Given the scarcity of space in Manhattan, New Yorkers often imagine vast possibilities for places that others would consider suitable for a walk-in closet.
That was what happened two years ago, when Karen Davidov found a one-room office on the eighth floor at 1239 Broadway, downstairs from the studio where she works with her architect husband. She grabbed the opportunity to rent it — and to pursue a project that would connect her love of jewelry to her more than a decade of experience as a consultant helping libraries with community engagement and artistic collaborations.
The result? The Jewelry Library, a books and gallery spot that opened to the public in fall 2018.
It welcomes browsers Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and hosts programs on subjects that include Mexican-made paper bracelets and the work of influential female metalsmiths. There are also regular sales exhibitions, usually of contemporary jewelry; Ms. Davidov takes commissions on jewelry bought at those events, and she is developing an online sales portal. But, otherwise, access and events are free.
The library is a narrow space of about 300 square feet — or slightly less than two compact parking spaces, with scores of books lining its walls nearly from floor to ceiling. The book covers all face front, a configuration that intentionally sacrifices efficient storage to maximize the visual impact of each volume (and to stoke the urge to pick them up and browse, although books may not be taken home).
“I could have fit many more books in here,” Ms. Davidov said, “but I want each one to be seen.”
She changes the array regularly, sometimes organizing it according to a theme and other times just varying the offering. She has about 400 volumes, which represent her personal library, a few private collections she acquired, and some books inherited from her mother, Corinne Davidov, a fashion illustrator and an author of “The Bakelite Jewelry Book” and “Victorian Jewelry: Unexplored Treasures.”
A title like “The Book of the Pearl,” published by Macmillan in 1908, might be found within arm’s reach of a monograph on the Modernist jeweler Arthur George Smith and another surveying sparkling “Hollywood Jewels.”
Jewelry also is ever-present. Between scheduled exhibitions, vitrines feature selections from the personal collections of Ms. Davidov and her mother, totaling more than 1,000 pieces of costume jewelry from the Victorian era to today, with pieces like a mod Pierre Cardin bib necklace and 1930s cherub brooches by Schlumberger for Schiaparelli.
(Ms. Davidov has begun renting or lending the jewelry to stylists and editors for television, film and editorial projects.)
Only a fraction of the library’s books are on view at once. “We revolve books in and out,” Ms. Davidov said. “The experience is more like visiting a reading room rather than a circulating library.”
Up a flight of stairs, hundreds of titles are shelved in a space called the Great Room, a penthouse shared with HMA2 Architects, which is run by her husband, Henry Myerberg. A visit to that collection is available by appointment.
During the library’s regular hours, Ms. Davidov said, there has been a steady stream of visitors, including students, jewelry designers scouting for inspiration (whom she declines to name) and curious passers-by surprised to find a library among the building’s warren of wholesale jewelry vendors. Some have heard of the place through word of mouth, Instagram and Facebook, or contacts Ms. Davidov made while collecting jewelry and dealing in jewelry decorative arts since 1980s.
While books and jewelry are central to the library, Ms. Davidov always had bigger ambitions.
“I like the concept of a living library — when the people of the community are the resource,” she said. “I want the library to be a place where there are objects to look at and books, but also lectures and workshops.”
So Ms. Davidov, with the help of a full-time associate, has been scheduling events in the library or the Great Room.
The Jewelry Detectives series, which runs quarterly, is intended to revive the history of underappreciated figures like Eda Lord Dixon, a jeweler, enameler and silversmith who was an important force in the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. Jewel Box Lunches are informal conversation sessions with collectors, designers and historians.
And there is the Scoop, evenings held about five times a year with storytellers recounting personal tales connected to jewelry. “The stories are not about the jewelry itself,” Ms. Davidov said. “Jewelry is a vehicle for bigger stories.”
The 2020 programming began last month with a talk by Valentina Caprini, a jewelry maker from Florence, Italy, who applies traditional filigree techniques to artful experimental designs.
Also on the agenda is a Valentine’s Day-theme exhibition with contemporary and vintage jewelry; a monthlong celebration of Sam Kramer, timed to coincide with the release in May of a book surveying the career of the midcentury studio jewelry maker; and a showcase planned for the second half of the year that will be dedicated to the early jewelry designs of Hilary Knight, illustrator of the Eloise series of children’s books.
The library’s fans say it fills a void in the city’s jewelry landscape.
“It’s really the only place in New York where people who are interested in contemporary, one-of-a-kind jewelry by artists can go,” said Susan Grant Lewin, an art jewelry collector whose trove of conceptual pieces was the subject of the 2017 exhibition “Jewelry of Ideas” at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan.
Compared with a conventional gallery or jewelry fair, the library is low key and primarily social, Ms. Grant Lewin said, “A place to meet and talk. You’ll see jewelers, gallerists, collectors and there’s no pressure.”
Thomas Gentille, the contemporary jewelry maker whose work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, participated in 2018 in one of the library’s first events, a conversation between himself and Andrea DiNoto, a journalist, in front of a standing-room audience of 70. There also was an exhibition of his work, mostly brooches in a materials ranging from 24-karat gold to egg shells.
He said he appreciated the library’s approach to jewelry — specifically that it was considered to be art. “It’s much more common to have this kind of programming in Europe, where there’s no question that jewelry is a fine art,” he said. “America is very far behind in that respect.”
The sentiment was echoed by Penny Morrill, whose 2019 book about modern Mexican silver jewelry, “Dreaming in Silver,” was the catalyst for several library events, including an exhibition on the intersection between Mexican jewelry makers and specific artistic movements like Cubism, Modernism and Art Deco.
The library “gives a seriousness to the history of jewelry making,” she said, but not in a stuffy way.
“I like the idea of thinking of it as a clubhouse for jewelry,” she said.
