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David Webb Archivist Levi Higgs and the Company’s Storied Zebra Bracelet
38 Plays7 years ago
Instagram doyen Levi Higgs tells Ben Miller about a jewel- and enamel-bedazzled treasure by a jeweler whose work can often be seen on the red carpet.
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Transcript
Opening Remarks and Instagram Initiatives
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi everyone.
00:00:01
Speaker
Just a quick note before we get started, and I'm sorry for the audio quality, I'm on the road and literally talking in my cell phone right now.
00:00:08
Speaker
But if you use Instagram, there's a fun opportunity to get involved in the podcast right now.
00:00:13
Speaker
The magazine Antiques is starting up a hashtag called My Curious Object.
00:00:17
Speaker
And if you have an object in your life that's interesting, or that has a fascinating story behind it, or that's just plain wacky and weird, or fabulous and beautiful, you
00:00:26
Speaker
post it to Instagram with the hashtag mycuriousobject and tag at antiquesmag, and we're going to choose one of the most curious objects we see there and feature it on the podcast.
00:00:37
Speaker
I can't wait to see your posts.
00:00:39
Speaker
With that said, let's get started.
00:00:46
Speaker
I guess I think a lot about authenticity, and I know that that's sort of a social media buzzword, but I think it couldn't be more true when you think about, you know, the objects that we're surrounding ourselves with, to think about the craftsmanship and the history and the story and, you know, why it's important, why it should be important.
Episode Focus: Animals and Zebras
00:01:02
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to Curious Objects and the Stories Behind Them, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller, and today we're going to have a little talk about animals, specifically a zebra.
00:01:14
Speaker
Now, if you're wondering what a zebra could possibly have to do with this podcast, stay with me, because that is just one of the firsts in today's episode.
00:01:22
Speaker
Another first is that my guest today is younger than I am.
00:01:26
Speaker
And if you ever thought that millennials don't appreciate antiques in the arts, get ready to change your mind.
Guest Introduction: Levi Higgs and David Webb
00:01:32
Speaker
Levi Higgs is the archivist and social media manager for the jewelry firm David Webb.
00:01:37
Speaker
Now, David Webb originated in 1948, so we're not talking about antiques, strictly speaking.
00:01:43
Speaker
But don't let that scare you off, because the values of awareness of the past alongside craftsmanship and artistry are very much alive in this 70-year-old firm.
00:01:55
Speaker
And they're also very much alive in Levi.
00:01:57
Speaker
I'm also going to take you on a little field trip to the David Webb workshop to hear about the process behind the jewelry,
00:02:03
Speaker
This episode was a lot of fun to put together and not just because we got to play with some very pretty objects, but also because Levi is a lot of fun to talk to and wears his enthusiasm on his sleeve.
00:02:16
Speaker
As always, if you're curious to see pictures of the objects that we're talking about, head over to themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:02:25
Speaker
I definitely recommend checking that out.
00:02:27
Speaker
Also, don't forget to send me your feedback.
00:02:29
Speaker
I really enjoy hearing your thoughts about the podcast and your suggestions for future guests.
00:02:34
Speaker
So send those over to podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
Episode Sponsor: Freeman's Auction House
00:02:39
Speaker
Our sponsor for today's episode is America's oldest auction house, Freeman's.
00:02:44
Speaker
Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Freemans has been telling the story of curious objects and collections since 1805.
00:02:51
Speaker
Today, Freemans believes in a unique standard of one-on-one service, and their tradition of excellence has benefited generations of private collectors, institutions, advisors, estates, and museums.
00:03:01
Speaker
Their spring sale season offered 14 successful auctions, 8 significant private collections, and 4 world auction records.
David Webb's Rise in Jewelry World
00:03:09
Speaker
freemans is currently inviting consignments of curious objects for their fall and winter auctions so head to freemansauction.com to find out more that's freemansauction.com let's do it um levi higgs thank you so much for being here i'm excited to talk with you about david webb thank you so much for having me i am hoping that you can give me a brief overview of the history of david webb um both the the man and the company
00:03:36
Speaker
So yeah, he was born in 1925.
00:03:39
Speaker
He was from Asheville, North Carolina in the south.
00:03:42
Speaker
He was a charming southern gentleman.
