Exhibitions • Expositions

DISCOVERING AN UNKNOWN MASTER: The Jewelry and Silver of F. Walter Lawrence
March 24 – October 3, 2004

The Newark Museum , Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A.

Double-walled bowl - Designed by F. Walter Lawrence, made by Lebkeucher & Co., Newark NJ. 1915-20. Private Collection.

The Newark Museum presents a first-ever retrospective of the work of the master jeweler, F. Walter Lawrence, opens at The Newark Museum on March 24, 2004. Thirty-eight pieces of Lawrence’s handcrafted jewelry and silver will be on display in the Museum’s Contemporary Craft Gallery until the exhibition, Discovering an Unknown Master: The Jewelry and Silver of F. Walter Lawrence, closes on October 3 of this year. His work was exhibited at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Arts Clubs in Sycracuse and Albany; his jewelry was written about in such diverse periodicals of the time as Town & Country and Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman magazine. Yet, until now, there has not been an exhibition of his life’s work.

Pair of bowls showing Austrian influence - F. Walter Lawrence, ca. 1910. Private Collection.

Born in Baltimore in 1864, Frank Walter Lawrence arrived in Newark at the age of sixteen to apprentice with Durand & Co., one of the biggest names in the jewelry industry. By the time he opened his own business in New York City in 1894, Lawrence had attained considerable repute as a designer of beautiful, sumptuous jewelry and elegant silverware. He was immersed in the Arts and Crafts ideal that these objects were not merely costly commodities, but art forms. In fact, many of the materials he used at the time were not intrinsically valuable. His colored gemstones, baroque pearls and iridescent fragments of ancient glass offer testimony that he was a romanticist, insired by both history and nature.

“Like his peer, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Lawrence was drawn to natural, organic forms,” says the Museum’s Curator of Decorative Arts, Ulysses Grant Dietz. “And, although Lawrence was aware of all of the various artistic movements flourishing in turn-of-the-century America, he wasn’t wedded to any one style.”

Pepper shakers in the form of mushrooms - Designed by F. Walter Lawrence, made by Lebkeucher & Co., Newark NJ. 1905-10. Private Collection.

The variety of styles, the quality and craftmanship, and the artistic values of F. Walter Lawrence are evident in this exhibition. An assortment of objects, made or designed by this master jeweler includes necklaces, brooches, bracelets, rings, bowls, candlesticks and more, on loan from private collections and museums. One piece, recently purchased by the Museum, is particularly evocative of Lawrence’s style, according to Dietz. “It is a very particular work of art,” he says, referring to a necklace that the jeweler created in 1909, as a thirtieth birthday gift. Fashion in the form of a hop vine, which is the plant representing the recipient’s birth month, October, the piece contains thirty faceted gemstones, one for each year being celebrated. They surround a center pendant featuring the same month’s birthstone, the opal.

Lawrence lived in Summit with his wife and son until his death in 1920, but his jewelry firm continued to do business in New York until 1975.