www.gustavmanz.com MESSAGE BOARD

RAINDROPS KEPT FALLING ON THEIR HEADS Martha Manz and Etta Place

2012-03-01T14:49:00.032-05:00

Gustav Manz and his bride Martha Bachem, in 1899
(Image courtesy Robert M. Eastman)

Martha Bachem became Gustav's wife on September 17, 1899. Like Martha's parents, Carl and Sophie Bachem—fine jewelry manufacturers from Pforzheim—Gustav had steamed over to New York City in the early 1890s, carrying two suitcases and an old-world goldsmith's training. He and Sophie became business partners after Carl's health failed, and Sophie promptly arranged the marriage to her middle daughter. The groom was 34, the bride 17.

Artist Colony: Postcard advertising Leonia, NJ (aka "New York's Ideal Suburb"), where Gustav and Martha lived together in the early 1900s
(Image courtesy Bergen County Historical Society)

At age 40, divorced from Gustav (with whom she had two daughters) and remarried to a philandering musician with socialist leanings (with whom she had a another daughter and a son), Martha conceived and launched Leonia Life, making her one of the first women in the U.S. to publish and edit a weekly. She managed the paper for 15 years, through the 1930s, reporting and editorializing on local politics, women's health and family planning, community theater and other happenings in the picturesque town whose proximity to Manhattan attracted many visual artists, actors, academics, and free-thinkers.

Before retreating to the suburbs, Martha and Gustav had their portraits taken at J.B. DeYoung's photographic studio where another couple fortune had thrown together—Etta Place and Harry Longabaugh (aka the Sundance Kid)—would pose for a cabinet card as they passed through New York on their way to Argentina, in February 1901. Later Tiffany & Co produced a receipt for a pendant watch similar to the one pinned to Etta's blouse in the famous DeYoung portrait: It cost $40.01 and was purchased by a James Ryan, one of the aliases used by Robert LeRoy Parker—aka Butch Cassidy. Good PR for Tiffany BTW (the store could boast its security was good enough to foil an infamous outlaw from staging a heist!).

Etta Place poses with her beau Harry Longabaugh (alias "The Sundance Kid")
at J.B. DeYoung's Union Square studio on February 1, 1901;
three weeks later they sailed for South America with fellow outlaw Butch Cassidy
(Image courtesy Random House, Inc.)

Outlaw Colony: Photo alleged to be of Butch, Etta and the Kid (right to left)
in front of their ranch cabin in Cholila, Argentina between 1901-1905
(Image courtesy Dan Buck, contributing editor True West)

A visit to DeYoung's: Etta (Katherine Ross), Harry (Robert Redford), and seated Butch
(Paul Newman) in movie still from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
(Photo: Lawrence Schiller)

Much about Etta's life including her real name, profession, how and when she died, remains a mystery. The Pinkerton Detective Agency noted that she sometimes went by Ethel. On several occasions, she and Harry left Butch to tend the home fires at their South American hideout and visited the States, even taking in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair (where Gustav's jewelry was on display at the Palace of Arts). Some speculate that Etta was actually a pseudonym for Ann Bassett—a prominent Utah rancher and sometime cattle rustler who is thought to have been romantically involved with the Wild Bunch's ringleader.

We don't know about Etta's watch. But we have a pretty good idea who made Martha's jewelry.

Martha Bachem, in the driver's seat of her 1920 "flivver"
(Image courtesy Elly Heyder)

Martha and Etta: Bolters who never let a little cold water stop them from telling people they didn't like the way things got done.

Perfectly Weathered

2012-02-19T19:47:00.001-05:00

Spotted this extra-long eye hook on an old Rhode Island pond house owned by descendants of Gustav's in-laws during our walk today. Some things only improve with age...

