Make fascinating hypnotic cuff-links, earrings, etc. $1.00 pr."

Here's an iconic Kramer pin with a taxidermy eye:

posted 08-27-2010 08:21 PM            

You can also find more common production pieces that are simple rectangles and circles with applied bezel-set stones, sometimes carved:

He also created serial objects, the best known of which was his "Cosmic Dragon" series. Here's an example:

Kramer's mark comes in several versions, with and without "mouse ears," and sometimes with an asterisk.

His catalogs featured do-it-yourself kits, as well as detailed information about the stones he loved. He's of the most highly respected modernist jewelers, and his items are in great demand today. We've also seen reproductions of his pieces, some well-done, and some crude like this:

posted 08-27-2010 11:43 PM            

He showed the New Yorker reporter an advertising card that said "We have things to titillate the damnedest ego -- utter weirdities conceived in moments of semi-madness." He also brought out "a massive, tortured ring in the form of a gas mask; a coral pendant intended to suggest an embryo; a germlike wavy brooch inspired by a spirochete; a squidlike ring; and another ring, which he said, correctly, had a kind of intestinal feeling."

The profile states that "a third of Mr. Kramer's items are done to order. He has incorporated a number of molars in pieces of custom-made jewelry, and only the other day embodied a piece of meteorite in a brooch on behalf of a customer who claimed to have detached it from an exhibit in the Museum of Natural History." It goes on to say that he was born in Pittsburgh and in 1935 graduated from the University of Southern California where an art course sparked his interest in jewelry. He initially set up a jewelry shop in Pittsburgh, but found it "backward, culturally" and moved to Manhattan.