This post is part of a series, Reading Time at HSNY, written by our librarian, Miranda Marraccini.

For much of the past few centuries, watchmaking comfortably occupied a position as part of the jewelry trade. It’s one reason why journals in our library at the Horological Society of New York (HSNY) often contain references to both, as is the case with the German title “Schmuck und Uhren.” Uhren means watches, and if you’re familiar with Yiddish, don’t worry, it’s okay to say schmuck in German–it just means jewelry.

An issue from the first year of publication of “Jeweler’s Weekly,” dated March 3, 1886, demonstrates the connections between the trades. In New York, jewelers had already established a thriving business district on Maiden Lane. This area near the southern tip of Manhattan was the center of the jewelry trade, including watchmaking, from around 1800 through the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, one of HSNY’s founders, George Schmid, had a watch repair shop just off Maiden Lane in the 1880s.

The “Jeweler’s Weekly” office address is printed on the front cover of the magazine: 41-43 Maiden Lane, a few doors down from what would be the Diamond Exchange, an early skyscraper reinforced to support the weight of jewelers’ heavy safes. The cover (image 1) shows a clock in the lower left corner, and is subtitled “A journal for the jewelry diamond watch silver ware & kindred trades.” (Unrelated, a couple of cupids in the sky above send a message of love by telegraph.)

A two-page spread inside the magazine (image 2) shows an inventory of some of the most well-known watch manufacturers at the time. On the American side: Waltham, Elgin, and Illinois. On the Swiss: James Nardin (cousin of Ulysse), and Vacheron & Constantin. There are also some less familiar names including the “Lady Racine” watch pictured, as well as Bryant & Bentley, seller of “fancy stone rings.” Much like today, there’s a healthy market for imitation gems, including one brand of imitation diamonds called “solar brilliants.”

On another page, the Illinois watch company advertises “the smallest American watch made” with an engraving showing the movement, presumably at actual size, about 33 mm (image 3). An advertisement I particularly enjoy, for Abbott’s patent stem-winding attachment, shows a caricature before and after: a grumpy-looking man with mutton chops is upset because “his watch has run down and his key is in the pocket of his other pantaloons” (image 4). On the right, his face is alight–Abbott’s stem-winding attachment has ensured that he is never again in this sad position!

Abbott’s invention essentially transforms a key-wound watch into a stem-wound watch, that you could wind with just your fingers. This advertisement came out around the time when watches transitioned from key-winding to crown winding (hence the “great reduction” in the price of key-winding movements above). So the problem Abbott’s attachment solves would not be a common one for much longer.

I include this curiosity not to mock our glum, keyless friend, but rather to undercut the impression many of us have of people from this period, mainly from posed photographs, as serious, somber, and humorless. They knew how to have fun in 1886, as anyone who’s watched The Gilded Age this season will know! The watch and jewelry trade was no exception.

Ads also show how peripheral trades served the same clientele and marketed themselves toward jewelers: makers of “fine cut glass,” china, silverware, spectacles, thimbles, buttons, pens, display cases, music boxes, and something called an “automatic eye-glass holder.” People working in these trades often made use of the same materials and techniques as watchmakers, and sometimes occupied the same workshops. If you could engrave a spoon handle, you could probably engrave a watch case, and people in New York in the late 19th century were doing both.

As far as non-advertising content, there isn’t much in the magazine, but there are updates on new technology, job postings, and industry surveys in various countries. Columns tell jewelers the industry news of the week, including information about robberies (“A paper of diamonds was seized…under peculiar circumstances”) and about people in the profession (“John [Redacted], an old Cleveland, Ohio, jeweler, is insane.”)

For New York jewelers, there are more detailed updates about members of the community, even covering minutiae like one Mr. Bliss’s troublesome knee inflammation! Again, far be it from me to mock Mr. Bliss, who was just getting ready to go out West on a selling trip before his knee acted up. Rather, the level of concern and care among the community is touching. It reminds me of the early members of HSNY, who founded the organization to support each other and their loved ones, providing a stipend when members were unable to work. In 2020, HSNY revived this spirit to support working watchmakers through the pandemic.

In addition to the “Jewelers Weekly,” our library features a number of volumes of the “Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone,” a merger of several related magazines which is still published today as JCK. I know that this publication was an early part of our collection because one of the volumes is stamped in gold “property of the Horological Society of New York.”

I can’t capture everything that goes on in the many pages of this magazine, but its earlier issues are full of stunning Art Nouveau-style illustrations, as shown in images 5 and 6—covers from 1903 and 1911, respectively. Advertisements of the early 20th century feature trendy items of the time such as railroad watches, auto clocks, leak-proof fountain pens, and electric lighted signs for businesses. Although some of the content focuses on the business part of the jewelry trade, a “Technical Department” feature in the magazine includes “lessons” by noted horologists on topics like “The Influence of the Escapement on the Isochronal Vibrations of the Balance.”

Later issues start to use eye-catching photography and color on the cover to lure readers (see image 7). A read-through of the 1950 volume of “Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone” shows how jewelry provided women an entry point into the horological trade, and not just as models or muses. In the January issue, a story with photographs features Edwina Duvall, a high school senior in Pasadena who decides to enter the profession (image 8). She gets a job with a jewelry shop owner who is at first skeptical that it might be a young girl’s “romantic” idea to work there, just a “passing whim.” After only a week, however, the shop owner is convinced of her aptitude, and upon her graduation, he offers her a full-time job, saying she knows as much about the business as those who’ve been in it for years. For her part, Edwina is thrilled that she’s already made several sales over $300, including watches selling for around $150 (about $1,900 today.)

JCK had a national audience, but for those interested in New York history, the ads in this 1950 edition of the magazine, which list the addresses of businesses, clearly show that the center of gravity for the trade had shifted. Jewelers no longer call Maiden Lane home and have moved to the Diamond District on West 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues–where the jewelry industry still thrives today, just three short blocks from HSNY headquarters. A recent ABC News piece filmed in our library and classroom, below, features interviews with female entrepreneurs of the Diamond District, who would have made Edwina in Pasadena proud.

In a “High Snobiety” article that quotes HSNY Deputy Director Carolina Navarro, Scarlett Baker writes that watches have more recently become dominant in store windows in the district due to demand: “47th Street has etched itself on the horological map as the place to go in the US for rare Rolexes, niche Patek Philippes, and Audemars Piguets. And the street’s promise of hard-to-come-by haute horology is second only to the knowledgeable merchants that occupy it.” Image 9 shows a tableau of the Diamond District during the evening rush hour, with its iconic diamond-shaped street lights visible above the swirl of pedestrians and flashing neon.

Although we still subscribe to jewelry-related journals at HSNY and they’re always available for perusal at our library, I wanted to include a mention of a few non-periodical books. One is the recent Bulgari: Beyond Time, a very beautiful and hefty coffee table volume that you might be able to spot in one of the pictures in my article about big and small books. Other items in our collection focus on watchmakers who are also known for their jewelry, like Cartier, or on techniques that apply to jewelry, like engraving on precious metal. We even have two new books about the Diamond District written by authors with personal connections to 47th Street, “Diamond Stories” by Renée Rose Shield and “Precious Objects” by Alicia Oltuski.

Looking at these books and magazines reminds us that watches are and have always been jewelry. They’re not only jewelry–they also occupy a position of some practicality that other pieces of jewelry might not–but they proudly belong to the trade. If you walk down 47th Street today, you’ll see that the heritage of horological jewelry is alive and ticking, glittering at you from behind thick glass, shining out into the loud, bright city night.