Jewelry Journey Podcast (Sharon Berman)
Explore every episode of Jewelry Journey Podcast
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
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| 29 Dec 2022 | Episode 46: Bakelite Jewelry: The Intersection of Design, Intricacy & Fashion with Matt Burkholz, Antique Dealer & Owner of Route 66 West Palm Springs | 00:30:14 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Matt Burkholz is an antique dealer with a focus on fine 1920s and 1930s Celluloid and Bakelite jewelry, and the owner of Route 66 West in Palm Springs, a fine, vintage, retro and couture costume jewelry store. Route 66 West is the culmination of a decades-long journey as a historian and purveyor of fine vintage jewelry and decorative accessories. Matt is an art historian by training and his approach to jewelry reflects his academic vision and combines it with 40 years of owning and operating galleries in New York City, Miami Beach, upstate New York and Palm Springs. He is the author of “The Bakelite Collection,” the foremost leading reference source on the subject. Additionally, Matt has written for numerous magazines and publications, and has appeared on Martha Stewart TV, Antiques Roadshow and other television programs as a highly respected subject matter expert. Additional resources: | |||
| 01 May 2024 | Episode 222 Part 1: How Terhi Tolvanen Captures Nature in Her Jewelry | 00:21:52 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Terhi Tolvanen Currently based in the French countryside, Terhi Tolvanen was born in Helsinki, Finland (1968). Following studies at the Lahti Design Institute, Finland, and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, NL, Tolvanen earned a Master’s Degree in Jewelry at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, NL. Tolvanen’s works can be found in numerous distinguished private and public collections worldwide, including the Swiss National Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK) the Dallas Museum of Art (TX- USA) among others. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com: Additional Resources
Transcript: Terhi Tolvanen’s jewelry isn’t made of gold or diamonds, but in its own way, it’s just as precious. The Finnish jeweler uses natural materials like wood, raw minerals and shells to create jewelry that not only looks beautiful, but challenges viewers to reflect on the world around them. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her daily walks shape her work; how living in Amsterdam and rural France have changed her jewelry over the years; and her advice for emerging artists. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. We're so glad you're here today. I'd never heard of our guest, Terhi Tolvanen, before. I'll let her pronounce the name in Finnish. I don't know how I missed her jewelry because I like large, statement-type pieces, and that's what many of Terhi's pieces are. I was really taken with them. She uses a lot of materials found in nature, integrated with stones that we might see in other jewelry. Her work can be found in many prestigious museums around the world. She herself has studied in several countries, growing and perfecting her work. Today, we will learn a lot about Terhi and the inspiration and ideas you will find all around her. Welcome to the podcast, Terhi. Terhi: Thank you so much, Sharon, for inviting me. It's great to be talking with you. Sharon: I'm so glad that we have the chance to talk. Can you tell us why you moved from Finland to Amsterdam to France? Can you tell us how the materials varied in each area? Terhi: I moved away from Finland. Originally, I was supposed to be going away for only one year, but after technical school, I was missing quite a lot to learn more about the reasons why to make things. At the time in Finland, there was no possibility to continue. That's why I started looking elsewhere. I ended up then studying in Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and I totally fell in love with the school. The one year I was supposed to stay became six years. After four years, I also did a master course over there, and after school I stayed because it was great. I fell in love with jewelry. There were galleries, there were events, there were colleagues, there were things happening. During the school years, I made a lot of friends, and I found a place to stay and all that. Now for about 10 years, I've been in France. I moved to France because of love. I fell in love. Sharon: Love, okay. And did you find materials different in each area? Terhi: The materials, yeah, of course. Moving to France has changed the accessibility to my materials totally, because I moved to the countryside from the city. This meant that I was able to use more and more branches that I could collect and find a little bit everywhere. And I’ve continued what I started doing already in the Netherlands for finding all my minerals and stones. I would go to mineral fairs. Now that I'm in France, I go to Paris. Sharon: Are there are a lot of materials in Paris? Do you find things to work with? Terhi: There is a quite good mineral fair once a year, in the beginning of December. I almost always have to wait one year if I want to have something or find the same thing again or find new material. When I do that, I have to count that I have enough for working for one year. I buy a lot and I don't always use everything. Sometimes it can even take up to five years before I really know what I want to do with certain minerals, but this is always very exciting for me. I'm a very big fan of minerals and stones in any shape and color and format. I have used a lot of rough minerals that I would cut just a little bit so that the dimensions would fit on a piece. For about three or four years, I've also been buying some cut stones. When I still lived in Amsterdam, I used to work with a stone cutter who would cut stones especially for me, and that was a very good cooperation. Since then, he has stopped working a little bit in that way. But he would save me things the normal goldsmiths wouldn't want to buy. He learned very quickly that was interesting for me. Mainly it was things that were a little bit different, a little bit less perfect than a traditional goldsmith would want to use. Sharon: How long have you been a maker? Did you choose it later or did you choose it when you were young? Terhi: I have been a maker since my graduation from the Sandberg Instituut. The master course in Amsterdam is called Sandberg Instituut. I graduated from there in 1999, and I had my first solo show in 2000. Of course, it took a little time to get going. But now it's 24 years ago. It’s long. Sharon: And you knew when you graduated that you wanted to be a maker or a jeweler. That's what you wanted to do professionally. Terhi: Yes. I was asking this question a lot while studying. When I started studying in Amsterdam, I was absolutely convinced that I don't want to be an artist and I don't want to make jewelry. But I thought, “Never mind. I will be able to learn a lot of important things anyway at school.” This meant that during a lot of school years, I was trying all kinds of different things. I was drawing a lot, I was making objects, I was working a lot with textiles, sort of half- clothes, half-sculpture pieces. And then at one moment towards the end of the master course, when it really became a reality that soon I will have to get out of the school and go into the real world, I really decided, “Okay, I will make jewelry,” because my conclusion, after all these school years, was that that's the thing I can do the best. So, I really chose it. Also, because of the situation at the time in the Netherlands, it was possible to ask for working grants for jewelry arts. I had some very good school friends that were very much encouraging me to take the jewelry direction. So, yes, it was a very conscious decision at the time, and I have not regretted it. Sharon: It was long periods when you were in a country. You said you were in Amsterdam for six years. Did you teach? I don't know, maybe I have that wrong. Terhi: No, not there. I was there for school for six years altogether. Also, I stayed for the reason that it was cheaper to work at school than rent a studio. When I graduated from the Instituut, I stayed in Amsterdam because it was, work wise, very exciting to stay there. I had a job on the site. Then later I got a working grant. I had a nice studio, so I stayed in Amsterdam until 2013 when I moved to France. Sharon: I have to ask if you knew the languages before you came to each country. Well, English in Amsterdam works. What languages do you speak? Terhi: I'm multilingual. in Amsterdam I decided that I would like to learn Dutch because I thought it is very important for the quality of life. I managed to learn Dutch, so I speak Dutch quite fluently. At school it was a lot in English, of course. I speak Finnish, Dutch, English, and now in France, people don't speak so much English, so I really had to learn French. I had already studied French during all my school time in Finland, so I had a base for that, but I couldn't speak it so well. Now, of course, with all the years, I have learned to speak French. I'm teaching now in France at ENSAD Limoges, the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art et de Design, which is one of the national art schools. I'm teaching in French. Sharon: As you learned each language, did your works change? Did it make it easier to work or harder? Did you see a change in your work? Terhi: Well, living abroad, it's often lost in translation, of course. To know a language very well, you need to also understand the mentality and the culture of each country. I don't know if it's so much the language that's influencing the work. It's more the physical fact being in a certain place with certain surroundings. Of course, for me nature is very important. It's a richness, the language is. Definitely, yes. Sharon: Your most recent exhibition, I don't know if you had another one since then, but last summer you were at Ornamentum Gallery. Your work was shown at Ornamentum Gallery, which is in Massachusetts, I think. Terhi: It’s in Hudson, New York. Sharon: Okay. I couldn't remember. Hudson, New York. The exhibit was called Moderate to Southwest Winds. What does that mean in jewelry? What did you think it meant? Terhi: I chose the title. It's a weather forecast. It's taken out of a weather forecast. I chose that because while working for that show, I realized that what is really making the rhythm of my work and my thinking is the weather. I go out every morning for a walk, and this is a very important moment for me depending on the face in the work. Either I try to just empty my mind and observe things in nature. I look at colors and light and shapes and textures. Or, when I'm a little bit further in the work, then the moment of walking is very nice for finding solutions, so I'm working in my head. And, of course, what is then very important is the weather. If it's nice weather, if the sun is shining, if it's raining, if it's the spring or the winter. In wintertime, there is not so much light, so I have to wait for the light to be able to go out. This is totally deciding the rhythm of my day. As I also wrote at the time for the text of the exhibition, all my life I've been following the weather forecast. I check every morning what kind of weather it's going to be. I plan my day. If it's raining in the morning, I will go and do my walk in the afternoon and so on. This is something that I learned from my grandfather in Finland who had a little summer cottage on a little island. It's important to know what kind of weather it is, if it was safe to take the boat to the mainland or not. This is a kind of habit. It's sort of a daily ritual for me. I was also thinking that as the weather is the factor that is so important, I can also say that what was a little bit different for this exhibition was that the theme was a little bit more general. I let myself have the freedom of not deciding so tightly the theme that I'm working on. During COVID, I had put aside all kinds of different plans, all kinds of pieces that I wanted to make but I was not able to make at the time. I also had some materials that they had put on the site especially for the show at Ornamentum. I decided to make the show in that way, that I will make all these pieces that were waiting to be made. I found that, like the weather, the circumstances of the situation led to that conclusion somewhat and what I could say. Sharon: How did COVID affect you and your work? Terhi: I found it a very, very difficult time. I didn't stop working totally, but I was not able to really make my big pieces. It was quite military like, I would say. How to explain? The French system was very strict. To go out, you had to sign a paper and you had to tell what you were going to do, and you had one hour to do that. If you would not be back at home on time, then you would get fined. There was a very efficient fear campaign on television and so on. It felt very uncertain, and I'm sure this was the case for everybody. It took away a lot of the safe feeling which is necessary to be able to really dive into a big work. In a way, the time was cut in small moments when it was possible to create. Ever since I started working, I think the COVID year was really the first year that I didn't have so much production. Sharon: Were you allowed to go out to your studio? Is your studio in your home or is it separate? Terhi: At the time, I had a studio in a little town close to home. When they announced that the lockdown is going to come, I moved the most important things from my studio to my home so then I didn't have to go. This would have been possible. I could have signed the paper and said, “I’m going to my work,” but I felt better working at home. Also, being in the countryside, it was more free to go out. It was an isolated house at the time. I have moved since, but it was much easier to be there than in a city situation. I'm glad I did it. I moved my goldsmithing bench and my main tools and my main materials. Sharon: You moved them home? Terhi: Yeah, I had a little room at home to be able to work. Sharon: What did you want them to learn from the exhibition? Let's say your show at Ornamentum was the first time they were seeing your work or contemporary jewelry. What did you want them to learn by looking at it? Terhi: I'm very concerned about wearability in my work. This gives the scale. For somebody who is not so acquainted with contemporary jewelry, a lot of times people find it very big. I like to say that my work is sculpture. Then one could say that it's wearable sculpture. I'm also, first of all, talking about nature since the beginning. I'm working on the same theme in a way for about 20 years. I never changed because there are always new things. What I want to really put in the front—this is a little bit of a French saying, sorry—is that nature is very precious, and there are a lot of very beautiful things to see. How to put it very simply? I just want to show that it's very special. There are a lot of little things you can see when one walks in the forest. It’s worthwhile to really look. This sounds a little bit like no explanation because there are so many factors. But I'm talking about a dialog between man and nature. I'm talking about respect towards nature. I'm talking about this kind of eagerness to control nature, and the nature is fighting back so this dialog is never ending. Of course, today this is a topic that is more actual than ever. There are so many wonderful things. It's amazing, I think. I mean, just the mineral world. It's amazing what nature can make. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 03 Aug 2022 | Episode 165 Part 1: Making a Name for Art Jewelry in Denmark | 00:21:58 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Annette Dam Annette Dam is educated from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway in 1999 and has since worked conceptually and exhibition-oriented. Annette Dam's works have been exhibited at exhibitions in Denmark as well as internationally. In 2015 she was selected for the World Craft Council's European Prize for Applied Arts in Belgium. Annette Dam received the prestigious Skt. Loye award from the Kjøbenhavns Guldsmedelaug. Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: For Danish artist-jeweler Annette Dam, the appeal of art jewelry lies in the challenge of making it. How do you turn an idea or feeling into a wearable piece of art? That’s the question she asks before starting any piece. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about her upcoming exhibitions and projects; how people from different cultures approach art jewelry; and why she wants to help the Danish art jewelry scene thrive. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today my guest is artist-jeweler Annette Dam, speaking to us from Denmark. Annette’s work is very intriguing. It’s straightforward, but she also injects humor. When you look at her work, you say, “Oh, my god, it’s so true what she’s saying. It’s so true, but it’s also very funny. Why didn’t I think of that?” Her work has been exhibited in museums and at shows around the world. She always has several projects going at once, which we’ll hear about today. Annette, welcome to the program.
Annette: Thank you, Sharon. It’s nice to be here.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. How is it that you got into art jewelry?
Annette: That was kind of coincidental, actually. I always drew a lot when I was a kid. I always did lots of arts and crafts. I come from a family of do-it-yourself types and creatives, but not in an artistic way. So, I’m used to drawing and stuff. I remember when people asked me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I said, “I want to be an architect.” I kind of wanted to be that. There was also, I must admit, something about giving them an answer that they would accept and leave me alone. Then I got into this after gymnasium—
Sharon: High school.
Annette: Yes, high school, but in Denmark, it’s like the last part of your high school and the first of college. Anyway, I came to this school. It was kind of a boarding school. You do it often on your sabbatical, but it’s a very big thing in Denmark to go to these schools. They can be creative. They can be about athletics. They can be about politics. They can be about a lot of things. I went to, of course, an artistic one.
I was dreaming about coming into this class with glass blowers, but it was filled up, so I heard, “Well, maybe you should try jewelry,” and I said, “O.K.” It just opened to me because I had the image of jewelry as being precious materials, nice and fine, wearable, functional. Wedding rings and stuff like that. But that school opened up to me that jewelry could be so much more. This was in Denmark. After that, I wanted to search if there was a way for me to do jewelry. In Denmark, you could do goldsmithing. They had something called the Institute of Precious Metals, but it was an add-on if you were already a goldsmith, which I wasn’t and I didn’t want to become one. In my head, you would spend the first couple of years doing repairs, making coffee, and I wasn’t into that.
I had already been to Norway working at this ski resort. I went back, heard about this school in Norway, and met a girl who had gone there as an architect. She explained it and I said, “This sounds amazing, just what I want,” and she said, “Well, it’s very hard to get in. You’ll probably not make it.” I have a stubborn side to me, so at the moment she said that, I definitely wanted to try. After a long application process, I got in. I had five years at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. It’s a wonderful school. I can highly recommend it today.
I spent five years there exploring materials, concepts. The school is built on letting you a course of a lot of skills, technical stuff of course, but you always have to do something artistic with it. Even though you’re learning a technique, it has to be more than that. I thought that was great, that I could express myself through jewelry, an art form I really enjoyed doing. Altogether, I spent 11 years in Norway. It wasn’t planned, and my mother was saying, “When are you coming home?”
Eventually I had kids and I went back to Denmark. In Denmark, it’s very common to stop at these—what do they call it?—joint workshops, where there are a lot of people sharing not only the space, but also the machines and the tools. As a startup jewelry artist, those machines are very expensive. For me, getting into this joint workshop, where we were 10 people at the time, was really good because I’m not from Copenhagen. I moved back to Copenhagen from Norway. I’m not from there, so I didn’t have a lot of network there, but I got that through this workshop. There were a lot of wonderful people there. I wasn’t limited by not having all the big machines because they were already there. I stayed in that workshop for quite a lot of years. I made a lot of good friends. I stuck to doing exhibition work. I wanted to do bigger projects and exhibition work, and then I would teach on the side, do odd jobs. I was able to do these crazy things that I wanted to do, and that worked out quite fine, I think. I’ve been doing that ever since, actually.
There at one of the workshops I met a now very, very good friend and colleague. We made this project called Art Jewelry Copenhagen. That’s a platform where we make group exhibitions and workshops and seminars. We’ve been traveling a lot under this platform, Art Jewelry Copenhagen. When people asked me at the time, as a young chick, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I had answered, “An art jeweler,” I don’t know if I would have gotten off that easily as when I replied, “I want to be an architect.”
Sharon: Art jewelry means so many different things. It’s so hard to define. You’re described as an artist-jeweler. Then there are people who say they’re jewelry artists. How do you define art jewelry?
Annette: To me, art jewelry is a method to reflect current times. It’s a way of having a discussion with myself and then doing these pieces that comment on it, as all contemporary arts comment on the present day. That can be either through form, material, aesthetics, or it could be making a statement or commenting on the political or environmental landscape we have nowadays. For me, it’s this method of digging into things, having this discussion about how to look at it, a way through a process, investigating themes, materials that I didn’t know before, and then putting it on my own body.
Sharon: Art Jewelry Copenhagen, it seems like it’s been very well received. You went to Asia. You’ve been all over the world.
Annette: Yeah, the last exhibition we had was at ATTA Gallery in Bangkok. Unfortunately, just at the time it was looking up with Covid, we thought we were going there. We bought the tickets, and then suddenly Thailand made some restrictions so we couldn’t go anyway. That was really sad, but we made this exhibition at ATTA Gallery where Marie-Louise Kristensen and I had invited seven other artists from Denmark making these—we call the exhibition COPENHAGEN ReARRANGED. It was basically about inspiring each other. As artists, we stand on the shoulders of many artists and designers before us, but we also get inspired to help each other. We all exchanged elements. I had very typical elements from what I’m doing, and I gave them to someone else in the group, and I received something from another person that I had to implement in a new piece. Denmark also has a long tradition of working together and the notion that you can do more together than alone. We have a lot of unions; we have a lot of them from old times, and these, I don’t know, communities—
Sharon: Like guilds?
Annette: Guilds, but also for housing. There are a lot of groups that join forces, and then you can do something as a group that you could never do alone. We have a long tradition of doing that. That school I mentioned before is also a part of that culture where you join forces. So, in this exhibition, we joined forces with other colleagues that we enjoy working with and made this exhibition. The artists had their own work, and then you could very easily see which was a collaborative work and which was not. It worked out, but we would have loved to go and list it at a gallery again.
Sharon: Will you be able to do that now?
Annette: Yes, now we can do it, but the exhibition is over. We’ll go another time. Actually, COPENHAGEN ReARRANGRD has been a gift to me. I’m also doing things with my friend and colleague. Marie-Louise Kristensen has made me do something I wouldn’t have done alone.
Sharon: That’s Marie-Louise Kristensen.
Annette: Yes.
Sharon: Another art jeweler who’s very creative, also.
Annette: Yes.
Sharon: I’m jumping around here, but you mentioned the collaboration. You’re starting to put something together that you call Spacious Copenhagen.
Annette: Yes.
Sharon: Tell us about that.
Annette: Yes. Marie-Louise Kristensen won’t be in that project because she would prefer to stay free in a way. I think I’m at the point in my career and life where I’m ready to establish something that binds me a little bit more in Copenhagen, and I would love to create this space that I’m missing myself in Copenhagen. I’m trying to create this platform and artist space gallery called Spacious Copenhagen. I have plans for three exhibitions next year. I’m starting out. That’s a lot of work before—Aleah – Is something missing here? Do I need to fill it out?)
Sharon: Yeah, I’m sure.
Annette: —if it’s a bigger group exhibition. I have these three ideas that I’m going to carry out, and in the meantime I’ll see if I can also find a permanent space in the inner city of Copenhagen ideally. I need to have funding and financial ballast to do that, but I’m starting out. I’m doing the platform and the website at the moment, so small steps, but I want to have this place where I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to apply for someone else’s space, and I can also invite internationally whomever I want. Ideally, I would also like to create something like an artist in residence over time. A lot of ideas, but I have to take small steps because I’m just me. And I´m not a full-time gallerist but an artist that aims to make an exhibition platform and doing my own work as well. (05_Annette Dam)
We don´t have many galleries showing art jewellery or museums with jewellery collections – the Danish Design Museum has some pieces in their general arts and craft collection, but not really a considerable collection representing the field. What we DO have though, is the Danish Arts foundation´s `jewelry box´ which consists of works they bought over, I think, the last 40 years, and those pieces of jewelry one can actually borrow and wear, if you in some ways are attending an official event or celebration. The Danish Jewelry Box is a very special and democratic arrangement that you could probably do another podcast about – in that case I suggest that you talk with Anni Nørskov Mørch, who have an interesting jewelry journey of her own. (02_Annette Dam)
Sharon: What do Danish people say when you say you’re an artist-jeweler? Do they understand what you’re talking about? Because, you’re right, Denmark has a long history of this sort of thing.
Annette: Yeah, but we have a long history within goldsmithing, art and design. When I say I’m an art jeweler, they have two question marks in their eyes and they say, “Hm, combining art and jewelry, what is that? Is it still functional or are we offering something for an art department?” I have to explain what I’m doing in more detail before they actually know what I’m doing. We do have a long design history, and that’s very good. I really have a tradition to draw on and to reference. I use that in my pieces, but at the same time, it’s not as big a gift as some might think—not to me at least—because you’re also bound to it in a way. It’s hard to break loose and step into the art field, so it’s affected me there.
Sharon: How do you explain to people what you do when they have question marks in their eyes?
Annette: I get more concrete, and I show them and tell them the thoughts behind the actual piece. I’m getting much better at wearing my pieces, so they have the visual at the same time as me explaining. I think a lot of times they don’t have any visual images on their retinas, so it’s kind of hard to reference.
Sharon: Were you hesitant to wear your pieces?
Annette: At a certain point I was. I don’t know. I got a little bit shy and a little bit humble at the same time. I’m getting over it. I’m getting older. If I want this field to grow in Denmark, I need to represent it also in wearing it.
Sharon: That’s a good way to look at it. It’s so much easier to explain to somebody if you’re wearing the necklace or the neckpiece and saying, “This is what it is.” It must create a lot of conversations when you’re wearing it.
Annette: Yes, it does. People get amazed. They don’t know how much thought goes into it, that there are so many perspectives and that it conveys a lot of talk and discussion about issues. You can discuss things, because this is a starting point for my view on the things and then go from there.
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| 13 Apr 2022 | Episode 153 Part 1: How NYC’s 92Y Developed the Largest Jewelry Program in the Country | 00:27:20 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jonathan Wahl Jonathan Wahl joined 92nd Street Y in July 1999 as director of the jewelry and metalsmithing program in 92Y’s School of the Arts, the largest program of its kind in the nation. He is responsible for developing and overseeing the curriculum, which offers more than 60 classes weekly and 15 visiting artists annually. Jonathan is also responsible for hiring and supervising 25 faculty members, maintaining four state-of-the-art jewelry and metalsmithing studios, and promoting the department locally and nationally as a jewelry resource center. Named one of the top 10 jewelers to watch by W Jewelry in 2006, Jonathan is an accomplished artist who, from 1994 to 1995, served as artist-in-residence at Hochschule Der Kunst in Berlin, Germany. He has shown his work in the exhibitions Day Job (The Drawing Center), Liquid Lines (Museum of Fine Arts Houston), The Jet Drawings (Sienna Gallery, Lenox MA, and SOFA New York), Formed to Function (John Michael Kohler Arts Center), Defining Craft (American Craft Museum), Markers in Contemporary Metal (Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art), Transfigurations: 9 Contemporary Metalsmiths (University of Akron and tour), and Contemporary Craft (New York State Museum). Jonathan was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in recognition of "Outstanding Artwork," and the Pennsylvania Society of Goldsmiths Award for "Outstanding Achievement." As part of the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX, and The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, his work has been reviewed by Art in America (June, 2000), The New York Times (June 2005), and Metalsmith Magazine (1996, 1999, 2000 2002, 2005, 2009); his work was also featured in Metalsmith Magazine's prestigious "Exhibition in Print" (1994 and 1999). Jonathan’s art work can be seen at Sienna Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts, which specializes in contemporary American and European art work, and De Vera in Soho, New York. His work can also be seen in the publications The Jet Drawings (Sienna Press, 2008), and in three collections by Lark Books: 1,000 Rings, 500 Enameled Objects and 500 Metal Vessels. Before joining 92Y, Jonathan was, first, director of the jewelry and metalsmithing department at the YMCA's Craft Students League, and later assistant director of the League itself. Mr. Wahl holds a B.F.A. in jewelry and metalsmithing from Temple University's Tyler School of Art and an M.F.A. in metalsmithing and fine arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is a member of the Society of North America Goldsmiths. Additional Resources:
Photos: Available at TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: With more than 60 jewelry classes offered weekly, the 92nd Street Y’s Jewelry Center is by far the largest program of its kind in the country—and it’s all run by award-winning sculptor, jeweler and artist Jonathan Wahl. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the different relationships he has with jewelry and sculpture; why craftsmanship should be embraced by the art world; and what he has planned for 92Y in 2022. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Here at the Jewelry Journey, we’re about all things jewelry. With that in mind, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming jewelry conference, which is “Beyond Boundaries: Jewelry of the Americas.” It’s sponsored by the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, or, as it’s otherwise known, ASJRA. The conference takes place virtually on Saturday and Sunday May 21 and May 22, which is around the corner. For details on the program and the speakers, go to www.jewelryconference.com. Non-members are welcome. I have to say that I attended this conference in person for several years, and it’s one of my favorite conferences. It’s a real treat to be able to sit in your pajamas or in comfies in your living room and listen to some extraordinary speakers. So, check it out. Register at www.jewelryconference.com. See you there.
This is a two-part Jewelry Journey podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Jonathan Wahl, Director of the Jewelry Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The program is the largest of its kind in the country. In addition to his life in jewelry, Jonathan is an award-winning artist whose work is in the permanent collections of prestigious museums. It has been exhibited nationally and internationally. We’ll hear more about his jewelry journey today and how art fits into that. Jonathan, welcome to the program.
Jonathan: Thank you, Sharon. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to see you.
Sharon: It’s nice to see you. Hopefully next time, it’ll be in person.
Jonathan: I would love that.
Sharon: Jonathan, tell us about your jewelry journey. How did you get to jewelry? Was that where you originally started out?
Jonathan: Recently I’ve been doing a lot of interviews myself with artists around the world—virtually since the pandemic—as Director of the Jewelry Center, and one of the questions I always ask them is “How did you find your way to jewelry?” It’s one of the questions I love to be asked because, at least for myself, it was interesting. I think all of us start out as artists, unless we’re born into a jewelry family. Everyone learns how to draw. Everyone paints on their own. Maybe they have classes in high school. If you’re lucky, you have a jewelry class in high school. I didn’t, so like many people, I discovered jewelry in college at Tyler School of Art, which has one of the best jewelry programs in the country, but I didn’t know jewelry existed until I went to art school.
When I went to art school, I thought I was going to be a graphic designer. Being the son of a banker and coming from a prep school, I figured I was going to be an artist, but I had to make a living. I wasn’t going to be a painter, so I was thinking I was going to be a graphic designer when I grew up. At the college, I discovered jewelry in my sophomore year. Stanley Lechtzin said to me—I’ll never forget it—“After you graduate you could design, if you wanted, costume jewelry in New York City,” and I thought, “That sounds kind of exotic and fun in New York City.” That’s how my jewelry journey really began, in an elective class as a sophomore at Tyler School of Art.
Sharon: Where is Tyler? I’m not familiar with it.
Jonathan: In Philadelphia. It’s part of Temple University.
Sharon: And Stanley Lechtzin, is he one of the professors there? I don’t know that name.
Jonathan: Stanley Lechtzin really put the program on the map. He’s in collections internationally. He pioneered the use of electroforming in individual objects. Electroforming was a commercial process used throughout the country for many different industrial applications, but Stanley figured out how to finetune it for the individual artist. His work has recently had some new-found appreciation because of the aesthetics from the 60s and 70s that are also coming back into vogue. His pieces are extraordinary.
Sharon: Before you came to the Y, did you design jewelry? Did you do art? Did you come home from your banking job and work on that stuff?
Jonathan: My father was a banker. I was not a banker. The closest I got to banking was working at a casino in Atlantic City one summer. My family has a house in Ocean City, New Jersey, so I could get to Atlantic City. I had to count a bank of anywhere between $30,000 and $70,000 a night. That’s the closest I got to being a banker.
I quickly then moved to London. This was the summer of my senior year after Tyler. After I graduated from Tyler, I moved to London briefly and worked for a crafts gallery in northern London. Then I decided I wanted to go to graduate school. I came back for about a year to work towards applying to graduate school, which ultimately became SUNY New Paltz. I graduated Tyler in 1990, so most of my undergraduate years were in the 80s. If you’re familiar with 80s jewelry, it was no holds barred. It was any kind of jewelry you wanted. My work—or at least my practice—quickly started to veer away from jewelry and towards objects and what I would call small sculpture. My choice to go SUNY New Paltz was specific because I didn’t really want to make jewelry, but I was interested in the field and decorative arts, the material culture of jewelry and metalsmithing. That’s what I pursued while I was in graduate school. I was recreating early American tinware about my experience as a gay American at that time. I wish there were visuals included, but that’s what I was doing at SUNY New Paltz.
Sharon: How did you find that material?
Jonathan: The tinware was a metaphor for America, for traditionalism. The pieces were metaphors for the function or dysfunction of America. These objects were a little perverse, a little sublime and really honest about how frustrated I felt about being an American and growing up in Philadelphia during the bicentennial. I thought life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was for everybody, but I found myself not really able to access the full extent of that saying, like many people in our country even today. But I’m happy to report that a piece from that era was just acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I’m thrilled that the older work is getting some interest. There’s some interest from the New York Historical Society, which is not finalized yet, but it’s interesting to see that work with new eyes 20-some years later.
Sharon: Congratulations!
Jonathan: When I was in Germany, my partner at the time was finishing his master’s degree, and I was an artist in residence there at the Hochschule der Künste, which is now the Academy of Art, I think it’s called. That was an interesting experience because Europeans in general, and Germans in particular, approach craft differently. They have a much longer and supportive tradition of craft of all kinds, so when they saw my tinware, it was a little confusing to them. I ended up in a program called small sculpture as an artist in residence because there was no jewelry program at this art university. It was interesting. It was curious.
Sharon: Tell us how you came to jewelry.
Jonathan: Jewelry eventually gets into my story. After leaving Berlin, I moved to New York. I knew I wanted to be a New York artist. That’s the place I had to go. That’s the place I had to find my destiny. I was walking around looking for positions in a gallery, which was what I thought I was supposed to do. I walked into one gallery and the director there said, “I don’t have any gallery work for you, but I’m on the board of a not-for-profit gallery at the YWCA. That’s the home of the Craft Students League. They are looking for a program associate, which pays a ridiculously low hourly wage but has health benefits.” I thought, “O.K., I can do that.”
