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center of the trinket industry. Oberstein’s metal chains and chatelaines (clasps for suspending keys, watches and other small objects), sold well all over the world. One beneficiary of the boom in the trinket trade was the Jakob Bengel Watch Chain and Trinket Factory, founded by Friedrich Jakob Bengel in Oberstein in 1873. But in 1929, after more than 50 successful but uneventful years in the business, the company switched direction, possibly because of a growing preference for wristwatches over pocket watches with chains.
The principle driver of this change was Ernst Hermann Hartenberger Sr., a cosmopolitan blessed with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and an astute business sense, who had married into the Bengel family in 1900. While Jakob Bengel continued to run the engineering side of the business, his son-in-law enlarged the Bengel range with an entirely new line: jewelry made of metal and the newly developed plastic Galalith.

For many years, Bengel had manufactured many types of chains, including curb, Venetian (box) and wheat chains, round belchers (rolos) and Garibaldis, slave chains, tubular and rod chains, as well as snake and hose chains. When these were combined with Galalith, a richly assorted range of costume jewelry resulted. Galalith, made with rennet casein (lactic acid) and hardened with formaldehyde, was developed by two Germans, Wilhelm Krische, an entrepreneur, and Adolf Spitteler, a chemist, who in 1898 took out a German Imperial patent on their invention. Galalith (gala for milk; lithos for stone) took well to tinting and texturing and it could easily be ground, drilled, milled, stamped and, most importantly, polished. An infinite variety of necklaces and pendants could be created from circle segments, balls, cones, squares, triangles, parallelograms or rods of Galalith that were produced in delicately tuned color tones or a sophisticated selection of strong color contrasts, stunningly combined with the bluish gleam of chromium.

Surviving Bengel sample books furnish detailed information on the use of materials, techniques, cost estimates and suppliers. Sample Book Vol. IX alone attests to the availability of 1,470 models between July 1931 and August 1932. Bengel designs were notable for their simplicity and clarity, especially in the way the materials were worked: Galalith was screwed into metal or held in place by ingenious settings and metal folds. Many necklaces and long chains with pendants, extremely fashionable at the time, featured freely revolving balls suspended from beveled metal arcs. A genre that provided scope for invention was the “goiter choker,” made of tubular chains that were square, round or flat in section, with a showy Galalith element at front center. Alternating with a wide variety of plastic Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125
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