“What can I say? I always REALLY liked frogs.”
BORN IN 1881 to Hungarian immigrants, I grew up in the tenements of the Lower East Side. Worked odd jobs. Sold antiques in Los Angeles for a while. By 1921, I was back in New York, and by the mid-1930s, I had a salon on Madison Avenue. No European training, no family connections. I just haunted the 47th Street shops, studying old pieces, thinking: What if?
Here’s what I figured out. A turbo shell from the Indian Ocean looks incredible next to a sapphire. Citrine chunks the size of jelly beans? Put them beside tiny diamonds. Wood — sandalwood, ebony — set in gold that cost more than a car. My “Barbaric” bracelets and “Bubble” earrings were not for the shy. The Duchess of Windsor bought several. So did Andy Warhol. The Vanderbilts. Coco Chanel.
Competitors tried to copy me. They missed the point. It wasn’t randomness. It was deliberate asymmetry — things that shouldn’t work, working.
I retired in the late 1960s, died at 91 in 1972. The workshop’s still going. Turns out nobody else can quite nail that ugly-beautiful thing.
Who am I?
Respond fast — one winner will receive a “Jewelry Geek” t-shirt and will be announced in INSTORE Magazine.
FEBRUARY’S ANSWER: Mario Buccellati / WINNER: Eileen Eichhorn, Eichhorn Jewelry, Decatur, IN
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