Art as Jewelry as Art
Art as Jewelry as Art
Harry Bertoia
Crab-Shaped Brooch
Lot Closed
October 6, 04:07 PM GMT
Estimate
35,000 - 40,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Harry Bertoia
1915 - 1978
Crab-Shaped Brooch
circa 1943
delicate sterling silver brooch shaped like a crab that responds to the wearer’s movement and vibration
4 by 2¾ in.; 10.2 by 7 cm.
Private collection of the private secretary to Eero Saarinen Wright Auction, Chicago, Harry Bertoia: Material and Form, May 2, 2007 [Lot 817a]
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Nancy Schiffer and Val O. Bertoia, The World of Bertoia, Shiffer, Atglen, PA, 2003, p. 25 for a similar example
Town & Country, May 2018, ill. p. 114
Yvonne J. Markowitz, Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MFA Publications, Boston, 2011, p. 166
Bertoia’s jewelry work is very rare, and his hammered brass and silverwork came from his years at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. His pieces like this Crab-Shaped Brooch are handmade and created with rivets and tension fittings. A similar example can be seen in Yvonne J. Markowitz, Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MFA Publications, Boston, 2011, p. 166.