Arts & Culture

NYT gives a shoutout to the Telfair and Owens-Thomas House curator Tania Sammons

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From an interesting piece in the NYT, Newark Recalls Its Lustrous Metals Past, about a new exhibit at the Newark Museum:

When the city’s metalwork factories were vying to meet worldwide demand in the early 20th century, Mr. Dietz said at a preview, “Newark was the Detroit of the jewelry world.”

Technological innovations on view include foldable eyeglasses, and porcelain and glass vessels trimmed with electrodeposited silver. The objects sometimes have multiple connections to people in Newark; a 1904 trophy made by the local firm William B. Kerr was awarded to the owner of a nearby printing company who won a harness race at a track in a local park.

Mr. Dietz, the museum’s senior curator, has brought out company drawings, salesmen’s samples and catalog pages drawn partly from recent gifts like the archive of the onetime major jewelry manufacturer Krementz & Company. When Krementz descendants offered the material, Mr. Dietz said, “we piled my car up with suitcases and boxes.”

Other recent scholarly studies of precious-metals artisans have focused on Virginia, Philadelphia, Savannah and New York City. An exhibition about Cincinnati silver opens in June at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and a jewelry show planned for next year at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago will display pieces that were fashioned locally.

The word “Savannah” in the article is a hyperlink to the University of Georgia Press page for The Story of Silver in Savannah by Tania June Sammons, the curator of the Owens-Thomas House and of decorative arts at the Telfair Museums. The foreward is by former Telfair director Steven High, who is now at the helm of the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota.

From the description of Sammons’ book, which was published as the catalog for a major exhibit:

Adding to the Telfair’s growing body of work on Savannah’s material culture, The Story of Silver in Savannah features more than one hundred color photographs of pieces of silver connected to the city. With discussions and portraits of simple spoons made by Savannah silversmiths, elaborate tea sets and dinnerwares owned by historic Savannah families, and contemporary collections that feature important examples of American and English silver, this catalog explores the evolving relationship between this prized metal and the inhabitants of Savannah.