SAPPHIRES AND SUFFRAGETTES Gustav Manz and the Unsinkable Mrs. William H. Klapp

2012-02-12T14:55:00.002-05:00

Among the customers calling on Gustav Manz's workshop in the early 1900s was a society matron who might have stepped out of a novel by Edith Wharton. A designer of interiors and decorative objects, Elinor Evans Klapp (or Eleanor as some sources identify her) was the wife of William H. Klapp, a Chicago dry-goods commission merchant. She spent most of her married life in Evanston, Ill. raising a family before taking up jewelry-making in her early 40s. She had visited Signor Castellani's workshop in Rome, and was enamored of the same Etruscan motifs and archaeological excavations that inspired Manz's designs. Another mentor was Florence Koehler, whose Renaissance-revivalist work is represented in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Son Eugene—a Chicago civil engineer who co-founded The House Beautiful magazine with two friends in 1886—was his mother's biggest champion.

Above: an illustration of Mrs. Klapp's jewelry from "An American Designer of Jewelry" (House & Garden, October 1903). Below: production notes for rings set with Mrs. Klapp's stones from Gustav Manz's costbooks (Winterthur Museum)

The sudden death of younger son William Allan, in 1887 (from typhoid fever at age 17), coinciding with the health decline and retirement of her husband, was another incentive to use her talents out in the world. A serious gem collector (her passion was classical Greek and Roman intaglio), Mrs. Klapp traveled to Europe every August to visit favorite antique dealers (e.g. Raoul Heilbronner) and to scout furnishings for her friends' Gold Coast mansions. As an early newspaper profile reported, "Like many another, sorrow and invalidism opened the way for this 'most blessed work,' as Mrs. Klapp herself would say. She had no technical instruction, but wide travel and intense love of the good, a keen eye to understand what was true and beautiful, a very independent taste, and strong individuality—these combined, have been her inspiration." If advising friends on tasteful settings for their stones struck anyone as inconsistent with her Philadelphia Quaker upbringing, her strong views on baubles retailed by "the trade" likely offset any residual doubt. "I abominate diamonds... or rather I begrudge them their excessive prominence," she told House Beautiful's art critic Harriet Monroe in July 1900. The massing of brilliants, she thought, was nothing more than "a vulgar display of ill-used riches—it actually nullifies the special quality of the stone."

Billed as "A Monthly Magazine of Art and Artisanship" under Eugene Klapp's editorship, The House Beautiful guided American readers toward rooms organized and decorated according to "sound simplicities and lasting truths"; his mother aimed to do the same with jewelry

Mrs. Klapp designed primarily for family and friends (which helps explain why no jewelry to date has surfaced at auction or in museum collections). But she was not averse to a little self-promotion for her chief aim: to reintroduce standards of simplicity and economy "in accord with early English and Roman work." She even let a Chicago newspaper into the spacious workshop she had installed in the family's house, with plenty of natural light from two large windows (no "prodigality of draperies" in Mrs. Klapp's world!), a fully equipped jeweler's bench, and a pair of mustachioed artisans to do the actual stone setting and metalwork. The simple swirl she used as her mark was taken from a picture by a "Mr. Feddar" (possibly Otto Fedder, 1873-1919??) of two spirits "after leaving this world." A fitting signature, the paper's reporter concluded, for one who "knew not whence the impulse to be a worker in silver and gold and precious stones came to her nor whither it may lead her." Where it led was a growing circuit of handicrafts shows organized by arts and crafts societies and women's clubs in Newport, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Boston, and New York. Mrs. Klapp's brooches, rings, and fur-clips were seen alongside the handiwork of a younger generation of women artisans—Margaret Rogers, Mabel W. Luther, Grace Hazen, and Marie Zimmermann—many of whom had formal design training and had even acquired metal-casting skills while attending schools like Pratt and Cooper Union. As historians Pat Kirkham and Toni Greenbaum note in their book on American women designers, before 1900 there were few places where a woman could learn the mechanics of metal-work outside the trade.

