Howard & Co. Edwardian Diamond Lorgnette Pendant

Howard & Co. was founded in 1866 by Joseph Platt Howard (1832-1909), an able jeweler who, according to the New York Times, "rose to an important position" under Charles L. Tiffany at Tiffany & Co. Howard was, the Times continues, "the first jeweler to move up Fifth Avenue." His salon, situated further uptown than that of any other important jeweler, was known to be "frequented only by the wealthy" and their stock, limited to the most refined objets, "made a glittering display" in the ground floor show windows of the converted A.T. Stewart mansion at Fifth Avenue and 29th Street. As architectural historian Tom Miller noted in Daytonian in Manhattan, the firm offered an array of elevated goods such as 16th century silver armor, "remarkable large" pink and canary diamonds, and natural pearl necklaces, one valued in 1900 at today's equivalent of $1,000,000. Another contemporary ad in the New-York Tribune highlighted a single "absolutely perfect oriental pear shape drop" pearl, with a "weight over 85 grains", priced around $775,000 in today's money. Miller reports that families such as the Livingstons, Vanderbilts, and Belmonts typified the social class and immense wealth of the Howard & Co. client. Howard descended from old Massachusetts Bay Colony stock, and his father, a New York-educated surgeon who trained at Columbia University, was a school mate and lifelong friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and helped establish a number of New York cultural institutions.