Spilling emeralds - emerald and diamond clips by Paul Flato, circa 1935-36

 

Pair of emerald and diamond clip-brooches mounted in platinum, circa 1935-36. Not identical, each brooch features three undulating pavé-set diamond leaves with baguette-cut diamond trim - together weighing a total of approximately thirty carats - with each suspending articulated clusters of diamond-set emerald drops and boules of old Indian material, many parts set en tremblant. Each brooch is approximately 3 1/2 inches long.

Based in New York City from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s - he also opened a second location in Beverly Hills in 1937 - Paul Flato is often considered the first celebrity jeweler, and was well known for important jewelry, dramatic, often whimsical, pieces which are still eagerly collected today. His impressive list of clients included wealthy socialites - Doris Duke, Gloria Vanderbilt - and film stars - Marlene Dietrich, Merle Oberon, Vivien Leigh, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, even Garbo - with many of the latter actually wearing his pieces on screen.

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Paul Flato (1 September 1900, Flatonia, Texas - 17 July 1999, Fort Worth, Texas), American jeweler. The son of a prominent Texas cattleman, he moved to New York City in the early 1920s to start medical school - or business school, depending on the source - but quickly changed course. After several years of apprenticeship with a Swiss jeweler, he opened his own business on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Due to his marketing savvy and personal charm - he navigated high society with ease - success came quickly, and his very imaginative work was soon considered to be on a par with the great European jewelers. But despite the success of the business, there were frequently problems with its cash-flow, not helped by his lavish lifestyle. In 1941, the Beverly Hills store endured a devastating armed robbery, and with the bombing of Pearl Harbor the same year, severe losses forced him to close it down. Then, in 1943, he was arrested for fraudulently pawning $100,000 in jewels that had been entrusted to him on consignment, using the cash to keep the business afloat. He maintained his innocence but was convicted and served sixteen months in the Sing Sing Penitentiary. On his release, he moved to Mexico City and started a business with his daughter, but in 1952 he was again accused of fraud and escaped to Central America. Caught, he served prison time both in Mexico and then again in the United States. In 1970, he returned to Mexico City, opening a jewelry store in the fashionable Zona Rosa area, which he operated in relative anonymity until 1990, when he returned to the United States, spending his final years surrounded by his family in Texas. He died there at the age of ninety-eight.

Before the mountain - George Mallory in photographs by Vanessa Bell, paintings by Duncan Grant

 

 George Mallory photographed by Vanessa Bell at 38 Brunswick Square, circa 1912.

George Herbert Leigh-Mallory (18 June 1886 – 8 or 9 June 1924) is a mountaineering legend for his famous attempts to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Three times in four years he made the climb - each time leaving behind his wife and three small children - and on the third try, in June of 1924, along with his climbing partner Sandy Irvine, and only days away from his thirty-eighth birthday, he was lost.

Mallory by Duncan Grant, 1912.

Mallory by Duncan Grant, 1913.

In 2015, thirty-four letters and cards that Mallory wrote to Lytton Strachey were auctioned at Bonhams. They were written over a period of twelve years, from 1909 - when Mallory was still an undergraduate at Cambridge - to 1921, while traveling to Tibet and his first encounter (reconnaissance) with Everest. His pre-Everest biography, his involvement with the Bloomsbury group, Fabianism, radical education, and his military career during WWI, has been more fully explored in recent decades. But this new material shows yet a different side of the famous mountaineer. Known for his grace as a climber, his writing is just as elegant. Also quite candid: flirtatious, bitchy, gossipy, sometimes witty, and sexually frank. 

Again, Mallory photographed by Vanessa Bell at 38 Brunswick Square, circa 1912. (Five images.)

He was introduced to Lytton by the latter's brother, James Strachey, and Mallory and Lytton quickly developed a close friendship. While certainly being flattered by Lytton's attentions, Mallory appears to have skillfully avoided turning the relationship into something sexual. (Though Mallory and Strachey's brother James had an apparently unsuccessful sexual encounter.) But Lytton was fairly obsessed with the six years younger Mallory from the start, writing to Vanessa Bell:

"Mon Dieu! George Mallory! My hand trembles, my heart palpitates ... he's six foot high, with the body of an athlete by Praxiteles, and a face – oh incredible – the mystery of Botticelli, the refinement and delicacy of a Chinese print, the youth and piquancy of an imaginable English boy." 

Mallory at Cambridge, circa 1905-09.

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In 1911, Vanessa Bell's siblings, Virginia (she married Leonard Woolf the following year) and Adrian Stephen leased No. 38 Brunswick Square, inviting Maynard Keynes and Duncan Grant to join them. Her photographs of Mallory most likely were meant as preparatory studies for Grant.

