GUEST: My husband, who is always looking for unusual things, and sort of that meets his definition of beautiful. And I think with this necklace, which I do know is an Art Smith, and it sort of falls within the Modernism period, and he bought it online. It was a gift to me.
APPRAISER: And you've worn it.
GUEST: Yes, I have-- it's very wearable, actually.
APPRAISER: He was born to Jamaican parents in Cuba.
GUEST: (gasps)
APPRAISER: Okay, they come to Brooklyn, New York, in 1920. So here he is, in a new country, and as a kid, he designs a poster for the A.S.P.C.A.
GUEST: (gasps)
APPRAISER: And it gets all this acclaim, and this is his entrance into the art world. In the early 1940s, he takes a job at the Children's Aid Society, and he meets Winifred Mason. And she's working in copper and brass, and this is where the bug bites him to make jewelry.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And eventually, he moves and opens a shop in Little Italy, Lower Manhattan.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: Now, you think about the times-- Black man, Little Italy, openly gay.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: Not so easy.
GUEST: No.
APPRAISER: They, they break his windows...
GUEST: (scoffs)
APPRAISER: Um, just, you know, all the nonsense that goes on with people who are ignorant. So, he moves, but where does he move? He moves to the coolest place. He moves to Fourth Street in Greenwich Village and he starts to thrive. You notice the jewelry has some large scale to it. This was due to the fact that early on in his career, there were a lot of dance companies. When you're on stage, things need to be large to be projected.
GUEST: Yep.
APPRAISER: You look at a lot of his jewelry, it's extraordinarily big and fun.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: He was very, very, very big about how he viewed jewelry and how he viewed the human body. He wanted people to look at a piece of jewelry-- his quote-- and say, "What is it?" He said, "A piece of jewelry is incomplete without the person's body who's gonna wear it." Because once it goes on you, it transforms everything.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: The way you feel, the way you look, the way his jewelry looks. It's a striped agate. There is a hole drilled through the middle, and then he runs the silver through it, and then wraps it. And this piece looks to me to be very much entrenched in the '60s. If we go over here behind the clasp, and we flip it over, you can see it says "sterling" and then it's signed "Art Smith." He didn't sign everything. I've seen plenty of Art Smith jewelry, especially a lot of the early stuff, that's not signed. Early in his career, there were a lot of people-- Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: They would come down to his store. He was once commissioned as a young man to do a piece for Eleanor Roosevelt.
GUEST: (gasps): Hm.
APPRAISER: And if, if you see pictures of this guy...
GUEST: Mm-hmm?
APPRAISER: ...he's, like, so hip and cool, and unfortunately, he passed away in the late '70s. I know you don't know how much your husband paid for it.
GUEST: (laughing): No.
APPRAISER: (laughing): I'm, I'm gonna go with, you got a really nice gift.
GUEST: Oh, okay!
APPRAISER: Will make his day, too. There's a lot of renewed interest in this type of jewelry. In an auction today, I would say this is easy, $2,500 to $3,500.
GUEST: Mm.
APPRAISER: Um it's, it's just wonderful. It's got nice scale, and um…
GUEST: Oh, thank you. Yeah.
APPRAISER: Yeah, and I'm dying to put it on you.
GUEST: (laughing): Ah. Okay.
APPRAISER: I haven't done this in a while, but...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Just the way he would have liked it.
