Art Deco bracelet with coral and diamond

Art Deco bracelet made of oxidised steel, platinum, gold, blood coral and diamonds. Signed: Marsh (California).

USA, circa 1925

The jewelry company GT Marsh & Co. was founded in 1876 by George Turner Marsh. Born in Australia, he immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of fifteen, with a stop over in Japan. He immediately fell in love with the country and wanted to stay in Japan longer, so his father got him a job with a tea import/export company. A few years later he joined his family in San Francisco and used his experience and enthusiasm to open one of the first Asian art galleries in the United States: GT Marsh & Company, Japanese Art Repository.

During the 1930s, while the company specialised in Asian antiques and art, it began to produce its own unique stylised jewellery. Notable was the use of oxidised steel with traditional Asian materials such as pearls, coral and jade. Their Italian goldsmith was into shotguns, he used steel for the jewellery with a method that was also used to prevent shotguns from rusting: gun blueing. First the steel was sandblasted and became beautifully matt, then it was treated with a liquid that blackens the steel. The diamonds, platinum and coral stand out beautifully against this.