Rolling chairs at the Paris Exposition, 1900 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Collection)

Undaunted, Mrs. Klapp sent forty designs to the Paris Exposition of 1900, the only American woman represented in the jewelry category under her own name, and received honorable mention. She exhibited at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo the following year. Two years later, a critic for The Craftsman praised the "great delicacy of feeling that is distinctive of the work of Mrs. Eleanor Klapp of New York, showed to advantage in her arrangements of pearls, turquoises and opals, which were inset in various articles for personal adornment and use. Combs, pins, and buckles vied with each other in beauty, and novel effects were secured in chains, pendants, and buttons..."

An ancient glass fragment framed with gold work by Gustav Manz exhibited at the National Arts Club's "Precious Stones: Modern, Old and Oriental" show and later at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis (Photo: Town & Country magazine, December 1903). The show brought together professional metal-workers like Manz with "amateur" designers and artisans such as Mrs. Klapp, Boston silversmith Mary P. Winlock, and B. B. Thresher of Dayton, Ohio (Image from Town & Country, 12 December 1903).

The Klapps followed their son Eugene to New York in 1903; he had married the former Margaret Hotchkiss, and with his friend Henry M. Brinckerhoff, co-inventor of the third rail, and fellow engineer William Barclay Parsons would soon form the firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff and Klapp. If they had not crossed paths before, Mrs. Klapp and Gustav Manz likely met in November of that year, when the National Arts Club exhibit of "Precious Stones, Modern, Old and Oriental" opened at the club's first home on West 34th Street. The review in The New York Times remarked on the "excellent taste" shown in Mrs. Klapp's designs and the "bold" and "beautifully wrought" gems Manz had wrought for F. Walter Lawrence's cases. These included an iridescent glass fragment framed by minutely palm trees and a camel train (a Manz specialty); and an ornate peacock "corsage" with eyes in the separate feathers formed of colored jewels—all destined for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis the following spring. Always on the lookout for the best artisans, Mrs. Klapp called in at Manz's workshop to purchase jewelry or supply him with stones for her own and others' settings, according to production costbooks. Whether or not she was tempted to give half her kingdom away, she found the very model of a master carver in the 38-year-old German-born Manz, a goldsmith and animalier in the style of Antoine-Louis Barye. Manz regularly sent his pieces to National Society of Craftsmen shows, and had begun to build a clientele that would eventually include the leading jewelry retailers of his day—Marcus, Dreicer, Theo B. Starr, T. Kirkpatrick, Black Starr & Frost, J.E. Caldwell, Shreve, Cartier, and Tiffany.

Top: Hand-wrought by Gustav Manz, this bejeweled peacock ornament must have drawn oohs and aahs at the National Arts Club exhibition "Precious Stones, Modern, Old and Oriental" in November 1903 (photo from Town & Country, December 1903). Bottom: Hair ornament designed by Mrs. William H. Klapp (photo from House & Garden Magazine, October 1903)

With the death of her husband in 1908, Mrs. Klapp continued to lead an active social life in the city, travel, and produce charming ornaments for friends and family—delighting her daughter-in-law (Eugene's wife), for example, with a ring set with a miniature of her grandchild painted by the artist Mary Helen Carlisle. She provided a pendant of moonstones set in diamonds on an "exquisitely designed" necklace of platinum for the Trustees of the Pratt Institute to present to the school's departing librarian. By this time she was living in the Bryant Park Studios on West 40th Street. The ten-story, north-facing loft building was designed specifically for people associated with the arts; its residents included Fernand Leger, Winslow Homer, Edward Steichen and many other visual artists. In her entry for Who's Who of American Women (1914) she was described as a "designer of art objects" and in favor of "woman suffrage."

