Designer: Ben Siebel (1918 – 1985)

Item: Ben Seibel Shovel Bookends Desk Set

Manufactured by: Jenfredware by Levco Mfg.

Country of origin: United States

Year made: 1950s

Materials: Silver and Brass plating over a magnesium, copper-zinc and aluminum base with an original baked on lacquer finish. Box has a cork lining.

Dimensions: Bookends are 5 ¾” x 6” x 2 ¾”. Box is 1 ½” x 4 ½’ x 3 ¾”. Tray is 1” x 7 ¼” x 4 ¾”.

Condition: Very good to excellent. Very minor wear to bookends and box, and some wear to the finish of the dish as shown. The cork interior lining of the box has a few minor cracks.

Description: Here is an important and very rare complete desk set of matching bookends, lidded box and tray by Ben Seibel for Jenfredware with his bookends that are often referred to as the Shovel Bookends. However, we have not been able to find any catalog or documentation for his use of that name. This design was done as part of a series of modernist metalwares Seibel designed for Jenfredware. Maison Gourmet was also a division of Jenfredware that sold the Jenfredware products at higher-end stores and department stores and we recently sold a pair of the bookends that retained those Maison Gourmet labels.

These are very stylish, well made and heavy, with the bookends weighing in at about 2.2 pounds each and the box weighing in at about 2 pounds. This set is in the much harder-to-find silver finish with brass stripes. The box retains the full original label on the interior of the lid and the tray has remnants of the label. The bookends lost their label. We have never seen a complete set in any finish, let alone this harder-to-finish.

Seibel was born in Newark, New Jersey but raised in Manhattan, where his mother had a shop in Greenwich Village selling her own jewelry and fashion designs. Seibel began pursuing a degree in architecture at Columbia University after studying with noted American modernist artists Louis Schanker and Leo Amino. After putting his education on hold for a three-and-a-half year term of service in the Air Force, Seibel returned to New York City in 1945, enrolling at Pratt Institute with a concentration in industrial design. He never completed his degree, instead started a studio that he maintained alongside a small staff until his death in 1985. The available literature indicates that Siebel’s designs for Jenfred-Ware were first introduced in 1948 and utilized various metal plated finishes over a magnesium, copper-zinc and aluminum base metal.