A Look Back at Maker & Muse: Women and Early 20th Century Art Jewelry
August 11, 2021
Featuring more than 250 stunning works of art jewelry drawn from the collection of Richard H. Driehaus and exemplary national collections, Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry, told the stories of the women who played an integral role in their inspiration and creation. The exhibition ran at the Driehaus Museum from 2015 to 2016, and then travelled to other venues throughout 2020. Here, exhibition curator Elyse Karlin Zorn reflects on her experience putting the exhibition together. It all began with a visit to Mr. Driehaus’ vault…
In 2014, I was asked to come to Chicago to look at jewelry in Richard H. Driehaus’ private collection—specifically pieces that fell into the genre of the Arts & Crafts Movement. Joyce Lee, then Mr. Driehaus’ private curator, took me to the vault and there I was overwhelmed to encounter so many pieces of beautiful Arts & Crafts Movement jewelry, primarily from Great Britain.
Arts & Crafts jewelry was created as a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and the mass production of jewelry. Artists chose to return to pieces that were handmade, original, and primarily one-of-a-kind. They used semi-precious stones and low-value materials; the jewelry was prized not for its intrinsic value, but rather for its artistic merits. The artists often didn’t have training as jewelers, but came from adjacent artistic backgrounds, such as painting, illustration and architecture, which made their creations all the more special.
That day, I was asked two questions: Is there enough jewelry here for an exhibition—my answer was an emphatic yes! And, does the jewelry seem to suggest a theme? Again, I answered without hesitation exactly how the collection spoke to me due to my interest in Arts & Crafts jewelry.
It was also clear to me that the collection emphasized the work of women, albeit in different ways. First, there were women jewelers who were allowed to actually craft jewelry for the first time in history in both Great Britain (England, Scotland and Ireland) and in the United States. Up until this time it was considered inappropriate for a woman to do so. We were lucky to have jewelry by Charlotte Newman, who is considered the first women in Great Britain who gained fame for her jewelry. There were also a number of English pieces designed and made by men but depicting a woman or women as subject matter. Finally, the collection included the work of several of the famous husband-and-wife teams such as Arthur and Georgina Gaskin and Nelson and Edith Dawson, and these we were able to include in the exhibition.
In our British Arts & Crafts gallery, pieces like the exquisite horn and moonstone tiara by English jeweler Fred Partridge was a highlight, as well as the beautiful horn and moonstone hair combs created by Partridge’s protégé, Ella Naper. Work by the Guild of Handicraft, probably the first makers of Arts & Crafts jewelry, was represented, as well as makers in the second generation of artists like Sibyl Dunlop and Dorrie Nossiter.
We chose to add a gallery of Art Nouveau jewelry because the Collection included several beautiful pieces by the master jeweler Rene´ Lalique. Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts were new art movements that existed simultaneously but had different influences and looked quite different. In France, women were the muses for this fantastical jewelry—often melded to insect wings or mermaid tails to make them of a mythical nature. No work of a women designer is available from this period save for one—Elizabeth Bonte, whose work we were able to showcase in the Art Nouveau gallery.
Art Nouveau was a search for a new style of art but was influenced by the changing roles of women, which frightened French men, a loss in France’s status as a major manufacturing source (England, Germany and the U.S were the leaders), and for other reasons as well. The curvilinear style associated with Art Nouveau is partially based on looking back to the 18th century when the rococo style was in vogue. Unlike Arts and Crafts, which was made to be affordable to anyone who wanted to buy it, Art Nouveau jewelry was not. It was quite expensive and so “over the top,” it had a somewhat limited audience. Members of the demi-monde, including actresses like Sarah Bernhardt, were its adherents.
In another gallery, we featured the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. We chose to do this both because Mr. Driehaus loved Tiffany pieces and because L.C. Tiffany was very forward thinking and had two women running his jewelry workshops—Julia Munson and Meta Overbeck. We paired some beautiful Tiffany glass objects with the jewelry to show the relationship between all of Tiffany’s output. Tiffany’s work was contemporary to both Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau, but truly is in a category all of its own.
We designed the fourth gallery around another Art Jewelry movement in Europe, taking place at approximately the same time frame as Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau. This was the Jugendstil (Young Style), which emerged in both Germany and Austria, specifically the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) and jewels by noted German artists such as Karl Rothmüller.
As the exhibition’s culminating gallery, we chose to showcase jewelry from Chicago makers—which seemed appropriate for a Chicago museum. The firm of Kalo is the name best known for jewelry made in the Chicago area. But there were many other well-known local jewelers and Chicago was among the largest centers for this kind of work in the early 20th century.
Clara Barck Welles, the founder of Kalo, trained many men and women who went on to have their own firms. Many of the jewelry artists in the Chicago Arts & Crafts Movement attended what we know today as the School of the Art Institute and showed their work in the exhibitions it sponsored.
The Maker & Muse exhibition traveled to multiple venues through 2020. Many of them added their own touch. At the Flagler Museum, they placed large cardboard blowups of women wearing Arts & Crafts dress and jewelry in the galleries, setting a great tone for the exhibition and reminding us that women were central to the exhibition. At the Paine Art Center and Gardens in Oshkosh, WI, they added the work of a local female Arts & Crafts jeweler, and at the Frick Museum, in Pittsburgh, they supplemented their labels with information written by local makers, social historians, and fashion experts.
Every time I came to visit the exhibition at the Driehaus Museum, there were many people wandering through the galleries and exclaiming about the beauty of the jewelry.
—Elyse Zorn Karlin
Image Credits:
Joë Descomps
Brooch, c. 1900
Diamond, 18K yellow gold
Collection of Richard H. Driehaus
Photography: John Faier
Ella Naper
Lily-Pad Hair Combs, c. 1906
Horn, moonstone
Collection of Richard H. Driehaus
Photography: John Faier
Karl Rothmüller
Mermaid, c. 1900
Gilded silver, coral, pearl
Collection of Richard H. Driehaus
Photography: John Faier
Installation Shot
Chicago Arts & Crafts Gallery
Photography: Michael Monar