Above: Mrs. Klapp designed a mounting for a portrait of her grandchild (left) by miniaturist painter Mary Helen Carlisle, reputed to be the only female artist Queen Victoria sat for. Below: An Edwardian miniature by an unknown artist in a diamond and platinum-topped gold mount (Clipping courtesy of a Klapp descendant; photo of miniature: Skinner)

One of Mrs. Klapp's last shows was at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, in November 1914. Organized by the museum's director John Cotton Dana, the exhibit consisted of 20 cases containing work by such seasoned members of the Boston Society of Arts & Crafts as Frank Gardner Hale, Josephine Shaw, Mabel Luther, Margaret Rogers, Eleanor Deming, Rosalie Clements; members of Gustav Stickley's New York workshop, as well as a manufactured goods consigned to Dana by the Boston firm of A. Stowell & Co and Chinese jade dealers Long Sang Ti & Co. (both firms, coincidentally, were wholesale customers of Gustav Manz). Mrs. Klapp's priciest item, a carved moonstone in a platinum and diamond setting, was listed at $350 on the entry form—the equivalent of $7500 or more today. Not much jewelry was sold, according to the Society's reporting secretary; but attendance by local members of the trade was robust, fulfilling Dana's intent of promoting "good design" to the city's gold and silver manufacturers.

In 1914, the same year that the museum mounted its first jewelry exhibit, director John Cotton Dana issued a pamphlet entitled "American Art and How It Can Be Made to Flourish"; below, a swirl buckle design by Mrs. Klapp

The summer following Dana's jewelry exhibit, on the first day of August 1915, Mrs. Klapp died at her family's country house in Clinton, New Jersey. Her entry in Who's Who of American Women 1914 notes her birth date as 1848, though census records and death notices say 1846. Her output is preserved in a handful of arts and crafts journals, in the profiles and reviews Eugene took pains to feature in his magazine (or sometimes wrote himself, under the pen name Oliver Coleman), and in the scrapbooks of descendants. "I should not mind being the great-granddaughter of some one who today buys a bit of Mrs. Klapp's work," wrote Madelene Y. Wynne (sic) in House Beautiful's December 1899 holiday gift round-up (Madeline Yale Wynne was the daughter of the inventor of the Yale lock and a renowned metal worker and writer). With all the interest in ocean-crossing Edwardian grande dames, the resilient Mrs. Klapp is ripe for rediscovery—or at least a cameo on Downton Abbey...

Elinor Evans Klapp, circa 1903

(from the scrapbook of a descendant)

We welcome further information or insights

about Mrs. Klapp's life and jewelry.

Kindly email gustavmanz@gmail.com

Souvenir from World's Fair 1900

(Beinecke Library, Yale)

Thanks to Kay O. Freeman for sharing research about William H. Klapp's profession and other biographical details, Newark Museum archivist Jeffrey V. Moy for a peek at Mrs. Klapp's entry list for the 1914 jewelry exhibit, and Courtney Bowers-Marhev for her groundbreaking thesis on Gustav Manz.

American Beauties: Sally James Farnham, Neysa McMein, Doris Manz

2012-01-24T19:03:00.001-05:00

Zodiac Ring by Gustav Manz depicting a kneeling Sagittarius (The Archer), circa 1916 (Winterthur Museum). Sally J. Farnham's birthday month was November

A 1916 entry in Manz's stockbook records a Zodiac Band Ring "sold to Mrs. Farnham"—Sally James Farnham, who had just divorced her husband, former Tiffany & Co art director Paulding Farnham. It's possible that Gustav and Sally collaborated on the design. Not long before purchasing the ring, Sally's own scheme for a Zodiac-themed frieze had charmed a public monuments jury in Philadelphia; the project was abandoned due to a spike in costs coinciding with the outbreak of war in Europe [our thanks to Michael Reed, director of the Sally James Farnham website, for this tidbit]. Farnham's big break came in August 1916, when she won a $24,000 commission to create a monument to Simon Bolivar, topping a field of twenty artists. Shortly after its dedication in spring 1921, critic Alexander Woollcott extolled Farnham's sculpture in the May issue of The Delineator as "the largest work by a woman which history anywhere records"; even more noteworthy, he gushed, was Farnham's apparent inexperience when she landed the job : "The great Bolivar is the work of an unschooled, selftaught artist who never had a lesson in her life and, what is more, it is the work of one who was a grown woman, the mother of two children, before she did her first modeling; indeed before the idea of being a sculptor at all ever entered her much-preoccupied head..." More on Sally's career at Smithsonian blog.