That’s when I found myself in the not-for-profit arts administration position that was developed into what I do now, at least part time. I was the program coordinator for the Craft Students League, which is unfortunately gone now, but had a wonderful ceramics, jewelry, painting, and book arts department. I ultimately became director of the jewelry studio and metalsmithing studio there, and then I became the assistant director of the whole program before I moved to the 92nd Street Y to become the director of the Jewelry Center here.
Sharon: Did they have an opening? How did you enter the 92nd Street Y?
Jonathan: Yes, there was an opening. There was John Cogswell. The Jewelry Center has some wonderful previous directors. It was Thomas Gentile from the late 60s to mid-70s, who really put this program on the map. He was followed by John Cogswell until the early 90s. Then briefly Shana Kroiz took over. She was between Baltimore and New York, and when she left the department, there was a call for a new director. That’s when I joined the program here.
Sharon: Wow! I didn’t know that Thomas Gentile was one of the—I don’t know if you want to call it the founders, but one of the names that launched it.
Jonathan: Yeah. The program began in 1930 in its earliest form as a class in metalworking and slowly evolved into a few more classes. It became part of the one of the largest WPA programs in the country here at the 92nd Street Y, but it kind of floated along until Thomas came—and Thomas, forgive me if I get this wrong—in the mid-60s, I think, maybe later. He came in and really started to formulate a program of study here. He was the one who really created the Jewelry Center as a center.
Sharon: Was he emphasizing art jewelry or all jewelry?
Jonathan: There was a great book put out by the Museum of Modern Art in the 50s about how to make modern jewelry. Now, I don’t know if the MOMA realized that they put out a book on how to make jewelry, but my point is in New York, I think there was still this idea of the modernist aesthetic and the artist as jeweler or jeweler as artist. I would say that Thomas was focused more on artist-made jewelry, the handmade, the one-of-a-kind object. It was still not looking in any way towards traditional or commercial jewelry.
Sharon: Jonathan, tell us what the 92nd Street Y is, because people may not know.
Jonathan: The 92nd Street Y is a 140-year-old institution here on the Upper East Side of New York City. It is one of New York City’s most important cultural anchors. It has many different facets. We have a renowned lecture series. The November before the pandemic, I remember we had back-to-back Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Lizzo. Wednesday night it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Thursday night it was Lizzo. Last night we had Outlander here, and I think we had a full house of 900 people plus 2,000 people online. We also have a world-renowned dance center that has a long history with Martha Graham and Bill T. Jones. In many ways, modern dance coalesced at the 92nd Street Y. The Jewelry Center has had a presence here at the Y since 1930. We have a wonderful ceramic center. We also have one of the most prestigious nursery schools in New York City. You name it.
The 92nd Street Y is a Jewish cultural center. It’s part of the UJA Association, but it’s kind of its own thing. It’s a whole other story about what Ys are and the difference between YWCAs, YMCAs and YM-WHAs, which is what we are, but the 92nd Street Y is really a cultural center.
Sharon: When are you opening your West Coast branch in Los Angeles? Because you have such an incredible number of speakers and programs.
Jonathan: Many of them come from the West Coast. We had Andrew Garfield here the week before last to talk about his amazing performance for a Reel Pieces program with Annette Insdorf. I think that was a full house of 900 people for a performance from “Tick Tick Boom,” which was great. I don’t know when we’re coming to LA. We’re just reemerging from the pandemic here in New York.
Sharon: This is not related to jewelry, but do you think that without the pandemic, you would have gone online to such an extent? Would it have been possible for people around the world, including on the West Coast, to see what’s going on?
Jonathan: The pandemic was the catalyst to do something we’d always thought about, but yes, the pandemic definitely forced us to do it. On March 13, New York City shut down. That Monday, we flipped all of our classes, every single one of our classes in the Art Center, which is about 200 classes, to be virtual. That worked for some classes better than others, obviously for painting and drawing. It was fine for jewelry. It’s tough if you don’t have a studio. What we did through the summer is offer online classes. We still offer online classes to some extent, but my focus is on building back our in-person class schedule, which we’re doing. We’re over about half enrollment now from the pandemic and moving quickly towards three-quarters.
Sharon: Did the people who enrolled in hands-on jewelry classes, did that just stop with the pandemic?
Jonathan: Yes, it stopped from March 2020 until September 2020. In September, we actually opened back up for in-person classes. We wore masks. We were socially distanced. We were unvaccinated. I was taking the subway and it worked. It was slow at first, but I think this process is a part of many people’s lives and this program is so meaningful for so many people. Being in New York, access to a studio is important, and very few people have studios at home. This is not only an important part emotionally of their lives, it’s also literally, physically, an important part of making jewelry their practice.
Sharon: Since you started as director of the program, I know you’ve been responsible for growing it tremendously. Was that one of your goals? Did you have that vision, or there was just so much opportunity? What happened?
Jonathan: All of the above. There was a lot of opportunity. Unfortunately, the Crafts Students League closed shortly after I left. Parsons closed their department. There were a number of continuing education programs that left Manhattan, and this is before the country of Brooklyn was discovered, even though I lived there. There were no schools in Brooklyn, really. The 92nd Street Y became one of the few places to study when I came on.
Also, to my point about studying jewelry in art school, you’re studying to be an artist generally in art school; you’re not really studying to be a jeweler in the way most people understand jewelers to be. Although certainly at Tyler, it was a great technical education and I learned a lot of hard skills, many people, including myself, were not adept at those hard skills. We’re not taught at a trade school, and I found that most of the people who were looking for jewelry classes wanted to make more traditional jewelry than the classes we were offering. Most of our faculty came from art school. There were some amazing people, Bob Ebendorf and Lisa Grounick(?) to name just a few, but as the 90s wore on and the aesthetic changed, I found that people really wanted to learn how to work in gold, how to set a stone. The aesthetics of jewelry shifted. You probably know yourself that the art jewelry world shifted a little bit too. For myself, I wanted to learn more hard skills, and I basically started creating classes that reflected my interests in how to make better wax carvings, how to set a brilliant-cut stone. I can then make that into what I want: studio jewelry, art jewelry, whatever, but those hard skills were lacking.
I’ve said this many times: I don’t know that this program would exist in another city other than New York because there was so much talent here. There were people from the industry here. There were artists who were studio jewelers and art jewelers all at my fingertips. I think that was one of the ways it grew, not because I reduced the perspective of what was being made here, but because I enlarged the perspective of what was being made here or taught here.
Sharon: How did you do that? Did you do that by identifying potential teachers and attracting them? What did you do?
Jonathan: I was lucky to have some wonderful people in New York City at that time. We had a wonderful faculty to begin with, but we also were able to expand the faculty with incredible people who had recently resigned. Pamela Farland, who was a master goldsmith and was the goldsmith at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for many years, was on our stuff. Klaus Burgel, who was trained at the Academy of Munich, was here in New York and came to us as a faculty member. Tovaback Winnick(?), who was a master wax carver and worked for Kieselstein-Cord for many years, came on as well. Some people work here for a shorter period of my time. My good friend, Lola Brooks, was here and taught stone setting. There was some really stellar talent around that helped me build this program.
Sharon: That’s quite a lineup you’re mentioning.
Jonathan: And a really diverse lineup.
Sharon: Diverse in what sense?
Jonathan: Klaus’ work is pure art jewelry: the iconic object, incredibly crafted, but what one would consider as art jewelry in its most essential sense. Lola Brooks, her work crosses the lines of both art and jewelry, and she’s got a beautiful studio jewelry line. Then there are people like Pamela Farland, who made very classical, Greco-Roman, high-carat granulated stones, classical goldsmithing. Then there was Tovaback Winnick who teaches carving, which is how the majority of commercial jewelry is made. We had real range as well as your regular Jewelry 1, Jewelry 2, Jewelry 3 classes where we’re teaching the basics of sawing, forming and soldering.
Sharon: You answered my question in part, but if somebody says, “I’m tired of working as a banker; I want to be a jeweler,” can you come to the Y and do that? Can you go through Jewelry 1, Jewelry 2, Jewelry 3 and then graduate into granulation? I don’t know if there’s a direct line.
Jonathan: Absolutely. We don’t have a course of study. We don’t have a certificate, but you can definitely come here and put your own skillset together. That’s also what I found strong about the program, that it gave people access to put their skillsets together without going through art school or going through college. You’re able to learn those hard skills in an environment where it’s no frills.
Sharon: Are they mostly younger people, older people, people of all ages?
Jonathan: It’s people of all ages. When I joked about the country of Brooklyn not being discovered yet, I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for my whole New York life, so I’m speaking the truth. There really wasn’t anything out there. If you were young and hip and cool when I lived in Brooklyn, you had to come here. So, for a long time, we had a much younger population that was cool, hip. Now, everybody has moved to the country called Brooklyn. That demographic has aged a little bit for us.
We have three classes during the day. We have a morning class, an afternoon class, a late afternoon class and then an evening class. If you’re a younger person, it’s most likely that you have a job, so you’re going to come at night for our classes. That’s only one-quarter of the population that can take a class here, because there’s only one slot of night classes. There could be four classes happening at the same time, but all from 7:00-9:30. So, in general our population skews old because those are the people who are generally available during the day.
That being said, it’s New York City. There are lots of different ways to make a living here. There are definitely people who are actors or bartenders or artists or what have you who do have time during the day and come here. It really depends on what class, but absolutely; we have all ages for sure. We also have kids’ classes in the afternoon from 4:00-6:30. | |||
| 09 May 2022 | Episode 156 Part 1: Deconstructing Classical Art for the Modern Era | 00:25:35 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Joy BC
Joy BC (Joy Bonfield – Colombara) is an Artist and Goldsmith working predominantly in Noble Metals and bronze. Her works are often challenging pre-existing notions of precious materials and ingrained societal ideals of western female bodies in sculpture. Joy BC plays with mythologies and re-examines the fascination with the ‘Classical’. Joy, a native of London, was profoundly influenced from an early age by the artistry of her parents - her mother, a painter and lithographer, her father, a sculptor. Joy’s art education focused intensively on painting, drawing and carving, enhanced by a profound appreciation of art within historical and social contexts. Joy BC received her undergraduate degree from the Glasgow School of Art and her M.A. from the Royal College of Art in London. She has also held two residencies in Japan. The first in Tokyo, working under the tutelage of master craftsmen Sensei (teacher) Ando and Sensei Kagaeyama, experts in Damascus steel and metal casting. She subsequently was awarded a research fellowship to Japan’s oldest school of art, in Kyoto, where she was taught the ancient art of urushi by the renowned craftsmen: Sensei Kuramoto and Sensei Sasai. Whilst at the RCA she was awarded the TF overall excellence prize and the MARZEE International graduate prize. Shortly after her graduation in 2019 her work was exhibited in Japan and at Somerset house in London. In 2021 her work was exhibited in Hong Kong and at ‘Force of Nature’ curated by Melanie Grant in partnership with Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery. Joy Bonfield - Colombara is currently working on a piece for the Nelson Atkins Museum in the USA and recently a piece was added to the Alice and Louis Koch Collection in the Swiss National Museum, Zurich.Additional Resources: Joy’s Website Joy’s Instagram Photos: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript:
While others are quick to classify artists by genre or medium, Joy BC avoids confining her work to one category. Making wearable pieces that draw inspiration from classical sculpture, she straddles the line between jeweler and fine artist. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why she works with noble metals; the exhibition that kickstarted her business; and how she confronts the often-dark history of classical art though her work. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Here at the Jewelry Journey, we’re about all things jewelry. With that in mind, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming jewelry conference, which is “Beyond Boundaries: Jewelry of the Americas.” It’s sponsored by the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, or, as it’s otherwise known, ASJRA. The conference takes place virtually on Saturday and Sunday May 21 and May 22, which is around the corner. For details on the program and the speakers, go to www.jewelryconference.com. Non-members are welcome. I have to say that I attended this conference in person for several years, and it’s one of my favorite conferences. It’s a real treat to be able to sit in your pajamas or in comfies in your living room and listen to some extraordinary speakers. So, check it out. Register at www.jewelryconference.com. See you there.
This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is the award-winning artist and goldsmith Joy Bonfield-Colombara, or as she is known as an artist and jeweler, Joy BC. She is attracted to classical art. She interprets it from her contemporary viewpoint, and her work has been described both as wearable art and as miniature sculptures. We’ll learn all about her jewelry journey today. Joy, welcome to the program.
Joy: Thank you for having me, Sharon.
Sharon: So glad to have you all the way from London. Tell us about your jewelry journey. You came from an artistic family.
Joy: Both my parents are artists. My mother is a painter and lithographer, and my father is a sculptor. So, from a really young age, I was drawing and sculpting, and I thought this was quite normal. It was later that I realized my upbringing was perhaps a bit different from some of my friends or my peers.
Sharon: Yes, it’s unusual that I hear that. They weren’t bankers. Was it always assumed that you were going to be an artist or jeweler?
Joy: Not at all. The fact that my parents were artists, I saw a lot of their struggle to try and place themselves within our society. They both were part of the 1968 revolution. My mom is actually from Italy. She left a tiny, little—not a village, but a small town called Novara which is near Verona and Turin, when she was 16 years old. She came to London and fell in love with London. She went to Goldsmiths School of Art, where she met my father. My father is English, and his ancestors were stonemasons from the Isle of Purbeck. So, they both met at art school, and it was much later that they had me.
As I grew up, they were incredibly talented individuals. They also struggled with how to live and survive from their artwork. As I grew older, however, as much as I loved the creative world I’d grown up in, I was also trying to figure out which pathway was right or was going to be part of my life. I didn’t necessarily want to be an artist. For a long time, I wanted to be a marine biologist because I was really good at science, in particular chemistry and biology, and I really loved the ocean. I still love the sea. Swimming is the one sport I’m good at, and I find it fascinating. I still find the sea as a source of inspiration.
So no, it wasn’t an absolute given; however, as I got older and went through my education, it became evident to me that was the way I understood the world and the spaces I felt most natural in. I’m also dyslexic. I used to be in special class because I couldn’t write very well, but my dyslexia teacher said, “You’re smart. You just have a different way of seeing the world.” I was always imaginative. If I couldn’t write something, I would draw it or make it, and I liked the feeling that would create when someone else lauded me for it. Immediately, I had this connection with the fact that I could make things that people thought were interesting.
So, I studied science and art and theater, and then I went off to travel to Cuba when I was about 18, before I moved to Glasgow. When I was in Glasgow in Scotland, I saw The Glasgow School of Art degree show, and I was taken aback by the jewelry and metalwork show in particular. I don’t know if you know the Rennie Mackintosh School of Art.
Sharon: No.
Joy: It’s a British Art Nouveau building. In Scotland, it was part of the Arts and Crafts movement. It was a school that was designed by Rennie Mackintosh. He’s a world-famous architect.
Sharon: Is that the one that burned down?
Joy: Yes, that year. I was actually there the year the school burnt down. I went to The Glasgow School of Art and I loved it. I did three amazing years there, and in my second year, I was awarded a residency to go to Japan. We had our degree show and we were preparing for it. The night before the fire, I took all of my works home. I don’t know why. I was taking everything home to look at before we had to set up for the exhibition, and the school burnt down. At the same time, I had three major tragedies in my life. My best friend passed away; the school burnt down; and my boyfriend at the time had left me. I went through this total mental breakdown at the point when I was meant to start my career as an artist. I was offered the artist residency in the jewelry and metalworking department.
When Fred died, I was really unwell. A friend of mine had offered that I go to New York. I ended up having a bike accident, which meant that I was in intensive care. I couldn’t work for three years. It was actually two friends of my family who were goldsmiths who gave me a space to work when I was really fragile. It was through making again and being with them that I slowly built back my confidence. That was my journey from childhood up right until the formals of education. These three events really broke me, but I also learned that, for me, the space I feel most happy in is a creative one, when I’m carving.
Sharon: Were you in the bike accident in New York or in Glasgow or in London?
Joy: In New York. My friend Jenny, who’s a really good friend of mine, was going to New York and said, “I want you to come to New York because you’ve had the worst set of events happen. I think it would be good for you to have some time away.” I said, “Yeah, I agree,” and I came to New York. I was in Central Park cycling. It wasn’t a motorbike. I blacked out. Nobody knows what happened. I woke up the next day in intensive care at Mount Sinai Hospital. I woke up in the hospital, and they told me I had fallen off my bike and I had front lateral brain damage, perforated lungs, perforated liver.
Sharon: Oh my gosh!
Joy: I feel really grateful that I’m here.
Sharon: Yes. To back up a minute, what was the switch from marine biology? I understand you were dyslexic, but what made you decide you were going to be a jeweler or an artist? What was the catalyst there?
Joy: I don’t think there was ever a specific switch. I feel like art has always been a part of my life. It was always going to be that. I was always going to draw and make. I was also encouraged to do sculpture. I remember trying set design, because I thought that married my love of film and storytelling and theater with my ability to draw and sculpt. I thought, “Theater, that’s a realm that perhaps would work well.” Then I went and did a set design course. The fact that they destroyed all my tiny, little things, because they have to take them apart to take the measurements for how big certain props or things have to be, drove me mad. I couldn’t deal that I’d spend hours on these things to be taken apart.
I think it was probably the exhibition I went to see at The Glasgow School of Art. When I saw the show, I was really taken aback that all the pieces had been handmade. They were, to me, miniature sculpture. I hadn’t considered that jewelry could be this other type of art. Seeing these works, I thought, “Wow! This is really interesting, and I think there’s much more scope to explore within this medium.” I think that was the moment of change that made it for me.
Sharon: What is it about sculpture, whether it’s large or jewelry-size, that attracts you? Why that? Is it the feeling of working with your hands?
Joy: I think it’s a combination of things, partly because my father’s a sculptor. I remember watching him sculpt, and his ancestors were stonemasons. They were quarriers from the Isle of Purbeck dating back to the 12th century. I remember going to the quarries with my dad and thinking how amazing it was that this material was excavated from the earth. Then my father introduced me to sculpture. A lot of West African sculpture, Benin Bronzes, modern sculpture by Alexander Calder. Michelangelo and classical sculpture was all around me in Italy when we’d go and visit my grandparents.
I think sculpture has always been something I found interesting and also felt natural or felt like something I had a calling towards. My mom has always said I have this ability with three-dimensional objects. Even as a child, when I would draw, I would often draw in 3D. I do still draw a lot, but I often collage or sculpt to work out something. You often draw with jewelry designs, actual drawings in the traditional sense, but I go between all different mediums to find that perfect form I’m looking for.
Sharon: When you were attracted to this jewelry in Glasgow, did it jump out at you as miniature sculpture?
Joy: Yeah, definitely. Looking at it, I saw it as miniature versions of sculpture. I also find artists such as Rebecca Horn interesting in the way that they’re often about performance or extensions of the body. Even Leigh Bowery, who worked with Michael Clark, was creating physical artworks with ballet. These interactions with the body I think are really interesting: living sculpture, how those things pass over. I don’t really like categorizing different art forms. I think they can cross over in so many different ways. We have this obsession about categorizing different ways or disciplines. I understand why we do that, but I think it’s interesting where things start to cross over into different boundaries.
Sharon: That’s interesting. That’s what humans do: we categorize. We can spend days arguing over what’s art, what’s fine art, what’s art jewelry. Yes, there’s gray. There are no boundaries; there’s gray in between.
Tell us about your business. Is that something your folks talked to you about, like “Go be an artist, but make sure you can make a living at it”? Tell us about your business and how you make a living.
Joy: I felt my parents were going to support me in whatever decisions I made. My mom ran away from Italy when she was 17, and she always told me that she said when she was leaving, “You have to live your life, because no one else will live it for you.” She’s always had the attitude with me. Whatever direction I wanted to go in, I felt supported. I’ve always thought that if you work really hard at something or you put in the hours and you’re passionate about it, then things will grow from that. Every experience I’ve had has influenced the next thing. I never see something as a linear plan of exactly how I’m going to reach or achieve certain things. I’m still very much learning and at the beginning of it. I only graduated in 2019 from the Royal College of Art doing my master’s.
As I mentioned before, these two goldsmiths had given me an informal apprenticeship, basically. They were two working goldsmiths that had a studio, and they had been practicing for around 40 years. They had given me a space to work on this skill. Even though I studied a B.A. at The Glasgow School of Art, which is a mixture of practical and theoretical, I felt that after going to Japan and working with a samurai sword specialist making Damascus steel—it took him 25 years to get to the point where he was considered a master craftsman, this master in his craft. I felt like I had just started, even though my education in making had started from birth because my parents were artists and exposed me to all these things and encouraged me to make.
Within metalworking and jewelry work, there are so many techniques and so many things you need to take years to refine. Really, it's been like 11 years of education: doing a B.A., then doing an informal apprenticeship, then doing my master’s. Only now do I feel like I’ve really found this confidence in my own voice within my work. Now I see the reaction from people, and I can help facilitate people on their journeys. I really enjoy that aspect of what I’m doing.
I’m still trying to figure out certain ways of running a business because it’s only me. My uncle runs a successful business in Italy in paper distribution, and he said to me, “Why don’t you expand or mass produce your work or have different ways of doing things?” This is where I find he doesn’t necessarily understand me as an artist. For me, it’s about process and handmaking everything. Perhaps that might not be the way I make the most money, but it’s the way in which I want to live my life and how I enjoy existing. My business at the moment is just me handmaking everything from start to finish. What’s really helped me recently is having support from the journalist Melanie Grant, who invited me to be part of an exhibition with Elisabetta Cipriani. It was with artists such as Frank Stella, Penone, who’s one of my favorites from the Arte Povera movement who also came northern Italy, from an area where my family is from.
Sharon: I’m sorry; I missed who that was. Who’s one of your favorites?
Joy: Penone. He’s the youngest of the Arte Povera movement in Italy that came out of Turin. He often looks at nature and man’s relationship to nature, the influence of it or connection. The piece of his that was on display was a necklace which was part of a tree that wraps around the décolletage. Then it has a section which is sort of like an elongated triangle, but it was the pattern of the skin from his palm. It’s very beautiful. His sculpture, his large pieces, are often trees forming into hands or sections of wood that have been carved to look like trees, but they’re carved. There’s also Wallace Chan, who is obviously in fine jewelry. Art jewelry is considered—I don’t know what to say—
Sharon: That’s somebody who has a different budget, a different wallet. Not that your stuff isn’t nice, but the gems in his things, wow.
Joy: There was Grima, Penone, Frank Stella. It was a combination of people who are considered more famously visual artists than fine jewelers. Then there was me, who was this completely new person in the art jewelry scene. I felt really honored that Melanie had asked me to put my work forward. I’ve always known what my work is to me. I see is as wearable artwork. But there was the aspect of, “What do other people see in it? How are they going to engage in this?” The feedback was absolutely incredible.
Since then, the work and the business have been doing so well. I have a bookkeeper now. The one person I employ is an amazing woman called Claire. She has been really helping me understand how my business is working and the numbers. However talented you are, if you don’t understand how your business is working, then you’re set up to fail. It’s really difficult to continue to stay true to my principles and how I want to make, and to try to understand how I’m going to be able to do that, what it’s going to take. I’m right at the beginning of it. I’m only in my first two years of my business. At the moment, from speaking to Claire, she was saying I’m doing well. I feel really supported by my gallery also, and that’s the big part of it. I think that’s going to make the difference.
Sharon: Wow! You do have a lot of support. No matter how talented you are, you do have to know how much things cost, whether you’re making by hand or mass-producing them. I’ve always wanted to stick my head in the sand with that, but yes, you do need to know that.
I didn’t realize there were so many artists at the exhibit. I knew you had this exhibit at Elisabetta Cipriani’s gallery, but I didn’t realize there were so many artists there. That must have been so exciting for you.
Joy: It was super exciting, and it was really interesting. Melanie has just written this book, “Coveted,” which is looking at whether fine jewelry can ever be considered as an art form. That’s a conversation I’m sure you’ve had many a time in these podcasts, about classification. It’s what we were talking about before, about how everything becomes departmentalized. Where is that crossover? How does it work? If people say to you, “I’m a jeweler” or “I’m an artist,” you’ll have a different idea immediately of what that means.
It was hard to present an exhibition which was a combination of different work with the interesting theme of “force of nature,” just as we were coming out of lockdown. These are artists who’ve all been working away, and we got to do a real, in-person exhibition that people could attend and see and touch. One of the most magnificent things with jewelry is the intimate relationship you have with it, being able to touch it, feel it, that sensory aspect. I think in this day and age, we have a huge emphasis on the visual. We’re bombarded with visual language, when the tactile and touching is the first thing we learn with. To be able to touch something is really to understand it.
Sharon: I’m not sure I 100% agree with that philosophy. I have jewelry buddies who say they have to hold the piece and feel it. I guess with everything available online, I don’t know.
Joy: Diversity depends on what your own way of experiencing things is. Also, the way you look at something will be informed by the way you touched it. Yes, we are all looking at things big picture. We know it’s made of wood or metal or ceramic. We can imagine what that sensation is. Of course, imagination also influences the ability to understand something, so they work together. I think it just adds different dimensions. It’s the same with music. Sound is another sensory way in which we experience things. Music often moves me and helps me relax in ways that other art forms don’t do.
Sharon: Right.
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| 25 Aug 2022 | Episode 168 Part 2: What It Like to See Celebrities Wearing Your Jewels | 00:22:55 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Barbara Klar Barbara Klar was born in Akron, OH, with an almost obsessive attention for details. The clasps on her mother's watch, the nuts, bolts and hinges found on her father's workbench, the chrome on her brother's '54 Harley Hog...Barbara's love of hardware and metal and "how things worked" was ignited and continues to burn bright. Coming of age in the Midwest, Barbara was part of the burgeoning glam rock explosion making the scene, discovering Pere Ubu, DEVO, The Runaways, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in out-of-the-way Cleveland nightclubs. Cue Barbara's love of music and pop culture that carries on to this day. New York...late 1970's, early 80's. Barbara began making "stage wear" for friends in seminal punk rock bands including Lydia Lunch, The Voidoids and The Bush Tetras, cementing Barbara's place in alt. rock history as the go-to dresser for those seeking the most stylish, the most cutting edge accessories. She certainly caught the attention of infamous retailer Barneys New York, who purchased Barbara's buffalo skin pouch belts, complete with "bullet loops" for lipstick compartments. Pretty prestigious for a first-time designer! Famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris invited Barbara into a group show at Art Wear and Barbara joyfully began to sell her jewelry for the first time. Barbara opened her first standalone store, Clear Metals, in NYC's East Village during the mid - 80's. In 1991 she moved that store into the fashion and shopping Mecca that is SoHo, where it was located for ten years until Barbara has moved her life and studio upstate to the Hudson Valley. She continues to grow her business, her wholesale line and her special commission work while still focusing on those gorgeous clouds in the country sky. Barbara's work has been recognized on the editorial pages of Vogue, WWD, The New York Times and In-Style Magazine as well as featured on television shows including "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Judging Amy." Film credits have included "Meet The Parents," Wall Street," "High Art" and The Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" video. Barbara has been hailed in New York Magazine as being one of the few jewelry designers who "will lend her eclectic touch to create just about anything her clients request, from unique wedding bands and pearl-drop earrings to chunky ID bracelets and mediaeval-style chains." Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Barbara Klar’s jewelry has been worn by the like of David Bowie, Steve Jordan and Joan Jett, but Barbara’s celebrity fans are just the icing on the cake of her long career. What really inspires her is connecting with clients and finding ways to make their ideas come to fruition. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the crash course in business she got when she opened her store in 1984 in New York City; why making jewelry is often an engineering challenge; and why she considers talent the least important factor in her success. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Barbara Klar, founder and owner of Clear Metals. Welcome back.
So, is your studio inside your home now?
Barbara: Yes, it is. It always has been. One time, I tried to have my studio in the back room of my store in SoHo. That just didn’t work at all. If they know I’m there, everybody is like, “Is Barbara here?” I could never get any work done. Eventually, I was able to get a building in Williamsburg and have my studios there. It was a great building because it had been a doctor’s office in the 50s, so there was a little living space in the back and the front had been all the examination rooms. That worked out perfectly for my studio at the time.
Sharon: And you’re in Woodstock, New York now?
Barbara: Yes, I am. I love it here.
Sharon: Had you moved there before Covid, or is that just an area you like?
Barbara: I’ve been here about six years now. I’ve been all over the Hudson Valley. I think I moved here prior to Covid. It’s a very arty town and full of weirdos and like-minded people. It’s a cool place. It has the history of Bird-On-A-Cliff, which was where all the Hudson Valley artists started. It started as an arts colony. So, it’s got that history, and it’s nice to be part of a history.
When I had my store—and I loved my store on 7th Steet in the East Village—I was so akin and felt such a vibe from the previous generations of jewelers that had stores on 8th Street in the West Village. It was a complete circle to me, and I feel that way now as well.
Sharon: So, you targeted Woodstock or this area to live in?
Barbara: No, I was going through a breakup. It was very painful. I found a place here. I knew it would be my home and my love. I was lucky. It’s one of those guided journeys.
Sharon: Looking behind you, I can see you have quite a well-developed studio. You have all your tools. It doesn’t seem like you’d be missing anything there.
Barbara: Definitely not. It’s great.
Sharon: Did you start out that way? Did you collect the tools throughout the years?
Barbara: Since 1979, I’ve been collecting tools. There’s always something else you need as a jeweler and a metalsmith. About 10 years ago I sold my house, which was a little bit south of Woodstock, and got rid of everything except my studio and my clothes. That’s where I’m at now, and it feels so good to not be buried with stuff. I just have my workshop, and that’s basically it.
Sharon: That’s the important thing, having your workshop. I don’t know if you still do, but you had a very successful line of men’s jewelry.
Barbara: Yeah, I was one of the first to do men’s jewelry. That was probably in the late 80s, early 90s. I’ve done a lot of men’s. I had a lot of gay male clientele. They were always coming in, and they had a large disposable income. It worked out great. I love to see a man in jewelry. I love what’s happened with the metrosexuals in the last eight or nine years. Even the nonbinary and straight males are feeling more comfortable with jewelry, and I think it’s really great. Coming from a rock background, you see a lot of flamboyancy on stage, and you see a lot of guys flashing metal. I think it looks great.
Sharon: It that what prompted you to develop this line? Did you ever sell it? Was it a production line or was it one-off? How was it?
Barbara: It’s limited production always. I had a friend ask me recently, “Barbara, on your website, why don’t you have a category that’s specifically men’s jewelry?” I said, “I’ll never do that because I can never tell what a man’s going to like.” With all of this large spectrum of gender identity, I can’t tell what somebody’s going to like. That’s not up to me, to decide what men’s jewelry is. So, I never really bought into that, but I know men and kids seem to like my work.
Sharon: They look in your window and come in and say, “I’d like to try that on”?
Barbara: Yeah, especially some of the bigger rings. I was always surprised what was attractive to them. Also, there’s a lot of word of mouth. I never relied on advertising. I got a lot of press, which didn’t seem to do much, but mostly it’s because of word of mouth that people come to me.
