Miriam Haskell (July 1, 1899 – July 14, 1981) was an American designer of
costume jewelry
Costume or fashion jewelry includes a range of decorative items worn for personal adornment that are manufactured as less expensive ornamentation to complement a particular fashionable outfit or garmentBaker, Lillian. Fifty Years of Collectabl ...
. With creative partner Frank Hess, she designed affordable pieces from 1920 through the 1960s. Her vintage items are eagerly collected and the namesake company, which first displayed her jewelry in New York City's McAlpin Hotel, continues. It is currently listed as ''Haskell Jewels, LLC''.
Early life
Haskell was born on July 1, 1899, in
Tell City, Indiana, a small town on the Ohio River, approximately 80 miles southwest of
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana borde ...
. After high school in
New Albany, where her Russian Jewish immigrant parents ran a dry-goods store, she studied for three years at Chicago University.
Establishing her business
Moving to New York City in 1924 with $500 in her pocket, she opened a jewelry boutique in 1926 in the old
McAlpin Hotel
Herald Towers, formerly the Hotel McAlpin, is a residential condominium building on Herald Square, along Broadway between 33rd and 34th Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Constructed from 1910 to 1912 by the Gre ...
, and a second outlet within the year at West 57th Street. Frank Hess joined her business the same year. Despite some controversy concerning the extent to which the jewelry designs are Haskell's or Hess's (Ellman quotes Haskell's nephew's claim that she designed a great deal;
[ Pamfiloff and others give the lion's share of credit to Hess]art glass
Art glass is a subset of glass art, this latter covering the whole range of art made from glass. Art glass normally refers only to pieces made since the mid-19th century, and typically to those purely made as sculpture or decorative art, with ...
, strass, and gold-plate parures were popular throughout the Great Depression, and the company went on to open boutiques at Saks Fifth Avenue
Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; colloquially Saks) is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street shopping district of Washing ...
and Burdine's, as well as stores in Miami and London. The Saks shop also offered pieces by Chanel
Chanel ( , ) is a French high-end luxury fashion house founded in 1910 by Coco Chanel in Paris. Chanel specializes in women's ready-to-wear, luxury goods, and accessories and licenses its name and branding to Luxottica for eyewear. Chanel i ...
.[
]
Most notable clients and collectibility of her work
Miriam Haskell jewelry was worn for publicity shots, films, and personal use by movie stars Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pic ...
and Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedienne and producer. She was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning five times, and was the recipient of several other accolades, such as the Gold ...
, as well as by Gloria Vanderbilt and the Duchess of Windsor
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Simpson; June 19, 1896 – April 24, 1986), was an American socialite and wife of the former King Edward VIII. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a ...
. Crawford owned a set of almost every Haskell ever produced, from the 1920s through the 1960s.[
Watercolors used for advertising, by Larry Austin and others, showing models wearing large Haskell pieces are also collected][Cathy Gordon and Sheila Pamfiloff, ''Miriam Haskell Jewelry'' (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2004).]
Her vintage pieces can command high prices from collectors. However, her jewelry was seldom signed before 1950, and it was her brother Joseph Haskell who introduced the first regularly signed Miriam Haskell jewelry. For a very short time during the 1940s, a shop in New England did request all pieces they received be signed by Miriam - this signature being a horseshoe-shaped plaque with Miriam Haskell embossed on it. Pieces with this signature are rare.
Wealthiest patrons and community work
Haskell's clients included Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. (; March 21, 1867 – July 22, 1932) was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' (1907–1931), inspired by the '' Folies Bergère'' of Paris. He also ...
, who decorated the chorines of his Follies with her designs; Bernard Gimbel of the department store chain; and John D. Hertz, Jr., scion of the car-rental company. With Hess, she traveled in search of materials to Paris, Gablonz, Venice, and Wattens, home of Daniel Swarovski's crystal factory. She built a mansion that she called Sainte Claire Cottage on the Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...
near Ossining. When the Ohio flooded in 1937, Haskell sent boxcars full of relief materials to New Albany, and traveled home to assist during the disaster. In World War Two, she gave generously to the war effort, and asked Hess to create new patriotic metalfree jewelry designs, using natural materials and plastics.[
]
Declining health, and legacy
The horror of World War II affected her health and emotional stability; in her fifties, she became ill, despite an adherence to health food. In 1950, she lost control of her company to her brothers. Living in an apartment on Central Park South with her widowed mother through the next decades, she became increasingly erratic in her behavior. In 1977, she moved to Cincinnati, under the care of her nephew Malcolm Dubin, and died in 1981.[Barbara Ellman, "The World of Fashion Jewelry" (Highland Park, IL): Aunt Louise Imports, 1986] It was a sad ending for an exceptional life, but, as Pamfiloff writes, "Obviously, the legacy of her dream has filtered on down through the decades. It was a man's world. Designers were men. The owners of companies were men. The staff was men. The salesmen were men. It was all men. And then you had Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel ( , ; 19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post-World War I era with popularizing a sporty, c ...
, who just jumped right out there, and a couple of other women who carved out their own niche in the world. Haskell did that, too."[
]
Books
* Deanna Farnetti Cera, ''The Jewels of Miriam Haskell'' (Milan: Idea Books, 1997).
* Barbara Ellman, "The World of Fashion Jewelry" (Highland Park, IL: Aunt Louise Imports, 1986).
* Cathy Gordon and Sheila Pamfiloff, ''Miriam Haskell Jewelry'' (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2004).
References
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20090801095554/http://www.miriamhaskell.com/the_story.asp
*
Miriam Haskell - Designers & Jewellery Makers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haskell, Miriam
American jewelry designers
1899 births
1981 deaths
People from Tell City, Indiana
People from New Albany, Indiana
People from Ossining, New York
Women jewellers