HENRY DANKNER NY JEWELER 1950\'S PENDANT RUBY 14K ZODIAC CANCER BIRTH STONE 20G
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HENRY DANKNER NY JEWELER 1950\'S PENDANT RUBY 14K ZODIAC CANCER BIRTH STONE 20G:
$1650.00
PLEASE REFERENCE NEW YORK TIME ARTICLEMAY 22, 2014
ByEve M. Kahn
- May 22, 2014The roster of small jewelry workshops in Manhattan’s diamond district keeps shrinking, but at least one company that’s winding down is preserving the history of its designs. After six decades of making jewelry at various addresses in the West 40s, Henry Dankner & Sons is closing and donating its paperwork and molds to theJEWELRY DESIGN DEPTat the Fashion Institute of Technology.
If not for that gift, the family’s story of escaping the Nazis in Hungary and winning renown in New York for their gold mechanical charms (with moving parts) would be largely forgotten.
The owner, Robert Dankner, 86, learned his trade from his father, Henry, and was long in partnership with his brother George. He has sold the equipment and emptied the company’s longtime space at 71 West 47th Street.
When moving crews arrived, “I had to tell them, ‘Please leave me these few pieces,\' ” Mr. Dankner said, pointing to a pile of hand tools as he packed up some of his remaining belongings.
The Fashion Institute is taking thousands of molds, as well as photographs, catalogs and sketches that document Dankner’s output. They include designs of tiny, twirling dancers; beating hearts; spinning streetcars; and galloping horses. Watch mechanisms power the moving charms, which can sell for over $1,000 each at sale.
“This is archival gold,” the jewelry historian Courtney Bowers Marhev said as she leafed through vintage images that were about to be moved to the institute.
Mr. Dankner kept the molds in boxes stacked to the ceiling, bearing labels like “cat musician” and “baby shoe.” On the workshop walls, he hung award certificates that his father received before World War II.
In 1944 the Nazis seized everything of value at the Budapest workshop, leaving behind the certificates. Mr. Dankner has never seen any of the company’s prewar jewelry resurface on the market. “I think they melted it all down,” he said.
In the 1950s the family restarted the company in New York, routinely working 18-hour days. Mr. Dankner suggests that the long toil was partly an attempt to defy the Nazis’ efforts to wipe out Jewish culture. “Was it subconscious, to prove the point that they couldn’t do it?” he
In the 1990s the family received minimal compensation from the Hungarian government for the Nazi theft. “I used the money to buy a beautiful tablecloth for each of my two daughters,” Mr. Dankner said.
During its peak output, from the 1960s to the ‘80s, the jewelry workshop had 27 employees. The wares were stamped with a D surrounded by a wreath, and the elite distributors included Cartier, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels.
Mr. Dankner “represents a wonderful period in the heyday of 47th Street,” Michael Coan, chairman of the Fashion Institute’s jewelry design department, said in an interview. Mr. Coan said he even envisioned the Dankner archive’s inspiring inventive new jewelry. “There’s no reason his stuff has to die or lie fallow,” he added.
Mr. Dankner said he was thinking of taking classes at the Art Students League. “I’m still just a beginner,” he said.
He said that while it was “very gratifying” to know that the archive would be preserved, part of him wished he could keep on making jewelry. “I still have the juices flowing,” Mr. Dankner explained.
reflected.
THE ABOVE IMAGE IS FROM THE NY TIMES ARTICLE
THE ONLY ITEM AT AUCION IS THE ZODIAC PENDANTHAVING A WEIGHT OF 20 GRAMS
THIS ITEM IS A VINTAGE 14K GOLD PENDANTHAS 1 RUBY FOR THE BIRTH STONE OF THE ZODIAK SIGN CANCER
SELLING AS IS FOR REPAIR OR PARTSNOW IS THE TIME TO ASK ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE.REMEMBER THIS ITEM IS NOT RETURNABLE SOLD FOR PARTS OR REPAIR AS IS, AS DESCRIBED.YOU ARE offerDING ON THE EXACT ITEM SHOWN, NOTHING MORE OR LESS.
HENRY DANKNER NY JEWELER 1950\'S PENDANT RUBY 14K ZODIAC CANCER BIRTH STONE 20G:
$1650.00