Sharon: Is the press how you developed your celebrity clientele? You were mentioning that you have quite a roster or that you’ve done a lot for celebrities.
Barbara: Yeah, that just kind of happened. In my store in SoHo, I used to have what I would call my “deli wall.” You know how you go into a deli in New York and you see all of the celebrities saying, “Oh, thanks for that corned beef sandwich. It was the best I had”? I had that in the background. Over time, celebrities would come in. A lot of stylists would bring celebrities. I developed the deli wall, and it was word of mouth again.
Sharon: I always wonder when I look at a deli wall if they ask people for their signatures, if they have a stack of photos in the back and say, “Would you sign this?” How did that work for you?
Barbara: I’d always ask them. It’s hard to do sometimes. I don’t want to overstep because every celebrity reacts differently to being recognized and interacting, but you’ve just got to do it. It’s funny; I’m impressed, but I know they’re human just like me. On my website, I sometimes look at the marketing stats, and that page is the most visited page. Here in America, we love our celebrities.
I know a lot of them had a big impact on me, so I get it. Once I waited in line for half a day because I made this belt for Tina Turner. She was signing records at Tower Records in New York City. I went up to her and showed her the belt, and I was so excited because she meant a lot me. She got me through a couple of breakups that were pretty devastating. So, I get it. I’m a fan. Definitely, I’m a fan.
Sharon: What did she say when she saw the belt?
Barbara: She was like, “Oh, I love it. I just love it.” She said, “I’m going to wear it.” I never saw her wearing it, but she was very kind and wonderful and gracious.
Sharon: That takes guts on your part, just to show a belt to a celebrity like that.
Barbara: It’s not comfortable for me because I’m very shy. I’m really a shy person. I even tried being in bands. My friends were in bands. I work better behind the scenes, but sometimes you have to jump off that cliff. I’m one of these people that I might be shy, but I’m also brave. I’ll take a risk. I think in these times, with the all the competition out there, especially for jewelry designers, you have to take a risk and you have to be brave.
Sharon: Yes, absolutely. It’s amazing to me; so many people I talk to who make jewelry, they say they’re shy, but you have to put yourself out there. You have to put your product out there. You can’t just sit in your studio.
Barbara: You can’t, and you also have to be able to talk about your work. There was a relationship I had at one time, and we had these arguments because he would make this incredible work. I would say, “What does it mean? How would you explain it? How would you define it?” and he would say, “Well, I’m not going to do that. If I have to do that, it negates everything. People should be able to draw their own opinions about what I’m saying.” I was like, “No, I don’t agree. I think you should be able to say what your intention was, how you see it. If it’s interpreted differently, that’s an extra plus in my mind.” I think everybody should be able to talk about their work.
Sharon: Especially if you are doing what I’ll call art jewelry. You’re not walking into a place like Tiffany, let say. That’s the only one of its kind.
Barbara: Exactly. The one-of-a-kinds are like that. When I had my store in SoHo, the greatest thing that was the most fun for me was making an inspirational thing that I thought nobody would ever wear or buy and putting it in the window, because that would get people to come in. They were outrageous; they were huge, and often I would sell those pieces. It was a shock to me.
Sharon: How did it feel to see celebrities, such as Steve Jordan, wearing what you made?
Barbara: It’s pretty incredible. Once it leaves my hands, it takes on its own journey. It’s an ego boost for a minute, but then you’ve got to make a living the rest of the time. I’ve been in this business so long, and you think, “Oh my God, I got my stuff on the Rolling Stones tour. It’s so great.” It’s impressive to people when you’re at a party and you can say that. Ultimately, it means nothing. Has he mentioned my name or anything on the Rolling Stones tour? No. That may never happen, and that’s fine. I don’t care. It’s fun.
Sharon: Is it validation to other people if you’re showing your work or talking about it, and you say a certain celebrity wore it? Isn’t that validation in a sense?
Barbara: It is. I try not to buy into that too much. The validation really comes from myself. I know what I’m doing. It’s fine. I don’t really need that, but that’s an extra special perk, I must say.
Sharon: A validation for you, but also—I’m not sure it would sway me, but for a lot of people—it depends on who the celebrity is, but it could sway somebody. They might say, “If ABC person wore it, then I want one like it.”
Barbara: Oh yeah, definitely. It works that way. To a lot of my rock-and-roll friends, the fact that I’ve sold a lot of work to Steven Tyler or Steve Jordan means something. Sometimes they’ll come to me with special commissions. One of my first commissions when I had my store in SoHo was for a client who had been to London, and he was obsessed with Keith Richards and the bracelet he always wears. He wears this incredible bracelet made by Crazy Pig Studios in London. He came to me and said he wanted me to make a bracelet like the one Keith Richards wears. I said, “Why would you have me do it? Why don’t you dial Crazy Pig in London and get the same bracelet?” He said, “Oh, I was in there. They were mean. They were really intimidating. I don’t want to give them my money.” So, I said, “All right. It’s going to be a little different, but I’ll make one for you,” and I made this incredible bracelet. I still sell it today. It’s the Keith Richards bracelet. It’s a fun story.
Sharon: Wow! Yeah, that is a fun story. You’re also writing a book now. Tell us a little about the title.
Barbara: Titles are interchangeable, but this has been the title for a while. It’s called “You’re So Talented.” I’m not sure what the subtitle is going to be exactly, but it could be “It Takes More Than Talent” or “Confessions of a Worker Bee.” It’s basically about my stories, my experiences not being a businessperson and being more of an artist, surviving New York. A lot of stories. It’s geared towards kids who have a lot of talent, but that’s not all it takes. Talent is like two percent of what it takes to be successful and to be creative and to be a survivor.
Surviving in New York City was such an incredible challenge, especially when you’re living and working on the street level. You can’t control what comes into your space. You don’t know how business is done. I had just opened my store in the East Village. I was 24 or something, and this big bruiser guy comes into my store and is like, “You gotta pay me for sanitation pickup.” I said, “What? I have to pay for sanitation? I thought the landlord took care of that.” He said, “No, we pick it up.” I’m like, “Well, how much do you want?” He said, “We want $75 a month.” I said, “What? I can’t pay that. I can barely pay my rent.” He said, “Well, how much can you pay?” and I said, “Well, I can pay like $15.” He said, “O.K.” and he walked out. Wouldn’t you know, every month he was there for his $15. It was crazy.
Sharon: You were honest, but you had to become a businessperson over the years.
Barbara: It was such a challenge. I have to tell you, another successful designer once said to me, “Nothing teaches you about money like not having any.” I think that was one of the wisest words, because I learned how to become my own bookkeeper, my own press person, my own rep. I also had to pay all the employee taxes, navigate the business end of it, try to get business loans. That was such an experience. I heard 2Roses talking about this on your podcast, too, about how business should be included in art school training. I was totally thrown out there and totally naïve.
Sharon: It sounds like the school of hard knocks.
Barbara: Definitely.
Sharon: And that’s what the book is about?
Barbara: Yes. People say, “You’re so talented.” If I had a quarter for every time somebody said that to me, I’d be rich. No, it’s not about that. It’s about perseverance, and it’s about hearing a lot of “no’s.” It’s about coming through the back door instead of the front door. The book is about things that were on my journey that were important and meaningful to me, and that I think young people could learn something from about moving to New York as an artist. It’s very different now. I don’t claim to know the ins and outs of New York City at this point in life, but I think my journey is still relevant.
Sharon: Definitely. I’m curious how you took the “no’s,” because you must have heard a lot of “no’s.”
Barbara: So many. It gets you to that next point. A no is actually good, because you’re forced to meet up with another solution or another path. I’ll never forget; I wanted to be like Robert Lee Morris, who had his work everywhere and bought a ranch in New Mexico and everything. I remember being tested for QVC in the 80s. They were having young designers on QVC. I did the test, and I heard them in the background saying, “I don’t know if she works well on camera. She might be a little too quirky. Her work is a little too eclectic.” I was like, “Oh God, really?” So, I was like, “You know what? I don’t care. That’s my thing. Maybe I don’t want to be a production person.”
I looked into having my work made overseas and all of that, and I realized, in the end, I would just be a manufacturer. For me, the art was more important. The hands-on making was more important. The person-to-person contact, communication with my clients and my employees was really important to me. I enjoy that way more than if I had been basically a business owner.
Sharon: It’s having the mark of the hand on it. If I know that you crafted it or somebody crafted it, it has much more meaning, I think.
Barbara: Absolutely. It means a lot to me. Recently I had a client whose mother was a big jewelry collector and had a couple of Art Smith rings. The client had lost one of the rings in the pair in Provincetown. It went into the ocean, gone. I was able to hold the matching ring in my hand and look at it and see a signature, because the client wanted me to recreate this ring, which I did do. But the whole time I was making this ring, I kept imaging Art. The ring was covered in dots of silver and pink gold and yellow gold. It’s a beautiful ring, very asymmetrical. The dots were raised like a half a millimeter off the band, and there were like 50 dots on this ring. So, I’m thinking of him making this ring in his studio. Every dot had to have a peg soldered onto the back before it was soldered onto the band. I did that 50 times, and I’m thinking, “My God, this guy was tenacious.” I had a lot of respect.
Sharon: How did you decide to start writing a blog? You write a blog. How did that come about?
Barbara: I really enjoy writing, and there are things I wanted to say that the work couldn’t say by itself. One of the things I’ve always been obsessed with since I was a child are charms. When I was five, Sherry Carr across the street from me had a shoebox full of charms, like the bubblegum charms, and I coveted that box. I was obsessed with that box. Every time I would see it, I would be like, “Show me the charms.” I wanted to knock Sherry out so I could get that charm. I started collecting charms at a very young age. They mean a lot to me, and they mean a lot to my clients. I talked about that in one of my blog posts. I think that was one of my first blogs, talking about charms and the meaning they hold for us. I think the spiritual side is important to me, the emotion you put to it and how it goes on the body. It’s for the body.
Sharon: Well, you have very eclectic jewelry, very unique jewelry. Barbara, thank you so much for being here today.
Barbara: I loved it. Thanks so much.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 08 Nov 2024 | Episode 225: In Memory of Sharon Berman: How Her Passion Fueled the Jewelry Journey Podcast | 00:36:48 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Sharon Berman Sharon Berman is managing principal of Berbay Marketing & Public Relations, specializing in working with professionals to create the visibility and credibility that fuel revenue growth. After 20 years of positioning lawyers and other trusted advisors as experts, Sharon launched Arts and Jewelry and expanded her scope to include professionals in the decorative arts and jewelry fields. A passionate jewelry collector, Sharon is studying for her GIA Graduate Gemology diploma. She is on the Board of Art Jewelry Forum, and is a member of the Association for the Study of Jewelry & Related Arts, American Society of Jewelry Historians, Society of Jewellery Historians and Society of North American Goldsmiths. Sharon writes and speaks frequently about business development and marketing for professionals. She has been a speaker at the Antique & Estate Jewelry Conference (“Jewelry Camp”). Sharon earned her undergraduate degree at UCLA and her MBA at USC. Additional Links to Articles About Sharon and Her Life: For donations in lieu of flowers, please follow the next link to Simms Mann program at UCLA, which was important to Sharon and Jonathan: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Jonathan: In fact, it's not going to be Sharon today. I'm Jonathan Kramer, known to some as Mr. Sharon Berman, and I'll open this podcast with some news, not unexpected in some quarters. Sharon passed away in August 2024 from the long-term effects of cancer. Sharon lived a long and productive life. Even after her cancer diagnosis some nine years ago and her prognosis that she would only live for five years, she soldiered through, did an amazing job of prolonging her life, and in some important ways, did that through this Jewelry Journey Podcast. In the podcast you're about to hear, Sharon's jewelry journey is going to be the subject. My youngest daughter, Aleah Kramer, is interviewing Sharon. This interview took place a couple of months before Sharon's passing. It's going to be the same thing you've heard before about a person's jewelry journey, but it's going to be very personal to Sharon. Sharon's jewelry journey with me began 32 plus years ago when we were dating each other, and it was very clear that we were going to get married. Sharon made it very clear that I should not bother to buy her an engagement ring and that she would take care of that herself. That was very typical of the Sharon I would come to know and love and typical of her approach to jewelry. She didn't want to leave it to me to pick out her engagement ring and just said to me, “Don't worry about that.” She ended up ordering some diamonds to evaluate from Empire State Jewelers in the Empire State Building. I remember that. She picked out the stone she liked, and she picked out the setting that she wanted it to be and had it constructed. That should have told me three decades ago that I was with a very special woman who knew her taste in jewelry and wasn't going to be sidetracked in that. That was actually the beginning of my jewelry journey with Sharon. Her jewelry journey has been one of passion and pleasure, and she's become quite the well-known person, even before she began this series of podcasts. I'm amazingly proud of what she's accomplished in terms of her own jewelry journey, and I have to say she's had an exquisite palate in the selecting and enjoyment of jewelry. She didn't just buy jewelry to collect it. She wore her jewelry all the time. It was a source of pleasure, and it made her feel comfortable. Her jewelry was a source of comfort for her. She would find these incredible makers and go out and interview them and purchase their goods. She really supported emerging artists. That was one of the gateways to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She wanted to share that enthusiasm for the up-and-coming makers with people that she talked with all the time. The more she talked to people, the more people said, “You know what? You should do a podcast and share this.” That's how the Jewelry Journey Podcast really started, some 225-ish episodes ago. We're going to leave the podcast up for people to listen to and hopefully enjoy and learn from. It will be a good and honorable tribute to Sharon's jewelry journey to do that. With that, I'm going to let Aleah do the magic of editing here. She's been the editor of these podcasts and has done an amazing job pulling all of this together. I am deeply grateful for her participation in the podcast and, more importantly, the fact that she and Sharon were really partners in this jewelry journey. I am indebted to Sharon for really opening Aleah's eyes to the jewelry journey. Aleah has become an exquisite collector and has gotten as much joy out of collecting as Sharon. With that, we’ll go to the podcast that Sharon talks about her jewelry journey, and then I'll come back at the end to close this out. Sharon: Welcome to the Jewelry Journey. I'm your host, Sharon Berman, and today we have a bit of a different episode. I have a few announcements to make, and then I'm going to share some of my jewelry journey. To help me with that, I'm going to introduce Aleah Kramer. First, thank you all for listening. If this is your first time, a big welcome. If you are familiar with this podcast, welcome back. I'm sorry to report that we suddenly lost several gems in the jewelry world. One of them is Cookie Lewis, who I can't say had a defined role, but she was my best friend. I've known her for 30 years and have been very friendly for the past 20 years, and she really got me into jewelry. Cookie was a very nice person, but I think anybody who knew her for any length of time would say she's a tough cookie. She had definite opinions that were difficult to change. I wouldn't always listen, but I knew she knew her stuff. I saw salespeople who would look at her when she contradicted them. They would look at her like, “Lady, you don't know what you're talking about,” but they'd go back and ask, and sure enough, she was right. Then they would take something out of one case and put it in another. She knew her stones and could always identify the flaws in stones much better than I could, despite all the study I've done. Cookie Lewis will be missed. The next gem that we lost is Robert Allen. Robert did our transcriptions. Robert did transcriptions for me for eight to 10 years, but for the Jewelry Journey since its inception. He had great analytical skills, as did Cookie, but they were both creative in their different ways. In my experience, I've found that people who are good at analysis aren't really the best people for creative endeavors. I thought they both could look outside of their analytical areas and look at the creative aspects of their profession. For instance, every year about Christmas time, Robert Allen would call me with a different idea. "Hey Sharon, I was thinking, what do you think of this?" Then he'd go into it. I can't tell you that I always accepted them or implemented them, but I thought it was really nice that he thought about it. I'll miss that. Our new co-host has been involved in the podcast for a long time but behind the scenes. Now she's coming out of the shadows. Her name is Aleah Kramer, and she's been a producer, an editor, a transcriber, and a pinch hitter. She's also my stepdaughter. She's also joined me on several voyages that I've gone on for the Jewelry Journey, and I would say that is really her métier. She knows it very well, art jewelry. Aleah: Thank you so much, Sharon. That was such a lovely introduction. Hi, everybody. My name is Aleah Kramer, and I am so excited that we're going to share some of your jewelry journey today. Sharon, you always ask your guests a few important questions, and I've always wondered what your answers to these questions are. I wanted to ask you, how did you first become interested in jewelry? Sharon: I think I first became interested in jewelry because I liked jewelry, but really it was Cookie Lewis who drew me into jewelry. She introduced me to estate jewelry, and from there I was off and running. Aleah: What are some of your favorite types of jewelry? Sharon: I like contemporary jewelry, some art jewelry. I used to like it a lot more. And estate jewelry of any kind. By estate jewelry, I mean used jewelry. That's how most people would define it. Aleah: I often hear you ask your guests about collecting and what defines a collector. What do you define as a collector? Sharon: That's a hard-to-answer question. I've been asked that before. I still don't have a good answer. What is a collector? A collector can be somebody who has three or more of the same kind of piece, three or more pieces by the same named jeweler or the same named maker. I really don't have a definition, and here I'm asking everybody who comes on what they define as a collector. Somebody told me they thought they were a really good shepherd of jewelry, and I thought that was interesting. I'm not sure that really fits the bill, but it was interesting to hear. What do you define as a collector, Aleah? Aleah: Oh, I'm too early in the biz to have any definitions. I'm interested in exploring all of the avenues and creating some definitions, but I am definitely not defining anything yet. Sharon: Okay, I think that's very smart. Aleah: Do you have a favorite piece of jewelry? I know you have a beautiful and extensive collection. Do you have a favorite piece of jewelry or a favorite artist? Sharon: Well, I have maybe one or two pieces by named artists, Cartier, that sort of thing. But I don't collect Cartier. The name people, I might have one piece, not because I was collecting or gathering them together. Not, “Oh, I have a piece by A, now I want a piece by B or C.” They just came to me, or I liked them. I don't have a favorite piece, except I would say there is a person in France who does beautiful, large rings. I happen to like statement jewelry. It has to be large, and it has to make a statement. It has to be a statement piece. Her name is Sylvie Corbelin, and she's represented here by Lionel Geneste. We just did a podcast with him. I'm probably butchering his name, but he represents her. She is a very talented and creative person. Aleah: She makes some really exquisite jewelry with high-end materials, such beautiful gold and such beautiful gemstones. They end up looking like paintings and works of art that you can wear on your finger or on your neck or as earrings. Sharon: It's a good way to describe it. Some of it is just very pretty! Pretty and unusual. Aleah: How long have you been a part of Art Jewelry Forum? Sharon: For about 10 years or more, but I was involved for maybe a couple of years. I'm not currently involved. I just look at what they have and the people they have on. Aleah: How did you get involved? How did you find them? Sharon: I found them because I was looking for ways to travel and learn about jewelry. When I found them, I didn't even know what art jewelry was, and I wasn't that interested. But when I saw that they were traveling, I was really interested. That's how I got involved. Aleah: What specifically about traveling to see jewelry interested you? Sharon: Because I like to travel and because there are very few places you can learn about jewelry by traveling. You know yourself there are only a few places. I could name them on one hand. I don't even need one hand. Aleah: How do you feel about the jewelry market in L.A.? Sharon: The jewelry market in L.A. is one-sided, and that's why I like to travel. Art jewelry really started out in Sweden, in Scandinavian countries, in the Netherlands. Here you don't see art jewelry. Here, I think it's very blingy, shiny. It has to catch your attention, and that makes sense. But it's not the kind I like. Aleah: Let's talk about the trips. About how many trips have you been on? Sharon: About seven or eight. Aleah: Do you remember the first trip that you took? Sharon: Well, you just reminded me. Abroad or with them? Aleah: Let’s start with abroad trips, and then even national trips that you’ve done in America with Art Jewelry Forum. Sharon: Well, I think some of the most memorable trips—we went to some places I never thought we would be, like Estonia. The Netherlands is de rigueur, but Estonia, I was really surprised I was ever there. Where else did we go? Aleah: Do you remember the trips to Germany for Schmuck? Sharon: That's right. We took several trips to Germany because Schmuck is there. That's the name of it. Schmuck means jewelry in German, and it's the largest market for jewelry. Art jewelry is displayed there. People go one year, they skip a year, then they go another year, so that's where we went. I came across a sweater. It was an art jeweler sweater, but it was a sweater I got there. I thought, “Gee, I forgot I had this.” That was a lot of fun. That's what I found with Art Jewelry Forum. If you travel a lot, you've seen things they’re showing. Aleah: What inspired you to start the Jewelry Journey Podcast in 2019? Sharon: I'd been thinking about it for a long time, and I thought, “What better time than the present?” I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I thought, “Just start it and see where it takes you.” Aleah: What were some of the key goals or motivations when you launched the podcast? Sharon: I'm thinking about that. Just to study jewelry in more depth. That was one of my key goals. I like talking and thinking about jewelry. That was another key goal. It gave me an excuse to talk to a lot of the jewelers I knew who wouldn’t talk to me. They were friendly, but they wouldn't necessarily talk to me unless I was asking them questions. Aleah: That's a really interesting answer. I hadn't thought about that as well. Sometimes when you're just talking to them, they're not that open. But when you get them into a podcast setting, they really do open up. You have really asked some interesting questions of people. Thank you for that answer. I’m really interested in that. In the 220 plus episodes that you've done, what have been some of the most memorable or impactful stories that you've covered? Sharon: I don't know if I have any that are so impactful, except one came from a jeweler. He said that the most important thing you have to remember when you're selling jewelry online is what the return policy is. I thought, “Well, he's really right.” I've never forgotten that. That's probably the only thing I haven't forgotten. Aleah: That’s a very important thing not to forget! Sharon: Yeah, but I think he's right. It was a good point. Aleah: What are some of the most important trends or developments you've observed in the jewelry industry over the past four years? Sharon: I would say, and I think a lot of people would agree with me, is probably the use of lab-grown diamonds becoming more accepted. They are a lot more accepted. Today I would look at them a second time in my jewelry. If somebody showed me a lab-grown diamond several years ago, I wasn't interested, but they've become a lot more acceptable in the past few years. Aleah: Which episodes or topics have resonated the most with you and with your listeners? I think you've really been impacted by cataloging. Sharon: Aleah, I think that’s a very good point in that I've spent the past—what I thought was going to be three weeks—six months working with somebody to catalog my jewelry. Aleah and I tried various means. We tried Excel, and we tried all these different ways that were supposed to help you catalog your jewelry. I think we settled on one called Collector Systems. I resisted because that has a subscription of about $1,000 a year, but it's the best one. The best one I could find, at least. I do have to give credit to Mara, who helped me do it. She also helped Aleah do it. When she asked how long I thought it would take, I really thought it was going to take three weeks, but it took forever. I had more than I thought, and we try and keep it up to date. Aleah: It's absolutely been a fun challenge. Sharon: When I'm going to sleep at night, I think, “Oh, I have to tell Mara that I sold that, or I gave it away or I acquired this, so we keep it up to date.” I'm usually behind the ball when it comes to that. Aleah: What have been some of the biggest challenges that you've faced in producing a weekly podcast about jewelry? Sharon: I haven't been able to think that far ahead. We've talked about starting a newsletter. I've wanted to be a few weeks ahead so I could announce things in the newsletter, but I've never been able to get more than a couple weeks ahead of what's coming up to let the listener know and to let the person that I'm interviewing know. By the time I contact them and they get back to me, which sometimes could be several weeks and occasionally it's been several months, it takes a lot longer. The thing that takes the most time on any podcast is the amount of time it takes. It's always lovely to get answers right away, but it doesn't happen that often. Aleah: Which guests or interviews stand out as being particularly insightful and eye-opening for you? Sharon: I have to think about that. I partially answered that question. It was Jeff Russak at Lawrence Jeffrey Estate Jewelers who told me what I needed to know about selling jewelry online. Besides that, Robert Lee Morris was a very interesting episode. There are a lot of episodes where I was told the person didn't have a lot to say, so they said they would stay within the half hour or 20 minutes or whatever, and an hour in I'd have to stop them because they were still going, and I hadn't said anything. They were very interesting, nonetheless. Aleah: How do you go about finding and selecting the guests you feature on your show? Sharon: Sometimes they come directly to me, which in the beginning really surprised me. Now they regularly come to me. If I read a name in the jewelry trades or in the newspaper, I'll circle it and pursue them. It's as simple as that. I may not know anything about them except that they're in the jewelry business, and I'll work on finding out more about them. I would say those are the two main ways. I think it's two main ways, they come to me, or I go after them. Aleah: In your opinion, what are the most exciting or innovative areas of art and contemporary jewelry? Sharon: I've recently learned that the Art Deco period was followed on the heels of Retro jewelry, and I like both periods. I like some art jewelry, but not all. There was a time when I liked all art jewelry, but I found that I really don't. I'm very particular about art jewelry. Contemporary jewelry is contemporary jewelry. If it's not one of those categories, I think it's contemporary jewelry. Aleah: I think that answered part of my next question, because I was going to ask how has the podcast helped expand your knowledge and appreciation of jewelry? Obviously, there are so many things you learn by just talking to so many people. Sharon: There's a lot I've learned and a lot you do learn. There's so much to learn. Aleah: What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own specialty podcast? Sharon: This isn't the first specialty podcast I've been involved in, but on any specialty podcast, any podcast in general, you have to be prepared, and you have to know that it takes time. I would say the thing that takes the most time is finding people and following up with them, booking the interview or whatever it is. It takes a lot of time. People don't think about that, and they don't work that into their story. Aleah: What have been some of the most rewarding aspects of hosting a long-running jewelry podcast? Sharon: That it's been long running. Long running is very exciting and rewarding. When people come to me and say, “I would really like to be on the Jewelry Journey,” or “I found the Jewelry Journey online,” I'm excited and rewarded by that. Aleah: I always think it's fun when people recognize you, too. When we're out at shows, they're like, “Wait, you're Sharon. Don't you host that jewelry podcast?” And I'm always like, “Yes, she does.” Sharon: Yes, once in a while they recognize me. I don't show my face on anything, but somehow people have recognized me. You play a big part because you've taped some. We've done some live, and I hope to do more in the future. Aleah: Yeah, I think you're out there more than you think you are. Sharon: It's probably true. Other things I'm proud of are the three times I've been in the press. The first time was in the Financial Times. Then two or three weeks later, people called me and said, “I saw you in the New York Times.” I was very surprised because one thing led to another, as it usually does in public relations. It turned out I was in the Financial Times, and I was in the New York Times. In November of 2023, the New York Times had a section called "Jewelry Podcasts Pick Up Some Glitter,” and it mentioned me and other podcasts. I am so honored to be included among them. They list six, usually. The third time, the equivalent of GIA in the UK is called Gems&Jewellery, and I was in the autumn 2023 issue. It comes out four times a year, I think, or no more than six times a year. I was very impressed. They were doing a special on jewelry podcasts, and I was honored and excited to be included with them. I questioned, “Why are they asking me?” But they wrote their little blurb, and it was very nice. It was very exciting to have that memory, to cut it out, and to put it on my Instagram, which is @artsandjewelry, by the way. I would say those are the things that are exciting to me. Aleah: How do you maintain creativity and come up with new angles to explore in each episode? Sharon: Well, how do you maintain creativity is probably one of the key questions I have in my mind that I ask the jewelers. How does somebody who's been doing it for 20 years keep fresh and creative? I don't know, and I haven't found the formula for that. As I'm talking to somebody, a question usually comes up that I wouldn't have thought of beforehand, but as they're talking it prods something. Aleah: The best way is really to put yourself out there and listen to their story. You just hear it, and you want to know more. It’s very organic for you. Sharon: Exactly, exactly. Organic is a very good word for it. Aleah: What role has social media played in growing and engaging your podcast audience? Sharon: Social media plays a key role. I don't know how I would distribute it or how people would find me if it weren't for social media. I have to remember that most of the people I talk with are on the younger side and they know social media, but a lot of people I talk to are exactly like me. “Can you tell me how to find the email again?” I have to remember that I play to both audiences. Aleah: Have you encountered any unique challenges in covering the jewelry industry, which is a very visual industry, through an audio format? Sharon: I haven't encountered any issues because this is a visual medium. What I've encountered is when a jeweler doesn't want to talk about their process. I've encountered that several times. It feels like they're giving away their secret sauce. They're afraid of it. Aleah: They're almost afraid to say too much. They think someone's going to replicate it. Sometimes when I'm listening, I'm like, “No, you have your own perspective. It's okay, tell us!” Sharon: That's true. If there’s a unique challenge, that would be it, visual versus audio. I think the audio holds it up. I've broached that subject when I've asked people, “Do you think I should make the podcast visual also?” Usually I get a nay, that people like to listen to the podcast. They're like me. You listen to a podcast when you run or when you're doing something else. Aleah: You've expanded by adding photos on your website and adding photos on social media. Even though it's an audio-only format for your podcast, if you want to find more, it's always beautiful that you bring the photos to the website so that listeners can see more. Sharon: Aleah, you have said it better than I could have. Aleah: Which guests have provided you the most surprising or unexpected insights? Sharon: I don't know why, but there’s a name that sticks in my mind a lot, probably because he's unique. I was thinking about it this morning. His name is Isaac Levy. It was Yvel jewelry, and Yvel is Levy backwards. I was surprised that he even said he would be on a podcast, because he really is an important guy. I remember him was saying, “Sure, why not?” and the way he said it was like, gosh, I wish everybody was that easy to ask if they can be on my podcast. He was such a nice guy but such an important guy, and he didn't start that way. His wife started it, and then he entered and worked with her. Aleah: I remember that too. She was the one who knew how to string pearls, and she taught him. They grew the brand together, the both of them. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently in the early days of launching the podcast? Sharon: Now I'm a lot more comfortable. I do more prep than I used to, but I'm a lot more comfortable doing the podcast. When I listen and remember how it was in the beginning, I was very measured in the way I delivered. I read from a script. I don't have to do that anymore. I would just tell people to start by being themselves. Aleah: That's great advice. Do you have anything you'd like to ask of the jewelry world and of your listeners? Sharon: Of the jewelry world, I'd like to ask if they have something they'd particularly like to listen to or a subject they're interested in. I’d like them to let me know so I can look at how I can do that. Aleah: Is there anything I haven't asked that you've been thinking about, or that you want me to ask? Sharon: No, I think you've covered everything in a lot more depth than I expected it to be covered. Aleah: Thank you so much, Sharon. Sharon: Thank you, Aleah. Aleah: Before my dad, Jonathan, comes back to say a few final words, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that this is not the way we wanted to end this podcast, but since this was the end of Sharon's jewelry journey, and because she left an exquisite mark on the jewelry industry, we feel like this is the right way to leave a tribute to her. Her life was as beautiful as any piece of art or jewelry, and I'm going to continue to bring you stories, memories, photos and more from her jewelry journey. I would love to hear stories from you as well. In a moment, my father is going to tell you how you can share those. Before I finish, I just want to take a moment to thank Olivia Consol. She has also been an editor on this podcast since the beginning and has done tremendous work. Olivia, thank you so much. It's always a joy to work with you. Finally, thank you, Jewelry Journey listeners, friends and family. And now back to my dad, Jonathan. Jonathan: That was Sharon's jewelry journey, and I'm really glad that you listened all the way to the end of it. I hope that you gained a better insight into my bride of 32 years, who was on her jewelry journey even before I met her, and how much pleasure she got sharing the stories of up-and-coming makers, the interesting people she met along the way, the wonderful trips she took with the organizations she belonged to, and just how much this jewelry journey fed her inner being. We’ll be linking to various articles about Sharon and items of interest that will help to round out her experience, her jewelry journey, the organizations that she enjoyed, some articles about Sharon's collecting, and things we think would be interesting to you, including photographs that show you a portion of her jewelry journey collection. I hope you find them interesting. I certainly have. I'd be very grateful if you would take a couple of minutes to leave your reviews of this podcast and your thoughts about Sharon, including anything you think would be interesting to share with us, her family, and with the larger community. I'll thank you for that in advance. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 26 Aug 2019 | Episode 37: Jewelry That Tells a Story: Antique & Estate Pieces in a Modern World with Benjamin Macklowe, President of Macklowe Gallery | 00:38:57 | |
Benjamin Macklowe joined Macklowe Gallery in 1994 and became its president in 2012. Under Ben’s leadership, Macklowe Gallery has become the world’s most respected dealer of antique and estate jewelry, French Art Nouveau decorative arts and the entire oeuvre of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Ben is a sought-after expert in his field and has served as a lecturer for museum groups and scholarly organizations throughout the United States. Ben has appeared on television to discuss Tiffany lamps with Martha Stewart, lectured on the art glass of Emile Gallé at Taft Museum of Art and has taught about Art Nouveau jewelry at Christie’s Auction House on multiple occasions. He helped expand the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, selling important decorative works of art to each. In recent years, Ben has sought to shed light on areas of collecting that have never been fully explored, spearheading the publication of two books: Dynamic Beauty: Sculpture of Art Nouveau Paris and Nature Transformed: Art Nouveau Horn Jewelry. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources: | |||
| 01 Jun 2022 | Episode 158 Part 2: Choosing the Best Pieces for Your Jewelry Wardrobe | 00:26:14 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Nan Summerfield Nan Summerfield joined Doyle New York as Director of the California office in Beverly Hills in 2014. Ms. Summerfield, a GIA Graduate Gemologist, has been in the appraisal and auction business for forty-two years. Nan began her career at the Gemological Institute of America in New York as a Staff Gemologist in the GIA Laboratory and later as an Instructor in the Education Division, before spending thirteen years as a Vice President in the Jewelry Department at Sotheby’s, first in New York, then in Los Angeles. Nan continued to develop and direct Sotheby’s jewelry auctions in Beverly Hills for eight years. For twenty years before joining Doyle, she owned Summerfield’s, a successful firm in Beverly Hills that specialized in buying and selling estate jewelry. Additional Resources: Transcript: After more than four decades working in estate jewelry as a dealer and at auction houses, Nan Summerfield knows a thing or two about how to select the best jewelry. Now Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle, Nan joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the pros and cons of purchasing jewels from the major houses versus lesser-known jewelers; why the auction industry began to court private buyers in the 80s; and when it makes sense to take a risk on an unsigned piece. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Nan Summerfield, Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle. Welcome back.
