Necklace

During the early twentieth-century Boston was a hub for American arts and crafts metalwork and jewelry. Boston jewelers like Frank Gardner Hale his protégé Edward Everett Oakes, were known for their use of colorful gemstone jewelry and polychrome enamel and had long and vibrant careers. Their signature style included scrolling wirework motifs, leaves, and gems came to define the jewelry created in the city. Working in this style until his death in 1960, Oakes had a long and successful career as a jewer. This necklace - which is reversible and features pearls on one side and amethysts on the other - represents the pinnacle of Boston arts and crafts design and features all the elements for which the city's artists were known.

With its material connection, pearl and amethyst, the necklace closely relates stylistically to Oakes’s masterwork, a jeweled casket or jewlery box, which was completed in 1929. (2000.628.1-2)