Rebecca Cauman

Skinner Auctioneers and Appraisers, Boston, June 2, 2001, lot 2
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Tricennial Exhibition of the Society of Arts & Crafts, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1927, p. 6, no. 75

Rebecca Cauman, a native of Massachusetts, was trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Massachusetts College of Art where she specialized in metalwork, especially in crafting covered vessels in copper, silver and pewter.  The present lot is a testament to her skill in rendering stylized natural motifs in jewel-like tones.  Cauman’s affinity for enamel and metalwork was not unnoticed by her peers:  she was a Master Craftsman member of the Boston Society of Arts & Crafts in circa 1924 and oversaw her own studio in downtown Boston.  Later she was featured in the Exposition of Art in Trade in 1927 in New York, where she and her sister subsequently opened a retail shop on Madison Avenue.  Examples of her metalwork were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum during this time.  Cauman’s work in silver enamel undoubtedly would have been influenced by exposure to the British Arts and Crafts movement, especially the work of Charles Robert Ashbee and his contemporaries at the Guild and School of Handicraft.  The present bookend design is a rare example in silver; a related, less developed pair is currently in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.