I wanted to ask you about something you said earlier, when you said that Doyle had decided they wanted to get out there more and get more private clients.
Nan: It was Sotheby’s that wanted that.
Sharon: I’m sorry, Sotheby’s. That’s right. Was it by opening more offices?
Nan: No, at that point, when I had joined Sotheby’s, they’d already done a big expansion worldwide. They were well-established. That was in the early 80s. What they did, and what Bain & Company suggested doing, was to reach out to the private clients and start adding auctions in California again so their private clients could come in. They tried to demystify the process and be more transparent about how it worked and the commission structures, that sort of thing, and to really make a concerted effort. I think that may have been when we started advertising in Town & Country and magazines like that, that were geared toward bringing in the private clients. That’s when it started building, at that point in time.
Sharon: Why private clients? Were they bringing in pieces that were in their safe deposit boxes that you weren’t seeing?
Nan: No, we were actually looking for private clients as buyers. Up until that point, it had been almost exclusively dealers that bought at auction. That’s a whole other thing that was happening at that point. The dealers used to have what they called rings, and they would agree not to bid against each other in the auction. Then following the auction, they would have what they call the knockout, where they’d bid amongst each other and decide who gets what piece and that sort of thing. New York found out about that and outlawed it.
They clamped down on it, but we’d always gotten jewelry from private clients. Most typically, I would say, it had been the estates that had come in and been sold at auction. With the new private clients, we wanted to bring them in as buyers but also as sellers, which they had been, but on a quieter exposure. It was good, but I think it was geared toward bringing the private clients in as buyers.
Sharon: I love the word you used before, which was helping people decide what they wanted to have for their jewelry wardrobe, as opposed to their jewelry collection. I’m still trying to find that elusive definition of what collector is. When you talk about the jewelry wardrobe, can you talk about that? Is it that they have earrings, they have a ring? How do you look at the wardrobe?
Nan: I would say most people typically start with the basics, maybe their engagement ring. They might buy a pair of diamond-studded earrings and maybe get a diamond bracelet along the way. Then they go through life, and they’re making a little more money and have a more sophisticated lifestyle. They start building it as you have your basics in your wardrobe. For example, I had diamonds that go with everything. In my case, I started buying things that were color coordinated. I love blues and greens, so I bought things that with emeralds or sapphires. I love pinks and purples. I have a fabulous Raymond Yard bubblegum 20 carat pink tourmaline ring that I love. I bought that way back in New York a million years ago.
Anyway, with the wardrobe, it really is like getting dressed. What are you going to wear? You want earrings, a necklace, a brooch perhaps, a bracelet and rings. You want things that work together well. With necklaces, we can get a lot of variation with what’s in trend. Right now, we’ve seen a lot of long necklaces. The long Alhambra chains that are Van Cleef or long pendant necklaces have been the trend where we were. Back in the 80s, the collar necklaces were what everybody was wearing. I think we’re going to start moving back into that trend in the next few years, but it’s always changing. Then the trends also change from white metals to yellow metals, and the swing happens in 10 or 15-year cycles. In the jewelry wardrobe, it’s everything from color-coordinating and if gold is in or not.
I also personally have nighttime jewelry, so if I’m going out to an event or black-tie thing, I’ve got platinum and diamonds or colored stone jewelry that’s dressier. Then the daytime jewelry is a little more casual, but it also depends a lot on where you live. It’s building what you personally love and what you’re drawn to. It’s a piece-by-piece adventure, and it’s fun. It really is. It’s exciting when you’ve been looking for the perfect pair of earrings to go with the necklace and bracelet you have, and then you finally find it. It’s fun, and it’s always treasure hunting. If you’re a true collector, I think you never stop collecting.
Sharon: I’d say that’s probably true. It’s interesting, some of the things you said. Yes, your style changes; you become more sophisticated. You say, “Well, that was me 30 years ago, but that’s not me today.”
Nan: Exactly.
Sharon: It’s interesting to think about it more in a wardrobe sense, as opposed to, “I already have a Berlin iron, so I want to add that to my collection.” Actually, my Berlin iron sits in my drawer because I’m afraid to wear it.
Nan: That’s a very rare category too, the Berlin iron. It’s such an interesting segment of history.
Sharon: Yes, some people would probably die, but I don’t mind adjusting or modifying even a signed piece. I want to fit me. I want it to work for me. The next person can decide if they don’t want the soldering I had done. I feel like that’s fine. I don’t give a hell if other people feel that way. It has to fit you, right?
Nan: Absolutely, but if you have to alter a piece, hopefully you can do it in a way where it might be able to be put back together. If you have a necklace you want shorter that has some links come out of it, or rings, which so often need to be sized to be worn, yeah. If you have a good jeweler that does it, then it should be less detrimental.
Sharon: You talked about the fact that you left having your own business as a dealer, which you were in for 20 years.
Nan: 20 years. It was wonderful.
Sharon: Wow! And that things had changed, and that was one of the reasons you thought maybe it was time to go back into the auction house. What changed in that time?
Nan: It was very interesting, because as I mentioned earlier, probably the first 10 or 15 years I had my own business, it was so easy to find jewelry and beautiful things. I used to go to the flea markets, I’d hit all the tradeshows and I had private clients bringing me things all the time. What changed everything was the entrance of the internet right around 2000. In the beginning it was new, and people were still trying to figure out to how to navigate it. Then, probably in the last five to eight years I was in the jewelry business, we started seeing an increase in people doing things online.
You had different platforms. I think eBay was one of the first to start selling things, and then 1stDibs came along. There were various platforms like that, where people started selling their jewelry online as opposed to bringing it to the tradeshows or the antique shows to sell. I think that was when it really started shifting, because we started finding less. When we would travel and go looking for things, whether it was at the flea markets or at the Hillsboro in the Bay Area, the antique shows or the big Miami show, it was just harder to find.
It was an interesting period and I recognized that. Really, the way it happened with Doyle is that they reached out to me. They were interested in opening up a west coast division, and I had worked with the woman that is the head for jewelry for Doyle in New York. She and I had worked together at Sotheby’s, so we had known each other for a long time. They reached out to me to see if I would be interested in opening up the west coast for them. They felt a jewelry person was probably the best direction to go because jewelry has a very broad reach. Everybody has jewelry. Not everybody collects old master paintings or impressionists or antique furniture or silver or whatever, but jewelry tends to cast a pretty wide net with people. Everybody has a mother or a daughter, somebody that has jewelry or loves jewelry. It was very timely that they reached out to me because my business was fine, but I could sense the changes that were happening.
I loved the 13 years I had spent at Sotheby’s. The auction world is really fun and interesting. You have such a huge volume of property that goes through your hands, and you meet the most interesting people that are both buyers and consigners. I find, like what I said before about working for Sotheby’s, is that in the auction houses, generally the specialists are very generous with their knowledge and share it. In the trade, people are very close to the vest, because knowledge equates to money. If you know why something is special, you don’t want to tell somebody else because you might lose your advantage.
Anyway, for all these different reasons, the time was right, so we went back and forth, and I ended up going onboard with Doyle. It started in May or June, I think, and I ended up signing a contract with them in October and haven’t looked back. It’s so much fun, and we’ve had fabulous success on the west coast. It's interesting, because Doyle very much reminds me of the way Sotheby’s used to be. It was like a family. At that point, John Meriam was the Chairman of Sotheby’s, and he was such a wonderful man. Doyle has that same not-corporate feeling you have in so many companies these days, but more of a family that works there. It’s been a wonderful experience; it really has.
Sharon: It sounds like it. You mentioned the office is moving. Doyle’s office in Beverly Hills is moving from the upper floor to a ground floor.
Nan: Yes, we’re very excited. We originally took over my old office that I had in Beverly Hills, and our business has just grown. It was again where the stars aligned. We’d opened a street-front gallery in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York was interested in opening a west coast branch in Beverly Hills on the ground floor. The head of our company had been out looking at colleges with her daughters over Labor Day weekend. They walked around Beverly Hills and noticed that a jewelry store in Beverly Hills had a sign that he was moving, and the space was available. She asked me to take a look at the space, which I did. He was so nice and took me on a whole tour and showed me that it was an enormous, beautifully built-out space. It was a small fortune in rent, but I went back.
As I was walking up to look at his space, there was a space downstairs in our building on Camden Drive, and it was closed. It was a gentlemen’s clothing store, and they had a sign on the door that it was closed. I thought, “Well, let me go peek in the window and see what this space looks like, because this could be good for us.” As I was looking in the window with my hands up on either side of my eyes, one of my old neighbors from when I was on the penthouse floor in our building was walking by, and he said, “Hey, Nan, what’s going on?” I said, “Well, we’ve outgrown our space and we’re exploring options.” He said, “A friend of mine has this place. You need to call him,” and he gave me his telephone number. After I had gone to look at this other space and videotaped it and sent it to New York, I called him up. He was the nicest man, and he told me he wanted to open another store. He had a son that was in New England in a cute little town, and his wife told him that if he was going to open a new store, he would have to get rid of another one. He had been through the pandemic, which had been stressful for everybody, so the space wasn’t even on the market.
I had spoken to our real estate broker, and he had said, “Nan, I’m sorry. I know New York asked you to look. There’s nothing on the ground floor level in the triangle. You’re going to have to go south of Beverly,” which in mind is no go; we only want to be in the triangle. We ended up signing a lease on that space. Another thing that makes it really wonderful is that we are located on Camden Drive, and two doors up from us is Christie’s. There’s Mr. Chow’s, a restaurant, and Sotheby’s is on the other side. So, we’re on auction row for the entire west coast. We’re thrilled about that too, because the auction house is on New Bond Street in England, the way when you’re doing a road trip and all the fast food and gas stations are clustered together. It’s sort of one-stop shopping. It feels like the jewelry district in New York. When you have similar businesses together, it drives business for everybody. So, we’re very excited.
Sharon: That’s great. It sounds exciting. Would a private client bring a piece to you and say, “What do you think about this? What can I get for it at auction?” and then go to Christie’s or Sotheby’s? It seems like people would be walking the street saying, “What does everybody think? How much can I get for it?” What do you think about that?
Nan: Yes, I think that is certainly a part of the equation. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s tend to be geared to try to get the very high-priced items. That leaves a lot of room in the mid-range and below where they won’t handle property. We handle everything, from soup to nuts. We feel like when we’re handling estates or clients, we don’t want to cherry pick their best things and tell them, “You’re on your own.” We try to accommodate our clients, so we have different levels of sale. I think a lot of times it’s about where you feel the most comfortable when you go and meet with different auction houses or specialists. I think it’s a very personal decision for people.
Sharon: How many times a year does Doyle have jewelry auctions on the west coast?
Nan: We were doing jewelry auctions up until the pandemic. When we went into the pandemic, everything changed. We’d already had our May sale put together, photographed and catalogued and everything, when we shut down. It happened so quickly that we were scrambling. We had to ship all the jewelry to New York. At that point, we implemented quite a few changes in how we did auctions going into the pandemic. We recognized that when people are locked in from the pandemic, their only way of communicating with the world was their telephone, their television or their computer. Gone were the days that people could go wandering into a store and buy what they wanted.
So, with that came a number of changes we made. We decided to make smaller sales. We typically had had about seven or eight jewelry auctions a year, and they would run maybe 500 lots for sale. We realized that people were looking at the sales on their phones and they would glaze over at 500 lots. So, we recalibrated it and started doing more auctions but smaller sales, about 200 lots per sale, which is more manageable.
We also implemented another change where we started photographing the jewelry being worn. I will tell you that in the 20 years I had my own business, one of the most frustrating things for me was when I bought at auction. I remember buying a pair of earrings, and when they arrived, they were enormous. I thought they would be the size of not even a quarter. Having a sense of scale when you’re buying online is very important, so we started having our shots photographed on some of our younger staff members—they’re more photogenic—so people would have a sense of scale and could see how big that pendant necklace is, or how the earrings look on the ear or the ring on the hand. That was also very helpful for people to bid online. They got more information and had a better sense of what they would be buying before they had to commit to it.
Now we’re doing auctions more than monthly. We usually run an auction pretty much every month. There are a number of months where we’ll have two or three auctions at different levels.
Sharon: Online or in person?
Nan: The way it’s structured, we have important sales, fine sales and online jewelry sales. The online sales are the less expensive things, group plots generally, things that are under $1,000. There will be some signed pieces. The online sales are handled only online. There’s no public auction that goes on. You can bid on your computer in real time. You can bid up to that time. If you bid on something just before it closes and somebody comes in and outbids you, it gives you another couple of minutes to go back and raise your bid, so it’s structured a little bit differently than our fine and our important sales. The online sales are virtually every month.
The fine and the important sales, now that we’ve come out of the pandemic, we’re doing public exhibitions. We’re doing previews in New York, and we try to do the previews in California as well. Once we open our gallery space, we should be getting all the fine and the important for previews for our California clients.
When people want to bid on the auctions, they have four different ways they can buy. They can come in person to the auction in New York and bid there. They can arrange to telephone bid. If they call us ahead of time, we’ll set it up. On the day of the auction, we’re all roped in on our computers, on Zoom calls, on the phone calling clients saying, “O.K., I’m going to be bidding with you on this lot that’s coming up in four lots,” and then we bidders sit there in the room. They can also leave an absentee written bid saying, “I like this bracelet. The estimate is $3,000-$4,000. I really love it. I’m going to bid up to $4,500.” Then we will bid on their behalf against the competition until there’s no competition, but if they get outbid, they won’t get it.
The last way, which has become so popular, is that people can actually bid on their computers in real time. Once the auction starts, if they go to Doyle.com, at the top there will be a banner that says, “Join the live auction now.” You click that. You can see the auctioneer. You can see the piece of jewelry. You can see the estimate and description, and then you can see if the bids are going. It’s a constantly scrolling thing. An auctioneer will be calling, “Yes, we have a bid at $8,500 from Nan in California. We’ve got a bid at $9,000 in the room” and so forth. So, people have four different ways they get on those sales.
One of the important things that’s good for people to remember when they’re bidding at auction is that, as is the standard in the entire auction business, there is a buyer’s premium. The buyer’s premium is on top of the hammer price it sells for, and it ranges from 25% to 30% depending on the auction house. At Doyle, it’s 26%. It’s really fun. It’s very easy. We also do condition reports on everything so people can see what the quality of the diamonds is, what the size of the ring is, how long the bracelet or the necklace is, how much it weighs. We give a lot of information on our auctions, which gives people more confidence in buying things. If they have extra questions, they can reach out to us and we will follow up with them and give them more detail.
Sharon: There are a lot of different ways, a lot of different perspectives. It is very interesting. Some of the reasons that seem to excite you make me say, “Forget it,” just because things are coming at you from so many different ways: online, in the room, on the phone, whatever.
Nan: I can see how it would seem overwhelming, but I would say choose the avenue that’s most comfortable for you. Just focus on that and let the rest of it fall away.
Sharon: That’s good advice. I know it’s the way of the world in terms of auctions, and the world has changed so much. Even as we’re talking, the jewelry world has changed so much.
Nan: Dramatically, it has.
Sharon: Thank you so much, Nan, for being with us today and telling us about it. I’ve learned a lot and it’s been really enjoyable. Thank you so much.
Nan: Sharon, thank you so much for inviting me. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 21 Oct 2019 | Episode 44: A Look Ahead at NYC Jewelry Week 2019 with Bella Neyman and JB Jones, Founders of NYC Jewelry Week | 00:21:48 | |
NYC Jewelry Week (NYCJW) is dedicated to promoting and celebrating the world of jewelry through educational and innovative focused programming. Last year’s inaugural NYCJW welcomed over 10,000 attendees who explored the multifaceted jewelry industry. This year’s event, happening November 18-24, will include groundbreaking exhibitions, panel discussions led by industry experts, exclusive workshops, heritage-house tours, innovative retail collaborations and other one-of-a-kind programs created by founders Bella Neyman and JB Jones. Bella Neyman is an independent curator and journalist specializing in contemporary jewelry. She, along with Ruta Reifen, started Platforma, a contemporary jewelry-focused initiative whose exhibitions have been on view in the United States and Europe. Bella’s articles have been published in The New York Times, American Craft and Antique magazine, and she is a frequent contributor to MODERN Magazine and Metalsmith magazines. Bella also serves on the Board of Art Jewelry Forum. JB Jones co-curated the first street art x art jewelry exhibition, PLACEMENT, with Bella Neyman. The duo launched a digital contemporary jewelry platform of the same name designed to promote the concept of “wearing your art.” Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Wear Daily, Juxtapoz, Obey, and Work magazines and more. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources:
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| 15 Nov 2023 | Episode 212 Part 1: Inside Appraiser Jo Ellen Cole’s Extensive Jewelry Library | 00:27:23 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jo Ellen Cole Jo Ellen Cole is the owner of Cole Appraisal Services and the director of fine jewelry at Abell Auctions. She earned her Graduate Gemologist Diploma at the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica and successfully passed the prestigious Gemological Association of Great Britain’s FGA examinations.
Additional resources: Gemological and Jewelry Books for a Professional Library:
GEMOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION BOOKS Gemstones: Their Sources, Descriptions and Identification, Webster, Robert Gem Testing, Anderson, Basil Handbook of Gemstone Identification, Liddicoat Jr., Richard T. Gem and Ornamental Materials of Organic Origin, Pedersen, Maggie Campbell Gemstones of the World, Schumann, Walter Photoatlas of Inclusions in Gemstones, Vols. 1, 2 and 3, Gubelin, Edward and Koivula, John Color Encyclopedia of Gemstones, Arem, Joel The Spectroscope and Gemmology, Anderson, Basil and Payne, James, edited by Mitchell, R. Keith
GENERAL REFERENCE Gemology, An Annotated Bibliography, Sinkankas, John The Complete Handbook for Gemstone Weight Estimation, Carmona, Charles Dictionary of Gems and Gemology, Shipley, Robert The Jewelers Manual, Liddicoat Jr., Richard T. and Copeland, Lawrence L. Gemstone and Mineral Data Book, Sinkankas, John
DIAMONDS Diamonds, Bruton, Eric Diamond Cutting: Complete Guide to Cutting Diamonds, Watermeyer, Basil Famous Diamonds, Balfour, Ian Hardness 10, Vleeschdrager, Eddy Diamond Handbook, Newman, Renee Laboratory Grown Diamonds, Simic, Dusan and Deljanin, Branko Fluorescence as a Tool for Diamond Origin Identification – A Guide, Chapman, John, Deljanin, Branko and Spyromilios, George PEARLS Book of the Pearl, Kunz, George F. and Stevenson, Charles Hugh Pearls, Strack, Elizabeth Beyond Price, Donkin, R.A.
JADE Jade, A Gemmologist’s Guide, Hughes, Richard Jade For You, Ng, John Y. and Root, Edmund
COLORED STONES Ruby and Sapphire, Hughes, Richard Emerald and Other Beryls, Sinkankas, John Opal Identification and Value, Downing, Paul
JEWELRY HISTORY Brilliant Effects, Pointon, Marcia Understanding Jewelry, Bennett, David, and Mascetti, Daniella Jewelry in America, Fales, Margha Gandy Victorian Jewellery, Flowers, Margaret Transcript: In appraiser Jo Ellen Cole’s opinion, the best thing a jewelry lover can have is a well-stocked library. Information on gems and jewelry abounds online today, but much of that information is incorrect. For that reason, Jo Ellen—a Graduate Gemologist who also passed Gem-A’s FGA examination—turns to books when she has a question about a specific piece, hallmark or stone. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to share which books she recommends for every jewelry interest; how jewelry trends shifted over the years due to cultural forces; and how to quickly identify the characteristics of different jewelry periods. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
I met Jo Ellen about six or seven years ago when I was studying for the GG, or the Graduate Gemology degree. In order to pass it, I needed to identify about 18 stones and get them all right, and I only had three chances to do that. This was daunting to me because I’m not a science person; I’m not a math person or anything. I wasn’t working with the stones. I wasn’t working in a jewelry store, so I really didn’t have the opportunity to handle the stones. I called another appraiser, Charlie Carmona, whom we’ve had on this podcast, and asked him for a recommendation for a tutor. I thought it was a pretty weird recommendation that I was asking for, but he immediately recommended Jo Ellen, and I never looked back. She’s been a great tutor. It was a few years ago, but she helped me a lot.
She knows a lot about jewelry, and not just jewelry, but I find her extremely knowledgeable about vintage and antique pieces. I have talked to and been to enough appraisers to know that this is its own specialty. She’s also been helpful when it comes to directing me to researchers for whatever I need. She pointed me in the right direction. Today, she’s going to share with us the books that she thinks will help us with our jewelry journey. Jo Ellen, welcome to the program.
Jo Ellen: Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.
Sharon: I’m so glad that you deigned to be on. Now, tell us, with a GG, which is part of the GIA, you can do a lot of things. So, why did you go into appraisal as opposed to other things?
Jo Ellen: Well, I found that I was lacking in salesmanship abilities, to say the least. I’m just not a salesperson, but I love to categorize; I love to research. Appraising seemed to fit that bill very well. Plus, when I realized that I was not good at sales, I met Charles Carmona, whom you mentioned before, at American Society of Appraisers—no, it was the AGA. I can’t remember what that stands for, but it was a meeting. I met him, and a couple of years later, he asked me to work with him and I jumped on it. It was a wonderful experience. He’s still my mentor. He’s so knowledgeable and knows so much about appraising. I always feel comfortable talking to him about any problem I might encounter. He’s been very instrumental.
Sharon: And a big name in the L.A. market, I would say.
Jo Ellen: He’s really gone worldwide. He has three laboratories in China and Thailand as well.
Sharon: I didn’t realize that.
Jo Ellen: Yeah, he’s really opened up his market. He also leads a lot of traveling groups and things. He’s very well-known.
Sharon: I knew he was well-known in Los Angeles, but I didn’t know he was that well-known around the world.
Jo Ellen: Having factories in Africa, he’s been around doing a lot of different things.
Sharon: I’ve stopped purchasing books when it comes to novels or something like that. I just listen to them. Why should I purchase a book as opposed to listening online when it comes to jewelry? Why should I purchase a jewelry book?
Jo Ellen: What I’ve noticed is that when I go online to research prices of jewelry, which I do often, I find that a lot of the information I find is not correct. I think part of the reason for that is because it’s so easy to list something online. It gets your name out there, so people do that. However, they don’t always double check their information. There’s a lot of misinformation out there.
Whereas in a book, it takes a lot longer to set it up, edit it, make sure everything’s proper. I’ve been able to count on the information coming from books a lot better than I have been from online sources. However, I must say there is certainly a good reason to look online as well. Some of the information is very good. It’s just that, personally, I feel more comfortable with a book form. Then, you can revisit that if you need to. It’s easier to find.
Sharon: Do you have to know if it’s right or wrong before you look at a book?
Jo Ellen: You have to figure that out on your own. But generally, if you have a good background in terms of knowledge of gems and gemology and antique jewelry from reading through books, a lot of times, you’ll find that information is incorrect when you go online.
Sharon: I know instances where I’ve found incorrect information about pearls or something like that. I wouldn’t say I’m any kind of expert, but I know it’s incorrect.
Jo Ellen: Yeah.
Sharon: Can you tell us quickly what you do every day? What does an appraiser do every day?
Jo Ellen: If I’m not reviewing a book for a gemological publication like The Gemologist or Gems & Gemology, which doesn’t do book reviews anymore—but a lot of times, I’m asked by people in the industry to review new books. So, I do that a lot, which involves going over the book line by line and figuring out what I think is proper and what isn’t, or what is clear and what is not. I do that a lot.
I also work at a local auctioneer two days a week, at Abell Auctions, as their fine jewelry director. I’m constantly cataloguing things and looking for prices on things, always encountering something unusual there. You get things from all over the world, and people like to use that venue as a way to sell their items. If I’m not doing that, I’m actually going to people’s localities to appraise their jewelry for them, either for insurance purposes or for estate purposes if somebody has passed or wants to set up a trust. I do that a lot, but a lot of my days are spent doing what I love, which is reading.
Sharon: You sound pretty conscientious to look at a book that closely when you’re writing a book review.
Jo Ellen: For me, it’s really important to get it right. Generally, most books, even if I don’t particularly like them, I can at least validate that their information is correct. I did have one book about a year-and-a-half ago that was just so egregious in its information I had to give it a bad review, which I’ve never done before. I called up the editor the week before it was due and said, “Why are you even covering this book? It’s so awful.” He asked why, and I started pointing out little things. He was like, “Oh,” but he published the review anyhow. I didn’t feel great about it because I don’t like to slam people for things, but it was just so awful I had to point it out.
Sharon: So, we should do our own reading, both online and with books.
Jo Ellen: Absolutely.
Sharon: Let’s talk about a book or books and talk about the history. If you want to learn about the history of jewelry through the ages, what would you look at?
Jo Ellen: There are a couple of really good books. When you write a book, it seems like the best formula is always to start at the beginning and take them through the ages. That’s what they do with jewelry history. Usually, they’ll start with prehistoric jewelry and how jewelry first came to be—it’s one of the oldest things that humans have done that marks them as humans—and then it goes through medieval times and Renaissance, and then to Georgian and Victorian and Arts and Crafts or the Aesthetic Period, and then through Art Nouveau and Art Deco and Retro and on up to modern jewelry for today. That’s usually how a book on jewelry history is set up. There are couple of really good ones out there that encapsulate what you need to know in terms of jewelry history.
Sharon: Before you tell us that, I wanted to tell our listeners that we will have all this information on the website. Yes, take notes, but you don’t have to write everything down; it’ll be on our website.
Jo Ellen: Yeah, I created a list of things that you can look for. One of the main books I recommend for overall jewelry history is a book called “Understanding Jewelry.” It’s by David Bennett and Daniela Mascetti, who were both cataloguers at Sotheby’s for many years and very knowledgeable in their field. It really helps to set up all those different ages of jewelry and gives wonderful examples and photographs. It’s a picture book as well as an informative book, but all the information they offer has always been spot-on. I’ve learned so much from that book. It’s one that I would definitely recommend.
Sharon: I’ve probably seen it in every jewelry office that has books. I see that book.
Jo Ellen: It’s a great book. It really is. Another good one that’s much simpler and has more pictures is a book called “Warman’s Jewelry.”
Sharon: Warman’s?
Jo Ellen: Yeah, W-A-R-M-A-N. The second edition was actually written by a good friend of mine, Christie Romero, who has since passed on. She used to be on the Antiques Roadshow. You’d see her on Antiques Roadshow a lot, a very knowledgeable woman. She had started her journey by traveling down to Mexico and learning all about Mexican silver and then just expanded from there. She used to give classes on jewelry at Valley College in Los Angeles. She just knew how to present things in such a way that it was very easy to assimilate that information.
It has tons and tons of pictures. It also has a jewelry timeline. It’s very thorough for being such an easily read book. There are even some prices in there, I think. It’s now an older book, and I think there have been other editions that have been written since hers, but I always liked hers because I’m familiar with it. So, that’s another good one that I would offer.
Sharon: What about a book if we want to be more specific, like Georgian or Victorian jewelry? It’s funny that when you say prehistoric, you could take many of the prehistoric pieces and wear them today and nobody would know the difference. But it seems to jump then to Renaissance.
Jo Ellen: Because it has to do with the Dark Ages. A lot of it is about human history and civilization. During the Dark Ages, people were in such terrible shape as a civilization, they didn’t have time to decorate themselves, so they usually used items from the past. There wasn’t a lot of information coming out between, let’s say, the 5th and 13th centuries. Then things started rolling again once society got more stabilized.
Sharon: Is there a particular book we should look at if we want to pick up where society picked up? Let’s say Georgian.