Dancing at the opera - dancers (as well as two singers and a few actresses) of the Paris Opéra, circa 1690-1700

 

In 1661 Louis XIV, a lover of ballet and an enthusiastic dancer himself, established the Académie Royale de Danse, intended to codify court and character dances and to certify dance teachers. The Opéra de Paris, still the primary opera and ballet company of France, was founded in 1669 by the king as the Académie d'Opéra, and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully; it was officially renamed the Académie Royale de Musique, but continued to be known more simply as the Opéra. The two institutions were closely related but never merged, and members of the dance academy were also associated with the Opéra. From 1671 until Lully's death, the dance academy was under the direction of the great dancing master Pierre Beauchamp, the man who codified ballet's five positions of the feet. Together, Lully and Beauchamp made theatrical ballet an important part of the Opéra's productions. The ballet of the time was merely an extension of the opera, having yet to evolve into an independent form of theatrical art, as baroque ballet would one day evolve into classical ballet.

Sisters, sisters.... - the daughters of the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, attributed to Jacob van Doort, 1609

 

Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (23 June 1593 - 25 March 1650), later Duchess of Saxony, later Duchess of Saxe-Altenberg, at the age of sixteen.

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Princess Hedwig of  Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (19 February 1595 - 26 June 1650), later Duchess of Pomerania, at the age of fourteen. 

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Princess Dorothea of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (8 July 1596 - 1 September 1643), later Margravine of Brandenburg, at the age of thirteen.

The three elegant young ladies are the daughters of Heinrich Julius (15 October 1564 - 30 July 1613), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and ruling Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel by his second marriage to Elizabeth of Denmark (25 August 1573 - 19 June 1626), daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark. The couple had ten children together, seven of whom survived to adulthood. (The duke also had a daughter from his first marriage, Dorothea Hedwig; married to Rudolph, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, she died the same year these portraits were completed.)

Alright, why not throw the brothers in while we're at it! 

The five portraits here represent the couple's children still living at home in 1609; they had two older children - their daughter, Sophie Hedwig, had married two years previously - and their two youngest had not yet been born. All five of these portraits are included in the Royal Collection.

Prince Christian of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (20 September 1599 - 16 June 1626), at the age of ten.

Prince Rudolph of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (15 June 1602 - 13 June 1616), at the age of seven.

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Jacob van Doort (or Doordt; ? - 1629, Stockholm), painter of Flemish or Dutch extraction active from 1606 to his death in 1629. Much of his work was for the courts of Denmark and Sweden, in particular the court of Christian IV of Denmark. Little is known of his life; he may have been the son of Peter van der Doort of Antwerp and the brother of Abraham van Doordt. He may have been born in Hamburg and he spent his career working in Northern Europe including, possibly, a few visits to England.

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In addition to the beautifully restrained palette of the ladies' portraits, I really admire the superbly handled drapery of their gowns.

Fond brothers - the ten male siblings of the Hutchinson Family Singers, daguerreotype, circa 1845

 

From left: Asa, Andrew, Jesse, Joshua, David, Caleb, Noah, Judson, Zephaniah, and John.

Asa, Andrew, Jesse, and Joshua.

David, Caleb, Noah, and Judson.

Zephaniah and John.

Descendants of the Pilgrims, Jesse Hutchinson and Mary Hastings Leavitt of Milford, New Hampshire, were the parents of sixteen children, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood. Their children came from a long line of musical ancestors, principally on the maternal side. And in 1840, four of their sons - John, Asa, Jesse, and Judson - formed a singing group, performing in four-part harmony, and calling themselves The Hutchinson Family Singers. Jesse Hutchinson soon quit to focus on writing for the group and managing their affairs. Their twelve-year-old sister Abby took his place; an alto, she sang the first tenor part. At first, the group sang mostly European songs at their concerts but, very early on, the family began adding original material which often explored controversial themes such as abolitionism, temperance, worker's and women's rights. Despite the disapproval this material engendered with some of their audiences - the singers were sometimes booed and even physically threatened - the group was very successful, touring New England and later, in 1845, they traveled to England -in the company of Frederick Douglass, no less - spending nearly a year there. Their success inspired imitators, and other of their siblings formed additional groups; while the original quartet was in Britain, Caleb, Joshua, Rhoda, and Zephaniah Hutchinson toured the United States under the name "Home Branch of the Hutchinson Family". The quartet - later, trio, when Abby retired from performing - sang at antislavery rallies, supported Lincoln’s presidential campaigns, backed the North in the Civil War, and performed slave songs to call attention to the predicament of black Americans during the postwar period. In subsequent years the families of individual brothers formed several Hutchinson Family groups.

The most celebrated configuration of the group: Judson, Abby, John, and Asa, circa 1843.