00:03:45
Speaker
And pretty early on, maybe 16 or 17 years old, he moved to New York City.
00:03:50
Speaker
And at that time, I think he knew that he wanted to work
00:03:54
Speaker
in jewelry he had an uncle back in the south that had done work with like souvenir ashtrays and he was a jeweler of some sort but it was more a little lower.
00:04:06
Speaker
Collectibles and something.
00:04:08
Speaker
Sure, yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
And once David Webb got to the city he did work on 47th street a bit and there's a few years there where he's really sort of figuring things out but
00:04:19
Speaker
He founded his business in 1948 with the help of a backer named Antoinette Quilleray.
00:04:24
Speaker
She was a gregarious French woman who really helped him meet society women and get his foot in the door with the clients of New York City.
00:04:34
Speaker
So from there, it just really took off really fast.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, really fast, right?
00:04:38
Speaker
Because pretty soon his jewelry was all over the covers of magazines.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:04:44
Speaker
Well said, because in 1950, two years after he founded the company, he had a cover of Vogue.
00:04:49
Speaker
I mean, he was 25 years old.
00:04:51
Speaker
So that's pretty meteoric, as we say.
00:04:54
Speaker
It took me a lot longer than 25 years to get my first Vogue cover.
00:04:58
Speaker
I know.
00:04:59
Speaker
It's a tough gig these days.
00:05:02
Speaker
Now he was working at a time when some of us I think would think of the great jewelers of that period as mostly being European.
00:05:10
Speaker
Cartier had a shop in New York but a lot of their great jewels were produced in Paris.
00:05:16
Speaker
Same for Van Cleef and Arpel.
00:05:18
Speaker
We could go down the list.
Client Approach: Webb vs European Houses
00:05:20
Speaker
What was it like for an American jeweler working at that time to be in competition with these monster European houses?
00:05:29
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:05:30
Speaker
I feel like the sort of the antithesis to those huge companies was what he was doing.
00:05:36
Speaker
He was having this one-on-one conversation with clients.
00:05:39
Speaker
He was really listening to what women wanted and responding to that.
00:05:43
Speaker
And, you know, maybe that was a little more high touch than what other companies were able to provide.
00:05:50
Speaker
He was truly giving people what they wanted.
00:05:53
Speaker
So Webb himself was active as a designer for a couple of decades.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:59
Speaker
And then when did he pass away?
00:06:01
Speaker
So he passed away in 1975.
00:06:05
Speaker
But he had pancreatic cancer.
00:06:07
Speaker
It was very sudden.
00:06:08
Speaker
He passed away in December of 1975.
00:06:11
Speaker
We have photos of him in 1975 looking great and happy and in the workshop.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:17
Speaker
So it really took New York City by surprise and his clients and his workshop, his business, everything.
00:06:22
Speaker
But he left so much behind and he had so much work done between
Post-Webb Era: Continuation of Legacy
00:06:27
Speaker
48 and 75.
00:06:27
Speaker
And that's what fills our archive.
00:06:30
Speaker
We have 40 to 50,000 original renderings and drawings and sketches that he left.
00:06:35
Speaker
Wow.
00:06:37
Speaker
And after his death, what happened with the firm?
00:06:41
Speaker
After he passed away, his accountant and business partner, Nina Silberstein, she took over with her family and they ran it for the next 30-some years.
00:06:52
Speaker
And then in 2010, Mark Emanuel and Robert Sadie and our business partners, they took over the company.
00:06:59
Speaker
The current owners are really interested in going back to the original aesthetic, David Webb's sort of what he had when he was... The iconic styles.
00:07:07
Speaker
Exactly, the iconic styles, yeah.
00:07:09
Speaker
And that brings us to your two very important roles at the company, which are you're the archivist and also the social media manager.
00:07:18
Speaker
That's true.
00:07:19
Speaker
And...
00:07:22
Speaker
I'm, you know, my title at my own firm is director of research.
00:07:27
Speaker
So I feel something of a kinship with you over that.
00:07:31
Speaker
And I find nothing more exciting than digging through the history of old companies and seeing what they used to be up to.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:07:39
Speaker
Describe to me what the David Webb archives are like.
00:07:42
Speaker
What do you have?
