Beaux-arts jewelry made in Newark, New Jersey

Magazine Antiques, April, 1997 by Ulysses Grant Dietz, Janet Zapata

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.