Florence Koehler (1861 – 1944) was an American craftswoman, designer and

jeweler A bench jeweler is an artisan who uses a combination of skills to make and repair jewelry. Some of the more common skills that a bench jeweler might employ include antique restoration, silversmithing, goldsmithing, stone setting, engraving, ...

. She was one of the best-known jewelers of the

Arts and Crafts movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Biography

Florence Cary was born on November 8, 1861 in

Jackson, Michigan Jackson is a city in Jackson County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The population was 31,309 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located along Interstate 94 in Michigan, Interstate 94 and U.S. Route 127 in Michigan, U.S ...

to Harriet (''née'' Banker) and Benjamin F. Cary. She grew up in Missouri and moved to

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...

in 1881. She married Frederick Koehler and was Head of the Ceramics Department at Kansas City Art School by 1893. They moved to Chicago where she exhibited her ceramics at the

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ...

. She briefly ran an

interior decorating Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. With a keen eye for detail and a creative flair, an interior ...

business out of the

Marshall Field and Company Building The Marshall Field and Company Building is a department store building and National Historic Landmark on State Street (Chicago), State Street in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was designed in the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts and C ...

with her friend Mrs. E. W. Sheridan. Koehler was a founding member of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society and taught jewelry and metalsmithing. She also taught

china painting China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects, such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porce ...

to women from the Atlan Ceramic Art Club in the 1890s and was credited with turning the club's technical gifts "to a rare standard of beauty, excellence, and originality." She traveled to London in March 1898, where she studied enamelwork and jewelry with Alexander Fisher. Afterwards her work made reference to historic designs, particularly those of the Renaissance period. Koehler separated from her husband sometime after 1900. She was the traveling companion of Emily Crane Chadbourne and the pair settled in London where Koehler retained a studio in Kensington. There she was acquainted with

Alice Stopford Green Alice Stopford Green (30 May 1847 – 28 May 1929) was an Irish historian, nationalist, and member of the first Seanad Éireann. Early life She was born Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford in Kells, County Meath. Her father Edward Adderley Stopford ...

Arthur Bowen Davies Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928. Biography Davies was born in Utica, New York, the son of David and Phoeb ...

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...

Lady Ottoline Morrell Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (née Cavendish-Bentinck; 16 June 1873 – 21 April 1938) was an English Aristocracy (class), aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befri ...

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

, and

Roger Quilter Roger Cuthbert Quilter (1 November 1877 – 21 September 1953) was a British composer, known particularly for his art songs. His songs, which number over a hundred, often set music to text by William Shakespeare and are a mainstay of the English ...

. Beginning in 1912, she moved to Paris and lived in

Place des Vosges The Place des Vosges (), originally the Place Royale, is the oldest planned square in Paris, France. It is located in the Marais district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. It is the oldest ...

where she befriended

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...

. Koehler met arts patron Mary Elizabeth Sharpe in 1920. She moved to Rome in the 1930s. In January 1944, her health failed and she was taken to a clinic where she was diagnosed with cancer. She died in Rome on May 4, 1944. Koehler left her possessions to Sharpe, who arranged a posthumous exhibition of her work in 1948. Collections of her jewelry and paintings were donated to the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase th ...

and

Everson Museum of Art The Everson Museum of Art ( ) in Downtown Syracuse, New York, is a major Central New York museum focusing on American art. History The museum was founded in 1897 by art historian George Fisk Comfort (who also helped found the Metropolitan Museu ...

, respectively. A collection of her papers and correspondence is held by the

Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at Harvard Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director, it is "th ...

at Harvard.

Works

Koehler started out as a potter and began making jewelry in earnest following her trip to London. In addition to her jewelry, she also produced a number of drawings and paintings. For her jewelry, Koehler tailored her designs and choice of gemstones to her clients, favoring

cabochon A cabochon (; ) is a gemstone that has been shaped and polished, as opposed to faceted. The resulting form is usually a convex (rounded) obverse with a flat reverse. Cabochon was the default method of preparing gemstones before gemstone cuttin ...

s over faceted stones. Her "leafy designs set with informal groupings of gems in 18-carat gold" earned her an international reputation. Art critic

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and art critic, critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent ...

praised her work, writing in ''

The Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation s ...

'' in 1910 that " is in the imaginative and definitely poetic quality that Mrs. Koehler's jewellery marks such an important moment in the modern revival of craftsmanship."

Biography

Works

Notes

Further reading