00:07:43
Speaker
We have a tremendous amount, and we're really lucky to have what we have because the company's only been through a few amount of iterations from his original ownership as he was alive that we didn't lose a lot.
00:07:58
Speaker
A lot of companies do lose the paper materials, the invoices, all that, but we have it all pretty much.
00:08:04
Speaker
So yeah, we have invoices, we have drawings, rendering,
Preserving Designs: The Role of Archives
00:08:07
Speaker
sketches, casting, moldings, everything.
00:08:12
Speaker
At least we think we have everything.
00:08:13
Speaker
And we have a magazine editorial that goes back to 1948.
00:08:19
Speaker
And I get to dig through it all and with the help of a colleague we digitize it and manage it and help the company sift through it.
00:08:29
Speaker
We're lucky that we have so much material that can inform how we move forward and we have style cards that are basically recipe cards for how to make every single piece that's ever been made.
00:08:45
Speaker
drawings that have never seen the light of day, that have never turned into jewelry pieces.
00:08:49
Speaker
They're just ideas still that came from David Webb's mind.
00:08:53
Speaker
So that's exciting to be able to think about how we can flesh those out or move them around and make them interesting.
00:09:01
Speaker
So I want to come back to some of the contents of the archive a little bit later.
00:09:05
Speaker
Sure.
00:09:06
Speaker
But let's dive in right now into the curious object.
00:09:10
Speaker
Oh,
Iconic Zebra Bracelet and Cultural Impact
00:09:11
Speaker
yes.
00:09:11
Speaker
For this episode.
00:09:12
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:09:13
Speaker
So tell me about this piece and describe it for our listeners.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's the David Webb Zebra bracelet.
00:09:21
Speaker
It's our most iconic animal bracelet.
00:09:25
Speaker
So it came out of the workshop in 1963.
00:09:29
Speaker
That's when it was originally designed, and that's when it came to fruition as well.
00:09:34
Speaker
So he had been working for 15 years or so at that point?
00:09:37
Speaker
Right, right.
00:09:37
Speaker
And, you know, through the 50s, we see a lot of really sort of...
00:09:42
Speaker
Not surprising jewelry, jewelry that fits in with a lot of other jewelry at that time, the sort of gold and diamond ladies who lunch jewelry.
00:09:50
Speaker
That's what I always call it.
00:09:51
Speaker
Maybe that's not the best way to call it, but that's what I call it.
00:09:53
Speaker
I mean, I'm thinking Mad Men, right?
00:09:56
Speaker
I mean, this is what Don Draper's wife would wear or would dream of wearing.
00:10:00
Speaker
Right.
00:10:01
Speaker
So this, in fact, has been worn by, or I should say, zebra bracelets by David Webb have been worn by some pretty exciting people.
00:10:12
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:10:12
Speaker
It's probably our most popular animal design that we've produced over the years.
00:10:16
Speaker
So who is the most famous person?
00:10:19
Speaker
Well, my favorite one that I always like to talk about and share is Diana Vreeland.
00:10:23
Speaker
She was gifted one in the 60s right when she went to Vogue in 1963.
00:10:30
Speaker
And we have this amazing cover of Vogue that came out in 1964 that has an Irving Penn photograph as the cover.
00:10:39
Speaker
And there's a woman holding her hand sort of to her face.
00:10:42
Speaker
She's got a zebra ring on her.
00:10:45
Speaker
that goes perfectly in line with this bracelet.
00:10:48
Speaker
She's got black and white eyeshadow on and the typography on the word Vogue is black and white.
00:10:54
Speaker
So it's just Zoom, this moment of everything coming together, the typography and this cultural moment of the black and white graphic pattern, everything.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:06
Speaker
So an extremely compelling and cool color scheme, dynamic, high contrast.
00:11:17
Speaker
And Vreeland, well, I should say that it was in fact, it became such an iconic image that the David Webb logo is even a
Celebrity Influence on David Webb Jewelry
00:11:29
Speaker
rendition of the zebra bracelet, right?
00:11:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:33
Speaker
So zebra bracelet aside, celebrities have played a pretty prominent role in getting David Webb jewelry out into the world and in front of people's eyes.
00:11:42
Speaker
Who are some other luminaries who have been spotted wearing these pieces or buying and owning these pieces?
