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1 Larissa Guimarães Professor Johnson Professor Linn New York 1 Larissa Guimarães Professor Johnson Professor Linn New York City Gilded Ages – Fall 2015 October 23rd, 2015 Report on Tiffany’s chatelaine purse (1950.102ab) 1. Introduction The shrine of the three kings is very splendid. One end is of pure gold but the whole is set with very precious stones. In one end is the largest topaz in the world, which drawing is in the end of the book. Catharine Beekman, “Catharine Beekman Journal of Trip Abroad”, (diary, New York, 1854), 36. Catharine Beekman’s description of a sanctuary she visited during a trip to Europe in 1854 demonstrates well the materialism so characteristic of the first Gilded Age in the United States. The period, which extended from about the first decades after the industrial revolution (1850’s to 1860’s) to the First World War (1914) or, some argue, to the beginning of the great depression years (1929), was marked by “unchecked wealth and unbridled excess.” The Gilded Age was a time for the expression of the profits derived from the changes the Industrial Revolution operated in America, such as the development of the railway, coal, oil, steel and finance industries; businesses that allowed for family names to become synonyms of the accumulation of fortune.1 Catharine herself bore a last name that made her part of the ten percent of America’s population that controlled three quarters of the country’s wealth during the 1890’s.1 This parcel of the society, which the Beekman family was a part of, entitled to itself the duty of raising 1. Greg King, A Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor in Gilded Age New York (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 5-6. 2 cultural and social standards in America, and found its way to it through the endorsement of aristocratic values largely arising from the European high society. As Greg King puts: To this end, every aspect of life in the Gilded Age took on deeper, transcendent meaning intended to prove the greatness of America: works of art uplifted and were shared with the public; clothing exhibited evidence of breeding; jewelry testified to cultured taste and wealth; (…) and balls rivaled those of European courts in their refinement.2 This “deeper, transcendent” meaning attributed to the activities the society of the Gilded Age performed was also present in the dry goods they owned, as we can read both in King’s enumeration – works of art, clothing, jewelry – and in Catharine’s detailed description of the gems she saw in a church in northern Italy. Society objects carried the same performative yet meaningful role their activities did. Among one of these meaningful objects of the Gilded Age was the chatelaine purse that is the object of this research. In fact, it belonged to Catharine Beekman’s family, more specifically to her sister, Cornelia Augusta Beekman. 2. Description The purse was manufactured by Tiffany & Co., and is made of black velvet and sterling silver, with the interior lined in chamois and divided into two compartments. It is suspended from two silver chains on either side of a snap fastener. Both the chatelaine and the fastener are worked in relief with floral motifs and scrolled outer edges. A silver medallion with the initials “C. A. B.” also worked in floral motifs is attached to the center of one of the velvet sides. The overall size of the object is 127/8x65/8x1 inches. 2. Greg King, A Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor in Gilded Age New York (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 5-6. 3 The purse has two Tiffany’s marks stamped, one in the inside part of the snap fastener reading “Tiffany & Co. 4092 M 7746 Sterling-Silver”, and another in the back of the chatelaine, reading “Tiffany & Co. 4254 M 7526 Sterling-Silver”. The marks allow for an approximation in the range of years when the purse was made, based on the history of Tiffany’s. The company, which started as a “stationery, Chinese bric-a- brac, fans, pottery, umbrellas and desks” store would not use the name “Tiffany & Co.” before 1868, when it incorporated the silverware factory of the Moore family. From then onwards, the silverware produced bore the letter “M” stamped, in addition to “Tiffany & Co.”.3 The numbers in the mark are the pattern number, usually on the upper side or the left of the mark, and the order number, normally below or to the right of the mark. While the pattern number refers to the original drawing of the pieces, the order number is assigned as identification of pieces or a set of pieces ordered at once.4 According to an approximation made by Carpenter and Zapata, the pattern number of Cornelia Beekman’s purse would indicate it was made between 1875 and 1876. Furthermore, visual comparisons with tables of Tiffany’s marks along the company’s history also point to the range between 1870 and 1875.4 We can roughly estimate that the purse was made between 1868 and 1890. The purse does not show many signs of use apart from a few scratches in the velvet. 