Jo Ellen: There’s a really good book on jewels of the Renaissance by Yvonne Hackenbroch. It’s quite a tome. It’s big, and it goes through the history of civilization as well as jewelry. It talks about the light occurring in the beginning of the Renaissance, when people started realizing there’s more to life than just eating and sleeping and staying alive. You can decorate yourself. You can show your social status by what you wear, some of it being jewelry. That’s a very good book for the Renaissance period.
There’s also another Renaissance book called “Renaissance Jewels and Jeweled Objects: From the Melvin Gutman Collection” by Parker Lesley. It shows wonderful examples of Renaissance-oriented jewelry. There’s one called the Hope Pearl Jewel. It’s this big, baroque pearl that’s decorated as the body of a man. It’s very well known. It demonstrates jewels like that.
Sharon: From there, does it continue to Georgian and Victorian?
Jo Ellen: Yeah, there’s a really good book, “Georgian Jewelry 1714-1830,” by Ginny Redington and Tom Dawes with Olivia Collings. It’s great because I had never seen a book specifically on Georgian jewelry. It’s not glamorous jewelry because the techniques weren’t there. It’s just that people wanted to adorn themselves to help their social status. It’s very collectable today. People collect Georgian jewelry all the time. It goes through the period before Queen Victoria took the throne and clarifies a lot of things. And, again, the information is spot-on. I’ve never had a problem with these books. When I go to confirm that information, I’ve never had a problem with it.
Sharon: I don’t collect Georgian jewelry, but I do know it’s very hard to find.
Jo Ellen: Yeah, it is, but it shows up at different auctions, sometimes in the most unusual places. Even at Abell Auctions you’ll see it. People just hold onto these things. A lot of Georgian jewelry isn’t available anymore because people would melt down those items to make new items in a newer fashion, such as a Victorian fashion. They would take the stones out, melt down the metals and then either recast them or remake them in some way into a newer-looking form. That’s why you don’t see a lot of Georgian jewelry anymore.
Sharon: How about Victorian jewelry? There seems to be a lot of it.
Jo Ellen: There’s a lot of Victorian jewelry. Even though people also did it then, where they would melt things down and make a new piece out of older pieces, there is a lot of Victorian jewelry because Queen Victoria, whom that period is named after, wore a lot of jewelry. She was a big jewelry person. She loved jewelry and she used it for sentimental reasons to give imagery, to bestow favor on people. So, there’s a lot of it around because people would want to copy her. Everybody started doing that. You’ll have mourning jewelry from Victorian times.
A lot of historical things happened during her reign, such as the finding of diamonds in South Africa, which changed the diamond market forever. Before then, there were diamonds from Brazil, primarily, or India, but they’re very hard to come by and very, very expensive. Once they opened up the diamond fields in South Africa, you started getting a lot more diamond jewelry.
Sharon: By mourning, you mean if somebody dies?
Jo Ellen: Yeah. A lot of times, when someone would die, they would leave a certain amount of money in their will to make mourning rings or pendants for their friends and family to remember them by. So, you have this memento mori-type jewelry which has its own collecting base. People collect their little pendants, which are like little baskets with a little enamel skeleton inside, little rings that say the man or woman’s name written around the inside of the band, all sorts of things like that. It’s kind of sweet because, when you think about it, jewelry is one of the few art forms that’s worn close to the body. It makes it more sentimental.
Sharon: And the diamonds from South Africa, were they different than the other diamonds, besides being less expensive?
Jo Ellen: The thing with Brazilian diamonds in particular is that they had what they call a lot of knots in them, where their crystals grow into crystals. You would have these harder-to-polish areas. With African diamonds, it’s such a pure form that they’re easier to polish. They didn’t take as much time to polish, and they didn’t break on the wheel the way that some of the Brazilian diamonds would break.
Sharon: They used those diamonds in Victorian jewelry?
Jo Ellen: They did.
Sharon: What books should we look at if we want to learn about Victorian jewelry?
Jo Ellen: There is a wonderful book—in fact, I used to know an antique dealer that used to give out these books to his clients because they were wonderfully organized. There’s a book called “Victorian Jewelry” by Margaret Flower, and it goes through the different phases of Victorian jewelry. There’s an early, a mid and a late phase. What she does is describe exactly what you can see during each of the phases, what types of jewelry. It’s very interesting, and it gives you an overall picture of how things came to be during that time period. It’s really nicely done.
There’s a much larger book I’m still reading because it’s so big. It’s called “Jewelry in the Age of Queen Victoria” by Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe. That also has a lot of very specific information on different types of jewelry, the makers during that time. What’s interesting is you’ll see the same authors over and over again because these people really use it. It’s their way to express themselves as a lifestyle, almost. They’re wonderful authors, and they do their research and know what they’re talking about. So, those are two Victorian jewelry books I would highly recommend. I think they’re wonderfully done.
Then, if you want to go into French jewelry, there’s another book called “French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century” by Henri Vever. It’s an enormously fat book. I’m still reading that one as well, but again, it’s jewelry makers. It’s huge. It gives makers’ information and techniques, and it’s beautifully done. That’s a good book to have as well.
Sharon: First of all, it strikes me that you seem to look at the pictures a lot more. You read. Most people don’t read any of the book. They look at the pictures. That’s different.
Jo Ellen: They have pictures with jewelry; that’s sure to entice you to continue looking.
Sharon: Then what do you go into? Edwardian and Art Nouveau?
Jo Ellen: Before that, there’s actually a period called the Aesthetic Period, which is also covered in the “Jewelry in the Age of Queen Victoria” book. It was in the late 1870s through the 1900s. There were certain makers that specialized in it, like Child & Child of London. They would make these beautiful pieces that harkened back to classical times but using new techniques and materials. That was a specific period. It was a very small period, but all the jewelry that was done during that time is beautifully done. There’s a book by Geoffrey Munn called “Castellani and Giuliano,” and it talks about that specific time period. For example, Castellani was known for taking antique or ancient jewelry and refiguring it for that time period around the 1900s.
Sharon: He was a goldsmith?
Jo Ellen: He was a goldsmith. It was actually two brothers who were goldsmiths. One of the brothers was very politically active and lost an arm when they were demonstrating or something. He got put in jail, but the other brother kept on, and then their children took over after them. In Giuliano’s case, which was another manufacturer in Rome, he was known for his enamels. You will see jewelry specifically with black and white enamel accenting other colored enamels. The work is beautifully done, and it’s very detailed.
Sharon: We may be going back a few years. What was Berlin iron, and when was that popular?
Jo Ellen: Berlin ironwork, I believe, was like 1840 through 1860. It was a result of people giving up their precious metals for the Prussian Wars that were happening at that time. They would make this Berlin ironwork, which is very delicate and lacey, but it was made out of iron because they didn’t want to use precious metals for that; they wanted to use it for warfare. So, they would use ironwork as a substitute for precious metals. There are some beautifully intricate bracelets and necklaces. It looks like lace. It’s really beautiful.
Sharon: Is it wearable?
Jo Ellen: It is wearable. It’s kind of a Gothic look, so it’s a heavier look. I don’t know if you’d want to wear it every day because, again, it’s kind of—I hate to say gloomy, but it is kind of a sober look because it’s black and the tracery is so fine. But it’s certainly wearable.
Sharon: After the Aesthetic Period, we have Edwardian and Art Deco. What do we have?
Jo Ellen: What we start with is Arts and Crafts, which is actually my favorite period. I have a lot of books on it, but there are a couple that were really good in terms of pushing forward the information I knew. One is a book called “Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts and Crafts Tradition” by Elyse Zorn Karlin, who’s a very active member of the jewelry industry. She gives lectures. It’s this wonderful book on Arts and Crafts jewelry and metalwork and leads you through the making of it with the guilds.
They tried to restart jewelry guilds in England where everything was made from first to last by the same person. The metal would be drawn and shaped by the person. If enamels were used, they would make the enamels themselves and apply them themselves. The stone setting was done by the same person. That was the beginning of Arts and Crafts, the person making the piece from beginning to end. Usually they’re not terribly intricate, but they’re beautifully fashioned with a lot of feeling. It’s a very comfortable look, and it’s infinitely wearable. The first part of Arts and Crafts started around 1883 through 1900. Then there was a repeat of it between around 1920 and 1935, around the same time as Art Deco.
What I forgot to mention during the Aesthetic Period was Carl Fabergé from Russia. He did a lot of Aesthetic pieces.
Sharon: He did the eggs, right?
Jo Ellen: He did the eggs for the Russian monarchy, but he also did jewelry for everyday people. He would make little, miniature enameled eggs for the general Russian population. Those still come up today once in a while. I saw an entire necklace of Fabergé eggs, all in different enamel colors beautifully done. Everything is so beautifully fashioned. You can tell they really took time in every single aspect of the making of that jewel. That’s what I love about it. It shows so much attention to detail.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 24 Nov 2021 | Episode 138 Part 2: How Metalsmith Magazine Is Highlights New Voices in Jewelry with Editor, Adriane Dalton | 00:22:39 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Adriane Dalton Adriane Dalton is an artist, writer, and educator based in Philadelphia, PA. She is the editor of Metalsmith, the magazine published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG). She was formerly the Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) in Logan, Utah, where she co-curated “ARTsySTEM: The Changing Climate of the Arts and Sciences” and taught History of American Studio Craft, among many other curatorial and educational projects. She holds an MA in the history of decorative arts and design from Parsons The New School for Design (2014), and a BFA in craft and material studies from the University of the Arts (2004). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Contemporary Craft (Pittsburgh, PA), The Wayne Art Center (Wayne, PA), Snyderman-Works Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), A CASA Museu de Object Brasileiro (Sao Paulo, Brazil), the Metal Museum (Memphis, TN), and Space 1026 (Philadelphia, PA). Additional Resources: Photos: Recent Metal Smith Covers
Transcript: Adriane Dalton took a meandering path to become editor of Metalsmith, the Society of North American Goldsmith’s (SNAG) quarterly magazine, but her background as a maker, her work as a curator, and her education in the history of craft has only helped her hone her editorial skills. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the overlaps between making, curating and editing; what she looks for when selecting work for the magazine; and why it’s important we not just talk about objects and the people who make them, but the conditions in which people make them. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: What kinds of changes do you think? I don’t know, galleries representing more Black jewelers and jewelers of color? What kinds of changes do you mean? Talking about them in classes? Adriane: For that particular issue, that essay by Valena Robinson Glass and the essay by Leslie Boyd touch on some of the possibilities for how to address those things. I would encourage anyone who’s listening who hasn’t read that issue or isn’t familiar with it to go pick it up off your bookshelf or go purchase it from SNAG. There are a lot of ways you can be reflective. Some of it is as simple as trying to understand if you have a space where there are no Black, indigenous, or people of color in that space, whether you’re a galleries or an educator, what are the barriers to access for people, whether they’re economic or graphic? There are a lot of different things. I don’t know that I can say there are one-size-fits all solutions to these things, but I think it’s a matter of being reflective. Sharon: I know you’re the editor of the publication; you’re not speaking for SNAG itself, but what do you see SNAG doing to lower barriers? Adriane: I think some of the things SNAG has done have been done to create, for example—for our virtual conference, there were needs-based scholarships for folks to attend the conference if they had an economic barrier, which is one way SNAG has dealt with that. Because of us having canceled our conference last year, there’s been a lot of upheaval. We’re trying to get through and recover from the financial burden of having to cancel an annual conference, as many organizations have this past year. One of the other things that has been done—and this started pre-pandemic—is changing how we define what it means to be a student. In the past, that was implied to mean a student of a four-year jewelry program. As most folks have probably noticed, there are fewer and fewer jewelry and metals programs in higher education in the U.S. than ever. So many programs have closed, and there have been a lot of community programs which have popped up, such as the Baltimore Jewelry Center, Smith Shop in Detroit, Brooks Metalworks, plus others. Then, of course, there are places like We Wield the Hammer and the Crucible in San Francisco. We’re trying to include anyone who’s taking classes in a community setting in this definition of student, offering lower rates for registrations for students, lower rates for student memberships and things like that. SNAG’s membership cost at this point is $99 annually, which I believe is less than it used to be. I feel like it used to be higher than that. Sharon: I don’t remember. I get my renewal notice and I know I want to remain a member. Will there be a regular conference this year or next spring, do you think? Although who knows with the Delta variant. Adriane: Right. There are plans for an in-person conference to happen in the spring of 2022 as it would normally, around Labor Day. I’m not involved in the conference planning, so I don’t know exactly what the plan is at this point, but I think there are some other things that SNAG has planned in the meantime. We have other virtual programming. We’re going to be having a symposium in the fall in October. I believe it’s October 22-23. This is part of what will be an annual program that happens every fall in addition to the conference, and it will be virtual. I believe the title of that symposium program is “Tides and Waves.” Each year, we’ll have a different geographical focus throughout the world. I believe that is the focus for this coming symposium, which is happening this fall. I think it will have been announced by the time this comes up. Sharon: This fall being 2021? Adriane: Yeah, this fall being 2021. I think the geographical focus for this symposium is Eastern Asia. Sharon: Oh, wow, that will be interesting. I’m not a maker, and when I go to the conferences, I’m more focused on what people are showing, what’s different. I’m trying to remember the issues you’re talking about. It doesn’t seem like there have been many—maybe they haven’t been of much interest to me, but I haven’t heard these issues being discussed at the conferences as much as how you form a gold something, or whatever. I don’t know. Adriane: You mean as far as conference sessions? Sharon: Sessions, yeah. Adriane: The last conference I attended was in Chicago. No, that’s not true; I attended our virtual conference, but when you’re working and the conference is happening and you’re trying to zip in and out of things and pay attention to everything, it’s all kind of a blur for me at this point, honestly. I think the most recent virtual conference dealt a little bit more with some of the things I was mentioning. For example, there was a panel that dealt with people who were makers or involved in the field in some way, but who also have a caretaking role, whether that’s mothering or something that. That also speaks to what I was mentioning before, thinking about not just what we make, but the conditions in which we make. That is a huge topic that hasn’t fully been addressed. How can you go to a residency and take a month or longer to do that when you have a small child—or not even a small child, a teenager—and do all of these things when you have some other person you have to care for? And of course, that disproportionately affects women in the field. I think one of the things that is great about an in-person conference but is much more difficult to have happen organically in a virtual setting, even now when we are accustomed to attending events virtually—and I love it; it’s great because I can be in San Francisco; I can be in New York; I can be in London, but I don’t have to leave my house. I just have to be awake at whatever time zone the event is happening in. But something that doesn’t happen at these things is the organic conversations you have in small groups at dinner or over drinks. For me as the editor, those are the conversations I’m really looking for. What are people talking about that we aren’t talking about more broadly, and how can we make space for that and bring that in? Sharon: That’s an interesting question. Yes, you do hear that as you’re having coffee with somebody or with a group. What’s on your plate that you’ve heard? Maybe it’s harder to hear that virtually, but something that you thought, “Oh, I want to investigate that more,” or “We need to do something about that, an article.” Adriane: Yeah, one very straightforward example is that during last year’s virtual New York City Jewelry Week, I spent the entire week, morning to night for seven days straight, glued to my computer. I was picking my laptop up and taking it into my kitchen when I made dinner. By the end of the week, I didn’t want to look at a screen again, but of course I had to. One of the presentations during New York City Jewelry Week last year was by Sebastian Grant— Sharon: He is? Adriane: Sebastian is a jewelry historian and teaches at Parsons - Cooper Hewitt. His presentation, which I believe was in concert with The Jewelry Library, was on looking at the history of Black jewelry artists from mid-century forward and trying to identify these makers and talk about their work and their stories that hadn’t been shared or acknowledged. In a lot of publications, there hasn’t been comprehensive publishing around some of these artists. After seeing his presentation, I reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in taking some of that research and sharing it in Metalsmith in a series of articles. So far, we’ve published two articles by Sebastian. That’s a very direct example of being engaged in the field in a virtual setting, hearing conversations that are going on—it was a presentation, but there was also a Q&A afterwards—and knowing this is something that needs to be given more space. Sharon: It must be great to be in a position where you can say, “This needs to be addressed further” and do something about it, to literally create. I know you have people you consult with on that, but still, that’s very interesting. What other areas do you have in mind that are churning right now? Adriane: It’s hard to say. I can talk a little bit about the examples of things that have happened over the recent volume that fit these criteria. Looking forward, it’s a little harder because I’m just finishing up Volume 41—or getting ready to finish it up—and then Volume 42 will be starting. There’s a lot of planning, a lot of question marks and things that are penciled in that I’m hoping will be written in in pen shortly. One of the examples that directly came out of attending the conference in Chicago, aside from that conversation I mentioned with Lauren Eckert which led to the New Voices Competition, was at—I forget what it was called—but basically, it was the exhibition room where everyone has their small pop-up exhibitions. There was an exhibition that was curated by Mary Raivel and Mary Fissell, who are both based in Baltimore and involved with the Baltimore Center. Their exhibition was called “Coming of Age,” and they were specifically interested in artists who had come to jewelry making or metalsmithing as a second career after having some other career first. I was really interested in that, because there’s the idea of the emerging artist as being someone who’s young and just out of school, just out of undergrad or just out of grad school. I think it’s a limiting way to think about where people are at in their creative process. I invited them to write about that exhibition, turn it into an article and talk about the interviews they did with the artists who applied to the show. We ran that in Volume 40, so it was the second issue of Volume 40 of Metalsmith. Sharon: That’s a really interesting subject. It’s so true; there are so many people who have come to jewelry making, whether it’s in metal or in plastic or whatever, after a career doing something else, when they said, “Hey, I’m done with this and I really want to do what I want do.” I know Art Jewelry Forum, when they started—I don’t know exactly where it ended up, but I know there was discussion in terms of age. Originally some of the grants being submitted had to do with age, and that really doesn’t tell you anything. Adriane: Right. That actually came up in that article. It’s been a while since I read it, so it’s not fresh in my mind, but I believe they interviewed someone from Art Jewelry Forum—maybe it was Yvonne—and they brought this up and talk about that. In the article, they talk about how people fall into this gap where they’re an age on paper where it seems like they should be mid-career artists, but they truly are emerging artists; it just may not seem that way if you know their age. I think it’s interesting, and the more we try to put—and this is true of all sorts of things—rigid parameters on something, I think we limit ourselves in whom we invite to participate in the field or be in these spaces with us. It leaves people out. Not everyone can graduate from high school and go straight into college and start a career as a bench jeweler or a production jeweler or conceptual artist. There are a lot of different factors that contribute to where a person is in their career and the work they’re making. Sharon: Yeah, that as well. What’s a student today? It’s an avocation. It may become their vocation eventually, but if they take a class at a community—I took a class at a jewelry school, and that’s all the metalsmithing I’ve done. I was thinking about how you, being a maker, how does that affect—do you think you could do your job as well if you weren’t a maker? Adriane: I don’t think I could do my job as well if I were not a maker who had a grounding in the processes and traditions of metalsmithing. As I was saying earlier, the field and the materiality of the field has shifted a lot. My undergraduate study in learning the basics of jewelry and metalsmithing is helpful for me as I’m looking at the way authors are writing about artists’ work. Not everyone who writes for the magazine is a maker or a jeweler, so there are some times when a term might come up, or someone might interpret a component of an object in a certain way. I, as someone who is a maker, and our readers often could look at that and say, “Well, I don’t think that’s quite right.” I then have the knowledge to write a note or an edit and say, “Hey, I think you might have this wrong. I think it’s vermeil and not actually gold.” I don’t think I would have that ability if I didn’t have a background as a maker. Sharon: That’s interesting. How do you find the journalism aspect? To me, what you’re doing—it’s both the combination of being a maker or jeweler and having the crafts background, but the journalism, not everybody could do that. Adriane: I don’t think about it in that way necessarily. Having a curatorial background, I think about the magazine more curatorially, I would say. Maybe there’s some overlap with the way someone with a journalism background would think about it, but because that is not my background and not my training, I don’t know. I think about what I’m doing as the editor as interpretative, in the way that if you are a curator and you’ve done research and you’re presenting a selection of artworks to the public, you have to contextualize them in some way. You have to make sure that the way that you’ve put things together, people can come into that space, whether it’s in a print publication or in a gallery space, and hopefully they can come away with the things that are apparent and the subtleties at the same time. That’s what I try to capture when I write my letter from the editor for every issue, which, as you alluded to earlier, sounds like a difficult task and it certainly is. Even though I have done a lot of writing, I’m always fussing with it and fussing with it and fussing with it up to the last minute. I want to make sure that when people read it, they get something out of it that isn’t just, “Here’s what’s in this issue.” Sharon: That’s interesting. Being an editor has so many similarities with being a curator. You’re culling through things and what goes with what and setting the context, which is what you definitely do in the note from the editor, and I’ll be thinking about them a little differently as I read more. I already look at them and think, “Oh, it’s so hard to express yourself.” You do a very good job, but they’re very weighty things you’re talking about. It’s not just, “Oh, we have pretty pieces of jewelry in this issue.” Adriane: Right. If that were the case, that would probably be all I had to say about it. Sharon: That’s true; moving from here on to Vogue. Adriane: I don’t know about that. Sharon: Adriane, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You’ve given us a lot to think about. I didn’t enter this conversation realizing it would be so thought-provoking. Thank you. It’s greatly, greatly appreciated. Adriane: That’s wonderful; thank you, and thank you for having me. This has been a fantastic conversation. Sharon: So glad to have you. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 15 Dec 2021 | Episode 141 Part 1: How Emerging Jewelry Designers Can Cut Through the Noise with Writer & Editor, Amy Elliott | 00:26:06 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Amy Elliott Amy Elliott is a writer, editor and brand storyteller who specializes in fine jewelry and fashion, and is fluent in other lifestyle categories, including food, weddings and travel. As a former staff editor at The Knot, Bridal Guide, Brides Local Magazines + Brides.com and Lucky, Amy is known for delivering high-quality editorial content across a variety of print and digital media. After recently serving as the Engagement Rings Expert for About.com, Amy joined the freelance staff of JCK as its All That Glitters columnist, while contributing articles about jewelry trends, estate and antique jewelry and gemstones to its prestigious print magazine. Amy also serves as the Fine Jewelry Expert for The Bridal Council, an industry organization composed of luxury bridal designers, retailers and media, and her byline has appeared in Gotham, Hamptons, DuJour, Martha Stewart Weddings, GoodHousekeeping.com and more. Additional Resources:
Examples of posts that reflect the intersection of jewelry with history, culture and current events: Bob Goodman Wants Jewelers To Join Him in Disrupting the Status Quo:https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/bob-goodman-jewelers-disrupting/
The Ten Thousand Things x Met Museum Collaboration Is Coming In Hot:https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/ten-thousand-things-x-met-museum/
Go “Sea” Some Serious Silver Treasures At Mystic Seaport Museum:https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/sea-as-muse-silver-seaport-museum/
New Jewelry From Rafka Koblence, Olympic Wrestler Turned Designer:https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/new-jewelry-from-rafka-koblence/
Transcript: As author of the “All That Glitters” blog for JCK, Amy Elliott has a front row seat to the jewelry industry’s up-and-coming trends and designers. She’s also been lucky enough to work with some of these designers, helping them refine their brands and create stories that resonate with customers. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what designers and retailers should do to stay relevant with younger consumers, how art jewelry has influenced high jewelry, and what jewelry trends to watch out for in the coming months. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, our guest is Amy Elliott, founder of Amy Elliott Creative. She is a writer, editor and thought leader who specializes in fine jewelry and fashion which makes most of us envious. That’s a great profession. She is a contributing editor to the industry publication we all know, JCK, and writes the blog “All That Glitters.” We will hear all about her jewelry journey today. Amy, welcome to the program Amy: Thank you very much for having me, Sharon. It’s a pleasure to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. I’m always envious of people who are writing about jewelry or makers and designers. That’s fabulous. I have no talent in that area, so when I hear about people writing, I think, “Wow, it’s great.” Tell us all about your jewelry journey. Amy: My jewelry journey is a mix of personal and professional. I’m an avid collector of jewelry. My mother is a big collector of jewelry, so from age 12 on, jewelry was always a part of my life and something that I gravitated to. As a professional, jewelry has been central to my career as a journalist and a writer since the very beginning, starting at The Knot in 1999. Sharon: The Knot being the bridal publication. Amy: Yes. At that time, it was just a website. I was there when they moved into magazines. I helped coordinate the gowns and accessories for fashion shoots and got a taste of engagement rings and diamonds, the 4Cs. That was my first introduction to jewelry on a professional level. Then I took a job at Bridal Guide Magazine, which is a leading print publication still around, privately owned. I was a senior editor there. I had many duties, but one of them was to produce a jewelry column, and that is when my education in jewelry really began. I began forming connections within the industry to educate myself on the 4Cs, pearl buying, colored gemstones. I’ve always been drawn to color, so that’s when I became a student, if you will, of gems and jewelry and how jewelry fits into conversations about fashion trends and cultural and social current events. That was when I really got into jewelry as a métier. I was one of the founding editors of Brides local magazines, which was a Condé Nast publication of regional wedding magazines that no longer exists. Because we were short on staff, I would call in all the jewelry for our cover shoots. Even though I had a leadership role there—I was the executive editor—I also made it part of my job to call in jewels for art cover shoots. I kept that connection, and then on the side I would freelance for luxury publications. It became the thing that I liked to do the best. I loved the people in the industry. I would always learn something. No matter what I was doing or writing about, I would learn something new, and that’s still true to this day. There’s always something for me to learn. I discovered that jewelry is the perfect combination of earth science, history, culture, and straight-up beauty and aesthetics. It’s a very gratifying topic to cover. I love the way it intersects with current events and with, as I mentioned, the fashion conversations at large. Sharon: When you went to Vassar, did you study writing? They’re not known for their metalsmithing program, so did you study writing with the idea “I just want to write”? Amy: Pretty much. I was always pretty good at writing and facility with language, so I went there knowing I’d be an English major. For my thesis I wrote a creative writing thesis; it was like a little novella. I’ve always had a love affair with words and expression of thoughts, and I loved reading, so I knew I would do something that had to do with words and writing. I actually graduated thinking I would be a romance novelist. That was what I thought I would do. Then, of course, I started out in book publishing, and I found it really, really slow and boring, just painfully slow, and I decided perhaps that wasn’t for me. Then I took a job in public relations. I really loved the marketing aspect of it and the creativity involved. Of course, it involved a lot of writing. Eventually I decided I wanted to be on the editorial side of things once and for all. I had always written for the high school newspaper. I had done an internship at Metropolitan Home Magazine in the design department in college, so magazines were always lurking there and were always the main goal. I ended up there; it just took a couple of years for me to get there. Once I did, I knew I wanted to work for a women’s magazine. I love things that would fall under the heading of a women’s magazine, relationships, fashion. The wedding magazines I worked at were a great fit for me because it’s pure romance and fantasy and big, beautiful ball gowns and fancy parties. It was a good fit for me, and I was able to take that and home in on jewelry as a particular focus elsewhere in my career after those first years. I will say Vassar is known for its art history program. I was not a star art history pupil by any means, but I took many classes there. I find myself leaning on those skills the most as a jewelry writer, looking closely at an object, peeling back the layers and trying to understand what the artist or jeweler is trying to say through jewelry, much like you would with a painting from the Renaissance. So, I am grateful for that tutelage because I found myself drawing on it often, even though I was definitely a B- student in art history. Sharon: It seems to me if you’re not going to be a maker, if you’re not going to be a metalsmith or a goldsmith or if you’re not going to be selling behind the counter, it seems like art history is a fabulous foundation for jewelry in terms of the skills you draw on. Amy: Absolutely. Historical narratives and every historical event that’s going on in the world can be—you can look at jewelry from the past and tie it into something that was going on, whether it was the discovery of platinum or the discovery of diamonds in South Africa. It all intersects so beautifully. Vassar taught me to think critically; it taught me how to express myself, to develop a style of writing that I think is still present in my writing today. I always try to get a little lyricism in there. A good liberal arts foundation took me into the world of magazines and eventually digital publishing. I stayed with Condé Nast for a long time. Then I went to Lucky Magazine and was on staff there for a little over a year and a half. I was exposed to fine jewelry on a more fashion level, like the kind cool girls would wear, gold and diamond jewelry that wasn’t big jewels by Oscar Heyman. It was a different category, but still within that universe. That was a great education, to look at fine jewelry in a fashion context. They had layoffs in 2012 and I was forced to strike out on my own, but I’ve been freelance ever since, doing a mix of copywriting for fashion brands and writing for various publications. I’ve been writing for JCK since 2016. Sharon: Wow! Amy, we want to hear more about that, but just a couple of things. First, thank you to our subscribers. I want to thank everybody who’s gotten in contact with me with their suggestions. I love to get them, so please email me at Sharon@ArtsandJewelry.com or DM me @ArtsandJewelry. Also a big shoutout to Kimberly Klosterman, whose jewelry is featured in the exhibit “Simply Brilliant: Jewelry of the 60s and 70s” at the Cincinnati Art Museum. It’s on now through February 6. You can listen to our interview with Kimberly on podcast number 133. Now, back to our interview with Amy. Amy, what I like about what you said—you expressed it very well—is the intersection of jewelry with current events and history. I know I always have difficulty explaining to people why I’m interested in jewelry or jewelry history. They think, “Oh, you like big diamonds,” and it’s hard to explain how it tells you so much about the period. Amy: Yes, I think acknowledging how global our industry is and learning about different cultures has been so critical to becoming fluent in this world and the gemstones that come from Afghanistan or Ethiopia or Mozambique. Just learning about the sapphires from Sri Lanka—it’s so global and all-encompassing. I read the Cartier book, and their story is so fascinating. I am interested particularly in World War II and how that impacted the jewelry industry, how Susan Beltran saved the business of her lover, how the events of World War II Germany impacted Paris and the jewelers there, how the Cartiers would do the birds in the cage and all that stuff. I think you can look at historic jewels and see reflected back at you current events and moments in our history. Sharon: Definitely. I imagine when you look at something, it’s not just seeing the jewel, but you’re seeing the whole background behind it, how it sits within that context, that nest of history with World War II and platinum. It’s an eye into the world. Amy: Even someone like Judith Leiber, who fled Hungary during wartime and became this amazing designer of handbags in New York. So many of the jewelers that are leaders and pillars of our industry came here because of the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. It really does intersect with what was happening in the world. The jewelry industry is a microcosm of all those events, even going to back to the Silk Road and Mesopotamia and the Armenians and the Ottoman Empire. It is a rich tapestry of moments. Historic jewels in particular can give you insight, not just into an artist’s vision, but into a moment of time. Sharon: I didn’t know that about Judith Leiber; that’s interesting. You left Lucky Magazine and opened your own shop. You do a lot of writing and editing. How do the graphics also play into it? Do you art direct? If clients come to you and say, “I need a brochure,” I assume you’re doing all the copy and editing, but do they bring you the photos? How does that work? Amy: My background in magazines definitely has given me a pretty robust skillset in terms of working with graphic designers and art directors, conveying ideas and working with them to solve problems. You do emerge with a sense of the visuals, and a taste level is part of it when you’re covering fashion and jewelry and things related to style. So yes, I think as a copywriter, one of the things I bring to the table is that I will be able to advise you on the quality of your photos and your look book on the crops, on the model even. Also there’s the hierarchy of information; that’s definitely a form of direction. It’s not very glamorous, but I’m good at understanding how things should be stacked and arranged on a page in terms of hierarchy of messaging. I do have a lot of opinions, I guess, about what looks good and what doesn’t. If that feedback is welcome, I’m always happy to share it. Sometimes a client will send me an email for review, and I know they just want to get it out, but I’m like, “No, this is spelled wrong, and the headline should be this, and this needs to go there,” and I’ll mock it up on the screen as to where things should go. The best editors and writers, especially when you’re dealing with jewelry and fashion and beautiful objects, you have to have a strong sense of the visual. Sharon: I know sometimes clients push back, but I assume they come to you because they want your opinion or they’d do it themselves, right? Amy: Yes. My favorite clients to work with are emerging designers who are just getting out there. They have so many ideas, so many stories to tell, and I help them refine their vision, refine their voice. For many of them, it’s the first time they’re coming to market, and I can help them present themselves in a professional way that will be compelling to buyers and to media. Sharon: What type of issues are potential clients coming to you for? Is there an overarching—problem might not be the right word—but something you see, a common thread through what they’re asking? Amy: There are a number of things. One could be a complicated concept that needs to be explained, something technical like the meteorite that’s used in a wedding ring. “We have all this raw material from our supplier. How do we make that customer-facing? How do we make that dense language more lively and easier to digest?” Sometimes it’s collection naming. “Here’s my collection. Here are the pieces. Can you give them a name? Can you help name this product?” Sometimes it’s, “We want to craft a story around this,” and I’m able to come at it with, “I know what the story is here. We’ve got to shape you to be able to present that story to the world, whether it’s a buyer or an editor.” Usually there is some sort of a concept that is involved; it just hasn’t been refined and it’s not adjustable. They’re so focused on the work and the design vocabulary, they need someone to come in and look at it holistically and figure out how they’re going to package this as an overarching idea. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “I need to write a letter. These are the things I want to get across to buyers or new accounts or an invitation to an event.” I can take these objectives, these imperatives, and spin them into something compelling and customer-facing and fun to read. It’s a mix of imaginative work and down-and-dirty, let me take this corporate document and finesse it and make it more lively and more like something a consumer would want to read on a website. Sharon: They must be so appreciative. Their work may be beautiful, but they have to condense it to say what they are trying to express and get that across to somebody who may not know the language, so somebody wants to pick it up and say, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” Amy: Storytelling is a big buzzword right now in the industry, but it’s so important. The marketplace is so crowded, and it’s not enough to be like, “I have a new collection of stacking rings,” or “I’ve expanded these rings to include a sapphire version.” You have to come up with some sort of a story to draw in an audience, and then you can use that story on all of your touchpoints, from social media to your email blasts to a landing page on your website. There are a host of jewelry professionals out there that can advise in different ways, to help you get into stores, to help you with specific branding, refining your collection from a merchandising standpoint. There are so many professionals out there that specialize in that, but I think what I bring to the table is knowledge of the industry and a facility with language. It’s almost like I’m a mouthpiece for the designer or the corporate brand and a conduit to the consumers’ headspace. Sharon: It sounds like a real talent in the areas where there are gaps in what a designer and retailer/manufacturer needs. Telling the story may be a buzzword, but it’s words, and you have to use the right words. Tell us about the JCK. You write the blog “All That Glitters,” which is very glittery. It’s very attractive. Tell us about it. Amy: Thanks. I was JCK’s center for style-related content. Obviously, there’s no shortage of breaking news and hard business news, because JCK’s first and foremost a serious business publication. Sharon: With the jewelry industry. Amy: With the jewelry industry. I’ve evolved the blog to be—my favorite things to cover are new collections. I like to interview designers about inspirations. I like to show a broad range of photos from the collection. A lot of it is just showing collections that I love. Maybe I’ve seen them at Fashion Week; maybe I saw them at the JCK shows or at appointments in the city; maybe I saw something on Instagram. I love to cover design collaborations. Those are one of my favorites things to cover: how two minds can come together to create a new product, like when Suzanne Kalan partnered with Jonathan Adler to do a line of trinket trays. I am interested in cultural events. I like to cover museum exhibits. I covered the Beautiful Creatures exhibit at the Natural History Museum. Because I live in Connecticut, I was able to make it up to Mystic Seaport. They have a beautiful collection of silver trophies by all the best makers, from Tiffany to Shreve, Crump & Low and Gorham. I was able to go up there and see that collection. It’s a blog about culture. It’s a blog about things I love. I’ve written about TV shows that have to do with jewelry. I like the title “All That Glitters” because it gives me a lot of leeway in terms of what I can cover. I’ve written about writing instruments. Fabergé did a collaboration with whiskey brands and I wrote about that. I try to leave it open, but if there’s a strong, new, exciting collection, especially from a high jewelry brand—I’m going to be writing something on one from David Webb coming up. They just released a new collection called Asheville, inspired by his hometown. I like to do a deep dive into a designer story or to show a new collection. My colleague, Brittany Siminitz, does beautiful curations. Sometimes I’ll do curations, meaning a roundup of beautiful products that correspond to an overarching theme. I love to do those, but I am happiest when designers come to me with a new collection and something that people haven’t seen before. I particularly love discovering new voices and emerging designers that haven’t been featured in the press before, so I can be that first introduction. | |||
| 26 Apr 2023 | Episode 192 Part 1: The Jewelry of Bill Smith: JoAnne Spiller’s Mission to Preserve the Trailblazing Designer’s Story | 00:21:22 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About JoAnne Spiller
JoAnne Spiller is the Director of Education at the Jefferson County Historical Society based in Madison, Indiana. She has more than two decades of museum education experience with an emphasis on children’s educational programming. She recently organized the exhibit “Bill Smith: Madison’s Visionary Jewelry Designer,” and is currently conducting research for a book on Bill Smith’s life and career.
Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript:
Bill Smith was a trendsetting Black jewelry designer who did everything from Cartier collaborations to costume jewelry. His designs were seen on the likes of Lena Horne and Cicely Tyson. Yet in the 30 years since his death, his impact has been largely forgotten. JoAnne Spinner, Director of Education for the Jefferson County Historical Society, hopes to change that with her recent exhibit, “Bill Smith: Madison’s Visionary Jewelry Designer” and a forthcoming book she is currently researching. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about Bill’s trendsetting designs; how he found his path as a gay Black man from a small town; and why his work is worth collecting. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today, we’re talking with JoAnne Spiller, the Director of Education for the Jefferson County Historical Society located in Madison, Indiana. She recently curated an exhibition about Bill Smith who came from Madison, Indiana. A lot of you haven’t heard of Bill Smith. I had never heard of him. He was one of the first, if not the first, Black jewelry designers to garner attention. He was very well-known in the 60s through the 80s but is just a footnote today. JoAnne is going to tell us all about Bill Smith. JoAnne, welcome to the podcast.
JoAnne: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to speak with you.
Sharon: I’m so glad you’re here. You came to Bill Smith through your education and your role. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
JoAnne: I have been the Director of Education here for 23 years. In the process of educating students, I have been building a file of famous Madisonians and Jefferson Countians from here who have gone on to do wonderful things. We are a very small community, and I think a lot of children don’t feel like there’s a lot of opportunity. Many of them don’t leave here; they stay. Their families have been here for generations. I wanted to let them know, especially among our minority community, that you can come from a small town and go on to do big and wonderful things out there in the world.
So, my file included Bill Smith. An article was given to us a few years ago with a note saying, “Hey, did you know anything about him?” and we did not. That started my journey of finding information about Bill. It has become quite an obsession if you ask anybody that knows me, especially my family.
Sharon: I had never heard of him, but he must have been something because he’s all over Google.
JoAnne: Yes, he is. He was born here in Madison in 1933. He had one sibling. They were a working-class family, and he went onto IU at the encouragement of his art teachers here. He was very much into creating, sculpting, making jewelry, and he was also a dancer.
Sharon: That was his first thing, being a dancer, right?
JoAnne: Yes, being a dancer. He went to IU to dance. He took art classes and was extremely encouraged by the art teachers there. After three semesters, he left. His teachers felt like he was ready to move on and do big things, so he left to go to New York to become a dancer. He could not find enough roles as a Black man in the 1950s. He graduated high school in 1951, so this would have been about 1953 or 1954 when he went out to New York, and he just couldn’t find the roles to support himself. So, he turned to jewelry making.
According to my research, he became an assistant or apprentice or helper to some jeweler in New York who needed help following some kind of accident. That’s what I’ve read. Bill stepped in and was extremely talented at what he did. Somewhere in that process, he struck out on his own and had his own experimental design company. This was in the late 50s. He met Raymond St. Jacques, who was a Black actor out in Hollywood. He was in a lot of westerns and rough-‘em-up kind of movies. Somehow, they formed a partnership and became Smith St. Jacques. Raymond was the financial backing for the early company, and Bill was the creative director. That business went on for several years until he caught the eye of Massimo Sargis at Richelieu, and then he started his big, wonderful costume jewelry career.
Sharon: He always worked in costume, but did he ever work in gold or silver?
JoAnne: I do have an ad in a magazine that shows Cartier work. He did work briefly for Cartier and Georg Jensen, who was a silversmith. For Cartier, he had some pendants I’ve seen that are polished stones, flat, and they are embellished with gold, I’m assuming, because it’s Cartier. They’ve turned them into belts, like some of his other funky belts we have examples of. But as far as I know, those two companies are the only ones that would have had the finer materials. I have read that he did work with some high-end materials early on, before Smith St. Jacques. He did special orders and he worked for some of the higher-end department stores, but I do not have examples of those. Everything I have seen and have my hands on has been costume jewelry.
Sharon: You have one of the largest, or maybe it is the largest, collections in the country that people know about.
JoAnne: It’s possible. It is very possible. We have more than 100 pieces of Bill’s. I would say two-thirds of them are signed. The others I can positively attribute to him because I have spoken with the person who helped with those designs. So, I can absolutely, concretely say that these things are his design. I personally have about 35 in my collection.
Sharon: In your personal collection?
JoAnne: Yeah, for my personal collection. They’re ones that speak to me, or maybe they’re duplicates of the ones we have at the museum, but I still like them. I actually wore one out the other night. Nobody understood it. They all looked at me sideways, but I had a good deal of fun wearing it. It was one of his early ones, the trueskin with the horse and the bird on a big, fat, heavy chain. People who know me know that’s not really my style. I was feeling bad that day, so I wore it. I wanted to get the story out. I wanted people to comment and ask so I could share my knowledge.
Sharon: I guess that’s leading into my next question. You curated this exhibit. What were the comments from people who came and had never heard of him?
JoAnne: They thought it was fantastic. I know they figured it was going to be this itty-bitty, halfway-put-together exhibit, and it wasn’t. People were actually astounded at what we had on display. We may be a small museum, but we have the glass cases and panels and things like that. We really did put together a very excellent display on him, and it was up for about a month. It was supposed to be exhibited in July instead of October, but I did not feel like I had enough of a collection to do that. I ended up getting more information on him in September that led me down another route, and then it was time to put the exhibit together.
Sharon: People walked away saying, “Well, that’s a great exhibit,” but did they walk away saying, “I never knew about him”?
JoAnne: A lot of them did. When I spoke earlier, I said a lot of people don’t leave this town—and they don’t; their roots go back generations. I am not from here. I’ve been here long enough where you could maybe consider me a native, but a few people that went to school with him came in and said, “Oh, we always knew he was going to do great things because he had such talent.” Unfortunately, they couldn’t give me much more than that. I don’t think they had a close relationship. They just knew of him and wanted to sneak a peek at what he had become later in life.
We did have a woman who loaned us a suede choker from one of his early collections. It has brass cutouts on it. It looks like a dog collar. She loaned it to us for the exhibition, and after seeing the display, she gave it to us. She gave it to the museum. She said, “This is where this piece belongs. It belongs with his collection.” Another woman, who is a recent native to our town, came into the museum three times to see this exhibit. Every time she came in, we had a discussion about it and she wanted to learn more. She would come in and say, “Hey, I saw this piece on eBay. What do you think of it?” She was bitten by the bug. She ended up gifting us an absolutely fantastic, rare piece before Christmas because she knew the story was important and she wanted to be part of it. She saw this piece and knew it was perfect for our collection, so she gave it to us. It was absolutely wonderful. It’s one of the ones I show when I do show and share.
Sharon: What were his heyday years?
JoAnne: That is an excellent question. I feel like it came and went in waves according to the company he was working with. Some of it is difficult to ascertain because his work is not always signed. Unless you have the backstory or you happen to know concretely that he did work on this collection, it’s hard to say when that big wave started. I do know that according to the 5½-inch binder of research I have—I’m not kidding you—most of the articles I have were from the late 60s into the early 70s. When he left Richelieu in 1970, he went to work for the parent company, O’Dell, which had Cartier and Ben Kahn fur. So, he did some furs. He worked for Mark Cross doing leather goods.
I mentioned the Cartier jewelry earlier. There’s a definite collection I know is his that’s all arrows, because arrows are his thing. He’s a Sagittarius, which he mentioned several times; it was the 60s. Arrows were very important to him, so I know that one of the Cartier collections with arrows is his, but it is not signed. It was very rare for a designer to sign their work at that time. For him to be able to sign it was pretty phenomenal.
Sharon: He didn’t seem to work for Cartier for that long.
JoAnne: He did not. I guess that was under the parent company. Unless I can find an article or a magazine photo that attributes it to him, I can’t be sure of all the collections he worked on. Of course, like any fashion, you design in one season, say the winter, but it’s for the spring collection. He may have worked for one company or another designing a collection, but it was launched after he left. There’s still a lot of investigation I need to do. The timeline for him, I don’t have it quite tightened up yet. I’m still working on it.
Sharon: You mentioned some of the costume jewelry companies he did work for. Let’s say O’Dell.
JoAnne: The parent company after Richelieu. He worked for Laguna. I do have a few pieces of his that are Laguna.
Sharon: Are they signed?
JoAnne: Yes, they are. I missed out on an auction the other day, and I kicked myself for a week. I’m still kicking myself. There are things I look for to complete a collection. Laguna is one of the ones he designed for. That company, if you Google it now, is all beach ware; it’s Laguna, California. It might be difficult to find things because I don’t think he did too many collections for them.
He also worked for Hattie Carnegie, but I can’t find anything of his that was signed. I have a newspaper article that shows a necklace, but the image is so poor I can’t tell what it looks like. I could have one in my collection; I wouldn’t even know it because I can’t tell from the image.
Sharon: What was his big break?
JoAnne: It was the body jewelry.
Sharon: The body jewelry?
JoAnne: The body jewelry he did with the pearls. I interviewed Clifton Nicholson, who himself is a very well-known designer in his own right. He lives 20 minutes from here. I spent an afternoon at Clifton’s studio, and he gifted me probably 150 pieces of jewelry.
Sharon: At one time?
JoAnne: Well, it was over two times. He came to see the exhibit in October. He called me a week later and came in with a big shopping bag full of jewelry that Bill had told him he could have when Bill was closing his Long Island studio to go work for Richelieu. Clifton grabbed whatever he saw. A lot of it was Bill’s original designs that aren’t signed but are definitely his. That was quite a gift. Then when I went back to have lunch with him and do an interview, he gave me another small bag of jewelry, still fantastic. There are several I have that are now positively identified because I found photos of them, so I can put the photos or the advertisements with the jewelry. I just love doing that; I love making that.
Sharon: Let’s say you have an unsigned piece. Can you look at it and say, “Oh, that’s Bill’s,” or “It looks like Bill’s”?
JoAnne: I can because I’ve been looking at them daily. He has a certain flair. There was a woman that came in and said, “Oh, I have this Richelieu bracelet and it’s a Bill Smith.” I looked at it and said, “I’m sorry, but it’s not. It’s too late. It’s too modern. He was not working for them at the time.” It was a late 80s design, and I said, “He was gone by then. That can absolutely not be identified as his.” I have a pretty good eye. I spend a lot of time when I travel looking at antique malls and flea markets hoping that something will call to me, and I will be able to find a piece I don’t have or I’ve never seen before. Then I ask my husband for the credit card so I can buy it. But I do think I have a fairly good eye for that. I can tell.
His early stuff is very rough and unfinished. Clifton told me a lot about the jewelry industry and designers and how that all worked. They riffed off each other all the time. You make a collection of crosses, and Avon’s got one too, and Kenneth J. Lane has one too. They’re all similar, but Kenneth’s are very, very polished and look extremely high-end. Bill’s stuff is a little more brutalist; it’s a little more rough around the edges. So, I can look at something and go, “Hmm,” or “It’s a knock-off.” Joan Rivers has stuff that looks like his early stuff. There’s no new design in jewelry, but I think I have a pretty good eye. It’s not fail-proof. Since Clifton gave me that early jewelry, I can look at it and get a feel for that time period. When I look at things online, I can say, “Maybe. That’s a strong maybe.”
Clifton was also very helpful because I had created a catalogue, so to speak, of all the jewelry I’ve seen on the internet that I know is Bill’s or maybe is Bill’s. Because they worked together for two years, we flipped through the whole book and he would say, “Yes, no, maybe, yes, no.” It was wonderful, because who else is going to be able to tell me that in a positive way? The zodiac collection, which I’m kind of obsessed with, is not signed, but Clifton, during one of my interviews, said, “Yeah, that’s Bill Smith’s design. He sketched it, I carved it,” so I can say that is one of his pieces even though it’s not signed.
That was a gift to me from Bill from above, I think. He sent Clifton to me. Clifton needed closure. I needed to have a conversation with someone that knew Bill. We met, and it was wonderful. It’s been so very helpful. I’ve been able to take my research to another level that I had not considered before. It was quite a blessing that Clifton came in, was wowed, and knew that this is where the pieces should be. He said, “I don’t know why I’ve been keeping these all these years. It must be because of this.” He’s been hanging onto those as long as I’ve been alive, I’m telling you. The bag of jewelry and I are the same age. It’s been a long time, but it was quite a gift. He knew we would take very good care of it, and he wants to help me to tell his story.
Sharon: He was Black, but he was also gay. When he went to New York, did he find more acceptance in the design community there?
JoAnne: I believe he did. At the time, in the early 70s, there was a boom of Black designers that were finally getting noticed, whether it was fashion or jewelry or some other kind of art form. They were finally getting some recognition and publicity outside of the Black community. The Black community supported them very well.
As far as the part about being gay, he was not as comfortable here in Madison as he would have been in New York. He needed to be away from a small town to be able to realize his potential. He could have gone to Chicago or Detroit, I suppose, but he took himself all the way to New York because he could, and he did. He knew that’s where he needed to be, and he did not give up; he persevered. I think he really was more accepted there than he was here.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 19 Oct 2022 | Episode 172: The Joy of Jewelry Marketing: Expert Tips to Make Your Jewelry Brand Stand Out with Laryssa Wirstiuk, Founder and Creative Director of Joy Joya | 00:29:21 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Laryssa Wirstiuk Laryssa Wirstiuk is the founder and creative director of Joy Joya. She’s passionate about helping jewelry entrepreneurs tell impactful stories about their brands and products, so they can reach their target customers. Laryssa is also the author of Jewelry Marketing Joy: An Approachable Introduction to Marketing Your Jewelry Brand and the host of the Joy Joya Jewelry Marketing Podcast. She has presented at a number of industry conferences and has appeared as a guest on webinars and at other digital events, speaking on the subject of marketing for jewelry brands. Many people don’t realize that Laryssa has academic training in creative writing; one of her first jobs after graduate school was as an adjunct instructor at Rutgers University, where she taught creative writing for five years. She never abandoned her passion for teaching and strives to educate as many people as she can about jewelry marketing. She believes that knowledge about marketing is the prerequisite to success in business. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How do independent makers and jewelers stand out in an incredibly saturated market? It’s not by using the same marketing strategy as everyone else. That’s the motto at Joy Joya, a digital marketing agency for jewelry brands founded by Laryssa Wirstiuk. Laryssa joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why digital marketing is necessary for jewelry brands; why branded content should be more than just a sales pitch; and why brands may want to rethink their focus on PR. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Laryssa Wirstiuk. She is the founder and creative director of Joy Joya, a digital marketing agency for jewelry brands. She’s also the host of the Joy Joya Marketing Podcast and has recently started a second podcast. We’ll hear all about her on Jewelry Journey today. Laryssa, welcome to the program.
Laryssa: Sharon, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be on your podcast.
Sharon: I’m so glad to have you. As I was reading the intro, it occurred to me—I’ve asked myself this many times, but never you—do you have a Spanish background? Joy Joya sounds Spanish to me. What is that?
Laryssa: I don’t personally have a Spanish background. I’m actually Ukrainian, so totally different. But I’m super passionate about Spanish culture and studied the language for a long time. That is actually where the name for my business came from. So, you are right.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I’m trying to think—there was a big jewelry show I went to in Barcelona a few years ago. I think it’s Joya. So, I was wondering about that.
Can you tell us a little about your jewelry journey? Tell us how you got to when you are now.
Laryssa: Sure. It kind of makes no sense, but I’ll try to keep it brief and straightforward. My training and background actually have nothing to do with jewelry at all. I went to school for creative writing, and I started my career in marketing as well as teaching writing. My background was always from this communications standpoint. Always, though, I was super passionate about jewelry. Apart from work, it was something I always loved looking at. Of course, when I was a broke college student and just starting my career, I couldn’t purchase a lot of jewelry, but I loved looking at it. I just had this passion, and it kept poking me in the back for many years, saying, “Why aren’t you doing more with this?”
I had a moment in my marketing and writing career where I was really unhappy in the industries I had been working in. I had a job in healthcare marketing. I dabbled a little bit in technology marketing, education marketing. Those are all great industries, but I was never really passionate about any of them personally. Still, in the back of my head I was like, “Jewelry, jewelry, jewelry.” So, I randomly decided one day—it corresponded with me moving from New Jersey to California. I was overhauling my life in that way, and I wrote on a napkin, “I’m going to move to Los Angeles and continue doing marketing, but I’m going to focus on jewelry.” I just decided that one day.
Sharon: Wow! Were you teaching before that?
Laryssa: I was also teaching, yes. As a millennial, I finished grad school during the 2008-2009 recession, and I entered a job market that was completely messed up. Like many people my age, I had 20 jobs. I was doing all the things. I was like, “Freelance this, freelance that,” teaching, marketing, all of this stuff for many years. I decided I wanted to take all of this experience and see what I could do with it in the jewelry industry.
Before I moved to California—because as you can imagine, it was a big transition moving across the country—I took a few months to live with my parents to save up a little money and try to really figure out what I was doing. I took a job working at a jewelry store, and that’s where I started to learn the language of the customer experience. I got training in selling engagement rings and diamond jewelry. It really confirmed for me that, up to that point, jewelry had been a casual hobby and interest, and now I was like, “I really love this industry.” I fell in love with it. It made me feel confident about this thing I wrote on a little napkin about what I was going to do next.
Sharon: What did you fall in love with?
Laryssa: I loved the product in general. Then it was having that experience of working in the store and helping people get their engagement ring or find the perfect gift for Christmas or Mother’s Day. I was helping people shop and understanding the emotional resonance of what jewelry means to people. I thought that was all so magical.
Sharon: You told me you worked in social. You moved into digital and social marketing in other fields and then segued into jewelry. Do I have that right?
Laryssa: Yes. Even though I’ve been focused on jewelry marketing for six years, my marketing career spans back to 2010 because prior to that, I was working in other industries.
Sharon: How did you get into social when it comes to the other industries and jewelry? It still has so much potential in jewelry.
Laryssa: Social media, you mean?
Sharon: Yeah. I should say digital. I went back and forth between digital and social, but go ahead.
Laryssa: That’s another layer of this, talking about timing and when I finished school and all the changes that were happening in the economy. That 2009-2010 timeframe was when social media became a thing. I think Twitter had launched one or two years prior to that. Instagram was just starting out. Facebook, maybe three or four years before that. It was so new, and I was intrigued by that. So, I was like, “Whoa, what is this? We can make friends and interact with people in all parts of the world based on our interests.” At that time, social media was truly social, not so much in the way it is now, but it was a place to connect. I even had a blog I wrote about social media because I loved it and was so interested in it. It was a natural passion of mine. It was something I was exploring not just in my work, but also after hours. After dinner, I would work on my blog about marketing because I was so interested in it.
Sharon: How did you segue to social or digital in jewelry from commercial, let’s say?
Laryssa: I don’t know. I don’t have a specific step-by-step way I did that. I think it just felt like a natural fit for me. I don’t really know how to explain it.
Sharon: What made you start your podcast? How did you start it? Everybody has a podcast today. It’s ridiculous.
Laryssa: I started my podcast in 2018. So, I’ve had it for like four years now.
Sharon: It’s a long time in podcast years today.
Laryssa: I know. Going back to digital and content, the content creation and distribution and social part, they’re natural passions of mine. Any way I can share myself through content, I want to be doing that. For me, podcasting felt like—I don’t want to say the easy way, but it felt low-entry. I could sit at home and do it, and as long as I learned the tools, I could upload it every week or however often. I also felt like I had a lot to share about certain things, primarily in this industry. Most people are communicating on Instagram, for example, and I didn’t feel like Instagram was giving me the space to fully expand upon the things I wanted to share.
I’m a pretty introverted person, which I think surprises a lot of people because I have so much to say and I’m on camera all the time sharing videos. But I think when I’m in conversation, especially in group settings, I tend to be the one that hangs back a little bit. I’m very quiet and I’m listening. But I feel that when I get on my podcast, it’s my time to shine. I can talk and feel very comfortable in that medium, for some reason.
Sharon: When you started your podcast, what did you want to accomplish jewelry-wise? Did you have an idea?
Laryssa: Sure. I was still very new to the industry at that point, and as I’m sure you know, Sharon, this is an industry that’s very multigenerational. People don’t usually just hop into it. They typically are in it because their families have been in it, or they’ve been in it for many, many years. As a newcomer to the industry, I felt that I needed to prove myself in some way. I felt that the podcast would give me a chance to show people that I am passionate about this industry, that I care and I have something to offer. It was my way of offering that.
Sharon: Did you immediately come up with Joy Joya because you liked jewelry so much? How did that happen?
Laryssa: It was the first name I came up with when I officially started my business in 2016. I don’t remember how I came up with it, but I did like the play on words, the fact that “joya” means jewel in Spanish. I liked that the word “joy” is in there, like the English word joy. It felt natural to me because I think marketing and the topics I talk about can be overwhelming and challenging for a lot of people. Everyone wants to be better at marketing and everyone struggles over that, but I wanted to come to it in a fun, playful, approachable way. The name felt like it expressed that for me.
Sharon: I think you’re right in that it does express it, but there is so much to learn, especially for jewelers who started before Covid. I remember so many people saying, “What do I need online for?” and then being shocked when it actually brought some return.
Laryssa: It’s so true.
Sharon: Your podcast focuses on social, digital, that sort of thing, right?
Laryssa: Yes, primarily digital marketing, but I do occasionally touch on more old-school topics. I just did an episode on direct mail, for example. I’ve covered other, tangential marketing-related things, but typically I’m focused on digital marketing.
Sharon: There’s so much digitally, it could go on for years and years. So, the new podcast, is it Gold Mine?
Laryssa: The Gold Mine is a new segment of my current podcast, but I do have an actual new podcast called Success with Jewelry. It is a cohosted podcast with my partner, Liz Kantner. Liz is a social media marketing expert for the jewelry industry. She works primarily with makers, like metalsmiths and indie jewelry designers. Some consider us to be competitors, but we do service slightly different parts of the industry and have our own strengths.
Earlier this year, we randomly decided to start meeting once a week as friends on Zoom. We would talk about our clients and business challenges we were having, what’s going on in the industry, just connecting and trying to have community with each other. In those conversations, it evolved into us wanting to offer products or services together. We started earlier this year with a webinar series called Success with Jewelry. We had a pretty good showing for that. People would come to our Zoom presentations, and we would talk about various topics in marketing.
More recently, we decided to start this new podcast. Like me, Liz also feels like she has so much to say and offer, but she’s primarily on Instagram and feels very limited by that. I think she sees all the fun I’m having with my podcast and how much I’m able to share and communicate. So, I said, “Hey, let’s try to do this together and invite people into our private conversations to make others feel like they’re not alone in the business challenges they’re having, so they feel a sense of community.” It was also just for entertainment because we like to banter and have fun. So, that’s what we’re doing.
Sharon: I do this weekly. How regularly do you sit down to do your podcast? You also sit with Liz and do a separate podcast?
Laryssa: I do my own podcast twice a week and I do a podcast with Liz once a week.
Sharon: Twice a week. That’s a lot.
Laryssa: It is a lot.
Sharon: Why should jewelers consider digital marketing or social networking? What does it buy them? I see a lot of jewelers at shows. What does it buy them outside of that?
Laryssa: It gives them more resonance. I’m going to call it resonance because if you interact with someone in person, of course that is an amazing experience. There is nothing that beats an in-person interaction. But as we all know, the marketplace is super crowded. We are so distracted. We are bombarded by a million messages all the time. The moment you leave that in-person interaction, then what? Maybe you have a business card or some other printed material, but if that jewelry brand has a digital presence, there’s an opportunity for them to continue connecting with that person in a digital space, whether that’s through email marketing, through their social media posts, through their website, so the connection isn’t limited to that in-person experience.
Sharon: Do indie makers and jewelers, people already up and running, call you and say, “Hey, I’m lost”? What do they call you and say?
Laryssa: Most people who reach out to me have some level of digital marketing going on, and they are frustrated with it, they’re not sure if they’re doing it right, they need it to be optimized, or they need to know what the other options are. They’ve already tried it themselves a little bit. I would say that’s primarily the type of people who reach out to me. I occasionally get people who are starting from scratch, but that happens more rarely.
Sharon: Do they say, “I have a website. I’m trying to redo it, and I don’t know how to make it up to date”? What do they do?
Laryssa: That could be one scenario, that they need their e-commerce website to be more effective. A lot of times what happens is the different digital marketing touchpoints—so, let’s say social media, email, the website—there are a lot of inconsistencies or disconnects between these things. What I’m good at is finding how to make all these things work together and be like a well-oiled machine instead of having these random bits and pieces everywhere.
Sharon: So, branding and rebranding is one of your strengths?
Laryssa: Yes, definitely. It’s something I definitely work on with clients.
Sharon: How would you describe a brand when it comes to jewelry, when it comes to engagement rings and Christmas gifts and anniversary gifts? How would you describe it?
Laryssa: How would I describe a brand?
Sharon: Yeah.
Laryssa: It’s so individual to the business. I don’t know if there’s one way to tackle it. In this jewelry industry we’re in, there’s unfortunately so much same-same.
Sharon: Yes, there is.
