Jewelry

Art Smith Modernette Cuff Bracelet, ca. 1945

Appraisal: Art Smith 'Modernette' Cuff Bracelet, ca. 1945

Transcript

GUEST: It's a bracelet that I have played with ever since I was six years old. It was my mom's. She gave it to me to play dress up with, all these years, and I kept it, and I just thought it was really a cool-looking bracelet.

APPRAISER: Well, you're right about that. Where did she get it? Do you have any idea?

GUEST: I don't know. She doesn't remember where she got it. She remembers that it was a favorite bracelet of hers, but she doesn't remember where she bought it. She's 95 years old now. As I was watching PBS, I wasn't really paying a lot of attention. I was just hearing "jewelry," and I looked up at the television and saw a picture of the bracelet.

(both chuckling)

GUEST: So I ran up the steps to go get the bracelet, came running back down the steps, and the television show was off.

APPRAISER: Yeah.

GUEST: And I couldn't figure out which PBS station it was on, 'cause the kids in the house had changed the station. So I had no way to find out

anything about the bracelet other than it was on PBS.

APPRAISER: Do you have any idea what it might be worth?

GUEST: The ten dollars that my mother probably paid for it? (laughing): That's about it.

APPRAISER: When you brought it to me, you noticed I kind of had an immediate reaction.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: And I looked at one of my colleagues, and I blurted out who it's by. It's by a famous Modernist artist named Art Smith.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: Yeah. Very prominent figure in the Modernist movement. This is really a piece of jewelry that is art, and it's a very rare piece. It's a cuff bracelet that's called the Modernette.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And it was tough to find similar pieces like that. He made this in copper and brass. The other ones we found were silver. And lately, the movement for Modernette pieces has just gone crazy. Now, Art Smith was born in Cuba. He's an Afro Cuban American who moved from Cuba to Brooklyn, New York...

GUEST: Wow

APPRAISER: ...and he eventually ended up in Greenwich Village.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: Which was a center for all the hip, modern things that were going on at that time, in the 1940s and '50s.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: And that's where this bracelet is from, the late 1940s.

GUEST: Oh, wow. Really? Wow.

APPRAISERS: He was picked up by Bloomingdale's, and he was commissioned from famous people like Eleanor Roosevelt to Duke Ellington.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: His jewelry was featured in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue magazine. It is signed on the underneath of the cuff.

GUEST: Oh, okay!

APPRAISER: And it says "Art Smith."