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Here is an original plaster cast from the hand of Will Gerth (see below) , i was lucky enough to purchase a bunch of his work. this one is not marked or signed but he worked for ONEIDA for some time and designed so many examples, i have many or his original sketches, unfortunately for me, i do not know the patern name, but that may be fortunate for you. if you search for Will Gerth either in active or completed items on you will find many more examples of what i have or had from his collection. he also did a lot of work with his wife Ruth.
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THIS item came from a collection of work, from the amazing artist Will Gerth. ------who had \"a list of clients as long as your arm. Designed products and advertising no end for top-drawer New York Agencies, Chase Brass & Copper, Oneida community (silverware, etc.) and yards of others. Designed packages all over the industrial and commercial world. Keeps to himself a lot. Averages 20,000 miles a year in his Franklin, enjoying New England. Is meticulous in his work. Plays Masterworks music while he labors. His midtown Manhattan studio in the Beaux Arts Apartments is a delight to see and sit in. Makes delicious fried cheese sandwiches, coffee. Has no etchings.\"
---and here is a bit of info on Will from the October 1933 brochure called \"Closure News,\" GERTH & GERTH
\"making a smart table lamp out of an old toilet floater is an odd way to gain distinction as a designer, but to a woman it\'s more or less second nature. It happened a couple of years ago when Chase Brass & Copper\'s building market sagged, and they feverishly launched a line of consumer merchandise to keep the machines going. After the showroom was laid out, Chase tried to reclaim old dies for some of the new products, and it was here that Ruth Gerth showed her flair for making things over. The lamp sold up in the hundreds of thousands.
Ruth Gerth is the feminine section of \"The Gerths,\" industrial designers at 307 E. 44th st., NYC. The other section is composed of Will Gerth, former Chicago Art Institute instructor, who in 1917 discovered in his class a pretty, ambitious blonde girl with the name of Ruth Koch, which he promptly changed. She had a fled an architectural school because the males hazed the solitary female beyond endurance, but being ambitious, switched to the Institute. Since then the Gerths have done industrial design side by side.
When they came to New York, Richard Bach of the Met. Museum of Art was among the first to discover them, and his recommendations resulted in their first big-time commissions. Now, after working quietly for a few year, they design for people like Chase Brass & coper, Oneida Silver, Keystone Watchcase, Consolidated Safety Pin, Dura Hardware, Pratt & Lambert, Bond Electric, Owl Drug, Altman\'s, Cushman Bakeries, Dennison\'s and other large firms. They\'ve done flat silver, metal specialties, automobile and refrigerator hardware, Illonois and Hamilton watchcases, powder boxes, compacts and lipsticks, kitchen utensils, drug packages, flashlights and lighting fixtures---most of it in the modern manner, and most of it grand stuff.
They work together, these two Gerths, and their teamwork amazes ordinary married mortals. Though often handling accounts separately, their work reflects their combined talents---Will being conceded the better artist and Ruth the more practical. Recently she gave the R.C.A. licensees a chalk-talk, her three-hundred-and-umpteenth paid lecture on design, and she tosses off magazine and newspaper articles on design and color quite regularly.....\"
he was part of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition in 1937, but he is not well known today. but his work is
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