The Jewelry of Royalty

 

QUESTION: I recently saw an exquisite brooch made by Cartier at a charity antique show. I always associated Cartier with fine watches. Can you tell me more about Cartier and how the company got its start in the jewelry making business?

ANSWER: While most people associate the name Cartier with fine watches, the company actually began repairing fine jewelry and later creating it. 

Louis-François Cartier founded Cartier in Paris in 1847 when he took over the workshop of his master, Adolphe Picard. In 1874, Louis-François' son Alfred Cartier took over the company, but it was Alfred's sons, Louis, Pierre and Jacques, who set up their own design and manufacturing operation and established the brand name worldwide.

Louis ran the Paris branch, moving to the Rue de la Paix in 1899. He was responsible for some of the company's most celebrated designs and exotic orientalist Art Deco jewelry, including the colorful "Tutti Frutti" jewels.

Cartier has had a long history of sales to royalty. King Edward VII of Great Britain referred to Cartier as "the jeweler of kings and the king of jewelers" For his coronation in 1902, Edward VII ordered 27 tiaras and issued a royal warrant to Cartier in 1904. Similar warrants soon followed from the courts of Spain, Portugal, Russia and the House of Orleans.

The firm had always had an illustrious clientele, including Henri and Maurice de Rothschilde, Ira Nelson Morris, Florence Blumenthal, Daisy Fellowes, Mrs. Cole Porter and Barbara Streisand.

The Cartier style was diverse, encompassing fashion accessories, as well as jewelry. It was a style which owed less to the prevailing design trends and more to the global travels and interests of the Cartier brothers and their intrigue with novelty. Their pioneering use of the much stronger platinum instead of silver, as a setting for diamonds made it possible to work in such a thin gauge that the diamonds seem to float in space in an intricate embroidery.

Attention to detail saw even the ring bolt catches studded with minute diamonds, and seed pearls on a tasseled pendant exquisitely graded in size.

But Cartier made its jewelry to be adaptable. One diamond fern spray brooch could also be a long corsage, a necklace or a tiara. A central jeweled motif could be removed from a necklace and placed in a brooch setting which, with a tiny screw-driver, was packaged beneath the velvet of its padded box. Long necklaces, known as sautoirs, sometimes contained pendant watches and could be lengthened or shortened, even turned into Brooches were made to be divided, if desired, for wearing on each shoulder.

Pierre Cartier established the New York City branch in 1909, moving in 1917 to 653 Fifth Avenue, the Neo-Renaissance mansion of Morton Freeman Plant (son of railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant) and designed by architect C.P.H. Gilbert. Cartier bought it from the Plants in exchange for $100 in cash and a double-stranded natural pearl necklace valued at the time at $1 million. By this time, Cartier had branches in London, New York and Saint Petersburg. 

By 1910, Cartier had found another medium to work with-pieces of rock crystal, a colorless, hard stone which was carved with foliate scrollwork. Always open to experimenting with materials, the jewelers began using blackened steel as a setting for rubies and diamonds in 1913. 

When the firm started to design its own jewelry, the Art Nouveau style of flowing, floral lines was at its peak. But Cartier chose to look back to historical Renaissance or Neoclassical architectural ornamentation for inspiration. A pendant in the form of an Ionic column, for instance, with scrolls from ancient stonework, is a good example. Cartier had a simplicity of design work with geometric patterns.

A trip to St. Petersburg in 1914 through 1915 and the popularity in the west of Faberge, inspired Cartier's Russian period. The trip was essentially to sell diamond and platinum jewelry and to purchase Russian enameled, gold objets d'art, but a year later Cartier had produced its own Russian style pieces and began exhibiting regularly in Russia, selling pieces to Russian nobility.

After the Russian Revolution, many of Faberge's American and European followers switched to Cartier, and this style continued to be produced until the 1920s.

The overseas influence set a trend in Cartier design. The brothers' admiration of the past led to ancient designs from Egypt, Persia, India, China and Japan being reworked in a modern way. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922 unleashed worldwide Egyptomania. Cartier produced pieces, such as a vanity box in the form of a sarcophagus. Designers looked to source books and museums, such as the Louvre and the British Museum, for inspiration. 