00:11:48
Speaker
Sure.
00:11:49
Speaker
So some of our favorites to talk about, of course, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Doris Duke.
00:11:55
Speaker
I mean,
00:11:56
Speaker
pretty much any prominent name in the 20th century we can dig through our archives and find a great record you've just done a show with Doris Duke yes exactly related to it it's called designing for Doris it's up in Newport through November at the Rough Point mansion and it's it's a look at pieces that she had designed as well as juxtaposing architecture
00:12:19
Speaker
renderings that she sort of advised on to restore houses in Newport.
00:12:25
Speaker
So that was a great sort of venture for the archive to pair with the museum and do some work that way curatorially.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:31
Speaker
And that's a fun synthesis of the sort of what we might think of as the dry, you know, dusty old archival work alongside the sort of dynamic and sexy celebrity representation.
00:12:44
Speaker
Right, right.
00:12:45
Speaker
And even today we have, you know, amazing celebrities who wear us on the red carpet.
00:12:49
Speaker
We have...
00:12:49
Speaker
Amy Adams and Emma Stone and Sofia Vergara.
00:12:54
Speaker
You know, great ones like Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow.
00:12:57
Speaker
We catalog these as well in the archives so that, you know, even our current red carpet material is for the ages.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:13:08
Speaker
It's interesting to me.
00:13:10
Speaker
You know, my day job is in a business where celebrities no longer play a role in the way that perhaps they might once have.
00:13:21
Speaker
And so, you know, for me, this idea of celebrity as a sort of being on the cutting edge of
00:13:29
Speaker
fashion and style is rather unfamiliar.
00:13:33
Speaker
So I'm interested, I mean, how does David Webb as a firm see its relationship with its celebrity proponents?
00:13:43
Speaker
I think, you know, even from the founding of the company in 1948, it's always been, um, a piece of how he's operated and how he's been connected to society.
00:13:53
Speaker
They've been women that are captivating and powerful and they really have projected him forward to get more clients, get more notoriety to have his bold designs paired with these powerful women that, you know, it just, it's the perfect synthesis of bringing those two things together.
00:14:10
Speaker
So I'm interested in the role and the importance of animals in David Webb jewelry design.
Animal Motifs in David Webb Designs
00:14:21
Speaker
you know, as far as David Webb jewelry is, you know, to the extent that it's recognized in the world, I think animals are really the iconic form.
00:14:31
Speaker
And this also, in my mind, this comes back to this idea of what distinguished David Webb as a designer from a lot of his contemporaries.
00:14:40
Speaker
So we're talking about this zebra bracelet, but there are a lot of other animals that he used as inspiration too.
00:14:48
Speaker
Certainly.
00:14:49
Speaker
So why animals?
00:14:51
Speaker
What drew David Webb to animals?
00:14:54
Speaker
It's a good question.
00:14:57
Speaker
In our archive, we have a whole shelf of reference books and sort of inspirational material that David Webb had.
00:15:06
Speaker
when he passed away it was part of the company's, you know, records.
00:15:09
Speaker
So, so we, whenever we're giving tours, we always talk about this is David Webb's reference library.
00:15:14
Speaker
And in the reference library is this great book called the big book of wild animals.
00:15:18
Speaker
And it was published in 1954.
00:15:20
Speaker
Um, and it has these amazing illustrations.
00:15:23
Speaker
It's a super iconic book from the fifties.
00:15:26
Speaker
Obviously it wasn't a children's book that David Webb had when he was a child.
00:15:29
Speaker
It was an adult man when he had this book, but he's,
00:15:32
Speaker
Looking at it, there's a tremendously great page of zebras and giraffes running together in the savanna.
00:15:40
Speaker
A lot of his animals are African mammals, like big jungle cats and the giraffes and the zebras and elephants.
00:15:49
Speaker
So, you know, maybe he was inspired.
00:15:51
Speaker
Did he ever travel to Africa?
00:15:53
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:15:54
Speaker
I'm not sure because we don't have so much of the personal information about him.
00:15:59
Speaker
We don't really know that for sure.
00:16:01
Speaker
But he did spend his fair share of time at museums.
00:16:04
Speaker
Absolutely, yes.
