THIS item came from a collection of work, from the amazing artist Will & Ruth 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. Averages 20,000 miles a year in their Franklin, enjoying New England. Is meticulous in their work. Plays Masterworks music while they labor. There 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 and Ruth 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.....

I just acquired a nice group of their art work and will be listing it on ebay, keep watch. the stuff is amazing.....IF YOU LIKE THIS ONE, CHECK OUT THE OTHER ITEMS IN MY STORE CATEGORY----WILL GERTH ITEMS or WILL GERTH ART

LOCATION-- box ( ARROW INTERNATIONAL pens small flat -- ORNAMENTS envelope under C)