Vintage Swank Foliate Relief Cufflinks on Black, Pair, c. 1950–1968

The Piece

A pair of gold-tone cufflinks in a cushioned square, worked in foliate relief over a blackened ground, by Swank of Attleboro, Massachusetts.

The design is a dense scrolling vine. Oak-like leaves with cut veining spring from curling tendrils that coil into tight volutes at the corners, and the whole pattern is raised in bright gilt while the ground behind it stays dark, so the foliage reads as if it were lifted clear of the surface. At the centre a plain diamond-shaped cartouche is left entirely blank, which is not an oversight: that is the panel a jeweller engraves with initials.

The face is gently domed on both axes, so it sits proud on the cuff rather than flat, and the edges roll under to a clean rim. The backs are plain, and each carries a hinged wrap-around toggle bar.

Both links are impressed swank in lower-case rounded letters on the reverse of the face.

History & Provenance

Swank began as the Attleboro Manufacturing Company, founded by Samuel M. Stone and Maurice J. Baer in 1897 to make women's jewellery. After the First World War it turned to men's accessories, and the turn came with the Kum-A-Part cuff button, introduced by its Baer and Wilde division in 1908 and an immediate success. The firm became Swank Products, Inc. in 1936 through a merger with seven wholesale dealers, and took the final name Swank, Inc. in 1941. Attleboro was then the jewellery manufacturing capital of America, and Swank was among the largest men's jewellery houses in it.

The mark dates the pair. Swank used block capitals on its older work, up to about 1940, and moved to rounded lettering from the mid-1930s onward. What is impressed here is the rounded lower-case form, which puts these on the later side of that change rather than the earlier.

The design puts them later still. A dark recessed ground with bright gilt foliage raised over it, and a blank lozenge left for a monogram, is the dress-set idiom Swank ran hardest through the 1950s and into the 1960s, when a matched set of links, tie bar and studs was an ordinary present for a man. The toggle back is the standard American fitting of the same years.

The pair is offered as c. 1950 to 1968.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

The blank centre is the useful part. These have been waiting since the 1950s for somebody's initials, which makes them a real present rather than a generic one, and any competent jeweller will cut a monogram into that lozenge in an afternoon.

Left plain they still work. Gilt foliage on a dark ground is the most forgiving decoration a cufflink can have, because it reads as texture at arm's length and as detail up close, and it goes with a navy suit, a tweed jacket or a dinner shirt without looking like it is trying for any of them.