While European jewelry houses were created by royal courts, aristocratic patronage and centuries of tradition, American jewelry emerged from a culture of entrepreneurship, industrial innovation and self-made wealth. The result was a distinctly American style—bold, technically inventive, jewel-driven and often less constrained by convention. Beginning in the 19th Century, firms including Tiffany & Co., Marcus & Co., JE Caldwell, Bailey Banks & Biddle, Harry Winston, David Webb, Oscar Heyman, Verdura, Raymond Yard and Seaman Schepps helped redefine luxury jewelry, creating an American culture that eventually influenced designers and designers around the world.
Now, cultural centers across the country are using America’s 250th anniversary to bring attention to American artists and designers in many creative fields, including jewelry. In New York, for example, the Sotheby’s trade show “250 Years of American Art & Culture” includes a special display of archives and contemporary creations from David Webb. The display will include a never-before-seen aquamarine suite from the 1950s, a newly created iteration of David Webb’s Totem Necklace, vintage coral pieces and one-of-a-kind emerald and sapphire brooches from the 1960s. “We didn’t think it would be two minutes that it would be David Webb. They’ve been good friends for years,” Frank Everett, vice chairman of Suthu’s jewelry, told the Observer. “He’s the quintessential American jeweler. It was a perfect fit.”
Maverick designs and sells as defining qualities
According to Everett, two defining characteristics set American artisans apart from their European peers. The first is their rebellious nature when it comes to design: “I think there’s a real maverick spirit here. I don’t mean to innovate. I think it’s one thing to be an innovator, and it’s another to be a maverick. If you look at someone like Louis Comfort Tiffany, who was very focused on American materials and American stones never used things like American sap, things like American sap, things like American sap. combination I think that was ahead of his time, which was old that fast forward to David Webb in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the same kind of thing. He was known to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every Saturday, and he would just put together all kinds of influences that he saw there in an unusual way.
The second defining factor is that many jewelry houses were run by salesmen. “A lot of the big companies were entrepreneurial,” Everett said. “Harry Winston was a salesman. Raymond Yard had a 20-year career as a salesman. Same with Paul Plato, even Charles Lewis Tiffany (who founded Tiffany & Co.). He started as a stationery salesman and then went into jewelry. I think the commercial spirit is pure America.”
Meanwhile, New Orleans antiques dealer MS Rau is hosting a visual exhibit, “Symbols of America: Artists Who Defined the Nation 1776-2026.” Elle Spurr, researcher, writer and MS Rau expert, told the Observer that American jewelry helped to define jewelry based on creativity, ambition and creativity: “From the artistic vision of Louis Comfort Tiffany to the famous diamonds of Harry Winston, unique precious stones, precious stones from the American Oscarbng and David Webster. American, taste and confidence in the world.
Asked about his choices for a museum exhibit that would best represent America’s experience in jewelry, he said, “Tiffany will establish the foundation of American luxury, Marcus & Co. will represent the refinement of the art of the century. Oscar Heyman will represent the technical mastery and beauty of the precious stone. Harry Winston will confirm the story of David’s precious diamond, which will bring confidence to the precious diamond. Mid-century American design Together, they discussed the story of American jewelry from development to reinvention.”
American influence abroad
It is generally believed that American high jewels were influenced by European jewelers, but Ariel Saidian of Joseph Saidian & Sons, a New York jeweler, argued that America’s success in high jewelry design also influenced the great European houses. “I think American fine jewelry has influenced European maisons because not every detail of jewelry needs to be overly refined,” he told the Observer. “A gem made in America that might be a little harder or harder or bolder than the same thing made in Paris, for example, is no longer ‘bad.’ In fact, I think the bold and daring American style is very popular all over the world now. Customers in the Far East didn’t even know brands like Verdura and David Webb 15 years ago, they can’t get enough of them today.”
David Webb is one of the few American jewelry houses that has remained true to its aesthetic innovation. Although Webb died in 1975, the company continues to produce jewels based on his original designs—bold creations defined by hammered gold, brightly colored gemstones and impressive enamel work. Today, most of the jewelry is owned by two investment firms.
Webb was born and raised in Asheville, NC, and moved to New York in the 1940s to become a jeweler. “From the beginning, he’s been living the American dream of going high and chasing his heart’s desire,” Levi Higgs, head of archival and brand heritage at David Webb, told the Observer. “Besides his origin story, perhaps the most distinctive American aesthetic qualities of David Webb’s jewelry are their bold styles and dimensions, and a design vocabulary developed through the integration of various cultural and historical influences.”
Higgs oversees the preservation of the company’s heritage while continuing to make the brand relevant to today’s clients. “David Webb was one of the few visionaries who moved women into the modern and contemporary era through jewelry,” he said. “His work embodies the height of American luxury—a moment in the second half of the 20th century when luxury became bold and uncompromising. What’s important today.”
The immigrant stories behind America’s heritage
While David Webb represents a homegrown American success story, many of the nation’s great jewelry houses were founded by immigrants who adapted Old World art to the rapidly changing American marketplace. The founder of Marcus & Co., Herman Marcus, was born and raised in Germany and moved to New York in 1850. Duke Fulco di Verdura, a Sicilian scholar, founded the Verdura jewelry salon in New York. Harry Winston was the son of Ukrainian immigrants.
The story of Oscar Heyman’s high jewelry is also a story of arrival. The company was founded by Oscar and Nathan Heyman, who immigrated to the United States from Latvia in the 1900s. The brothers were among the few American jewelers who could work with platinum; Oscar was the first non-French master at Pierre Cartier’s Manhattan workshop.
When the entire Heyman family arrived in America in 1912, Oscar and his brothers founded Oscar Heyman & Bros., which quickly became a popular workshop for many of America’s leading jewelry houses, especially platinum jewelry, at a time when few American craftsmen had that expertise. Between the founding of the company in 1912 and 1942, Oscar Heyman received seven patents related to jewelry making, and the company soon gained a reputation for its exquisite craftsmanship and masterful use of rare colored gems.
The company remains family-owned, currently led by third-generation president Tom Heyman and second-generation CEO Adam Heyman. It is one of the few important American high-end jewelry companies still owned by the original family and one of the few that still has a full-service workshop on Madison Avenue.
“Like most of them, they’ve been working seven days a week for decades helping their customers,” Tom Heyman told the Observer. “When this company was founded, the brothers and many members of their family all worked together to build this business and achieve the respected reputation we now enjoy.” My cousin Adam and I feel grateful to be able to continue the family and the legacy of the company.”
After World War II, Oscar Heyman was the first American jeweler to source precious stones directly from Asian miners and cutters. “Our stone appraiser team continues to travel internationally to view a huge variety of gems so they can sift through thousands to arrive at what they believe is the best,” explains Tom Heyman. “Oscar Heyman excels in our use of rare and esoteric gemstones, such as alexandrites, black opals and Paraíba tourmalines.” It is also one of the few high-end jewelry companies that does almost all of its business within the jewelry trade, choosing to sell through resellers, rather than directly to consumers.
250 years after the nation’s founding, America’s greatest jewelers are creating an aesthetic rooted not in inherited royalty but in exceptional craftsmanship driven by innovation. In the hands of immigrants, merchants and self-taught mavericks, jewelry stopped being a record of blood and became something more democratic and bold, not to mention unquestionably American: a record of desire.
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