A41 goes back to the days of Dashiell Hammett when he was in an advertising managerial position for Samuels Jewelry. [This photograph was taken at a time] when they had inaugurated a rotogravure campaign. Most young people today don't know what a rotogravure section is, but at that time the rotogravure section was nearly always printed with brown ink. Rotogravure was a quick way of reproducing photographs. Also, in San Francisco dealing with the process was something to cope with technically; I nearly ruined my photographic printing technique because I did so much rotogravure. The engravers doing rotogravure did not understand how to make nuances in scale. Anything they did was done in great contrast, so the trick was to send them a print in medium scale, no blacks and no real whites. An most of the time they would produce a very creditable reproduction." "Dash had inherited this program through another photographer who had come up with lovely pictures of stiff looking women sitting in opera boxes, wearing jewelry and flashing rings on their fingers. And this just didn't go over. All you saw were the women who were trying to look dignified and obviously were not anyone but models. And you couldn't see the jewelry. " "So Dash called me in. I didn't know him at the time but he was certainly a great character about town and we hit it off. I said to him, 'Well, what's the matter with just showing the merchandise? You're trying to sell jewelry not people." And he said to go ahead and try it my way. So we went on with a series of photographing jewelry similar to this photograph and it turned out to be a very successful campaign. People came in and asked to see and sometimes bought the very piece of jewelry which showed up in the rotogravure advertisement for that week." "But both Dash and I would sort of have our tongue in cheek....Dash with his curious off hand manner would do the damndest things. Such as one day he said, "Well, we need quite a few things. Here take these home and photograph them for the weekend." And he handed me something like three or four thousand dollars worth of diamond rings. And I said, "But Dash, I have to carry these home? Do they have any insurance?" "Oh," he said, "it's all right. Just forget it. They're not that important. Just go ahead and do it." "So with fear and trembling I did it. And I think [one of the pieces I photographed that weekend] was the wedding ring I photographed on the end of an old fashioned bed spring out in the backyard. Fortunately it didn't fall through because Alameda has sandy soil; I might still be digging if it had fallen off!" (Roger Sturtevant, interview with Joyce Minick, transcribed in catalog sheets).