00:16:05
Speaker
And so part of the reference materials are, you know, books on jade and books on...
00:16:11
Speaker
ancient cultures and there's a big encyclopedia of fancy rope work and knots.
00:16:16
Speaker
So he's getting all these ideas from all these different places.
00:16:20
Speaker
Animals specifically feel really sort of fun and whimsical, but
00:16:25
Speaker
but his designs aren't super silly in the way that maybe some other jewelers in the 60s were doing a little more fairy tale or a little more just childlike, I suppose.
00:16:36
Speaker
But his animals have sort of a regality to them.
00:16:42
Speaker
But they're also friendly.
00:16:43
Speaker
I think that's always the distinction that we make.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:16:46
Speaker
I mean, they're...
00:16:48
Speaker
Some of them seem quite realistic.
00:16:49
Speaker
Sure, yeah.
00:16:50
Speaker
And others, not so much.
00:16:51
Speaker
Right.
00:16:52
Speaker
I mean, you see giraffes with zebra stripes.
00:16:54
Speaker
Sure.
00:16:55
Speaker
Or, well, fantasy animals.
00:16:57
Speaker
We have some unicorns.
00:16:58
Speaker
We have dragons.
00:16:59
Speaker
We have... The chimera.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:02
Speaker
Winged horses and hippocampus, you know, like seahorses.
00:17:07
Speaker
Right, straight out of mythology.
00:17:09
Speaker
Right.
00:17:10
Speaker
And then when he's rendering those in the hammered gold repoussé cuffs that we also do,
00:17:15
Speaker
you're bringing a mythological creature to an Etruscan-style gold hammering technique.
00:17:21
Speaker
And it's interesting.
00:17:23
Speaker
He was living and working very close not just to the Natural History Museum in New York, but also to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:17:31
Speaker
And we've heard it told that he went there once a week and was constantly looking at things and inspired.
00:17:40
Speaker
So the zebra brace that came out in 1963...
00:17:44
Speaker
And then in 1964, he wins the Cody Award, and he accepts that award at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
00:17:49
Speaker
And it was given to him by Gloria Vanderbilt.
00:17:51
Speaker
She was a friend and a client, and she was presenting it to him.
00:17:55
Speaker
And he won pretty much specifically for his work on animals, like animal jewelry specifically.
Material Choices: Enamel and Coral
00:18:01
Speaker
So the materials that you often see in web jewelry, of course you see the same stones and the same metals as you find in any other jeweler's work.
00:18:14
Speaker
But there are differences, I think, in where the emphasis lies in David Webb pieces.
00:18:23
Speaker
That is, you know, you expect to see a lot of coral.
00:18:27
Speaker
Sure.
00:18:28
Speaker
And a lot of enamel, as on this zebra bracelet, which is covered head to tail, literally in enamel.
00:18:35
Speaker
It's 18 karat gold.
00:18:37
Speaker
We do a tremendous amount of work with enamel.
00:18:39
Speaker
He really revived that, I feel like, in the 60s, effectively.
00:18:44
Speaker
And it's a huge part of what we continue to do today.
00:18:46
Speaker
We have one enamelist in our workshop that's right on Madison Avenue, and she does great work, of course.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:53
Speaker
Um, we, we do a lot of, as you mentioned with coral, you know, we have other hard stones like lapis or jade or rock crystal that are really iconic for us.
00:19:03
Speaker
Um, and we employ on staff, uh, people who can carve that and work at in a specific way to, to do carved animal bracelets as well, among other things.
00:19:13
Speaker
Um, you know, we do some work with diamonds of course.
00:19:18
Speaker
Um,
00:19:19
Speaker
I see some on the zebra's head here.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yes, precious and semi-precious stones, but it's usually about color and big, bold gemstones, cocktail rings, that sort of thing.
00:19:30
Speaker
Right.
00:19:31
Speaker
But generally, it seems like the emphasis lies more on the design rather than on the... Yes.
00:19:36
Speaker
You know, in contrast with like a Harry Winston, for example.
00:19:39
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:19:42
Speaker
In David Webb, you don't see the...
00:19:44
Speaker
honking big rock set on a simple setting.
00:19:46
Speaker
I mean, they're there in the archive.
00:19:48
Speaker
If we wanted to pull that out, we certainly could.
