Marie Zimmerman
1879-1972
Marie Zimmermann was among the most eclectic and innovative designers of jewelry and metalwork working in the early twentieth century. Her creations in gold, silver, bronze, copper, and iron explore a wide range of approaches to design, celebrating and interrogating traditional methods and experimenting freely with materials, surface, color, and applied ornament. Because of the diverse and challenging nature of her work, Zimmermann’s oeuvre has received little scholarly attention until now.
The daughter of Swiss immigrant parents, Zimmermann grew up in Brooklyn and was educated at the Packer Collegiate Institute, the Art Students League, and Pratt Institute. She lived for some twenty-five years at the National Arts Club in New York City, where she also exhibited her work alongside that of other leaders of modern American design. Like many designers, Zimmermann’s earliest artistic expression was jewelry, which she continued to produce throughout her career, excelling particularly in intricate combinations of semiprecious stones, delicate enameling, and gold that boldly invoke and subvert Egyptian and classical revival styles.
Zimmermann’s jewelry is truly a distinctive body of work. Her childhood during America’s Gilded Age, her training during the heyday of the arts and crafts movement, and her keen awareness of international and historical precedents equipped her to create eclectic and individualistic designs. While jewelry played a particularly important role in her earliest artistic expressions, she continued to create in this medium throughout her career. Similarly, her profound interest in Egyptian antiquities and reinterpreting this style was not limited to jewelry or to her early career. She explored innovative uses for this imagery in ironwork, bronze, gilded vases, and, particularly, in her celebrated Egyptian Box, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In all her creations, Zimmermann expressed a personal vision of beauty.
