Description
Rare belt made by the highly skilled, female jeweler Sah Oved, responsible for some of the most original and striking jewelry designs before the Second World War.
Heavy silver belt made of ten hinged rectangular panels. On the exterior eight hinges are disguised by architectural cartouches with geometrical stepped frames and coral beads. These are linked by horizontal columns in relief, and on the back of the belt is an elaborate hinge in similar geometric style with gold highlights. On the front is an oval buckle with a loop as clasp and a decorative panel of lapis lazuli and foliate and goldish-brown inlay, partially rubbed or worn away. On the interior of the belt, each panel has in relief an oval frame (two of them with lapis lazuli inlay) flanked on either side by tapering circles.
Provenance:
By descent to Sah Oved’s daughter, gifted to an anonymous collector; acquired from the art market, London.
Literature:
Sah Oved, born Gwendolyn Ethel Rendie (1900-1983) created some of the most original and striking jewelry designs before the Second World War. Pieces by her are rare, even in public collections. See: the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (ClarePhillips, Jewels & Jewellery, London 2019, pp. 150-151) and the National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (Chadour-Sampson/Newell-Smith (see below, no. 117), each with a necklace; a ring by her is represented in the Alice and Louis Koch Collection in the Swiss National Museum, Zurich (Chadour 2019, p. 499-500).
Oved went to art school in Chichester and it was during this period that she became interested in jewelry. World War I changed the course of her life, and she took up medical research in Cambridge, continuing classes in jewelry during the evenings. It was not until 1923 that she was professionally trained, under the auspices of the well-known Arts and Crafts jeweler John Paul Cooper (1869-1943), who inspired her fascination for medieval jewelry, and in 1924 she opened her own studio. In 1927 she met her husband Mosheh Oved (1885-1958), the charismatic owner of the Bloomsbury antique store Cameo Corner. Moshe was an expert in jewels and antiques as well as sculptor, author, and poet. In the store from 1937 onwards she undertook repairs, engraving and enameling antique jewelry, while designing her own creations. After 1945, Sah Oved studied silversmithing at the Central School of Arts, London and in 1953 authored the publication “The Book on Necklaces.”
A recent exhibition described her as “a jeweler with a lovely sense of imagination combined with a real understanding of sophisticated making in precious material” (exh. cat. A Sense of Jewellery design through the work of forty artists from the past forty years, September 15–November 19, 2015. Goldsmiths' Center, London, curated by Amanda Game and Professor Dorothy Hogg, w/o pp.). This description of her work applies well to the present belt with its highly imaginative design and ornamentation. The geometric style of the individual elements suggests a date in the 1920s when she had her own studio. The plaque inserted in the belt buckle is a re-used carved lapis lazuli plaque with inlay, reminiscent of stone inlay work in Mughal architecture, like the famous Taj Mahal built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan from 1631-1653. For the varying techniques of inlay work in Indian jewelry, cf. Rita Devi Sharma/M.Varadarajan, Handcrafted Indian Enamel Jewellery, New Delhi 2008.
For biographical information, see: Graham Hughes, Modern Jewelry, London 1963, p. 243; Peter Hinks, Twentieth Century British Jewellery, London 1983, pp. 85-86; Barbara Cartlidge, Twentieth Century Jewelry, New York 1985, p. 213; Elyse Zorn Karlin, Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts & Crafts Tradition, Atglen (PA), 1993, p. 86; Bella Neyman, “The Lion of Judah and the Unicorn,” in: Modern Magazine, Winter 2011, pp. 138-143; Chadour-Sampson and Hindman 2016, no. 39; Beatriz Chadour-Sampson/Sonya Newell-Smith, Tadema Gallery London, Jewellery from the 1860s to 1960s, p. 475-476.