Beth Wees, Curator Emerita, The American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this holiday season, let’s luxuriate in the profusion of jewels worn by Americans over the past 300 years.  Our earliest jewelry was sentimental in nature, related to love and marriage or to death and mourning.  In the early nineteenth century, Newark, New Jersey, became home to some 200 manufacturers, and the iconic firms of Gorham and Tiffany & Co. were established in Providence and New York City respectively. On New York’s Fifth Avenue, upscale jewelry houses such as Dreicer, Marcus & Co., and Verdura strove to compete with imported European brands. Britain’s Arts & Crafts movement inspired American jewelers to create small-batch studio production featuring enamels and semi-precious stones. Our journey will conclude with a look at costume jewelry and the work of mid-20th-century artists whose modernist designs paved the way for contemporary innovations. Whether made from gold, silver, hair, platinum, diamonds, sapphires, pearls, plastic, rubber, or even aluminum, these objects delight the eye and educate us about our Nation’s ongoing love affair with jeweled adornment.

Brooch
Designed by Paulding Farnham for Tiffany & Co.,  1889–96
(2016.739)
Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Necklace
Dreicer & Co., ca. 1910
(2012.71)
Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art