This polychrome flower brooch was designed and fabricated by the Boston artist Jessie Ames Dunbar. It is one of two brooches by Dunbar that are featured in the Boston Made: Arts and Crafts Jewelry and Metalwork exhibition and related book. In 1916, listed among her peers Dunbar was described as being "of special importance" but, as she did not sign her work, she is little known today. Like other artist jewelers working in Boston, Dunbar favored colorful gemstones in her mix of gold and silver jewelry. Born in Canton, Dunbar graduated from the Department of Design at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1907. After graduation, she maintained a bench in a shared studio at 26 Lime Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill, and during the summer months she relocated to Monhegan Island—off the coast of Maine--where she set up a summer studio-shop. During her lifetime, Dunbar's work was published in Art and Progress (1913), American Art News (1915) and The American Magazine of Art (1916), and her jewelry was exhibited at the Society of Arts and Crafts, the Handicraft Club in Baltimore, and alongside that of Margaret Rogers and Josephine Hartwell Shaw at “The Little Gallery” in New York City. In 1923 her work was included in the “American Handicraft” exhibition at Rhode Island School of Design. In 1996 the Monhegan Museum organized the exhibition “Jewelry by Jessie Ames Dunbar,” which featured her jewelry alongside family photos and ephemera.

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