ADAM'S FINE JEWELLERY & WATCHES Tuesday 17th September 2019

63 101 AN ENAMEL AND RUBY FROG BROOCH, BY DAVID WEBB Designed as a stylised frog with smooth polished body of cream enamel, with fine line linear detail and ruby cabochon eyes, mounted in 18K gold, signedWebb, length 4.2cm, width 3cm € 5,000 - 7,000 “The list of women who own his diamond and emerald encrusted animals reads like Who’s Who. The Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, and Mrs. Amory wear his green enamel frogs.” - Eugenia Sheppard, 1964, fashion editor for the New York Herald Tribune. DavidWebb founded his eponymous fine jewellery line in Manhattan on July 28th 1948, at just twenty-three. His creations have come to embody the emboldened post-war era, exuding extravagance and excess which was hitherto disparaged.Webb stands amongst few who in the 20th century lay claim to an aesthetic style which was wholly their own.Webb’s design were uninhibited, audacious and mesmerising, fast attracting throngs of American royalty to his 2 West 46th Street address, quickly becoming ‘NewYork’s best-known secret.’ Donned by Jac- queline Kennedy, ElizabethTaylor and Estee Lauder,Webb jewellery has presence and demand notice, designed for those with presence in the vast city. Little is known ofWebb’s early life, though few from his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, could foresee his meteoric rise to fame just a few short years following his move to NewYork. Webb got his start in Asheville as an apprentice to his uncle, a silversmith, before landing a job in the Diamond District of NewYork at the age of seventeen.The independence he exhibited to move to NewYork at this ripe age only serves to demonstrateWebb’s individuated approach to all aspects of design. He completed all of his design work himself, from the conceptualisation of his pieces in pencil sketches in an unmistakably ‘Webb’ fashion, through to their complete fruition. A fascination with colour is at the core of allWebb’s work, though ultimately this is dictated by his deep respect for form and materials.Webb’s command of geometry gave him the liber- ty to create without compromise, likening him to an architect as well as artist. It is this duali- ty of material and form which caught the attention of Jacqueline Kennedy, who selectedWebb to complete seven designs for the Kennedy gifts of state which honoured minerals native the United States.All of these were accepted by Kennedy, prompting a lasting collaborative work relationship between the pair, with Kennedy herself comparingWebb’s ingenuity of design to that of Cellini. In the 1970s, venerable houses such as Cartier andVan Cleef &Arpels turned to a resurgence of the art deco style. Conversely, inWebb’s typical self-instructed style, he drew influence from innumerable cultures spanning across many periods, holding no reservations in his choosing.This was the penultimate result ofWebb’s studies of artefacts, utilising the extensive resources which NewYork city had to offer. He famously found himself on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art weekly, preoccupying his mind with bygone ancient cultures, from the Greco-Romans to the Byzantines.Artefacts from all corners of the world were re-envisaged byWebb.A Minoan bull would become a gold belt buckle and Greek penannular bracelets became the models forWebb’s signature gold animal bracelets. He thrust jewellery further away from the abstract, embracing figurative forms and volume like no other. His ex- uberant animal creations take their place amidst a lineage of figurative animal art, successors of everything from Cartier’s 1940s ‘big cat’ jewels to the legacy of the preserved talismanic mythological creatures he found at the Metropolitan Museum. It is for this breadth of influence, his stark individuality and boldness of design that brands Webb the Quintessential American Jeweller. © Ruth Peltason, DavidWebbThe QuintessentialAmerican Jeweller, pp203