The horse right here: Farnham standing beneath Bolivar statue in a borrowed studio. Today, the sculpture overlooks the Artists' Gate at 59th Street and Avenue of the Americas

Both Farnham and Woollcott were friendly with Neysa McMein—a leading illustrator (she created the first likeness of Betty Crocker) and Algonquin Round Table regular (director-actor Rebecca Miller plays her in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle). In his autobiography, Harpo Marx—another pal—recalls that "a lot of us agreed [Neysa] was the sexiest gal in town. Everybody agreed she was the best portrait and cover artist of the times." Bringing things full circle: Gustav's 19-year-old daughter Doris—who worked as his sales rep and briefly as a diamond broker—sat for McMein's famous "American Beauty" cover series for McCall's magazine.

Doris Manz by Neysa McMein, 1924

Neysa McMein carrying the flag, 1917 (New York Times photo archive)

Neysa McMein drawing cover for McCall's (photo courtesy Grapefruit Moon Gallery)

Manz Spotting: What to Look for in a Gustav Manz Piece

2012-01-18T12:19:00.000-05:00

ASJH NEWSLETTER, SUMMER 2011

The American Society of Jewelry Historians (ASJH) Summer 2011 newsletter features tips for Manz spotting:

"....It is important to note that, in those days—unlike today, where the designer/manufacturer often aggressively courts and markets directly to the consumer—it was unthinkable for the skilled wholesaler to directly approach the retail client unless specifically invited to do so. Prominent retail stores such as those previously named often sold pieces made by Gustav Manz, and marked them as their own works. Only someone familiar with his inimitable style would have any idea he was the genius responsible for the jewel, and not the retail establishment. What, then, are the characteristics of Gustav Manz's style, and how does the trained eye recognize it? The roots of Manz's style lay firmly in the Art Nouveau movement, replete with animal motifs, valutes, foliate motifs, and often Gothic or eastern motifs. All were highly detailed and sculptured, often steeped in the sensualism reminiscent of Auguste Rodin's sculptures. Animals and the figures pulse with volume and life, as if springing out from the jewel. A favorite subject used in many instances was that of the panther, a motif that became well-known in the hands of Cartier's Jeanne Toussaint. Animal pins were a major part of his design sensibility; the claws found on the dragons, panthers, and lions are highly articulated and full of strength. Spectacularly ornate and rendered wings adorn the birds of prey, dragons, and peacocks. Plant life, including leaves, branches, lily pads, and lotuses all have deeply modeled and etched surfaces. Charming dog pins and stickpins were a part of the entourage as well, with the finely chased surfaces often set with tiny diamonds. In addition, Egyptian motifs figured prominently in his designs, many of which were retailed by Tiffany & Co. in the 1920s. Eastern motifs were explored in the 1920s as well, some of which included dragons, pagodas, and serene Buddhas..."
(Summary by Diana Singer, D & E Singer, Inc.)

Buddha ring settings by Gustav Manz, c. 1923.

Sold toTiffany & Co. and Shreve,

Crump & Low

(Courtesy Winterthur Library)

Jade, enamel, and ruby Buddha earring

Gustav Manz

(Private collection)

To learn about future ASJH events, contact Meg Selig at info@jewelryhistorians.org

Waiting to Cross: Elephant in the Big Apple

2012-01-09T09:42:00.001-05:00

Photographed at Museum of Art and Design, NYC, 6pm, Saturday, January 7, 2012. The elephant is part of a public sculpture exhibit by Peter Woytuck.

Lapel Pins: Into the Wild, circa 1912

2012-01-04T09:47:00.003-05:00

Pinned: Celluloid and brass campaign button supporting Teddy Roosevelt's Bull-Moose Party, 1912. Unknown maker.