Laryssa: It’s really a shame. I think everyone has something unique, but either they’re afraid to step into that uniqueness, or they just don’t know how. They’re too close to it, so they can’t see what the unique thing is. I’m always trying to challenge businesses in this industry, not just people who work with me directly, but through my podcasts, like, “Come on. Let’s find the thing that makes you unique, because we don’t need any more of the same thing. I can guarantee you that. There’s already too much of the same thing.” It’s a little bit of a disease in this industry.
Sharon: I know you’re in Orange County, California. I’m in Los Angeles. Sometimes I think if I were in New York, it might be different or easier because you’d be in the center of things. You’d have more access. Do you find that, or do you think that?
Laryssa: To be in the center of things for a brand?
Sharon: Or to be in New York. Do you feel like sometimes you should be elsewhere?
Laryssa: No. I’m in Glendale, actually. I’m not in Orange County. I am pretty central to the downtown L.A. jewelry scene. I do have a lot of clients in New York, and I don’t feel like not being there is an obstacle at all. I think in this world now, especially post-
Sharon: That’s true. How about on the West Coast? There’s so much going on on the East Coast when you talk about conferences and jewelry things. On the West Coast, it’s hard to find things besides bling if you’re trying to find anything different.
Laryssa: That’s true. Yes, because in New York, there’s—New York City Jewelry Week is coming up. We just had trade shows in August. For me as a service provider, the trade shows are more like I just want to go and see. For me as a service provider, I find the people who attend those trade shows are engaged in trade, and they don’t want to talk about anything else. That’s an important part of the industry. So, you guys do that, and then when you realize it’s not working, you can come talk to me.
Sharon: No, I understand. Maybe it’s me. It just seems that there’s a lot less on this coast than there is on the other coast.
Laryssa: Yeah, that’s true.
Sharon: I love jewelry, but every time I go to a conference, it’s been on the East Coast. I’ve been fortunate that I could go. That’s one of the reasons I started the podcast. I felt like, “What about the person in Iowa or Idaho? They want to know about what you’re saying, right?”
Laryssa: Yeah, definitely. What’s your favorite New York City show?
Sharon: I go to more conferences, more educational. There’s ASJRA. It’s been in Chicago; it’s been in New York. In the last few years, it’s been online. I also like Art Jewelry Forum. They have different things. They do have it here, too. You speak on a lot of panels. You’ve spoken at JCK, AGS. Tell us what those mean and what they are.
Laryssa: Yes, recently I was speaking at JCK. That is pretty much the biggest tradeshow, at least here in North America. It happens in Las Vegas every year. They do have an educational aspect to that conference, but like I mentioned before, I think people’s mindsets are more like they’re there to do actual trade.
Sharon: Yes, to sell or to do business.
Laryssa: So, it’s me just going to pal around and see people I know primarily.
Sharon: There’s a lot to be said for that. There’s a lot to be said for the networking that takes place there. What topics are you talking about?
Laryssa: Yes. This year at JCK, I was on a panel called “The Fringe of Marketing.” We were talking about up-and-coming marketing platforms and tactics that people in the audience maybe wouldn’t be as familiar with.
Sharon: What would you say those are? Instagram, yes. TikTok?
Laryssa: Yeah, we spent a lot of time talking about TikTok. Also, the Metaverse and NFTs and things like that.
Sharon: NFTs? What does that stand for?
Laryssa: Non-fungible tokens.
Sharon: I was telling somebody this morning that you wake up in the morning and say, “O.K., today’s the day I’m going to learn more about Instagram or TikTok,” and then you say, “Why?” because 10 minutes is going to change it all. Even with Instagram, it seems like it’s gotten so commercial as opposed to what it was before, where a jeweler could really show their stuff.
Laryssa: It’s hard to keep up with. There’s something new every week, honestly.
Sharon: I bet there is. I’m laughing; my husband is a TikTok addict. My sister said to me, “Isn’t that for kids?” I said, “Yeah.” I know it’s for adults too, but it’s morphed a lot.
So, what are the top two points you want to make when you talk about jewelry?
Laryssa: Jewelry marketing?
Sharon: Yeah.
Laryssa: I think more people need to be leaning into creating valuable content. I’m just making up a number, but 99% of jewelry businesses are too focused on themselves, the “Me, me, me. Look what I have. Look at me. My stuff is pretty. This is what I can offer you,” and not as focused on the customer and providing value. What does the customer want? What can you give them? How can you make their lives better? And content is a great way to do that. Blog posts, video content, e-books, style guides, things that educate, inform, entertain, inspire the customer, rather than just being an infinite sales pitch for your sparkly thing. That is the primary point I would like to make.
My second point is that I think most of the industry thinks about marketing in a—I don’t want to say old-school or traditional way, because it’s not really, but they’re very focused on PR. How can I get on the celebrity? How can I get in the magazine? A lot of them also lean into social media and advertising. Those are the primary three things that almost every jewelry brand does with their marketing and outreach strategy. But if everyone’s doing the same thing and most people’s products look kind of the same, I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish there.
Sharon: Do you have to persuade a lot of jewelers? Do you find a lot of resistance?
Laryssa: To what I’m saying?
Sharon: Yeah.
Laryssa: I don’t think it’s for everyone, honestly. There are a million marketing agencies out there that will do that. They can go do that, and they can continue seeing the same results they’re seeing, but I think if someone is truly ready to try a different way or think differently about their approach, I’m the person for them.
Sharon: The things you said, blogs and style books, do you do all of that?
Laryssa: Yes.
Sharon: You must be well-positioned to do that. You’ve written some books, right?
Laryssa: I have written a book for my business and another unrelated fiction book.
Sharon: You just want to write, right?
Laryssa: Yes, I am a writer at heart. I studied it. I used to teach writing. It is, to me, the easiest and most natural way to communicate.
Sharon: And it comes in very handy with jewelry. Laryssa, thank you so much for being with us today. It’s been great to have you. I wish you the best with your business.
Laryssa: Thanks, Sharon. I really appreciate chatting with you. I love your podcast, and it was so fun to have you interview me.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 30 Aug 2021 | Episode 127: New Luxury: Making Jewelry that Puts Meaning Over Value with Art Jeweler & Author, Nicolas Estrada | 00:32:44 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Nicolas Estrada Nicolas Estrada (Medellín, 1972) discovered his artistic pathway in Barcelona, a city that he had come to for entirely different reasons. Until that point, he had been an inhabitant of the business world, where he was involved in marketing. His destiny, however, was to follow another path: creating one-off jewelry artworks that were meaningful, unique and infused with stories that speak to the senses. At Barcelona's Llotja and Massana schools, he came into contact with the jewelry world for the first time, where he discovered that his efforts opened up infinite possibilities for expression to him. He has studied widely, learning the techniques of gemology, setting and engraving. Nicolas has given lectures and workshops at universities and art centers in England, Germany and the United States. In 2019, he was invited to represent his homeland, Colombia, at World Art Tokyo in Japan, where he also had the opportunity to give a lecture and lead a workshop at the Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry in Tokyo, Japan's most highly regarded jewelry school. Nicolas is the author of the five books in the series on jewelry that has been published by Promopress in several languages and distributed worldwide. Nicolas lives in Barcelona, the city that allowed him to be who he wanted to be and to do what he wanted to do. He has his own studio, where he shares his craft and experiences with other jewelers who also live in or are passing through this wonderful cosmopolitan city. Additional Resources: · Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/NEJ · Instagram: @nicolasestradajeweler · Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolasestradajeweler · Video about his books: https://youtu.be/Ph8aoK8Vg4I · Video about his studio & work: https://youtu.be/SxwJYAPZfJQ Photos: Earrings 1: hand-carved rock crystal, gold
Earrings 2: trapiche emeralds, diamonds, silver
Brooch: agates with intaglio, silver, steel
Ring 1: rock crystal with intaglio, silver, pearls
Ring 2: wood, copper, silver, paint
Transcript: Although Nicolas Estrada entered the jewelry field later in life, he has as much enthusiasm for the industry as any newcomer. Coming from a background in the business world, he brings a wealth of creativity and keen insight to his work as a maker, researcher, and author. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why he thinks art jewelry will explode if makers tap into the right market, how he compiled his series of jewelry books, and why he finds more meaning in art jewelry than traditional jewelry. Read the episode transcript below. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, speaking with us from Barcelona is my guest, Nicolas Estrada. Nicolas is a maker, entrepreneur and creator of five books featuring art jewelers from around the world. Each book focuses on a different type of jewelry such as necklaces or bracelets, and I’m sure many of you have his books on your shelves. We’ll hear more about his jewelry journey today. Nicolas, welcome to the program. Nicolas: Thank you very much for inviting me, Sharon. I am very happy to talk to you today. Sharon: It’s great to talk with you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you creative as a child? Nicolas: My journey in jewelry started in 2000 exactly, I think around the same month. I was a very creative child. My parents and my sister thought I was going to study design. In Colombia at that time, if you were very creative, you could go to architecture school maybe, but I went into engineering because I wanted to be like my father. So, I went to electrical engineering, but I crashed against a wall in the first semester. Then I went into business administration. The situation at that time in Colombia was extremely dangerous. All the things you see in the Narcos series, this was my city; this is how I grew up. I think my father was very worried that I was living in the city at that time, so without saying anything, he sent me to Boston to study business. So, the creativity went into a parenthesis for a while. I was always making gifts for my girlfriends, for my friends, but I was going to be an executive. When I came to Barcelona, it exploded. I became a jeweler with many, many things happening in between. If you want, I can tell them, but this is a long story. I don’t know if you want me to share it with you. Sharon: I’m curious why Barcelona. How did you go from Boston at Babson College, I think I read, to Barcelona? How did you make that leap? What was the catalyst? Nicolas: In Boston, I had a great time in the university. Babson was a great school. They’re international, so I had many friends during the first time in my life by myself. But the winter was so hard, and it was the first time in my life when night arrived at 4:00 and the day started at 9:00. So, at the end of Boston, I went back to Medellín. I worked in a bank for six months. Then I went into a multinational company knitting garments for one or two years, then I went into another consumer goods multinational for another two years and I burned out completely. This corporate world was very hard for me. I was very successful, but the only thing I was getting from this corporate world was money, nothing else. I decided to quit. I started to apply for an MBA at all these Ivy League schools, but I didn’t get the GMAT score I needed. So, I was thinking, “O.K., what am I going to do?” My sister was living in Barcelona. I had never been to Spain before, so I decided to go visit her, maybe take the summer for myself, think about life a little bit and decide what to do. I came to Barcelona, and in September I went to a jewelry school because there was professor who was a friend of a boyfriend that my sister was dating at the time. I started to do some jewelry because I wanted to express myself, take a break from the corporate world. It was the first time I had time for myself in five years, because I was always going from one work to another without any holidays in between. I remember in that school, I went to an exhibition and saw work from McClure in Canada and another artist here in Barcelona; it was a museum. I said to myself, “This is the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my life.” I saw that most of the people who were exhibiting in that museum were from the Massana School, former students or professors. I went to talk to Ramón at Massana and he said, “Yeah, transfer and I will receive you here,” and I got into Massana. Sharon: When you say Ramon-- Nicolas: He was my sister’s friend. I went to talk to Ramón. He was so friendly, and he said, “Well, yeah, transfer and you will get into Massana. I will make sure you get into it this year.” So, I transferred, he accepted me and I started at Massana. My father was freaked out because, imagine, he had paid so much money for education. I was so successful in Colombia. I was doing extremely well in the corporate world. I was starting to change a little bit, so he was like, “O.K., why don’t do jewelry as a hobby and maybe you’ll come back to the corporate world.” I said, “Dad, give me a little time and let me decide.” I think putting all these oceans between Colombia and my life was also very helpful, because in Medellín you don’t do what you want; you do what people want you to do. If you are a man, you are supposed to play a certain role in society: not artistic, not cooking, nothing like that, no creativity. You just go into business, or you become a doctor or something like that. Here in Barcelona, nobody knew who I was; nobody cared about me. I’ve said many times that in Barcelona, it was the first time in my life that I had time for myself and the opportunity to be exactly what I wanted to be. This was also very difficult because I had this background and the commitment with my father. I needed to retribute all the effort he made for paying for my university. When I graduated from Massana, I won a prize. I went to Marseilles as a representative from Massana and I won a prize and went to Germany— Sharon: You’re talking about Galerie Marseilles? Nicolas: Exactly. At Massana School, I won the prize for one of the best graduation works. The best works went to Galerie Marseille. I won a prize in Marseille at Galerie Marseille, all the ones who won the prize went to Germany. I won the first prize in Germany. There was a woman here called Pilar Garrigosa. She was a woman—I don’t know how you say the word in English, but the woman who supports artists a lot. Sharon: A sponsor, sort of? Nicolas: Yeah, a sponsor, exactly. She’s also a jeweler, but she was always sponsoring people she liked. She liked my work, so she invited me to exhibit in her house. My parents were here during that time of the year, and when they saw this exhibition, they realized this is what I was going to do. People were amazed; I was very happy. I saw a lot of work. It was fantastic. So, my father relaxed, and I continued with jewelry. I was with jewelry for a while. This was, what, 2000, 2003, 2004? And it was fantastic. I was working for a very important jeweler here, not artistic at all, very commercial. I was doing a lot of his pieces and I was earning my livelihood. I liked the craft; I liked working with my hands. I was learning technique, because in jewelry most of the good technicians, they start at 14 in the studio, or at 12 or 16. I started very old in the craft. I took advantage of all this time to go to technical schools, to learn from masters, but most was commercial jewelry. Sharon: When you say commercial jewelry, were you working in what we think of as traditional jewelry, as opposed to art jewelry, where you’re working with gemstones? Nicolas: Exactly, yeah. Traditional is a more appropriate word. I needed to earn my livelihood; I needed to pay the mortgage. I needed to bring some money into the house. Artistic jewelry is fantastic for the soul, but very bad for the pocket. I was doing some artistic jewelry, but I was mostly making my life working for this known jeweler here in Barcelona. Sharon: Who was the sponsor you named? I don’t know the name. Nicolas: Her name is Pilar Garrigosa. She’s a very important woman here. She’s from the family of one of the most important mayors of the city. She had a jewelry gallery a long time ago, and she’s a fantastic woman. She also opened the door for me to the jewelry institutions, to many people. I went with her to Munich for the first time. She’s still a very good friend of mine, and she was my collector in the beginning. She was buying a lot of pieces from me. She’s a woman I am very grateful for. Sharon: What attracted you to art jewelry as opposed to, say, traditional jewelry? What was it that you liked? Nicolas: Traditional jewelry gave me the technique, but I think traditional jewelry sometimes is a little boring because it doesn’t speak to the person; it’s just gold and gemstones. It’s fantastic to know how to do these, but I think the jewelry that speaks, that tells a story, this is the artistic jewelry. This is the jewelry I like to do now. I also try to do some traditional jewelry that has a more artistic look. I am not a professor; I earn my living from jewelry and artistic jewelry. The public is very narrow, so it’s difficult to approach a lot of people with artistic jewelry. I like to make more commercial pieces, more traditional jewelry to appeal to a broader audience. Sharon: There is a real market for art jewelry, but it’s a lot narrower than regular jewelry. Do you see any changes in that marketplace? Do you see it growing? Do you see it declining? You travel all over the world and talk to art jewelers. Do you see any changes or hot spots, let’s say? Nicolas: The thing is that, apart from us, nobody knows what art jewelry is, so the potential for growth is 1000% if we manage to arrive to people. People don’t know who we are; they don’t even know that this exists. When they see a ring from Niessing, they are overwhelmed, and this ring is from the 40s, 50s. People still believe that jewelry from the 60s is extremely creative. We are not doing a good job at all in showing to the world what we do. The image that people have of jewelry is from Cartier, Bulgari, a diamond from De Beers, the engagement ring they buy in the most traditional store. There’s all the potential in the world because people don’t know what we do. They have no idea there is another kind of jewelry. Sharon: Every art jeweler has to be a businessperson and market their own things, but you have such a strong business and entrepreneurial background. Do you think that gives you an edge or makes you see things differently in how you sell your stuff or make art jewelry more known? Does this give you more edge? Nicolas: The marketing is very good when you are using somebody else’s budget. Sharon: Somebody else’s money? Nicolas: Budget, the money from somebody else. If you are a corporation and you get $1 million to invest in advertisement, you do it all perfectly, but when you have to sell yourself, this is extremely difficult. Also, I think nothing prepares you in life for rejection when people say, “This is too ugly,” or you have things in red, blue or white, but they want it in yellow, the color that you don’t have. You have variety, but people want exactly what you don’t have. For me, no matter how well you are trained, rejection and negativity and these things are very difficult to take. The business world prepares you maybe to manage money, to invest, to be organized, but it doesn’t prepare you for the artistic world, because the artistic world is extremely difficult. As you said before, it’s not that we are not only the owners of our business. We have to be the photographer; we have to write; we have to deal with social media; we have to teach and we have to speak, so we are all in one. We need to be very well prepared. Sharon: That’s so true. Nothing prepares you for the rejection when it’s your own work. Maybe somebody has been out in the world as a salesperson, but they’re not selling their own things. It’s so personal when somebody says, “It’s too expensive,” or “Do you have it in yellow?” How was it that you started compiling books? Why don’t you tell everybody about them? Nicolas: Since I started in the artistic world, I tried to be receptive to all the doors that open in life. You have to be very careful of what you ask for, because usually what you ask for is going to arrive. I try to be prepared every time a door opens. Usually for me, it’s very difficult to say no to things. When I mentioned to you before that I got this prize here in Barcelona, there was a guy in the exhibition of the winners. He liked my piece, so he made me do one piece for his girlfriend and we kept in touch. He’s a little bit older than I am, maybe two or three years older, so we were seeing each other in all of our exhibitions, in the art scene in the city. One day our friend said, “I have a friend who is a publisher and he would love to publish a book about jewelry. I will tell him to call you.” This was in 2005. In 2010, I got the phone call from this guy, five years later when I had totally forgotten about it. He told me he was selling the books from the Lark Books publisher, like the “1,000 Rings” books that are fantastic, and that opened the door for all of us. So, I said yeah, but I want to make a book for my house. I said, “Look, I don’t copy things, but we can start talking about different languages, different artists, stuff like that.” We started to talk about it. This was in 2009 maybe. I started to do some research, to look at all the books, and we started with “Rings.” We were calling at that time; this was by email and calling and by regular mail. We published the “Rings” book in 2010 and it was a total success. Then we did “Earrings.” It was also very successful. After “Earrings,” we did “Necklaces.” “Necklaces” is one of my favorite books because it allowed me to show for the first time the people who wear the kind of jewelry we make. In “Rings” and “Earrings,” you don’t see much of the face or the body, but in “Necklaces,” I was able show the people. The British publisher who buys most of the books from the catalogue publisher didn’t like some of the bodies, so this was the big heat. The catalogue publisher said, “No, we’ll go with the book anyway.” This was also a very difficult book. Now we have five books. It’s like one book every two years. Sharon: They are so fabulous. I have a hard time looking at some of them because the jewelry is so beautiful. It’s so creative and fantastic, and it’s also a great way to learn about other artists, too. There are a lot of names I’m sure a lot of people don’t know or aren’t familiar with. Do you search these people out? I’m sure they come to you also. How do you find them? It’s such a variety and so global. How do you find them all? Nicolas: Well, Sharon, after so many years in the field—the first book was extremely difficult. I had to invite every single person in that book because nobody knew me. Many people didn’t trust me. There were even some people in Argentina trying to bring the book down because they thought I was going to steal all the images. This was so difficult to make. Now, after so many trips to Munich, so many trips all around the world looking at nice jewelry, I have my database. I also make huge calls everywhere. I think I reach a big jewelry audience with this call. For example, in the “Bracelet” book, I was surprised because 60% of the people who are in this book—it’s the last book—I didn’t know anything about. I was very afraid of this book because it was going to be the end of a collection in a way, so I wanted this book to be beautiful. But not too many people make bracelets, so I was always in fear, “Am I going to fail? This is not going to be good enough.” But at the end, I got all this information from people I didn’t know anything about. To answer your question, in the first book, I had to invite every single participant. In the last book, the attention was so nice that I was bombarded by applications of many people I didn’t know anything about and has surprisingly beautiful work. Sharon: What kept you going if the first book was so difficult? Was it that the publisher said, “O.K., we’re past the worst. Now, let’s get to the second book”? What kept you going? Nicolas: For me, as I said before, we have huge potential because mostly nobody knows what we do. This is the seed I give. This is my way of contributing to the field to show to a broader audience that rings are not only from Cartier; there are many more rings. If you want to adorn yourself, you don’t have to go Bulgari; you don’t have to go Fifth Avenue in New York. You can look for people, crazy guys, crazy girls, who make things in an atelier and get dirty and cut themselves. There’s a very beautiful way to adorn yourself if you go away from the most traditional sources. This is how I want to contribute to the field that has given me so much. Jewelry is my life. Jewelry makes me a happy man because I love the field; I love my work; I admire my colleagues very much. This is a way for me to give back. Also, to be very honest, books give me a little bit of a reputation in the field. The artistic world is so hard most of the time. This reputation is a little fuel to my ego to keep going after rejection, after failing to sell, after not doing well in the gallery. I get the messages of people who are in the book, “Oh, I love your work. My pieces look fantastic.” I get back a little bit. I get very nice feedback and it makes very happy. So, I want to contribute to the field. I get a reputation. It’s a balance. It helps me a lot. Sharon: They’re beautiful books. Do you think it’s opened some people’s eyes, people who didn’t know about this kind of jewelry? It’s certainly a great way to do it. It’s a great introduction if somebody doesn’t know anything about the field. Do you think it’s opened people’s eyes? Nicolas: Totally, yeah. To give you a personal example, my mother didn’t know this kind of jewelry existed, and now she’s sharing these with all her friends. If we give a book like this to friends, if we open their eyes, little by little we’re going to create a broader audience. That is what we need. I think the luxury world is not our world. The luxury world for me is very boring. If you are a man, you go to Armani, you buy off the mannequin, so you dress like the mannequin, same tie, same suit, same belt. You go to Rolex and buy the watch because in the luxury world, you want to show how much money you have and how much you are worth. I think we are never going to reach the luxury world because we don’t sell prestige, but we sell a story. I think we have to look for the people who go to museums, who are more responsive to a storm or a sunset or the beautiful things in life, not only money. These are the people I try to target because these are the people who want to invest in the things that make them happy, not in the things that show others how much money they have. These are the people I want to target with the books, with my jewelry, with our approach. There are so many people like this in the world. Millionaires, there are a few, but I think there are many more people who are responsive to beauty, and these are the people who we want to approach. Sharon: Do you have another book in the hopper or in mind? Is there another one, or do you feel like you’ve covered the gamut? Nicolas: “Bracelets” was delayed one year because of the pandemic. It was supposed to be released in 2020, but it just got released in January of this year. I am taking my time to enjoy the book, to enjoy the comments, to make sure all the participants get their copies. I think there is going to be another book in the very near future, but I don’t know exactly what it is going to be. The thing with these books, Sharon, is that they cannot only be beautiful books; they also need to be commercial books because they are business for the publisher. Many books you see are exploring beauty and everything, but they are targeted to a certain audience. The books I make, they need to sell out. They need to get everywhere; they need to have a second edition, otherwise the publisher is not going to be interested. I have to talk to him and see what is going to be beneficial for him and beneficial for me. We have to get together maybe later this year, during the second semester, and start deciding what are we going to do next, because this is exacting work. It’s not that I go to the publisher and tell him what to do. This is a work; I am the author and I make compilations for them, but they are the ones who sell and they are the ones who invest. They are the ones who need to get back their investment. Sharon: Right, I understand. They have to make money. Well, it’s a good thing they sell because it’s a great series. Thank you so much for being here today. Hopefully when the next book comes out, we’ll have you back. Thank you so much, and good luck with everything. We’ll be talking with you. Nicolas: It was a fantastic invitation. Thank you very much, and I hope we can have a reality again without all the virtuality. Virtuality is amazing, the way we manage to discover the spiritual world that connects to many people, but I think we miss the hug; we miss touching; we miss seeing; we miss saying hello, having a drink. I hope to see you again very soon here in Barcelona, in Munich or somewhere else in the world, Sharon. Sharon: I look forward to it. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for reading. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 01 Apr 2022 | Episode 151 Part 2: A New Book Celebrates the Jewelry of Laurie Hall | 00:29:14 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Susan Cummins
Born in 1946 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but raised primarily in Atherton, California, Susan Cummins specializes in contemporary art jewelry and spent many years as a gallerist in Mill Valley, California. In 1983, Cummins took over Horizon Gallery in Mill Valley, re-naming it the Susan Cummins Gallery. Noting a lack of representation, Cummins settled on American jewelry as a primary focus for her gallery. Eventually, Cummins relocated to a larger space in Mill Valley and became known for representing painters and jewelers in the same gallery space, blurring the rigid distinction between fine art and craft. Cummins maintained the gallery until 2002. In 1997, Cummins helped found Art Jewelry Forum, a nonprofit tasked with connecting people working across the field of contemporary jewelry and educating new audiences. She continues to be a frequent contributor and is currently serving as the board chair. Cummins has also served on boards for arts organizations such as the American Craft Council and the Headlands Center for the Arts. Her primary focus in recent years has been her work as director of the Rotasa Foundation, a family foundation that supports exhibitions and publications featuring contemporary art jewelers. Susan Cummins was elected a 2018 Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council.
About Laurie Hall
Laurie Hall, along with Ron Ho, Kiff Slemmons, Ramona Solberg, and Nancy Worden, is part of what has been called the Northwest School of Jewelers, an influential jewelry art movement centered around an eclectic style of narrative and composition. Laurie Hall is a long-time artist and educator from the Pacific Northwest, whose work has exhibited internationally. In 2016, her work was featured in Craft in America’s exhibition Politically Speaking: New American Ideals in Contemporary Jewelry. Laurie’s work is part of numerous private and public collections including The Museum of Art and Design in NYC, The Tacoma Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com: Coney Island Express 1983 Carved polychromed wood, bronze, sterling silver, string, and found cocktail umbrella 1 1/2 x 1 1/4 x 16 inches Private collection Photo: Roger Schreiber
Stumped 1988 Yew wood, sterling silver (oxidized), and antique compass 13 x 1/4 x 3/8 inches The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection, museum purchase funded by the Morgan Foundation in honor of Catherine Asher Morgan, 2002.3793
Cubist Café 1987 Sterling silver (oxidized) 6 1/2 x 12 3/4 x 1/2 inches Tacoma Art Museum, gift of Mia McEldowney Photo: Doug Yaple
Wrapped Up in the Times 1987 Sterling silver (oxidized), aluminum sheet, and decoy fish eye 6 x 4 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches Sandy and Lou Grotta collection Photo: Richard Nichol
The Royal Brou Ha Ha 1996 Sterling silver (stamped), stainless-steel fine mesh, hematite beads, and sterling silver foxtail chain 10 x 10 x 1 1/2 inches Tacoma Art Museum, gift of Sharon Campbell Photo: Richard Nichol
One Screw 2009 Bronze screw and sterling silver 1 x 1 x 1/4 inches Curtis Steiner collection Photo: Curtis Steiner
No. 2, Please! 1988 Bronze, found No.2 pencils, basswood, and color core 16 x 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection, museum purchase funded by the Morgan Foundation in honor of Catherine Asher Morgan, 2002.3791
Behind the Eight-Ball 2008 Fabricated marriage of metal ball (copper, sterling silver, nickel silver, bronze), copper frame, found printing plate and stencil, and sterling silver 2 3/4 x 3 x 1/2 inches Marcia Doctor collection Photo: Roger Schreiber
Transcript:
Although her work has been shown internationally, Laurie Hall’s jewelry is undoubtedly rooted in the Pacific Northwest. As a member of the influential Northwest School of Jewelers, Laurie’s eclectic, often humorous work has drawn the attention of numerous gallerists and collectors, including Art Jewelry Forum co-founder Susan Cummins. Susan recently captured Laurie’s career in the new book, “North by Northwest: The Jewelry of Laurie Hall.” Laurie and Susan joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the influences behind the Northwest School; where Laurie draws her inspiration from; and what they learned from each other while writing the book. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode.
Today, my guests are Susan Cummins and Laurie Hall. Susan has co-authored with Damian Skinner a new book, “North by Northwest: The Jewelry of Laurie Hall.” For 20+ years, she was the driving force behind Art Jewelry Forum, which advocates for contemporary art jewelry. Laurie is an arts educator and jeweler from the Pacific Northwest whose jewelry has been exhibited internationally. She’s a key figure in the Northwest School of Jewelry, an influential jewelry art movement centered around an eclectic style of narrative and composition. If you haven’t heard Part 1, please go TheJewelryJourney.com.
Welcome back. Susan, did you see Laurie’s work somewhere and said, “I want to show that,” or did Laurie send you a photo and say, “Do you want to carry my stuff?” How did that work?
Susan: I don’t think Laurie sent me anything. I think I saw her work in a gallery in San Francisco that had it before I did, the Lane Potter Gallery.
Laurie: Right.
Susan: It could have been that I saw it in the catalogue for Jewelry U.S.A. or another invitational of some sort, or I could have seen it through Kiff Slemmons, who I was also showing at the time. Somehow or another, I saw images of it. I had a show—I can’t remember if it was a group show. Maybe it was Northwest jewelers; I don’t remember the reason for the group show, but it seemed to me that Laurie’s work would fit into that. That’s when she did the café piece, because Laurie always was very conscious of where her pieces were going.
If she was doing a show that was going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area, she wanted to do something that reminded her of that area that she thought people there would relate to. She thought San Francisco was kind of like Paris, in that there are cafés and Bohemians, life and art and all that. So, she made this café piece that looks like it could have been something that Brock or Picasso did early in their careers. There’s a guitar in there. There are tables with plates and chairs and things askew, as if in a cubist painting, and the word “café” in big letters across the top. It was something she thought the San Francisco community would like.
When she did something for the East Coast, she often thought about folk art and Americana, so she used whirligig figures, literally off of whirligigs, or folk art-influenced imagery, like people riding a bicycle, or a tall bicycle with a top hat on and a little message, or the words “Coney Island” on it so they would be thinking of Coney Island. It was very folk art, Americana-like, which she thought the East Coast would be more interested in. Laurie was definitely making work for these markets she showed in, very conscious of that and very accommodating to it. Anyway, did I answer your question? I think I got carried away there.
Sharon: Yes. Laurie, how did the fact that you were a teacher influence the work you did? I don’t know if you’re still teaching.
Laurie: I taught for over 38 years. The cubist café was because we were studying cubism. I taught calligraphy, lettering and graphics. I love lettering and graphics, and the kids influenced me a lot because they would comment on what I was making or doing. I didn’t work at school, but I’d sometimes bring a piece in and show it to them. Did I answer it?
Sharon: Yes.
Susan: Why don’t you talk about that piece you did that was a challenge for the students in your class to make something like it?