The collecting instincts of the Cartiers was evident in the way they included ancient fragments in their pieces, such as in a winged scarab brooch which included blue glazed wing pieces which would have been found on the chest of a mummy.

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Wearable Beauty

QUESTION: My mother has a beautiful silver bracelet that my dad gave to her on their tenth wedding anniversary. The letters GJ are inscribed on the inside. I’ve always admired this bracelet and hope that one day it will be mine. Can you tell me who made this bracelet and perhaps something about it.

ANSWER: Your mother’s bracelet comes from Georg Jensen Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, although I’m sure your dad purchased it at one of the company’s retail stores here in the U.S. Jensen is one of the premier jewelry companies in the world and continues to be known for its unique jewelry designs.

                           
Born in 1866, Jensen was the son of a knife grinder in the town of Raadvad north of Copenhagen. He started training to be a goldsmith when he was 14 as an apprentice with Guldsmed Andersen. But in 1884, he decided to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Jensen had dreamed of being a sculptor ever since childhood. In 1887, a plaster bust of his father gained him admission into the Royal Danish Academy of Art. He exhibited his first sculpture at the 1891 Charlottenborg Spring Exhibit in Copenhagen and graduated the following year.

Although his clay sculpture was well received, making a living as a fine artist proved difficult, so he turned his hand to the applied arts. First as a modeler at the Bing & Grøndahl Porcelain Factory and, beginning in 1898, and then with a small pottery workshop he founded in partnership with Christian Petersen to make ornamental ceramics. Their ceramic jug, The Maid on the Jar, was selected for the arts and crafts exhibit in the Danish Pavilion at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. The public and critics loved their work, but sales weren’t strong enough to support Jensen, who his point a widower, and his two small sons.

Through his ceramic work, Jensen received a travel grant award which allowed him to tour Europe at a time when the Art Nouveau movement was in full force. The work of these artists in beautiful, yet useful, objects inspired him. Upon is return Denmark, he became increasingly involved in designing and making jewelry. In 1901, he took a job as the foreman for goldsmith Mogens Bailin. Finally, in1904, he opened his own small shop in Copenhagen, employing an apprentice and a helper.

Jensen's early designs were primarily in the tradition of Arts & Crafts, with an emphasis on hand-beaten surfaces' and semi-precious stones. This was a time when the cost of materials was high, and wages for skilled labor was low. The stones Jensen selected---amber, moonstones, lapis lazuli, green agate, garnet, ebony, hematite and small bits of coral—were relatively inexpensive.

Georg Jensen never followed fashion, he created it. He opened his first retail store in Berlin in 1909. In 1912 he expanded his workshop and opened a large retail shop in Copenhagen. It's also important to note that from the beginning, he laid the groundwork for Georg Jensen as a brand, versus that of one artist, hiring talented artisans, craftsmen and designers. When other studios gave no credit to their designers, Jensen always did.

Jensen's training in metalsmithing along with his education in the fine arts allowed him to combine the two disciplines and revive the tradition of the artist craftsman. Soon, the beauty and quality of his Art Nouveau creations caught the eye of the public, assuring his success. Before the end of the 1920s, Jensen had opened retail outlets in New York, London, Paris, and Stockholm.

In 1905, he held his first exhibition outside Denmark at the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Germany, and the museum purchased a number of his designs. In 1910, he received a gold medal at an exhibition in Brussels.

What really catapulted him to international fame, however, was his first U.S. exhibition at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. In addition to being awarded more gold medals, an entire showcase of jewelry was purchased bythe newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

At the time of his death in 1935, the New York Herald Tribune proclaimed him as "The greatest silversmith of the last 300 years.” His vision lived on through the employees he had trained and his small workshop developed into a worldwide company. Designers like Henning Koppel, Vivianna Torun Bulow-Hube, Manna Ditzel, and Arno Malinowski brought the company to the forefront of international design.