Retailers of Gustav Manz's Moose pin included Marcus & Co, Tiffany, Gorham, Black Starr & Frost, Bigelow Kennard and Ferdinand Hotz; stockbook record, 1910-1912 (Winterthur)

Around the time Gustav Manz's workshop was turning out figural Bull-Moose and Grizzly Bear scarf pins for jewelry retailers' white-shoe customers, Leon Leonwood Bean developed his familiar duck boot for the same gents to wear on hunting trips in Maine. By the time of his death in 1967, L.L.'s mail-order sporting goods concern was worth $3.5 million; this year, L.L. Bean celebrates its 100th anniversary and duck boots now occupy Wall Street... But where have all those jaunty pins gone?

Leon Gorman, L.L. Bean's grandson

Gustav Manz sketch of a Grizzly Bear pin, ca. 1910

Teddy Bears for Grownups

2011-12-20T10:14:00.002-05:00

We dropped by Macklowe Gallery recently to try on this Edwardian-era ring depicting bears strolling through a forest. The figures wrap around the shank, stepping lightly over fallen branches, heads up as if in anticipation of some tasty treat around the bend...

Bear ring attributed to Gustav Manz, ca. 1910

In 1912, Manz filed copyright registration for his Barye-like bronzes, including a vignette of buffaloes attacking a bear, a pair of fighting panthers (currently in the collection of the Cleveland Library), and three polar bears adrift on an iceberg (an homage to Peary's 1909 polar expedition, no doubt). Gustav's animal poses weren't all nature tooth and claw. The bruins on this18K ring wear expressions that seem purposeful, almost trancelike (perhaps lured by strains of ragtime emanating from the Prince George Hotel ballroom...) They'd surely have appealed to a dandy when George Botsford's "Grizzly Bear Rag" was all the rage...

Design for a scarf pin, ca 1910, Gustav Manz

Deco Dragons a Hot Item at Skinner's Fine Jewelry Sale

2011-12-07T23:37:00.011-05:00

An unusual platinum and diamond bracelet retailed by the old New York firm T. Kirkpatrick & Co. was the capstone of Skinner's fine jewelry sale this week.

Lot 764 (courtesy Skinner Inc.)

Thomas Kirkpatrick, the firm's founder, emigrated from Dumfries, Scotland in the 1850s. After spending a few years at Ball, Black & Co. (where he was known to sleep under the counter to protect the stock), he opened his own store and art gallery and prospered during the Gilded Age. A crony of "Boss" Tweed (reporters dubbed him Tammany's "badge man") and Teddy Roosevelt (on whom he bestowed a "lucky" penny that had been blessed by Pope Leo and then set in gold), Kirkpatrick died on December 27, 1906. His son, John, took over the store at 334 Fifth Ave, later moving it to 664 Fifth. There was also an outpost at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. When the younger Kirkpatrick died in 1928, a third generation kept the business going until the death of Kirkpatrick's grandson Thomas in the 1980s. Even with one emerald eye missing, the bracelet fetched a final price of $171,825 at Tuesday's sale—seven times the reserve. According to the catalog description, the unsigned piece descended through a prominent New York family stored in the original retailer's box.

Ruby-breathing dragons to warm the wrist (courtesy Skinner Inc.)

Griffins and dragons and other legendary creatures abound in Manz's ledgers between 1910 and 1925, and T. Kirkpatrick & Co was a steady buyer. Stockbooks record sales of a pair of Griffin Ring mountings (sold May 12, 1910) and a gold ring trimmed with applied platinum acanthus leaves (sold Sept. 16, 1913); and a "Renaissance Ring" (sold Dec. 21, 1914). Later sales entries for Kirkpatrick include a figural Mermaid and Faun Ring set with a star sapphire (sold Nov. 5, 1919).

Design for a Griffin Ring by Gustav Manz, pencil and gouache (Mathews family collection)

Earlooms: ASJH Lecture by Art Nouveau expert Ben Macklowe

2011-11-18T12:21:00.013-05:00

Fun slide-show hosted by ASJH at Fashion Institute last night. Benjamin Macklowe, Vice President at Macklowe Gallery, explained the idiosyncrasies of Art Nouveau style. For example: nouveau designers (1890-1910) produced few earrings: The mermaid locks favored by the era's beauties often obscured their ears, so artists focused on visible ornaments—figural necklaces and horn combs decorated with coyly mating dragonflies and writhing snakes (hard to miss). And if one should stumble on a rare pair of antique earvices labeled nouveau? They may be pendants that got converted, says Ben.