00:19:50
Speaker
But we definitely focus on other things at the moment with high color, powerful design.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:07
Speaker
Let's take a quick break here.
00:20:09
Speaker
When we come back, we're going to dive into the craftsmanship side of the David Webb enterprise.
00:20:15
Speaker
I'm going to talk with Levi a bit about that, but also with one of the longtime jewelers at David Webb.
00:20:21
Speaker
So you can hear it from the horse's mouth.
00:20:23
Speaker
I also want to say a quick thanks to you for listening.
00:20:26
Speaker
I really appreciate all of your feedback, your ideas, the ratings and reviews that you leave on iTunes.
00:20:32
Speaker
Those really help us to get the word out.
00:20:34
Speaker
If you're enjoying the podcast, think about sending it to a friend.
00:20:39
Speaker
I really believe that the stories around these objects are universal.
00:20:42
Speaker
and that there's tremendous value for all of us in hearing them and learning about them and thinking about them.
00:20:49
Speaker
So it means a lot to me that you're taking the time to listen.
00:20:53
Speaker
And to those of you who are helping to get the word out and encourage more people to think about and listen to stories about these curious objects, thank you so much.
00:21:02
Speaker
Again, send your feedback to me at podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
00:21:08
Speaker
Many thanks also, once again, to our sponsor, Freeman's, America's oldest auction house.
00:21:12
Speaker
Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Freemans has been telling the story of curious objects and collections since 1805.
00:21:19
Speaker
With international experience and comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freemans work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine art, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
00:21:33
Speaker
Freemans is currently inviting consignments for their fall and winter auctions, including Asian arts, fine jewelry, books, maps and manuscripts,
00:21:41
Speaker
Americana, British and European furniture and decorative arts, as well as 20th century design and American art and Pennsylvania Impressionists.
00:21:50
Speaker
Ready to consign?
00:21:51
Speaker
Visit Freeman's online at freemansauction.com to learn more.
00:21:59
Speaker
Another subject that I'm interested in getting into with you a little bit, which has to do with the craftsmanship around these pieces and the production process.
00:22:11
Speaker
And I'm looking forward to, you've shown me around the workshop, which is a bustling place.
00:22:19
Speaker
And I'm excited to go back there and talk with
00:22:22
Speaker
one of your jewelers.
Craftsmanship Process at David Webb Workshop
00:22:25
Speaker
But give me a sense, because jewelry manufacturer can take a lot of different forms and a lot of different companies.
00:22:34
Speaker
Take a piece like this bracelet, for example.
00:22:38
Speaker
Sketch out for me, what's the, give me a biography of this piece in terms of the
00:22:45
Speaker
process of crafting and producing it.
00:22:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:22:48
Speaker
So this piece's birth certificate essentially is a drawing that we have in the archive that was hand done, hand sketched on a piece of paper with pencil, super rudimentary, but it's a great schematic of this piece.
00:23:01
Speaker
And that was done in 1963.
00:23:03
Speaker
But since then, we have, you know, the molds and we have the workshop on Madison Avenue, all under one house, one roof, I suppose.
00:23:15
Speaker
So, you know, it gets molded, it gets...
00:23:19
Speaker
it jumps around the workshop to different people who do different things to it, the enamelist or the stone setters or the polisher and you know some of the people who still work at David Webb have worked at David Webb for you know 50 some years.
00:23:33
Speaker
We have a polisher named Ray who
00:23:35
Speaker
polished Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry and worked with David Webb when he was alive.
00:23:38
Speaker
And some of the other members of staff have, you know, their fathers worked at David Webb.
00:23:44
Speaker
So I think you'll learn a little bit more about that once you go back and visit again.
00:23:48
Speaker
Well, for sure.
00:23:49
Speaker
And we were talking, you know, last week about how there's very much a feel of a family business, in part because literally families have worked there.
00:23:59
Speaker
You know, multiple members of families have been working there.
00:24:03
Speaker
So how many jewelers do you think had a hand in making this particular bracelet?
00:24:09
Speaker
Oh, good question.
00:24:11
Speaker
Maybe five or six.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, from start to finish, that's sort of a rough guess.
00:24:18
Speaker
I try to know a little bit about what goes on in the workshop.
