A new exhibition explores how the city put its own spin on early 20th-century jewelry and metalwork.
The Arts and Crafts movement, which had its start in Britain in the late 19th century, was a reaction to what many saw as the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. It emphasized craftsmanship in high-quality, handmade items, with materials chosen more for aesthetics than value. The movement spread around the world and found acceptance in the United States. In Boston, Massachusetts, it spawned a community of artists and metalsmiths who did it their own way. That is the basis of the new “Boston Made: Arts and Crafts Jewelry and Metalwork” exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, according to Emily Stoehrer, the museum’s Rita J. Kaplan and Susan B. Kaplan curator of jewelry.
The exhibition spans approximately 30 years, from the founding of the Society of Arts and Crafts in 1897 through the stock market crash in 1929. More than 75 works are on view, the majority of them jewelry, along with enamel boxes, design drawings, a costume and one painting, notes Stoehrer. Among the items is an archive of design drawings by leading Arts and Crafts proponent Frank Gardner Hale, which the museum acquired in 2014.
The Society of Arts and Crafts, part of an effort to popularize contemporary applied arts, offered artist craftsmen “power in numbers,” says Stoehrer, with regular meetings, annual exhibitions and a retail showroom. That, combined with metalworking courses from the city’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) and local colleges, meant the movement had a solid grounding by 1910, says Stoehrer. “The exhibition heavily features Frank Gardner Hale. He had trained at SMFA and went to England to study with Charles Robert Ashbee, a leader in the Arts and Crafts movement there. By the time Hale came back to Boston, the metalworking community was established.”
In many cases, she continues, the jewelers and metalsmiths were working in the same building or block, “having the same teachers and exhibiting together at the Society of Arts and Crafts. So you really see this community evolve.”
The feminine technique
The Arts and Crafts movement offered women jewelers a socially acceptable way to enter an industry long dominated by male designers and find their creative voices. “That’s a major theme in our exhibition,” says Stoehrer. “Nine of the 14 artists exhibited are women — Josephine Hartwell Shaw, Elizabeth Copeland, Margaret Rogers, Lucretia McMurtrie Bush, Gertrude S. Twichell, Katherine Pratt, Mary Catherine Knight, Hazel Blake French and Jessie Ames Dunbar.”
Shaw and Rogers were among the important early makers of the style, explains Stoehrer. Boston-trained, they were exhibiting at the Arts and Crafts society before Hale came back from England. Many of the other women jewelers would be unknown to the average museum visitor, but were found through research, Stoehrer notes. “They were active during the time period, and examples of their jewelry were able to be located…. We are excited to show Jessie Ames Dunbar and Lucretia Bush’s work, as their jewelry has not previously been exhibited alongside better-known artists like Shaw, Rogers and Copeland.”
Shaw is the best-known of the women designers, says Stoehrer, but there are only six examples of her jewelry known to exist. “We have all of them in the exhibition. She made really big, bold pieces, and some of her extraordinary necklaces will be on view.”
The museum acquired two of her works — a brooch and a ring — in 1913. “These would have been contemporary jewelry then,” says Stoehrer. “She’s the first woman as a contemporary jeweler to enter the collection.”
Local color
One of the things that distinguishes Boston Arts and Crafts pieces is their use of “a lot of gold, often in different colors mixed in one piece, [as well as] diamonds and colored gemstones, enamel, silver and platinum,” Stoehrer explains. “Boston really becomes known for this very colorful jewelry.”
Patrons of the arts, she adds, embraced the Arts and Crafts philosophy of pieces being designed and made by the same person. “The Society of Arts and Crafts sold the jewelry in their showroom and also did special exhibitions. These jewelers also traveled nationally and gave lectures and were featured in international exhibitions. While this was very much a Boston movement, the artists were known nationally, and in some cases internationally, in their day.”
A slew of showstoppers
The exhibition includes many incredible pieces by Hale, including a brooch studded with gemstones and embellished with gold scrolls, Stoehrer says. “Some more unusual pieces by the women designers include a necklace by Shaw using antique Chinese jade and enamel made to look like gemstones. French used Sandwich glass she had cut by lapidary artists…. At first glance and even second glance, it’s hard to tell they aren’t gemstones.”
A masterwork by Edward Everett Oakes is the final piece on the exhibition’s timeline, says the curator. “A casket made of platinum and pearls and amethysts, it was shown in October 1929 at the Society of Arts and Crafts showroom, just a few weeks before the stock market crashed.” It didn’t sell until the museum acquired it in 2000.
Learning and growing
Education was a key reason the Arts and Crafts movement flourished in Boston, according to Emily Stoehrer of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Society of Arts and Crafts gave jewelers a firm background of technique, along with a sense of community and an outlet to sell their work. “Boston was an early education center in metalsmithing, and you did see a lot of people coming from elsewhere to study here,” says Stoehrer. There were also “people who came to Boston and trained with experts like enamelist Laurin Hoving Martin, and then went to teach elsewhere…. And the style evolved from there.”
Main image: Necklace by Frank Gardner Hale in gold, green garnet, sapphire and opal, after 1906. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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