"Listen, listen, said the mermaid to the prince"
Illustration by H.J. Ford, early 20th C

An exception to the ear rule, these c.1905 Egyptian revival pendant earrings bear the retail mark of F. Walter Lawrence and were most likely designed and wrought by his favorite goldsmith Gustav Manz. They are on view with other examples of Manz's work at The Forbes Galleries' International Art Jewelry: 1895-1925 exhibition through March 17, 2012.

Pavé Parade: A Cartier Diamond Elephant Necklace

2011-11-13T12:38:00.063-05:00

A parade of Cartier pachyderms goes on the block this week at Christie's Geneva Magnificent Jewels sale on November 16, 2011. The front group are pave-set with diamonds. The Cartier herd remind us of a sterling elephant bracelet Gustav Manz carved in the early 1900s.

Elephant necklace by Cartier (courtesy Christie's Geneva); elephant bracelet by Gustav Manz (Private collection)

Manz produced animal-themed items for many retailers including Cartier, Tiffany & Co, Theo B. Starr, Marcus & Co, Black Starr & Gorham, Shreve Crump & Low, and others; a sketch of a 1925 elephant brooch made for Cartier, studded with 80 diamonds, is in the collection of Winterthur Library.

Production notes for platinum and diamond pave elephant sold to Cartier in 1925, Gustav Manz ledger (Winterthur)

Gustav Manz pave-diamond animal pins (Arts & Decoration, 1926)

More on Manz's elephant jewelry at Tusk Trust.

Elephants in the Room: Gustav Manz and other metalsmiths at The Forbes Jewelry Gallery

2011-10-16T12:43:00.126-04:00

Like many master jewelers Gustav Manz kept a low profile and rarely signed his designs. For the first time in 70 years, some of his work is on view at The Forbes Galleries. The show's curator, Elyse Karlin (co-author of Imperishable Beauty) has brought together 200 pieces fashioned by famous and anonymous artisans, each representing one of the aesthetic styles that emerged at the turn of the 20th century.

Manz's expertise as a carver of motifs taken from nature is evident in a circa 1905 sterling silver purse frame featuring mermaids swimming in a lily pond, made for F. Walter Lawrence, in a solid gold brooch depicting a remarkably lifelike maple leaf branch and whirligigs, and in a diminutive gold elephant dress clip set with cabochon jade, sapphire and ruby stones—versions of which he designed for firms like Cartier, Tiffany, and Shreve, Crump & Low.

International Art Jewelry 1895-1925
October 29, 2011 through March 17, 2012.

Manz Spotting: London Bling That Shines Through the Fog

2011-06-10T08:27:00.050-04:00

Alicia Reyes is a London-based banker, blogger, and private jewelry curator. Her site Collecting Fine Jewels offers an expansive lineup of 20th century jewelry masters, their work, and the museums and auction houses showcasing it. Her latest discovery: a 18k ring depicting two strolling bears by Gustav Manz currently offered at Macklowe Gallery.

Manz Bear Ring / Macklowe

Beasts in the Jungle: Tigers (or Panthers) and Snakes, Oh My

2011-05-24T11:56:00.033-04:00

One of Manz's signature designs came up for auction at Skinner's 14 June 2011 fine jewelry sale. A drawing of this setting—one of the highlights of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1924 Industrial Arts show—is in the Joseph Downs collection at Winterthur.

Lot 238: Gustav Manz 14K Gold & Star Sapphire Ring, c.1920s

(Photo courtesy Skinner Inc.)

Gustav Manz Sterling Ring, c.1920s
(Private collection)

Side view (Private collection)

April Comments

2011-04-09T10:27:00.008-04:00