Berlin iron earrings, Geiss Ironworks

Episode 15 Jan-2005, Debra Thimmesch, European and American Art Intern I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. A necklace strung with five elegant, classical portrait cameos, an enchanting bracelet in the Gothic Revival style, graceful pendant earrings of delicate black tracery, a brooch composed of two intertwined hoops holding finely detailed rosettes. These four exquisite examples of early 19th-century Berlin Iron jewelry are currently on view in the Spencer’s nineteenth-century gallery, on long-term loan from Robert Hiller. They are also--quite surprisingly--poignant mementos of a brutal war long since past. The jewelry comes from the Royal Prussian Foundry in Berlin, which opened in 1804 and began making iron jewelry. A decade later, near the end of the Napoleonic wars, the iron jewelry played a role in the German war effort: The government asked citizens to donate their jewelry made of precious materials to help pay for the campaign against France. In exchange for their gold, donors received iron jewelry, inspiring a new art form as well as a motto for the era: “Gold gab ich für Eisen” or “I gave gold for iron.”