3. Dorothy Rainwater, Encyclopedia of American Silver Manufacturers (New York: Crown Publishers, 1975), 168-69. 4. Charles Hope Carpenter, Janet Zapata, and Boston Arts. The Silver of Tiffany & Co., 1850- 1987. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), 259-63 4 3. Production & Marketing Tiffany products were largely advertised in seasonal catalogues. In the 1878 Tiffany & Co. summer catalogue, the company lists its products by groups of presents suitable for different people. Chatelaines, more specifically, are listed under “Gifts for Ladies” and “Utensils for Household Use”. Even though this catalogue does not associate chatelaines with purses, it 5 recommends that they should be bought altogether with items to serve as its pendants – fans, smelling-bottles, vinaigrettes and watches. Evidently, the catalogue also extensively advertises Tiffany silver in general. It highlights the company’s specialists and advises buyers to consult with Tiffany’s designers, who were “trained, and their shops organized, with reference to such special work.”5 Another interesting fact about Tiffany’s advertisement for the summer of 1878 is that although prices are not listed in the catalogue, the company stresses the season’s costs of production, which were “minimum” and the products’ prices, according to them “lower than similar goods have ever before been offered.”5 Carpenter and Zapata’s work on Tiffany’s estimated the price of chatelaines to vary from $6 to $100, converting the original value of the object to the dollar in 1987, when the approximation was made.6 The catalogue yet offers information about the locals of production of different kinds of Tiffany’s silver items. At that period, the company claimed all pieces to be made in their stores by their specialized designers and craftsmen, the only exception being the ones falling in the “Electro-Plated Ware” category, which products came from a factory in Newark, New Jersey. The chatelaine purse would probably have fell into the category of “Household & Artistic Silver”, which had its articles produced in 53 and 55 Prince St., in New York; or “Fine Jewelry, Leather Goods & Stationery”, which products were manufactured in Union Square, in New York. 5. Tiffany & Co. “Tiffany & Co.” (Catalogue, New York, 1878), 2-7 4. Charles Hope Carpenter, Janet Zapata, and Boston Arts. The Silver of Tiffany & Co., 1850- 1987. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), 259-63 6 4. Use and Meanings The word chatelaine derives from the French word “châtelaine”, which means the woman responsible for a household, or a “château” (French for “castle”, also used figuratively as “houselhold”),7 and like many other items of American fashion, the fashion of the chatelaine originated in Europe. More specifically, during the 19th century, housekeepers throughout the continent commonly wore chatelaines to bear items necessary to the maintenance of the house on a daily basis – keys, watches etc.8 Not surprisingly, then, when such fashion was absorbed by America, the senior, married or unmarried woman in a family was the one who usually wore chatelaines. As the piece gained sophistication and started being produced by jewelry manufacturers such as Ball Black and Co., Starr and Marcus, and Tiffany and Co. around the 1860’s, it even carried a connotation for young women, who could be seen as more responsible and participative in their family’s affairs if she carried one of these. However, this probably was not the case for Cornelia Beekman (1849 – 1917), who never married and indeed was the hostess of various social events of the Beekman family and mistress of her houselhold, where she lived with her parents, James William Beekman (11/22/1815 – 06/15/1877) and Abien Milledoller (11/22/1815 – 01/15/1877), her brothers James William (11/04/1847 – 08/07/1908) and Gerard, and her sister Catharine, until 1868, when she married.9 7. Harold Newman, An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry. (New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1981) 8. Natalie Rothstein, Four Hundred Years of Fashion. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum in Association with W. Collins, 1984), 174. 9. Tunis Bergen, comp. Genealogies of the State of New York. Vol. I. (New York, NY: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1915), 493. 7 Because Cornelia was an unmarried woman, it is unlikely that the chatelaine purse was given to her as a gift from someone outside her family circle. It is unclear how the purse came to her possession, but it is likely that she or her father bought it directly from Tiffany’s. f As indicated by James W.
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