Designer: Annemarie Davidson (1920 – 2012)

Item: Enamel Jewel Lidded Jewelry Box

Manufactured by: Annemarie Davidson

Country of origin: United States

Year made: Circa 1960

Materials: Copper enamel tile on Walnut wood box

Dimensions: 1 ¾” x 5” x 5”

Condition: Excellent

References: Nelson, Harold; Jazzar, Bernard, Painting with Fire: Masters of Enameling in America, 1930-1980. Long Beach Museum of Art, California (2006); Rosenberg, Alan, Alluring Enamel. Modernism Magazine: (Spring 2003) pages 68–72; Jazzar, Bernard N and Nelson, Harold B. The Enamels of Annemarie Davidson, Glass on Metal, The Enamellist’s Magazine, Volume 27 Number 5, December 2008, pages 98-100; periodical California Design: 6 in 1960

Description: Here is a beautiful little lidded box by Davidson in walnut with a heavy round enameled copper plaque inlaid into the walnut top. The decoration on the enamel work is her most highly regarded Jewels design. This design is similar to others we have seen using this same color scheme with psychedelic orbs and ray bursts on bookends and many plates and dishes she did. These abstracted forms and shapes are often referred to as her Jewels design and are considered her most highly acclaimed works. It is signed on the bottom with her foil label as shown. Davidson collaborated with Blaine Rathe who was an established woodworker and well regarded studio artist in her own right, to produce the wood boxes and other wood bases for Davidson’s enamel art. Although Davidson’s enamel plates and dishes with objective imagery are ubiquitous, inexpensive, and abundant, her Jewels plates and desk accessories (i.e. bookends, boxes, pen holders, blotters, etc.) are fairly hard to find.

Davidson was born in Berlin in 1920, and came to the US in 1936. She studied economics at New York University and later at Columbia University. She studied enameling with the prominent enamel pioneer Doris Hall in the 1950s. Davidson moved to southern California with her husband in 1946, and lived and worked in the Los Angeles area until her death in 2012. Her early abstract work is her most highly regarded, and was exhibited at California Design in 1960. She was listed in Craftsmen of the Southwest in 1965 which only listed 8 enamelists total including Fred Ball, Margaret Montgomery Barlow, Nik Krevitsky, June Schwarcz, Kay Whitcomb and Elllamarie and Jackson Woolley. In her work, Davidson frequently uses pieces of glass of varying sizes to create irregular organic shapes which she calls “jewels.” These raised forms appear to float on the liquid surface of the vessel or plaque. For many of her abstract compositions, she also uses a sgraffito technique, incising straight lines with the sharp point of a dart. These hand-drawn lines, which fan out from a central focal point, present a linear counterpoint to the more fluid, organic and sculptural form of the jewels. You can see the use of both her 'jewels' and the sgraffito technique in this wonderful example of her early work

Her works were exhibited in her lifetime at the Pasadena Art Museum, Long Beach Museum of Art, Mobile Museuam of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.