Jewel Co. Bronze and Marble Aquarium

Here's what I have in Lovejoy's dusty files ;~) "The Jewel Aquarium Company was based in Chicago, IL and manufactured fancy tanks with seahorse legs and also very fancy hand hammered iron stands, they also made some custom models. The ends of the fancy tanks were cast iron coated with bronze and a patina. The most expensive had stylized dolphins or storks. They manufactured a few hexagon tanks with the seashell lights mounted on the glass supports. The expensive tanks had grey slate beds with inner white porcelain the glass fitting between the two. Some had center recirculators some did not. They also made a cheaper line of cast iron tanks with a Art Deco design. All of their tanks had a Jewel name tag attached to the lower frame or had the name Jewel cast into the tank frame on the cast iron tanks. They also made a cast tank called the Chicago Bungalow. They designed the old balanced aquarium room at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago that has since been dismantled to enlarge the gift shop, (****). They designed the Nautalis lamps that are still in the Shedd just inside the main doorway to the reef tank. They also made a stainless steel mounted on aluminum legs series. In more modern times the company manufactured very nice aquariums and terrariums used in schools and college and university labs. I have a couple of the old aquarium stands, one of the dolphin tanks, a stainless steel 50 gallon, and a seahorse leg stand. There was a guy in Chicago who made about 6 reproductions of the hexagon tanks and he sold them through one of the aquarium magazines about 20-25 years ago. He collected the old Jewel fancy tanks. Jewel also made one tank in I believe the 1930s that looked kind of like a bath tub with the lighting in the sheet metal ends. The company was in business from the at least 1920s through the late 1940s or early 1950s for the fancy tanks and into the 1970-80s at least for the commercial tanks." Lovejoy