00:24:21
Speaker
It's super inspiring to go up there and see a piece at different stages of its life.
00:24:27
Speaker
I wanted to get a better sense of what this craftsmanship process actually looks like.
00:24:30
Speaker
So I went to the source, the David Webb Workshop, right above their retail space on Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side.
00:24:44
Speaker
This workshop is buzzing with activity.
00:24:47
Speaker
There are gemstones out by the dozen.
00:24:49
Speaker
There are tools that I don't even recognize.
00:24:52
Speaker
It's a loud and busy place, as you can hear.
00:24:55
Speaker
I was able to talk with the jeweler there who has really seen it all.
00:24:59
Speaker
Well, Lorenzo, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me.
00:25:03
Speaker
You're welcome.
00:25:04
Speaker
And I wanted to ask what your specialty is in the David Webb workshop.
00:25:11
Speaker
Well, there's a few of them.
00:25:13
Speaker
I do necklaces and bracelets.
00:25:15
Speaker
My specialty is bracelets, which is anything to do with animals.
00:25:21
Speaker
And how long have you been working at David Webb now?
00:25:25
Speaker
Since 1978.
00:25:25
Speaker
It'll be 40 years this September.
00:25:29
Speaker
Congratulations.
00:25:31
Speaker
Thank you.
00:25:31
Speaker
And it was your father who brought you into work here originally.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, my father's been working here since 1964, if I'm not mistaken.
00:25:43
Speaker
And then he had to retire around 93, my dad.
00:25:48
Speaker
And you started here as an apprentice and then worked your way up, right?
00:25:51
Speaker
Yes, I started as an apprentice, picking up garbage,
00:25:56
Speaker
washing down the sinks, hanging out paper towels and towels, and do whatever else I had to do before I even sat down for a couple hours to work.
00:26:05
Speaker
That sounds pretty glamorous.
00:26:07
Speaker
No, it wasn't so bad.
00:26:09
Speaker
How have, over the course of the time you've been working here, 40 years now, technology has changed.
00:26:15
Speaker
I imagine some of the tools have changed.
00:26:18
Speaker
How has that affected your work, and how is what you do now different from what you did 40 years ago, aside from taking out the garbage and that kind of thing?
00:26:27
Speaker
Well, as far as tools, nothing has changed, really.
00:26:30
Speaker
I mean, I still got, like, tools that are 40 years old with me.
00:26:33
Speaker
I really don't buy them.
00:26:35
Speaker
But as far as the technology to making jewelry, the CAD department took over, which comes out a lot better now and a lot easier to assemble.
00:26:42
Speaker
Lorenzo told me that the zebra bracelet was actually one of his favorite pieces to work on at David Webb.
00:26:47
Speaker
And he described to me how, after decades of production, he and the other jewelers actually came up with a new and improved way of constructing the piece.
00:26:54
Speaker
The old connection used to be a little more difficult.
00:26:57
Speaker
Not difficult, but it didn't do anything for the bracelet because if a piece of the bracelet itself, on the zebra especially,
00:27:07
Speaker
If a piece broke in the middle of the bracelet, we would have to take the whole bracelet apart just to get to that point.
00:27:14
Speaker
But now, in the 90s, we had an idea of making screws and tubings into the bracelet.
00:27:22
Speaker
So you can just screw the piece that you want to replace or repair.
00:27:26
Speaker
So it's more of a modular...
00:27:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:30
Speaker
Kind of structure.
00:27:31
Speaker
Correct.
00:27:32
Speaker
And this change with using a different kind of screw, is this the only change in the way that the zebra bracelet is made?
00:27:42
Speaker
That's the only thing we changed about it.
00:27:44
Speaker
Everything else is still the same from back in the 1960s.
00:27:48
Speaker
Lorenzo told me that he only works on a small number of pieces at a time, maybe one or two in a day.
00:27:54
Speaker
Still, he's been working long enough to have made a lot of zebra bracelets.
00:27:59
Speaker
I would say maybe 100, 150 pieces I made of that one piece only.
00:28:03
Speaker
Wow.
00:28:04
Speaker
And they're all out in the world now.
00:28:05
Speaker
Somewhere.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yeah, somewhere.
00:28:09
Speaker
Have you ever seen someone wearing one out in public?
