Designer: Annemarie Davidson (1920 – 2012)

Item: Enamel Jewels Plate

Manufactured by: Annemarie Davidson

Country of origin: United States

Year made: Circa early 1960s

Materials: Copper, enamel and glass

Dimensions:: 8 ¾” square

Condition: Excellent.

References: Nelson, Harold; Jazzar, Bernard, Painting with Fire: Masters of Enameling in America, 1930-1980. Long Beach Museum of Art, California (2006); Rosenberg, Alan, Alluring Enamel. Modernism Magazine: (Spring 2003) pages 68–72; Jazzar, Bernard N and Nelson, Harold B. The Enamels of Annemarie Davidson, Glass on Metal, The Enamellist’s Magazine, Volume 27 Number 5 December 2008, pages 98-100; periodical California Design: 6 in 1960.

Description: Here is a rare and beautiful Jewels plate by Davidson from the early 1960s in a very unusual color palate that we have not seen before. The colors on this are a cool and soothing combination with the gold jewels placed in a minimalist and modernist nearly black design below a very subtle and finely executed sun-ray sgraffito incised lines radiating outward to the edge. This plate is another stunning example midcentury modernism in the enamel arts and would make a great accent piece in any modern home.

Davidson had a thriving retail business creating enamel objects with objective imagery that is somewhat kitschy, such as birds, trees, frogs, and other depictions from life, and which can be easily found in thrift shops. However, her abstract work is her most highly regarded and was her “fine art” practice. That work was exhibited at California Design in 1960 and several western museums. She was listed in Craftsmen of the Southwest in 1965, which only listed eight enamelists total including Fred Ball, Margaret Montgomery Barlow, Nik Krevitsky, June Schwarcz, Kay Whitcomb and Elllamarie and Jackson Woolley.

Davidson was born in Berlin in 1920, and came to the US in 1936. She studied economics at New York University and later at Columbia University. She studied enameling with the prominent enamel pioneer Doris Hall in the 1950s. Davidson moved to southern California with her husband in 1946, and lived and worked in the Los Angeles area until her death in 2012.

In her work, Davidson frequently uses pieces of glass of varying sizes to create irregular organic shapes which she called her “jewels.” These raised forms appear to float on the liquid surface of the object.

Her works were exhibited in her lifetime at the Pasadena Art Museum, Long Beach Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art, and are now beginning to be widely collected.

We have a large selection of Davidson’s jewel plates available in varying sizes and color combinations so please let us know if there is something in particular you may be looking for and we just might have an example available for sale.