Elizabeth Mertz jewelry a hit at auction - The Frederick News-Post : Features

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Barbara Mertz jewelry a hit at auction

By MARGIE HYSLOP Special to the News-Post | Posted: Sunday, April 5, 2015 2:00 am

A rare antique natural alexandrite and diamond ring with cushion-shaped natural alexandrite, about 5 carats set in 9K gold surrounded by 20 old European cut diamonds.

News-Post file photo
Mystery author Barbara Mertz, who wrote under the name Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, is shown in this photo taken in April 2000. She died last year at age 85.

As did her writings of mystery, suspense and exploring Egypt, Barbara Mertz’s jewelry collection drew interest from near and far at auction earlier this year.

The scholar and novelist penned 67 novels and three non-fiction works on ancient Egypt before she died at her 19th-century farmhouse outside Frederick in August 2013 at age 85.

Evident in Mertz’s jewelry, as in her books, was her fascination with Egypt, foreign lands, cultures, bygone eras and cats.

Mertz purchased the adornments from collectors around the world, said Jenny Putnam, fine jewelry specialist for Alex Cooper Auctioneers.

Museum directors, collectors and fans attended the Feb. 5 sale, held both online and at the Alex Cooper’s Towson gallery, Putnam said.

Although she declined to identify buyers, between 200 and 300 potential bidders attended the sale, Putnam said, and some came from as far as London and Hong Kong.

Among the 250 items sold were rare, centuries-old Egyptian pieces — including a green faience votive ring, said Mertz’s daughter, Elizabeth E. Mertz, who is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

That ring — featuring a seated cat surrounded by smaller cats — was very “mom,” Mertz’s daughter said.

During Egypt’s New Kingdom period, when it appears that the ring was made, the goddess Bastet was represented as a cat, she noted.

Bastet was also the name of a cat in a long-running series that Barbara Mertz wrote, under the pen name Elizabeth Peters.

In those 19 novels, the heroine was Amelia Peabody, an intrepid archaeologist, which is what Mertz aimed to become after she earned a doctorate in Egyptology at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s.

Mertz hit barriers in her quest to find work in academia, as many women did then.

During two years she lived in Europe while rearing her children, household help enabled her to turn her hand to writing.

In novels that transported her readers to other places and times, Mertz used her both her education and the research skills she had honed.

Daughter Elizabeth, who earned a doctorate in anthropology herself, shared her mother’s interest in various cultures.

However she did not share her mother’s love of jewelry. She did gain an appreciation of her mother’s collection by handling her estate.

“Somewhere mom’s laughing — she finally got me to pay attention to this hobby of hers,” Professor Mertz said.

Many pieces in Barbara Mertz’s collection were from times and locales that were settings for her fiction (much of which was published under the name Barbara Michaels).

“She had a fascinating collection, very specific” in her selection of pieces, said Arthur Guy Kaplan, who wrote “The Official Identification and Price Guide to Antique Jewelry,” published by Random House.

Kaplan, a lawyer and antique dealer from Baltimore, said he had read many of Mertz’s books, met her and even sold her some earrings.

Kaplan’s jewelry business specializes in Victorian and Georgian era pieces and he said he purchased about a dozen items from the Mertz collection at auction.

One particularly stunning piece was a late 19th-century Art Nouveau gold and silver brooch, incorporating diamonds, emeralds, pearls, rubies and sapphires and depicting a butterfly amid flowering twigs.

Other purchases were English and from the Victorian era and of Egyptian and Indian origin, Kaplan said.

While Mertz’s books fed readers’ interests in archaeology, history and Egypt, her stories particularly inspired women, Elizabeth Mertz said.

“She made me and other young women feel they should dream big and do important things in the world and be themselves,” she said.

Her books appealed to older readers, too.

Reader William E. Joy, who came to the auction with his mother, said his mother’s interest “in all things ancient Egypt” ignited during her late 60s.

Documentaries sparked it and Mertz’s books held and informed it, Joy said.

What Mertz wrote was “popular not just because of story lines but because of real archaeological mysteries” they explored, Joy said. “Not everybody has the ability to communicate the knowledge they possess but Barbara Mertz could do it,” Joy, a medical illustrator from Owosso, Mich., said.

His mother also fancies felines, so, he said, he was not surprised when she bought a necklace featuring a cat amulet from the Mertz collection.

To honor part of her mother’s legacy, Elizabeth Mertz said she is trying to raise money to start a writer’s retreat in Barbara Mertz’s name at a Maryland college. She declined to name the school, as the effort is ongoing.