Oyster Bolo MB x EH LMTD EDITION Interchangeable Charms

By Edible History

The waters around the shores of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island once contained half of the world’s oyster population. Billions of them carpeted the seabed. Not surprisingly, they were a natural food source for the Lenape, the people indigenous to this land, and we can find traces of their pre-European consumption in the oyster middens that lie below high-rises and sometimes emerge at construction sites. 

When Europeans began to arrive in the 16th century, settlers wrote of the bountiful waters, teeming with life. There were hundreds of different kinds of fish. There were dolphins, whales, and porpoises. And there were oysters. As the merchant trading town of New Amsterdam grew into the booming port city of New York, oysters provided critical calories to the growing metropolis: they were cheap, they were nutritious, and they were seemingly limitless.

In the 1790s, the West Indian traveler Médéric Moreau de St. Méry visited the city and was quite taken with how many oysters were consumed by its residents. He wrote, “Americans have a passion for oysters, which they eat at all hours, even in the streets. They are exposed in open containers in their own liquor and are sold by the dozens and hundreds up to ten o’clock at night in the streets, where they are peddled on barrows to the accompaniment of mournful cries.”

Indeed, oysters reigned supreme in 18th and 19th century Gotham. Oyster carts would park themselves outside factories, selling oysters for pennies a piece to hungry laborers. The city’s taverns would serve them roasted in stews and pies. And in 1763, in a basement on Broad Street, the city’s first oyster cellar emerged. These cellars ran the gamut from grimy hole-in-the-wall to refined eatery with crystal and silver spoons – but they all served the ubiquitous mollusk, “in every style.”

Some oyster cellars were marked by a red balloon, the traditional sign of a brothel, and indulged their customers in the famed aphrodisiac qualities of the oyster. Other cellars offered the “Canal Street Plan,” all you can eat oysters for a mere six cents. George Makepeace Towel (what a name!), a British visitor to New York in the 19th century wrote, “There is scarcely a square without several oyster-saloons; they are aboveground and underground, in shanties and palaces. They are served in every imaginable style, escalloped, steamed, stewed, roasted, ‘on the half shell,’ eaten raw with pepper and salt, devilled, baked in crumbs, cooked in pâtés —” and, well you get the picture.

One cannot talk about oysters and New York, without talking about Thomas Downing. Born to a free Black family in 1791 near the Chesapeake Bay, Downing moved to New York in 1819. He lived at 33 Pell Street with his wife and bought a small skiff that he rowed out across the Hudson every morning to pick oysters. A decade later he had enough customers, and enough capital, to open his eponymous oyster cellar at 5 Broad Street. 

Downing’s luxurious dining room quickly became a hub for businessmen to slurp oysters and talk shop. Mayor Philip Hone referred to him as, “The great man of oysters.” When the city of New York threw a ball in honor of Charles Dickens’ 1842 visit, Downing catered the event. Downing himself became known as the man who knew all the secrets of City Hall and Wall Street. And he had secrets of his own – unbeknownst to the largely white, generally wealthy crowd of patrons above, the basement of Downing’s formed a stop on the Underground Railroad, hiding enslaved people on their way to Canada. 

By the early 20th century, the waters around New York had become so polluted with runoff from factories and contaminated with sewage, that oysters sourced from its immediate environs were deemed unsafe to eat. The oysters that had once helped to sustain the city, were destroyed by Gotham’s growth.

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Bolo Details

• Original MackBecks x Edible History Design
• Hand-formed, sculpted, and painted pearlescent acrylic, resin, shell, and pearl.
• Interchangeable Pearl, Lemon Wedge, and Hot Sauce Charms that attach via round lobster claws.
• W 1.75” x H 2”
• Lightweight - 2.0 oz.
• Jewelry Box and Artist Postcard Included
• Made in the USA

Hardware Details 

• 30” Gold-Plated Brass 2mm Snake Chain
• Nickel Free and Hypoallergenic

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* This is a Limited Edition Pre-Order, meaning that all designs will be made-to-order after our Pre-Order window closes(07/20/2024) or when we sell out, whichever comes first.*