Art: Diamond Jim’s Settings

The first diamond James Buchanan (“Diamond Jim”) Brady bought cost $90. When he died in 1917 he had spent $2,000,000 on precious stones. Besides such curios as a diamond-tipped cane, he owned 30 complete sets of jeweled cuff links, studs, tie pins, fobs, watch chains, etc. A railroad man, he enjoyed blazoning the fact by wearing what became one of his most famed diamond arrangements— the Transportation Set. The diamonds of the Transportation Set have long been dispersed but last week Black, Starr & Frost —Gorham, oldtime Manhattan jewelers, put on exhibition the platinum settings from which the stones glittered in the days when they were making newspaper copy and table conversation throughout the land.

Most amusing to today’s public was a design of a Pullman car which Mr. Brady liked to pin on his underwear. Almost two inches long were his freight and passenger car cuff links. A bicycle-shaped stud was reminiscent of the goldplated, diamond-studded bicycle he gave to Lillian Russell, who kept it in a plush case when she was not riding it. From the cover of his eyeglass case came the three-inch design of a locomotive. Other items: a camel tie clasp, a collar button representing an early airplane. In a forthcoming biography of “Diamond Jim” Brady, Jeweler Parker Morell estimates that at the time of Mr. Brady’s death, War had brought his collection’s gross appraised value down to $507,445.10, adds: “Today, Diamond Jim’s jewels are being worn by thousands of unsuspecting women.”