Jakob Bengel, locksmith, founded his company in 1873 in Idar-Oberstein and originally manufactured pocket watch chains.

It was during the Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 and Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 period that designers were looking to obtain new materials and inspiration to produce costume jewelry.
Inspired by French Avant-Garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 and other fashion trendsetters such as Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...

, Bengel started to produce experimental jewelry. The pieces, catalogued 1924-1939, combined brass and chrome with geometric shapes of colored galalith

Galalith

Galalith , is a synthetic plastic material manufactured by the interaction of casein and formaldehyde. Given a commercial name derived from the Greek words gala and lithos , it is odourless, insoluble in water, biodegradable, antiallergenic, antistatic and virtually nonflammable.-Discovery:In...

.

External links

• The industrial monument Jakob Bengel