There has been no designer with the sustained appeal of Georg Jensen. His work continues to attract top collectors and museums throughout the world feature his pieces. For five generations his legacy has grown, unrivaled by any other 20th century creator. He is, quite simply, unique.

Raise a Jug

QUESTION: I recently found a large character jug at a local flea market. The dealer said it was old, most likely from the late 19th century. How can I tell if it is indeed old or maybe just a reproduction?

ANSWER: There’s lots of confusion about character, or as they’re more commonly known, Toby jugs, inspired by the original Toby Jug, with its brown salt glaze, developed and popularized by Staffordshire potters in the 1760s. They got the idea from similar Delft ware jugs produced in the Netherlands.

The first Toby jugs, made in the form of a jovial, stout, man wearing a long coat and tri-corn hat of the late-18th-century, puffing on a pipe, and holding a jug of ale, became common pouring vessels at local taverns. The pitcher had a rear handle and a removable lid, and the tricorn hat formed a pouring spout. Most antique historians attribute the first one to attributed to either John Astbury or Thomas Wheildon.

There are two theories as to origin of the jugs’ name. Some believe the jovial, intoxicated character of Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night, inspired it while others believe  a notorious 18th century Yorkshire drinker, Henry Elwes, also known as "Toby Fillpot" was the inspiration. Either way, the name stuck.

Well-known potters, such as Ralph Wood I and II, Enoch Wood, Thomas Hollins and William Pratt, followed Astbury and Wheildon lead and began making Toby jugs in Staffordshire and Leeds, England.

Most collectors equate Doulton Pottery with Toby jugs since John Doulton established his riverside pottery at Lambeth, south of London, in 1815. His company manufactured miles of sewer pipe and became the leader in the sanitation revolution of the time. Today, Doulton, now known as Royal Doulton, is famous for its plates, vases, and jugs, decorated with popular imagery from English history and literature.

While Royal Doulton made Toby jugs for the remainder of the 19th century, it wasn’t until 1901 that it introduced figures, series ware, and rack or case plates. Over time, these became highly collectible. In 1934, Charles Noke of Royal Doulton introduced the first modern character jug, John Barleycorn, a symbol of the brewers, followed by Old-Charley, Night Watchman, Sairey Gamp, the midwife and sick-nurse from Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, Parson Brown, the sporting cleric, and Dick Turpin, the highwayman. The character jug series features lifelike caricatures of the heads of famous historical personalities and legendary characters from folklore, literature, and popular culture. The difference between a Toby jug and a character jug is that the former features a full figure while the latter just the head and shoulders of the person.

On jugs made before 1960, a dark glaze bleeds over the rim and into the white glazed interior. But the best way to tell the age of a character jug is by its mark. Many of the older jugs have a capital "A" to the left of the "Lion and Crown — Royal Doulton - Made in England" stamp printed on jugs made from the 1930s to the 1950s. After the 1950s, Royal Doulton printed the mark in darker green and without the A.

Doulton jugs made in the 1930s show the name of the character in quotation marks. On those made in the 1950s, the letter “D’ precedes the name of the character without quotes, with the  copyright date lying underneath.

Those jugs marked with an “A” are actually less valuable because Royal Doulton, over time, flooded the market with them. However, character jugs introduced in the 1950s and discontinued in the 1960s, such as Johnny Appleseed, Simple Simon, Dick Whittington, Admiral Nelson, the Hatless Drake and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh, are more valuable than those marked with an “A.” Also, the company made its character jugs in five sizes, from small to large.

The smaller ones, marked Doulton Made in England in a circle with the name of the character in the center, cost $2 new and now sell for $100 to $300 each.  A complete set can sell for $1,500 to $2,000.  The larger ones sell for $100 to $500 each. And as with any collectible, there are exceptions.

By the late 20th century, over 200 different makers, including Royal Doulton, Shorter and Son, Lancaster-Sandland, Royal Worcester, and Wedgwood & Co. were producing Toby character jugs. However, as the 21st century dawned, their popularity waned and many stopped making them. Today, only three companies still produce Toby character jugs.