Necklace
Meta Overbeck American
Louis C. Tiffany American
Manufacturer Tiffany & Co.
Louis C. Tiffany was a master of nearly every medium, exploring predominantly aspects of nature, color, and light, as exemplified in this necklace. Jewelry was one of the last mediums to which Tiffany turned his attention, beginning about 1902, and he unveiled his first examples of nature-inspired artistic jewelry in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. During the early years, his jewelry was made under the direction of his talented enamellist Julia Munson, and she and those under her, mainly women, worked out of his Studios building. After 1907, the operations moved to Tiffany & Co., at Fifth Avenue and 37th Street, where he established a dedicated "Art Jewelry" section, with Munson still at the helm. Louis Tiffany was by then Vice President and Art Director of Tiffany & Co. When Munson retired in 1914, she was succeeded by Margreta (Meta) Katherine Overbeck, who designed and directed the Art Jewelry department there until Tiffany’s death in 1933 and the Art Jewelry department closed. The similarity of this necklace to a sketch in a scrapbook of sketches by Overbeck in the collection of the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida, suggests its authorship to Overbeck, but stylistically, it must date to early in Overbeck’s tenure. As such, it is almost a transition piece within the oeuvre of Louis Tiffany’s jewelry. It is still heavily inspired by nature, with the naturalistic leaves in their colorful autumnal foliage achieved by the delicate translucent enamels and silver berries, looking to Munson’s era, while at the same time, it reveals Overbeck’s interest in gem stones in its incorporation of Montana sapphires, emeralds, and topazes. Overbeck would later forgo references to nature altogether and create designs that made the various stones the feature of the work.
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