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Silver Flake News
The Jewelry and Silver of F. Walter Lawrence
by Janet Zapata
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1026/is_4_165/ai_n6077618
Although known to astute jewelry buyers at the turn of the
twentieth century, Frank Walter Lawrence (Fig. 1) is relatively
unknown today, Perhaps this stems from the fact that he conducted
his business in an upstairs salon, where he offered fine,
handcrafted jewelry, silverware, and bronzes to a discriminating
clientele including Mary Harrison (1858-1948), the wife of
President Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901). (1) Lawrence was
an important designer who displayed his jewelry in many arts
and crafts exhibitions as well as at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase
Exposition in Saint Louis. Although he made fine jewelry of
precious stones he focused primarily on artistic pieces with
unusual stones such as hessonite garnets, pink tourmalines,
and chrysoprase, which appealed to his sense of aesthetics
in a manner similar to the jewelry designed by Louis Comfort
Tiffany (1848-1933). And, like Tiffany, Lawrence often turned
to nature for inspiration.
Lawrence was born in Baltimore on November
2, 1864, one of thirteen children, to France La Fayette (1824-1885)
and Hannah Rebecca Lawrence (nee Thomas; 1829-1915). (2) In
1880, when he was sixteen, the family moved to Newark, New
Jersey, where Frank Lawrence learned the rudiments of designing
and fabricating jewelry. Obituaries state that he apprenticed
with Durand and Company (1869-1936), a prominent jewelry manufacturer
in Newark; the silver firm Howard and Company (c. 1866-c.1922)
in New York City; and Jaques and Marcus (c. 1882-1892), a
maker and retailer in New York City. One source states that
he "apprenticed himself, purposely working at the bench
that he might physically learn the creative art of the jewelry
trade." (3) In 1883 he was listed in the Newark city
directories as "jeweler" at 12 Centre Street. In
1889 he established his first business in Newark under his
full name at the above location, (4) but it is not known what
type of jewelry he was making.
On April 19, 1893, Lawrence married Bertha
Baldwin (1866-1930). (5) They had one son, Walter Baldwin
Lawrence (1895-1956). (6) In 1894 Lawrence moved his business
to 857 Broadway in New York City, where he was listed in the
city directory under "jewelry" and residing at 4
West Ninety-fifth Street. He must have been quite well established
in the field by this time, for he was among the guests at
the twentieth annual banquet of the New York Jewelers' Association
held at Delmonico's on November 15, 1894. This event was attended
by prominent jewelers and silver makers in the New York City
region, including George W. Shiebler (1846-1920), George Krementz
(1837-1918) from Krementz and Company (1869-present) in Newark,
and George Frederick Kunz (1856-1932), the prominent gem expert
at Tiffany and Company (1837-present) in New York City. (7)
In 1898 Lawrence opened his first jewelry salon
at 41 Union Square. (8) He called the business F. Walter Lawrence
and remained at this location until he moved to 322 Fifth
Avenue in 1905, according to the city directory. In 1915 he
moved to the Harriman Building at 527 Fifth Avenue, Room 706.
All of his jewelry and silverware is marked "F.W.L.,"
"F.W.LAWRENCE," or "F. WALTER LAWRENCE."
Lawrence often adapted the motifs and trends
of the jewelry and silver being produced at the turn of the
century. He mounted gemstones in collet settings (the stone
is completely surrounded by the setting), a technique based
on the arts and crafts style made popular in England by Charles
Robert Ashbee (1863-1942), and Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862-1928)
and his wife Georgie Gaskin (1866-1934). From Marcus and Company
(1892-before 1950) in New York City, he borrowed the technique
of pearling, which, in fact, had been perfected by Charles
Osborne (1847-1920) when he was a silver designer for Tiffany
and Company and later for the Whiting Manufacturing Company
(1840-1926) in Providence, Rhode Island.
The first known piece of jewelry by Lawrence,
the ring in Plate IV, which dates to 1901, utilizes both of
the above techniques. It was specially designed for a client
and bears the initials "MP" worked into the braid-like
pattern on the back of the shank, along with the dates 1851
and 1901, on either side of the shank near the stone, suggesting
the ring was a fiftieth birthday present. Six diamonds in
collet settings serve as the "prongs" to hold the
hessonite garnet in place. The gold mounting is decorated
with pearling and designed in a spiral pattern that has been
heavily chased to give the effect of octopus tentacles. An
amethyst and diamond brooch from the same period (Pl. III)
is designed along similar lines but is finished in a more
dramatic manner with the upper part of the octopus-like tentacles
ending in small half-round pearl-like elements and the far
ends of the tentacles terminating in diamonds in collet settings.
This curvilinear style could be called the
American version of art nouveau, a less exuberant expression
of the whiplash line of French art nouveau. On the brooch
in Plate II the chased gold mount in the pearling style is
set with a star sapphire within a scrolling border. Two white
opals are set at either end of the brooch, their bluish coloration
picked up in the four Montana sapphires (9) and their greenish
tones in the demantoid garnets. For the next several years,
Lawrence continued to work in this style, adapting it to form
an interlacing design on a ring set with a cabochon emerald.
(10)
By 1903 Lawrence was creating a new style of
jewelry that incorporated baroque pearls from the Mississippi
River (see Pl. V). He wrote in Town and Country that the neck
ornament illustrated here is an example of "the apt use
of these mal-formed pearls as sails on the little galley."
(11) The sails on the four galleys on the side panels are
made up of dogtooth hinge pearls, while the billowing sail
on the galleon in the central plaque is a large baroque pearl.
(12) The nautical motif continues in the dolphins surrounding
the central plaque and in the cattails and scallop shells
on either side of the flanking panels and on the clasp. The
gold has been hammered to give it the soft, handwrought appearance
characteristic of most of Lawrence's early jewelry.
Lawrence exhibited this neck ornament at the
Arts and Crafts Exhibition of Art Craftsmanship at arts clubs
in Syracuse and Rochester, New York, in 1903, along with jewelry
incorporating Cyprian or Phoenician glass "taken from
the tombs throughout Syria, where it has lain for centuries."
(13) The fragments of ancient cups, bowls, and bottles had
"a wonderful iridescence" from their long burial.
(14) The fragments were found in the ancient city of Jerusalem
and imported into this country by Ayeez Kayat. (15) Other
objects in his exhibit were a vinaigrette of which the body
was an ancient tear bottle; a buckle and a ring, each with
an Egyptian head; a scarf pin with the head of Cleopatra;
a sphinx brooch; an Egyptian boat; and a desert scene in a
frame decorated with a caravan, pyramids, and palm and lotus
trees. The background of the scene was formed from a slightly
concave piece of glass so that, when held at different angles,
it imitated the "sunset behind the Pyramids." (16)
The only known extant piece of Lawrence's jewelry
incorporating Cyprian glass is the lotus and dragonfly hair
comb in Plate I. The glass fragment with hues of red, green,
brown, and blue is framed by a gold mounting with lotus flowers
and leaves. A dragonfly with wings set with diamonds and demantoid
garnets hovers over the glass.
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