Footnotes

Idar-Oberstein—500 Years of Gem Carving History
The town of Idar-Oberstein, located in a scenic valley of the Hunsrück Mountains in the western part of Germany, is actually a pair of villages a few miles apart which were politically joined in 1933. Oberstein is known for its jewelry manufacturing and Idar is the gem cutting center. Little known to Americans except those in the gem trade, in Europe, this town is known as the "gemstone city" or Edelsteinstadt and has become an increasingly popular tourist destination.
Historical records indicate that its 500-year-plus history and remarkable traditions of gemstone cutting developed when miners found agates and amethyst crystals in Miocene-age basalt formations nearby. However, many cutters in Idar claim that agate mining and cutting dates to Roman times, due to evidence of some Roman settlements not far away and a Roman road that runs near an important source of cutting material.
Today the manufacturing there includes various cut gems, although originally, the industry was founded only on the local deposits—particularly agate —but also jasper, rock crystal, amethyst, and smoky quartz.
The city's development of the agate industry, in the beginning of the 16th century, was based on these mineral deposits, the availability of local sandstone used for the cutting and polishing wheels, and waterpower to work the wheels. By the 1700s, there were about 15 workshops cutting agate which used the nearby Nahe River for energy—a number which doubled by the year 1800. However, when dwindling local agate deposits caused a slow-down in the industry and many cutters left the area. These emigrants discovered large agate deposits in Brazil, they brought the material back and the cutting industry again began to flourish. By the late 19th Century as many as 150 cutting shops were in existence and the industry expanded from cutting agate and jasper into carving various types of stone objects such as dishes, goblets, bowls, snuff boxes, cane heads, parasol handles, fancy buttons, and even beads.
Now a town of about 50,000 inhabitants, Idar-Oberstein is recognized as the most significant European cutting center for gemstones, other than diamond—and some of the original family businesses are still in existence. The German Gemstone Museum (Deutsches Edelsteinmuseum), situated there, devoted entirely to the display of minerals and cut gems, jewelry, and carvings, is considered by many connoisseurs to be the best of its kind in the world.



Manfred Wild
Born in 1944, Manfred Wild, an eighth-generation gem cutter, is one of the most renowned lapidary artists to emerge from Idar-Oberstein. At the age of twenty, during an apprenticeship with a gemstone merchant, he began his well-rounded educational journey in the areas of fine art, gemstone cutting, engraving and goldsmithing.
Working in a family tradition of stone cutters established in 1630, Manfred Wild is one of the world's most famous creators of "objets d'art." He is best known for his virtuoso work in rare, precious and semi-precious materials carved as perfume bottles, animals, whimsical figures, flower studies, enameled eggs with concealed "surprises", cameos, chalices and objets de fantaisie made of precious stones, gold and silver.
It is helpful, of course, to understand Wild's work within the greater context of 19th and 20th Century Decorative and Jewelry Arts. In addition to the influence of his own family and town, Mr. Wild follows the traditions established by René Lalique and Peter Carl Fabergé (Russian jeweler, 1846-1920) and a great number of parallels can be seen in their work. Fabergé had begun a new era in the Jewelry Arts. Prior to him, many jewelers felt the value of jewelry was intrinsic, based upon the stones (particularly diamonds) and precious metals. The artistic creativity and superior craftsmanship introduced by Fabergé made such objects transcend their "break value". Fabergé also used a number of decorative techniques attributable to French 18th Century goldsmiths, e.g. the art of guilloché, a surface treatment of metal that could make waved lines or striations in the design, either performed by machine or by hand. Atop the guilloché decoration was a translucent enameling that required the application of several coats and the "firing" of the object in an oven after each layer, a very labor-intensive technique. The limited palette of enamels used in the nineteenth century was expanded upon by Fabergé who, after much experimentation, arrived at over 140 shades. He also used natural stones often found in his local area or native to Russia, e.g. jasper, agate, bowenite, nephrite. Often his use of precious stones, including sapphires, rubies and emeralds was in an understated way, only for accents, and even then were used en cabochon. Diamonds, if used, were typically rose-cut. So many of the aforementioned decorative elements are seen the work of Wild even as they appear in the examples on these pages. When India Early Minshall, a wealthy collector of Fabergé purchased an egg in 1944, she stated, "Fabergé was called the Benvenuto Cellini of the North, but I do not think any jeweler can ever be compared to him"—She could not know that someday the work of Manfred Wild would rival the work of the great Russian jeweler......

Mr. Wild's works are displayed in museums throughout the world including: The German Gemstone Museum in Idar-Oberstein, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., The Harvard Museum in Boston, The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and The Iksan Jewellery Museum in Korea, as well as extensive private collections in Japan, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States of America.