Every­one is won­der­ing what Mrs. Obama will wear for the inau­gural balls and her husband’s Swearing-in Cer­e­mony. How­ever, not one edi­to­r­ial has inquired about her pos­si­ble choice of bijoux for these his­tor­i­cal and once-in-a-lifetime events.

While the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion will mostly likely spend years pre­serv­ing these highly-anticipated frocks, the neck­lace, bracelet, ear­rings, or brooch (and I’m bet­ting heav­ily that this par­tic­u­lar orna­ment shows up on Jan­u­ary 20^th–more on this here­after…) will require lit­tle if any main­te­nance and may even out­last the ensem­bles with which they were meant to coor­di­nate. And yet, no one has even haz­ard a guess as to what they might be?

Sap­phire and dia­mond neck­lace by Oscar Hey­man & Brothers

Well, I won’t offer such spec­u­la­tion. Although I do have a sug­ges­tion. I would like to see her wear pieces designed and man­u­fac­tured by the hands of tal­ented Amer­i­cans. This coun­try pro­duces much of the most beau­ti­ful jew­elry in the world. Unas­sum­ing, hard­work­ing and ven­er­a­ble firms such as the nearly one-hundred-year-old Oscar Hey­man & Broth­ers or Julius Cohen are still pro­duc­ing jew­elry of prodi­gious qual­ity; in decades past, both of these jew­elry man­u­fac­tur­ers crafted pieces with their own sig­na­tures, as well as the name plaques of oth­ers, and qui­etly stood aside as the jeweler’s jew­eler while higher pro­filed houses took the credit (an accepted prac­tice at the time).

Arthur Smith brass brooch, circa 1950s. see www.auerbachmaffia.com

Going back to the President-elect’s Swearing-In Cer­e­mony, it would be remark­able to see Mrs. Obama wear a brooch on her lapel by African-American Arthur Smith (1917−1982). Smith, a grad­u­ate of Cooper Union in New York City, opened his first shop on Cor­nelia Street in Green­wich Vil­lage in 1946. His work has since become sym­bolic of the Mod­ernist move­ment of the twentieth-century. Smith was an active sup­porter of African-American and Gay rights, and a notable jazz enthu­si­ast. His design aes­thetic was exe­cuted on a large, bold scale; per­haps this was a reac­tion to the stage jew­elry he designed for Tal­ley Beatty, Pearl Primus, and Claude Marchant, which were all African-American dance com­pa­nies. From 1948 to 1979, he worked out of his shop at 140 West Fourth Street in Green­wich Vil­lage (NYC).