00:28:12
Speaker
No, I never did.
00:28:14
Speaker
Never did.
00:28:14
Speaker
I wish I did because I would have said, you know, I made that.
00:28:17
Speaker
All right.
00:28:20
Speaker
Well, keep your eyes open.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yes, I will.
00:28:22
Speaker
Well, Lorenzo, thanks so much for talking to me.
00:28:24
Speaker
You're very welcome.
00:28:29
Speaker
I want to move us onto a subject that's a little more personal, which is to say, you know, I think that part of the reason that I even know that you work at David Webb and that you exist, the reason that I found you in the first place has a lot to do with
00:28:58
Speaker
your presence in social media, your presence online.
00:29:05
Speaker
You're a very active promoter of jewelry, decorative arts, the history of craftsmanship.
00:29:14
Speaker
Sure.
00:29:15
Speaker
And as someone who's fairly socially media stunted, as I am.
00:29:23
Speaker
That's not true.
00:29:24
Speaker
Well, we don't need to get into that.
00:29:28
Speaker
But it is, you know, it's impressive for me to see the way that you are bringing these pieces and these ideas and these concepts out into the world and in front of people who might not
00:29:41
Speaker
Otherwise be exposed to them.
00:29:45
Speaker
And, you know, I'm very interested in this idea of being an evangelist around these things.
00:29:52
Speaker
One particularly, you know, well, there are a lot of people these days who are concerned about new generations of collectors and enthusiasts and so on.
00:30:03
Speaker
So what do you think, what are people of our generation, we're both young guys, what are our compatriots?
00:30:13
Speaker
What is our cohort motivated by?
00:30:16
Speaker
What brings them into this world?
00:30:19
Speaker
You know, it's a really good question.
00:30:21
Speaker
I guess I think a lot about authenticity, and I know that that's sort of a social media buzzword, but I think it's
00:30:27
Speaker
couldn't be more true when you think about you know the objects that were were surrounding ourselves with right now in in this very room as we record to to think about the craftsmanship and the history and the story and you know my background is in decorative arts and design history and i just think about context every day all the time right i think you know if you're in if you're a young interior designer i don't think you can make informed choices unless you know
00:30:55
Speaker
you know, how a rug is going to sort of translate across time to people in the room that you're creating.
00:31:05
Speaker
I mean, that's for any field.
00:31:06
Speaker
That's for tons of different sort of ways of thinking.
00:31:10
Speaker
Sure.
00:31:12
Speaker
So yeah, in my personal Instagram, I've always tried to tell stories that give context and that talk about where things come from and how, you know, especially jewelry and, you know, why it's important, why it should be important.
00:31:29
Speaker
And I don't necessarily think I'm
00:31:31
Speaker
preaching to just a young audience.
00:31:32
Speaker
I think there's a lot of different people that are interested in that sort of thing that you can educate.
00:31:37
Speaker
I do forget sometimes that people older than us are on social media.
00:31:40
Speaker
Sure, of course.
00:31:42
Speaker
And I run social media at David Webb too and that's something that we think about all the time.
00:31:47
Speaker
What's the client want to see and how can we tell the story of the brand through that medium?
00:31:52
Speaker
Because to be an archivist and a social media manager, I always say it's all storytelling.
00:31:58
Speaker
Sure, right, right.
00:32:00
Speaker
it fits together perfectly honestly.
00:32:03
Speaker
Do you wear jewelry?
00:32:05
Speaker
I do.
00:32:05
Speaker
I wear a David Webb nail bracelet every day.
00:32:09
Speaker
I'm wearing it right now.
00:32:10
Speaker
And it's part of our tool chest nail collection from 1971 that we revived a few years ago.
00:32:17
Speaker
And it's a unisex line so I love it.
00:32:20
Speaker
Perfect.
00:32:30
Speaker
That's going to wrap us up for today.
00:32:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:32:33
Speaker
And a big thank you to Levi Higgs and to David Webb.
00:32:36
Speaker
I'll just remind you once more to send your feedback to podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
00:32:42
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe and to leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.
00:32:47
Speaker
Today's episode was produced and edited by Sammy Delati.
00:32:50
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:32:52
Speaker
And I'm your host, Ben Miller.