British “Tree Frog” brooch, silver set with green and clear paste jewels, red jewel eyes, marks c. 1895
Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book “On the Origin of Species” overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of specie. By the 1870s both the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact and awakening the public to the diversity of life. The frog emerging from Darwin’s Pond was a symbol of the times and a favorite theme for jewelry of the era.
Paul Haustein Germany Rare Jugendstil enamel and silver inkwell c.1900
PAUL HAUSTEIN (1880-1944) Germany
HERMANN BEHRND (b. 1849) SILBERWARENFABRIK (silver) Dresden, Germany
JAKAB RAPOPORT (enamelist) Budapest, Hungary
Inkwell c. 1900
Multicolored burgundy, purple, blue and green enamel with silver mounts, glass insert
Marks: Moon, crown, 800, HB (Hermann Behrnd mark)
Same model with variant mount illustrated: Deutsche Goldschmiede-Zeitung, n.d. (circa 1903-05), p. 23
For related works and more information see: Art Nouveau in Munich: Masters of Jugendstil, ed. Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1988) pp. 67-69; Jugendstil in Dresden, Aufbruch in die Moderne, Gisela Haase et al., exh. cat. (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Wolfratshausen: Edition Minerva, 1999).
Wolfgang Gessl / Scandinavian Modern Sterling silver teapot with arching handle 1990
WOLFGANG GESSL (b. 1949) Austria / Sweden
Teapot 1990
Hand wrought and hand hammered spherical silver teapot with cylindrical handle and spout elements, maple and padouk wood layered arching handle
This is No. 2 out of the edition of 3 models.
Marks: Wolfgang Gessl (script impressed signature), 2/3, WO.GE (in a rectangle), Swedish assay mark for Stockholm, 925 (silver guarantee in a rectangle), E11 (in a rectangle), LF
Exhibited: Glänsande Geometri, Mettalum, Stockholm, Sweden
Illustrated: Gold and Silversmith Wolfgang Gessl: Exceeding Geometry, Kerstin Wickman, p. 16.
H: 10” x W: 16 ½” x D: 5 ½”
Price: $32,000
Wolfgang Gessl was born in 1949 in Vienna, Austria and trained as a goldsmith with Professor Hans Angerbauer. Upon moving to Sweden, Gessl studied under the eminent silversmith Sigurd Persson at Konstfack, the National University of Art, Craft and Design in Stockholm, Sweden.
Wolfgang Gessl has had fifteen solo exhibitions including shows at The National Museum, Stockholm and The Royal College of Art in London. His metalwork has been widely exhibited in Sweden, Europe and the U.S and his pieces can be found in many private collections throughout the world. He has taught at Konstfack for more than twenty-four years, and continues to live and work in Stockholm.
Illustrated: New Bauhaus, 50 Jahre: Bauhausnachfolge in Chicago (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv and Argon Verlag GmbH: 1987), p. 177
H: 18 5/8” x 22 ½” (framed)
Nathan Lerner’s long career was inextricably bound up in the history of visual culture in Chicago. Born in 1913 to immigrants from Ukraine, he began studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of 16, taking up the camera to perfect his compositional skills. At 22 he began doing a kind of photojournalism, developing his well-known series on ”Maxwell Street,” an immigrant neighborhood hit hard by the Depression, and also photographing the southern Illinois mining area. In 1936 when the New Bauhaus was established in Chicago by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Lerner became one of its first scholarship students and turned increasingly to photographic experimentation. He began making semi-abstract, strongly Constructivist images involving luminous projections, solarization, photograms and other methods, and his interest in manipulating light led him to invent the first ”light box.” In 1939 he became the assistant of Gyorgy Kepes, head of the school’s light workshop; together, they wrote ”The Creative Use of Light” (1941). With Charles Niedringhaus in 1942 he developed a machine for forming plywood that was used in making most of the school’s furniture. After working as a civilian light expert for the Navy in New York during World War II, Lerner returned to the school, now called the Institute of Design, and was named education director after Moholy-Nagy’s death in 1946. He left in 1949, opening a design office that became nationally known for its furniture, building systems and glass and plastic containers (including bottles for Revlon and Neutrogena and the Honeybear honey container). In 1968 Lerner married Kiyoko Asia, a classical pianist from Japan, and over the next two decades made numerous trips to Japan, where he took his first color photographs, as well as Mexico. He had his first solo exhibition of photography in 1973 and thereafter exhibited regularly in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Japan. His work is included in photography and design collections around the world. (Roberta Smith, New York Times, February 15, 1997).
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