Margaret De Patta Ring, ca. 1960
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GUEST:
My father-in-law obtained the ring in the '70s, but he met the artist in 1960, and he actually acquired four to five pieces. They were wedding pieces. The lady was getting divorced and she wanted to trade them. And so my father-in-law did not like the rest of the pieces, and so he melted the other four of them down and he just kept this one.
APPRAISER:
It's what we call of the Modernist school, and it has a nice connection here to the Bay Area. It's made by an artisan who was in Berkeley, and her name was Margaret De Patta. And De Patta started her studio in the 1930s, and she worked over in Berkeley, and when she went to school, she studied under the artist L·szlÛ Moholy-Nagy, and he was a very famous graphic designer. He worked in a lot of different mixed medias, and he was very well-known and is very well-known in the art world. And he had a great influence on her, and they did a lot of photography and different things together, and it really came to help form her style for the Modernist movement. And she really was probably one of the most well-known of that school here in the Bay Area. In fact, she was one of the people who helped start the Metalsmith's Guild here in the Bay Area for upcoming artists and craftsmen and metalsmiths, which is still in existence today. So she was very influential. She worked with these very sort of curvilinear forms, and she had a real interest in transparency of stones. So the stones that we have here are a few diamonds, and this is a piece of smoky quartz. It's just a tablet of smoky quartz. And what she's done that's sort of beautiful here, the engagement ring and the wedding band nestle together.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So we've got this very modernistic piece, and then the ring itself is stamped on the inside of the band as well, so this is how we know it's by De Patta. Now, the ring I believe was probably made in the 19... late '50s, early '60s.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
This is the time period which is very, very collectable. At auction, I would estimate this item between $4,000 and $5,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my God, are you serious?
APPRAISER:
Yes, because of who it's by. If this were a no-name gold ring with some diamonds and smoky quartz, it would have a very insignificant value, but it's because it's De Patta that it is that valuable.
GUEST:
That's amazing. I can only wonder, because there was four other pieces...
APPRAISER:
Oh, I know. Yeah. Well, don't tell your dad that. (laughs) And she did do production line pieces, but this is not part of the production line, so it probably was a one-off custom design for the client.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
It's a wonderful piece.
GUEST:
Thank you!
Appraisal Details
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