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The Newark Experience

Video

Kings of Jewelry
Ulysses Dietz [Curator of Decorative Arts at the Newark Museum] speaks about Newark's emergence between 1830 and 1850 as the greatest center of fine gold jewelry production in the United States. Filmed at the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark, New Jersey on February 2, 2012. DVD Available?

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A Convergence of Science and Art: Simpson-Middleman Paintings Featured in Boeing Advertisements from the 1950s
Joseph W. Hammond. New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8(2), Summer 2022, pp. 26-73.
"By 1956, the Newark, New Jersey--based, art team of Marshall S. Simpson (1900--1958) and Roslynn E. Middleman (1929--2003) had produced a large and important series of abstract paintings that depicted various interpretations of space and the night sky. Eleven of these works were featured in employment advertisements placed over the next two years by the Boeing Airplane Company (now the Boeing Company) in Scientific American and elsewhere."

Decorative Arts

Jewelry

The Glitter and the Gold: Fashioning America's Jewelry.
Ulysses Grant Dietz. Newark, N.J., Newark Museum, 1997.
Published to accompany a Newark Museum exhibit (May 7-November 2, 1997) on the development of Newark as a center for the design and production of gold and silver jewelry designed primarily for the new affluent middle class. Available?
"Beaux-arts Jewelry Made in Newark, New Jersey,"
Ulysses Grant Dietz and Janet Zapata. Magazine Antiques 151, April 1997, 592-599. Available?
"Jewelry for Gentlemen": Krementz & Company's Men's Rolled Gold Plate, 1866-1940
Emily K. Rebmann, Thesis (M.A.), University of Delaware, 2015.
"The case study presents an in-depth history of the men's jewelry produced and disseminated by Krementz & Company, a prolific but understudied Newark, New Jersey manufacturing firm...The author contextualizes men's jewelry within the larger social, material, and technological constructs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, utilizing social history, material culture history, business history, and biography to achieve a deeper understanding the significance that men's jewelry had to those who wore it and those who designed and manufactured it."
"American Plique-a-Jour Enameling,"
Janet Zapata. Magazine Antiques 150, 1996, 812-21.
Riker Brothers and Whiteside and Blank in Newark were two of the four jewelry firms creating objects using the plique-'a-jour enameling at the turn of the 20th century. Available?
"The Jeweled Watches of Henry Blank and Company of Newark"
Leslie Sykes-O'Neill. The Magazine Antiques 169(1), January 2006, pp.186-193.
Blank specialized in women's jeweled wristwatches, which were sold by the finest jewelry retailers in the first part of the 20th century. Rutgers-restricted Access
Craftsmen of Elegance: The Newark Jewelry Industry: An Exhibition, December 19-April 30.
Newark, N.J., New Jersey Historical Society, 1979. Available?
The Newark Museum...Jewelry History.
Newark, N.J., Newark Museum Association, 1914. Available?

Furniture

"Edwin Van Antwerp's Jelliff Furniture,"
Ulysses Grant Dietz. The Magazine Antiques 137, April 1990, 906-13.
John Jelliff and Company was the most important 19th century furniture manufacturer in Newark. Available?
"John Jelliff, Cabinetmaker of Newark,"
Margaret E. White. Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 76(4), October 1958, 297-300. Available?
"A Major New Piece in the Jelliff Puzzle"
Ulysses Grant Dietz. Magazine Antiques 129, May 1986, 1096-1099. Available?
"David Alling's Chair Manufactory [Craft Industrialization in Newark, New Jersey, 1801-1854],"
Don C. Skemer. Winterthur Portfolio 22, Spring 1987, 1-21. Rutgers-restricted Access

Silver

Silver in Newark: A Newark 300th Anniversary Study.
J. Stewart Johnson. Newark, N.J., The Newark Museum Association, 1966. Available?
"Newark Silversmiths and Their Marks,"
Newark Museum Quarterly 18(3-4), 1966, pp.15-51.Available?
"Silver From the Golden Era of Newark Made Jewelry."
Janet Zapata. Silver Magazine 29(5), September-October 1997, pp. 32-38.
Newark jewelry 1890-1915
Title not owned by the Rutgers University Libraries.
Unger Bros, Manufacturing: Jewelers, Silversmith and Glass Cutters, Newark, N.J..
Shreveport, La., American Cut Glass Association, 1985.
Catalog. Available?
Unger Brothers
Images from the Online Encyclopedia of Silver Marks, Hallmarks & Makers' Marks.
"Unger Brothers Flatware Patterns."
Diane Zinn. Silver 26(9), July-August 1994, pp.24-27.
Title not owned by the Rutgers University Libraries.
"Silverphiles Beware!."
Janet Zapata. Silver Magazine 30(6), November-December 1998, pp. 30-31.
Re: Forgery of an Unger Brothers silver brooch.
Title not owned by the Rutgers University Libraries.
Unger Brothers Silver in the Newark Museum Collection
"Twentieth Century Silver in the Newark Museum. Part I."
Ulysses Grant Dietz. Silver Magazine 32(6), November-December 2000, pp. 18-27.
Highlights the influence of John Cotton Dana on the development of the collection.
Title not owned by the Rutgers University Libraries.
"Twentieth Century Silver in the Newark Museum: Part II."
Ulysses Grant Dietz. Silver Magazine 33(1), January-February 2001, pp. 10-18.
Title not owned by the Rutgers University Libraries.

Other

Marcel Duchamp in Newark
Hellmut Wohl. Burlington Magazine 145(1198), January 2003, pp. 36-39.
In January 1960, Marcel Duchamp installed a window display which included his Nude Descending a Staircase, no, 3 at Bamberger's department store. Rutgers-restricted Access

Art and Industry

John Cotton Dana and the Politics of Exhibiting Industrial Art in the U.S., 1909-1929
Nicolas Maffei. Journal of Design History 13(4), 2000, 301-17
John Cotton Dana, director of the Newark Museum from 1909 to 1929, pioneered the exhibition of mass-produced goods in museums.
Made in Newark: Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era
Ezra Shales. New Brunswick, Rivergate Books, 2010. Available?
John Cotton Dana and the Business of Enlightening Newark: Applied Art at the Newark Public Library and Museum, 1902-29 Rutgers-restricted access
Ezra Shales. Thesis (Ph.D.), Bard Graduate Center, 2006. Available?
The New Relations of Museums and Industries.
John Cotton Dana. Newark, N.J., Newark Museum Association, 1919. Available?