Laurie: Yeah, you mean the football thing. At Mercer Island High School, they always win all the sport competitions, football, basketball, baseball, soccer, everything. Sometimes they’d shut school down when they were in the finals. I had a whole bunch of football players in my class, and they all called me Hall. They all thought I was cool.
Sharon: I’m sorry. You were cool? Is that what you said?
Laurie: They thought I was cool.
Sharon: For a minute I thought you said cruel, and I was going, “O.K.”
Laurie: No, they called me Agent Orange and Galleon. It was quite funny. They all wanted an A, and they kept coming up and saying, “What does it take to get an A? This is an art class. It must be easy to get an A.” I said, “All right. We’re making jewelry. You guys have to make a necklace and wear it into the lunchroom if you expect to get an A. You have to wear it. I really want you to wear it all day, but I won’t be able to see you all day.” Anyhow, they did it, and everybody enjoyed it.
Sharon: And did they get A’s?
Laurie: If they deserved one. Just by them doing it, I thought they deserved an A because of that, yeah.
Sharon: It’s a high hurdle, walking to the lunchroom with something like that.
Laurie: Yes, guys with big necks and everything. It was humorous.
Susan: You also did a piece yourself that had to do with the idea of football, which was a sandwich board piece you wear over your shoulders, front and back. It was called “Rah, Rah, Sis, Boom, Bah.” There were footballs flying over the goalposts and flags and people waving and numbers and all kinds of things.
Laurie: I had a little candy. They used to give candy out. If you had a date to the football game, they’d give you a favor, a little tin football with some candy in it. So, I used that football on the necklace. That was my found object that I had, but how did I come about having that? I think it was in my brother’s drawer upstairs in my parents’ house.
Susan: No, somebody invited you to a football game and gave you a piece of candy.
Laurie: I doubt it. I probably stole the candy in it.
Sharon: Laurie, was there a point in your jewelry making that you were selling but making so much that you said, “I can’t teach right now”? Was there so much demand, or no?
Laurie: No, I had a really good job. I needed the money. I had no other means of support because I’m a single lady, and I loved it. It was consistent. It was reliable. I had no desire to make production jewelry. I worked for Robert Lee Morris one summer for six weeks. It was interesting, and I really liked Robert. I went to his workshop up in Lake Placid, New York. He made that Coty collection of bracelets that are all aerodynamic, and he was talking about that. I used hollow construction a lot because I’m not a flat jeweler. I really make dimensional things.
Sharon: Yes, you can see that now.
Laurie: To me they’re sculpture; they really are. They’re sculptural, and I like the way they interact with the body. It’s a sculpture on the body, as I said, but I’m not really intellectual about what I’m doing. I’m just recording things that I think other people could find interest in and making them. Do I know they’re going to find interest in them? I’ve always been lucky my work has gone out. Am I big seller? I usually sell what I make, but I can’t make that much. I’ve always been interrupted by school. I had a lot of kids every day. I was in a public school, and then I had to clean the room and get the supplies. I had a whole lot of energy. I’m kind of amazed at what I did at this point.
Sharon: Have you ever put on a piece that you had been playing with and said, “This is too flat,” or “It’s not talking,” or “This isn’t what I had in mind”?
Laurie: You mean do I mess up and trash something? Yeah, of course. There’s one piece in the book that’s made out of an aluminum ruler. I made that piece three times and even had it photographed. I don’t have a lot of money, but I don’t think about that. I just go and do something because I know I’ll have to figure it out later. When I finally got that piece done, it went to a gallery and it sold immediately, but I made it three times. I have evidence of the way it looked along the way.
Sharon: What was it the other times? You didn’t think it was dimensional enough?
Laurie: It just didn’t do it. That’s all I can say. To be honest about it, it wasn’t compelling. There are compelling ideas. Some people can sit down and design something and make it—I’d say there’s the ordinary way things look where they’re acceptable, like a lady the other day showed me a picture of something on a TV set and said, “Is this your piece?” I looked at it and said, “No. It’s nice, but I don’t make that kind of thing.” I don’t try to make nice. I don’t try to make acceptable. I just try to make something that’s got a little bit of magic to the message. You don’t get it right away maybe, but you keep wanting to go back and look at it. That’s what I hope for, and that’s what it does to me when I make it. I either know it works or I know it doesn’t work.
Sharon: Do you have a story in mind that you want to say, or message in mind that you want to get across in a piece before you start it?
Laurie: Sometimes, like when I found the screw, I knew what I was going to do with it. I saw what was behind the Eight Ball. I saw that ball thing, and I had some Corbusier letters. They were stencils, and I had the monkey. I knew I wanted to make a marriage of a metal ball, and I wanted to see how round I could get it. That was the high bar, so it was technical in one aspect. I try to go over the high bar sometimes.
What other piece can I talk about? The “Wrapped Up in the Times” piece doesn’t have any found objects in it other than a glass eye, but I had aluminum, and I made the newspaper out of aluminum because I could cut letters. If you know how you can do it with the materials you have available—and I work with anything. If I think it will work in the piece, I work with it.
Susan: We should say that “Wrapped Up in the Times” is a fish wrapped up in The New York Times. It’s a pun. I was going to say a couple of things about Laurie’s work. One is that she really does describe the Northwest. If you’ve ever lived in the Northwest, which I have, either in Portland or Seattle, there are so many references to her place of origin that you just can’t miss them. For example, there are a lot of boats in her work. There’s water or fishing references. There’s a bridge. One necklace is of the bridge. Portland, if you’ve ever been there, there’s a river that goes through the city, and over the river are many, many bridges. There’s also a lot of wood and log sections, like rounds of cut wood which came from some branches of a hawthorn tree—I forget what it was.
Laurie: Yew wood.
Susan: Yew wood, yeah. Those sections were all arranged around a necklace with a little compass down in the bottom, which refers to a story about Laurie getting lost in the woods. She called it “Stumped,” again referring to getting lost in the woods, but also referring to the fact that Portland was a big source for lumber companies back in the 19th century for wood. For a long time, they cut the trees and left them stumps, so there are vast areas where there were stumps. Even today, Portland is known by the nickname of Stumptown, and you can find Stumptown coffee around town. It’s a brand of coffee. There are parts of the city that are called Stumptown. So, it’s a joke, and yet she made this necklace that has this title.
A lot of Laurie’s pieces are like that. They are puns or plays on words, or just something funny. There’s another piece called “The Royal Brewhaha,” which is about brewing tea. It’s got tea bags all around it, all of which Laurie made, but it’s about the English, so the royal part comes in making a deal about something. It’s just funny and fun. She’s often very clever about how she names them. It’s also things that are coming from this area, except maybe “The Royal Brewhaha,” but many things—
Laurie: Except it was Princess Di and the royal family. I am Scottish, English, Irish, all the British Isles, so I couldn’t help but identify with her because she was so tortured by the royal family. I hated that, so I had to make a piece about it.
Susan: Everything that she’s doing is coming from her place, her environment. Everything around her and in her life is incorporated one way or another into the pieces.
Sharon: Susan, in writing the book and interviewing Laurie and going through the archives, what surprised you most about Laurie’s work?
Susan: I knew Laurie to some degree before, but not all that well. It is fantastic when you write a book about somebody and you get to ask them every single question you can think of about themselves, about their lives, about their backgrounds, about the piece they made. We literally went through all the work Laurie had ever done that we had pictures of, and I said, “O.K., Laurie, what’s this piece about? What’s it made of? When did you make it? What were you referring to?” So, we have something written up in our archive about every single piece.
I don’t know if there’s any one thing that surprised me about Laurie, but everything about Laurie was interesting and funny and fun and amazing in how original her work is, and how she embodies a certain area of this country, and how she was a very American jeweler who was interested in stories and her place of origin. I think none of that was a big surprise, but it all was really interesting to me.
Laurie: Ramona had used things from other places in the world, and I could relate to what she had done, but I didn’t want to do it again. I knew I wanted to celebrate American things, and that was it. Then I went about trying to describe it, not thinking it out until I had to make things. I’m very driven by a deadline and a vacation and having time to work, because I worked all the time.
Sharon: Were you picking things not just from America, but from the Pacific Northwest?
Laurie: I was living there and I loved where I was from, so I couldn’t help but record what was going on in my life.
Sharon: I’m curious, because in the past 30 years, let’s say, everyone has even less of an understanding of your work. I could see how it would be like, “Oh look, you have this ethnic jewelry over here, and you have your cool jewelry over here,” which is really unusual. Have you seen more “I don’t get it” in the past 30 years?
Laurie: If someone saw the café necklace on, they’d want it, or they’d say, “Well, maybe I can’t wear that, but I really like that.” I don’t want to worry about that. I didn’t worry about it, and I’m still not worried about it. That’s what’s wrong. I think Dorothea Prühl was not thinking too much about acceptability. I love her pieces. Being free and expressing your own self or your original thoughts is better than anything else. It really is.
Susan: I think Laurie’s work speaks to American interests. I don’t think those interests have changed a huge amount from when she made these pieces, but she’s been making pieces all along. She’s still making pieces. She’s still reflecting her times and her place. I think we’re talking more about the beginnings of her career or some of the earlier pieces, but the later pieces are also very similar in their humor and their personal reflections of where she is. That doesn’t change much over time. Your environment is your environment. The Northwest is the Northwest. There still are influences from nature, from First Nations people. There’s a lot of imagery you can see all around Portland and Seattle from the Native Americans who were there originally, which influenced Laurie’s work as well.
Laurie: I love that stuff. It’s the same feeling. It was looking at the materials. Making with materials is so exciting with the colors, the textures, all of those things. It’s just so exciting putting them together.
Susan: And that’s pretty much constant with what Laurie’s made all along.
Sharon: Laurie, was there something surprising or interesting that was thought-provoking as Susan was interviewing you and you were thinking more about the work? Were there surprises or reflections you had that hadn’t occurred to you?
Laurie: I think Susan explained how I think. That was a surprise to me, because I didn’t think anybody could figure out how I think. That was the biggest gift she gave me. I was so pleased with the writing and also with Damian, with some of the things he’d say to me. It was fun. We interviewed a lot, and it was always exhilarating.
I never did this because I was trying to make a living or be famous or anything, but I did it because I liked expression. Even from when I was a kid, I won a poster contest. I was in the fifth grade. Everybody at the school entered and I won; the fifth grader got first prize. I never felt that my primitive style would be rejected. I also felt that I could go ahead and be the way I am inside, put it down in paint, put in down in printmaking, put it down however—not that I didn’t have to work hard to get one composition to work, but another one would fall into place. There are quick pieces. Then there are long, hard pieces that you work on. They’re all different.
Susan: We should also say, Laurie, you were teaching art in general in your high school classes.
Laurie: I wasn’t just a jewelry teacher. I was teaching painting, printmaking, graphics, textiles, everything. I had to go out at the end of the day and go from one end of Seattle to the other getting supplies. Then I’d go down to Pacific Island Metal where they have all this junk, and I’d think, “Oh, look at that! Look at that, this metal!” I love metal, I really do. I can make sculpture for the body, but when you think about making your sculpture that is freestanding, I haven’t done much with that yet. I still want to make some tabletop ones, little ones, but it’s putting things together that’s so exciting.
Sharon: So, there’s more to be explored. I have to say the book is very clear in terms of explaining your thought process behind each of the photos, which are beautiful, as well as your thought process in general. It’s published by Arnoldsche. How do you say that?
Susan: Arnoldsche. They’ve published a lot of books on contemporary jewelry, especially European ones, but they’ve also published more American writers about American jewelers now. Toni Greenbaum just published one on Sam Kramer. The influx book that Damian and Cindi Strauss and I worked on was also published by Arnoldsche. They are really the best distributors of contemporary jewelry publications.
Susan: Yes, and I was excited they were going to publish my book.
Sharon: It sounds like such an honor. It’s a beautiful book. It’s available on the Art Jewelry Forum site, ArtJewelryForum.org, if you want to see a beautiful book. It’s also a very readable book with the pictures. Thank you both very, very much. It’s greatly appreciated. I hope to talk to you about the next book.
Susan: Thank you, Sharon. Thanks so much for having us.
Laurie: Thanks, Sharon.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 01 Feb 2021 | Episode 105: Expand your Jewelry Career Horizons with GIA’s Educational Programs with Kimberly Overlin, Dean of Students at GIA | 00:21:05 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kimberly Overlin Kimberly Overlin is Dean of Students at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), a position she earned after graduating from GIA herself. She has served in this role since 2009. Additional Resources: Photos:
The Robert Mouawad Campus, GIA’s World Headquarters in Carlsbad, California. Photo by Eric Welch/GIA.
GIA’s diamond grading lab. Photo by Valerie Power.
"Eyes of Brazil" a large quartz geode, sliced into 16 polished slices on custom stands is housed in GIA’s museum in Carlsbad. Photo by Orasa Weldon/GIA. | |||
| 12 Oct 2023 | Episode 207 Part 2: How Machi De Waard Co-Authored the Ultimate Guide to Beginner Silver Jewelry Making | 00:25:29 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Machi de Waard Machi de Waard is a designer-jeweller and jewellery tutor. Jewellery has been her full-time pursuit since early 2007, and Machi’s work has been shown at galleries, fairs and exhibitions. Machi combines her studio practice with teaching, having taught jewellery making for over ten years in various locations throughout the UK. Her interests in modern art, particularly in sculpture and minimalism, influence her work.
Additional Resources: -www.machidewaard.co.uk -insta: @machi_jewellery -www.janetrichardson.co.uk -insta: @janrichardsonjewellery Book links:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney,com
Transcript:
Working with metal might seem like something best left to the pros, but Machi de Waard’s new book smashes that misconception. Written with Machi’s friend and co-author Janet Richardson, “Silver Jewelry Making: A Complete Step-By-Step Course,” includes seven projects that help beginner makers build on their skills and make real jewelry at home with simple tools. Machi joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the serendipitous way the book got published; why silver is the best metal for beginners to start with; and which common mistakes DIY makers should watch out for. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone, welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, my guest is Machi de Waard. She, along with Janet Richardson, is the coauthor of the book “Silver Jewelry Making.” They are both jewelers and teachers in Great Britain, and that’s where she’s speaking to me from. Welcome back.
That’s what I wanted to ask you. Do people say to you, “Why do you work in silver and not gold?”
Machi: I’m happy to do any commission in gold. We both do commissions in gold. It’s just harder to afford to do large pieces in gold unless somebody’s already paying you to do it. It’s just very, very expensive.
Sharon: Do you ever rhodium plate your silver with Argentium, or whatever that brand name is?
Machi: Argentium. I use a lot of Argentium in my own work, almost exclusively but not quite, because it doesn’t tarnish as much as sterling silver. Janet uses some Argentium silver and sterling silver. I do not rhodium plate partly because rhodium has actually become very expensive as well, and I prefer not to plate things because if there’s a plate, it can come off. You don’t want the customer to have a piece that looks great and then you have to replate it over a few years. So, I don’t really like to plate my pieces unless absolutely necessary. I don’t think Janet does much plating either.
Sharon: What’s your favorite kind of thing to make? Is it a bracelet, a ring, a necklace?
Machi: Oh, I like all of it. I think Janet and I are both—what’s the word—I was going to say obsessed, but maybe passionate sounds better. We are both never bored of jewelry. We like to make pretty much everything. I would say at the moment, my favorite thing is brooches, but I’m happy to make anything.
Sharon: I’m not any kind of maker, but it seems like a brooch would be easier because you only have to make one of those, as opposed to an earring or something where they have to match.
Machi: Yeah, I suppose so, although earrings don’t have to match.
Sharon: Today they don’t. That’s true.
Machi: In the 20s they wore mismatched earrings, so you can always use that excuse. I guess with the brooch, the important thing is the pin. You want a really good pin that’s going to hold the brooch up and it’s not going to flop forward. It will hold on to whatever you’re wearing but also not be impossible to put on and off. There are different things for each piece that you have to look out for.
Sharon: What do you teach your students about pins? Before you even start, do you have to think about what kind of fabric it’s going to be worn with?
Machi: Yes, absolutely. A really small brooch, you could wear on linen, but you have to think about the size of the pin, the material you’re going to put it through, how it’s going to hang, how heavy it is, whether you want a double pin. There are all kinds of different things you can put it on. It depends what you want to use it for, because it’s totally different if you want it for, let’s say, a winter wool coat versus holding on a silk scarf. It really depends on the end use. You have to think about that before you start making.
Sharon: What are the other things you counsel your students to think about before they start?
Machi: The order of fabrication. If you don’t think about it and then you get halfway through your project, then you realize, “Oh, I should have done that before that,” that can cause problems. It’s important to have at least a basic plan of the order you’re going to do things in so that it works out.
Sharon: Does your book talk about that? It talks about fabrication?
Machi: Yes.
Sharon: Did you have to look for a while before you found a publisher? I can’t remember.
Machi: It was actually quite funny. I had been talking to not only Janet, but my other jewelry friends, and I said, “Oh, Janet and I are going to write a book,” and of course it didn’t happen. Then one of our jewelry friends was at a craft fair and a publisher, which turned out to be Search Press, approached her and said, “Do you want to write a book about jewelry making?” and she said, “No, absolutely not, but I know somebody who does.” Then Janet and I approached Search Press and proposed what we wanted to write, and it was exactly what they were looking for. It was total serendipity. We wanted to write exactly what they wanted somebody to write for them.
For us, it was fantastic because Search Press is an award-winning craft publisher. Not only are they excellent at editing and putting together the actual book and the layout and so on, but we had a professional photographer for, I think, five days and we worked in the photography studio. We made the things in the studio and the photographer could take pictures of every little detail. We were worried that maybe there would be a limit on the number of pictures they would take, but he took thousands of pictures. We got all the detailed photographs we wanted, which was so important for visual learners especially, to be able to see exactly what we were talking about.
Sharon: Do you have to be a visual learner for this to work?
Machi: I don’t think so, but that’s because I’m a reader and Janet’s a visual learner. She’ll look at all the pictures and I’ll look at all the words. It turned out to be perfect for the balance, because I was constantly checking the words and she was constantly checking the pictures.
Sharon: I guess I’m not a do-it-yourselfer. Can I learn how to make the jewelry that you talk about in this book?
Machi: Yeah, totally. If you want to, absolutely.
Sharon: If I want to, that’s the question. Did the two of you ever teach together in a classroom or any kind of school?
Machi: No, we generally teach our own classes, but we’ve covered each other’s classes quite a bit. When her husband was unwell, I covered her classes, and when I was doing this degree, she covered my classes. We’re very comfortable taking over from each other because we know what the other is doing.
Sharon: Did you think about doing this book with somebody else?
Machi: No, it had to be Janet.
Sharon: What would she tell me about working with you?
Machi: I think she would say that we complement each other very well. Janet can do everything she wants to with computers, but it’s definitely not her favorite thing. So, I did all the typing. We did everything together. Part of it was during lockdown, so we did loads over Facetime. We would talk over Facetime while I was typing. I typed everything, so that worked out really well. She definitely would have gotten mad at the computer at some point and probably thrown it out the window.
Sharon: Was one of you responsible for CAD or anything like that? When you talk about computers, I think of things that are much more intricate than typing.
Machi: This was just typing. It was just about formatting the text so the publisher could take it and rework it into the format they wanted for the book.
Sharon: Did the publisher tell you how long they wanted it to be or what they wanted in the book?
Machi: Yeah, that was way back at the beginning. When we sat down with them, they said, “O.K., it’s going to be 192 pages.” “O.K.” From the get-go, they knew exactly what they wanted, and then we worked with them within those parameters. It’s also quite funny; jewelers notoriously have terrible nails because they’re constantly getting their nails dirty and breaking. It was actually in the contract that we had to get a manicure before we got the pictures done for the book so our nails wouldn’t be too disgusting.
Sharon: Wow! That’s like a manicurist. A manicurist usually has nails that aren’t done.
Machi: Actually, yeah.
Sharon: So, you had to get manicures before the photos were done.
Machi: Yeah.
Sharon: What kind of troubleshooting tips do you give in the book?
Machi: This is where our experience with teaching really shows because we know in a classroom setting when students get stuck and when they get frustrated. The troubleshooting is about the points that are more difficult. For example, with soldering, there are a lot of little details that can go wrong, and people get frustrated. There’s a whole section about solder troubleshooting.
Then there’s also quite a bit about making joins. Whenever you put something together, like a ring or a bangle or a jump ring, the join has to be really good. It has to be clean, and it has to fit fairly well. So, there’s a whole section about what to do if your join is not good and how to fix it.
There’s also troubleshooting for stone setting because there’s a bit of a temptation, especially with your first-ever stone setting, to get excited and put the stone in to test if it fits before you should put it in, before the item, whatever it is, is finished. Then people get their stones stuck. There’s a whole section for four different ways to get your stone out of a setting because you’ve put it in too early.
Sharon: Can you do something if a join doesn’t fit? If a jump ring doesn’t fit, what can you do?
Machi: Yeah. A clear example is when you make a ring and it’s too small or too big. What do you do? If it’s too small, you can put it back on the ring mandrel, which is like a steel-tapered tool you form the rings around. You can put the ring on it, and then you use a mallet, which is a soft hammer, and you hit it down the mandrel so it stretches it. Just because your ring is too small, all is not lost. You can still stretch it. If it’s too big, you can cut out a little piece and then resolder it and make it the right size. There’s usually some way of fixing it.
Sharon: Do you talk about that just in your classes, or do you also talk about that in the book?
Machi: It’s in the book.
Sharon: Wow! Is the book available everywhere that you would buy an art book?
Machi: I checked and it’s available on Amazon U.S., of course, and Target. I’m trying to remember the other American things. I looked up on the internet where it is. To my surprise, it was available in the Brooklyn Library, which is nice.
Sharon: I’m surprised it’s available in the U.S. I hadn’t thought to look, but I guess it makes sense with Amazon U.S. being so big. I’ve encountered books that are just in Great Britain and they’re not in the U.S., so that’s what I was thinking.
Machi: I think that’s part of the advantage of working with Search Press because they have so much experience in this arena. They got the book absolutely everywhere. It’s on Amazon U.S., U.K., Holland, Japan, Scandinavia, everywhere. It’s also on Penguin U.S., I think on the website. I’m not totally sure if it’s on the website, but it’s definitely available everywhere, basically.
Sharon: Did they do the translating?
Machi: Yup.
Sharon: So, you didn’t have to be involved or worry about any of that.
Machi: No, I don’t even know the details of that. They just took over all of that because they’re super-experienced with these things.
Sharon: That’s pretty good. What’s your next book?
Machi: We vaguely have an idea to do a follow-up book for this, but I think I might have to convince Janet of it. We’ll see.
Sharon: Focusing on silver jewelry again?
Machi: Yes, definitely. We both love making and we love teaching. We just enjoy watching our students go from strength to strength and make their own pieces. Giving people the ability to work on their own is definitely very satisfying.
Sharon: You talk about picking a project in the book and taking it further. Can you give me some examples of that?
Machi: We do the preliminary part of that, and at the end of every project in the book, there’s a progression section which says, “Well, now that you can do this, you can do that.” For example, once you have done all the projects, all the way at the end, it shows that you can also make cufflinks and tie tacks based on the information you’ve learned throughout the other projects. We tried to cover as many different types of pieces of jewelry as possible, so that at the end you can do that.
After that, there’s a section in the back about how to design your own jewelry and how to move forward with thinking about how to design and progressing to make other things. It’s all building blocks. You need the core skills, which are described in great detail, and you can constantly refer back to those, but you can keep building and building and then using the troubleshooting sections to get you out of problems.
Sharon: It would seem like after you write one book, you’d say, “That’s it. I’m done.” What makes you want to write another book?
Machi: I’m not so sure we will because this one took three years from beginning to end. It was a lot of work. It was really, really satisfying, especially because Search Press gave us such a good photographer. It really made it to a quality level that we were very happy with. It had so much detail in the photography and the words. We were really pleased with the outcome and with the feedback we’ve had. We’ve had really good feedback from people saying, “I always use this book to get me out of problems when I’m working on my own.” That’s really satisfying. Whether we’ll actually do another one, I don’t know. I have to talk to Janet again.
Sharon: What would be on your wish list? I keep going back to this. Would it be gold? Would it be silver? Would it be copper?
Machi: I think silver again because this is just seven projects, but there’s no end to how many projects you could do. For example, I’d be interested in adding a project about doing a box, working with hinges, doing gold foil—which is called keum-boo, where you fuse gold foil to silver—or making a large bangle. There’s no end to the possibilities, but just moving it up with different levels of complexity.
Sharon: Fusing gold to a silver object, that seems like it would be asking for trouble in the sense that you’re asking for something to come off.
Machi: Well, the gold foil fusing is actually bonding, so it becomes one metal. It can’t come off. You could scratch it, but you can’t take it off if you do it correctly.
Sharon: Do you see this being the start of your empire, you and Janet, the start of an empire of silver and then going on to bronze or gold or some other metal?
Machi: Both of us just really love silver and the accessibility of silver. Some other people have written very good books about gold. Gold is a whole other thing. I think with silver, there’s so much more to explore that still stays accessible in terms of cost. I think we would probably be more interested in that. I am not sure. It depends. I have to bribe Janet.
Sharon: I’ve heard people say they don’t like silver because you have to polish it and polish it—I’m talking about sterling silver—if it’s not plated. Somehow that stops it from tarnishing.
Machi: There is no getting around that. Sterling silver will tarnish, but it does tarnish more if you don’t wear it. Like a ring, if you just wear it all the time, it generally is going to tarnish less, although it does depend on your skin. Some people’s skin reacts with silver more than others. That’s why I use a lot of Argentium silver, because it tarnishes far less than regular sterling silver. It’s technically more tarnish resistant. It doesn’t not tarnish, but it’s definitely less, so there’s less maintenance with it. That’s why I use that. Janet also uses it to some degree.
Sharon: Is it more expensive?
Machi: A fraction, but nothing significant. Sterling silver is 92.5% silver with the rest being copper, and Argentium silver is 94% silver. It has a higher silver content. It also is copper, but it has a little bit of germanium. The germanium forms an oxide on the outside of the metal, which stops it from tarnishing so it stays white. Well, it doesn’t entirely stop it from tarnishing, but it keeps it from tarnishing as much as sterling. It definitely stays cleaner. If you’re very bothered by tarnish or if you find that you’re cleaning your jewelry, I would say to look for Argentium silver jewelry.
Sharon: Is that something you talk about in the book or in your classes?
Machi: I do talk about that in my classes. It’s not in the book, but that’s partly because when you start, it’s just easier to access sterling silver. Now, you can get Argentium in the U.S. and here, no problem, but Argentium was changing slightly. The inventor of Argentium changed the alloy slightly last year, so it’s better than it was before, but it was still shifting; things were changing. We didn’t discuss it in the book because it would have been too much other information. There’s only so much you can cover with jewelry that we had to limit it somehow.
Sharon: 192 pages is still quite limiting.
Machi: Yeah, and there’s still a lot in there.
Sharon: What is the difference rhodium and Argentium?
Machi: Rhodium is really used only for plating. Argentium is another silver alloy. So, there’s sterling silver and Argentium silver.
Sharon: So, you would make something first and then dip it. I don’t know. I have this image of dipping it in the rhodium, but you would make it out of Argentium first.
Machi: Yes, rhodium is a very traditional thing to plate with. White gold especially is often plated with rhodium to keep it very white and then it doesn’t tarnish. Silver is generally not rhodium-plated, or at least not for individual makers because it wouldn’t make sense cost-wise. It would add a significant amount of cost. Most silver you buy from an individual maker is not going to be plated.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I’ve been told that white gold in its natural form yellows over the years. I don’t know if that’s true or not.
Machi: Yeah, that’s why white gold usually is plated with rhodium gold, especially if it’s commercially imported, to guarantee it’s rhodium plated. At the moment, there’s a bit of a shift going on in the industry with rhodium, partly because it was getting so expensive and partially for environmental reasons. It’s not that environmentally friendly. A whole bunch of the platers I use in London were moving away from rhodium to different white metals to change the way they plate so there were fewer environmental issues. So, there’s a bit of a shift going with that. You’ve got to watch the space. Things are changing on that.
Sharon: So, you go back to the same people to buy your stuff from. You keep going back to the same to people buy it. That’s interesting.
Machi: Yes, and we have a list in the book—no, we don’t have a list. We mention a couple of suppliers, but there’s actually a list on the publisher’s website for suppliers because suppliers change, of course. In the U.S., the main supplier is Rio Grande, and in the U.K., the main supplier is Cooksongold. Those are the big suppliers. Their websites are excellent, which makes it much easier to order the materials.
Sharon: Are they related, Cooksongold and Rio Grande? I know Rio Grande. Are they related?
Machi: No, not as far as I know. Their owners aren’t the same, so I don’t think so.
Sharon: O.K. Machi, thank you very much. I’m glad to know that it’s not Machi, it’s Machi. Thank you. I looked at that and thought, “It sounds right.” It’s M-A-C-H-I, and the last name has a “D-E” and then a capital “W-A-A-R-D.” The book is available now. It’s “Silver Jewelry Making,” and it’s available from Search Press.
Machi: Yes.
Sharon: You can find it in the U.K. and in the U.S. and all over the world, it sounds like, or they can contact you. Thank you, and thank you to Janet. We’ll look forward to your next book.
Machi: Thank you very much.
Sharon: Thank you for being here today.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 23 Mar 2020 | Episode 69: Discovering Tel Aviv’s Up-and-Coming Fashion and Jewelry Designers with Galit Reismann, Founder of TLVstyle | 00:19:52 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Galit Reismann: Israeli tastemaker, entrepreneur, curator and fashion-content expert Galit Reismann decided to combine her passion for fashion with her deep connection to Tel Aviv. Her initial concept was to expose visitors to the inside of Israel’s emerging fashion design scene. With a keen interest to meet people of different walks of life and cultures, Galit decided to create TLVstyle, a service that serves as a hub to connect, engage and promote Israeli fashion. Galit brings to TLVstyle a rich professional experience in media management, fashion and export. Previously, Galit helped Israeli designers to establish new markets, primarily in the U.S., where she worked with procurement managers and buyers. She aims to promote fashion tourism by exposing upcoming Israeli designers and their unique fingerprint to international audiences in experiential and innovative ways. From customized tours, to events and special projects, Galit tailors and curates exquisite encounters with Israeli fashion makers and provide them with the recognition they deserve. Additional resources:
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| 10 Nov 2023 | Episode 211 Part 2: Canadian Artist Colette Harmon on How Her Over-the-Top Jewelry Got its Start | 00:24:10 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Colette Harmon Colette Harmon’s one-of-a-kind accessories are a dazzling blend of crystal, mixed metals and semi-precious stones. With an appreciation for meticulous craftsmanship, the metal meshing and intricate beadwork in each of her statement pieces are an audacious departure from mainstream minimalism. Born in Sisters Village, Guyana, Colette studied fashion design in Toronto before apprenticing as a belt and handbag designer for a leather goods manufacturer. Harmon soon founded her own eponymous label, whose name became synonymous with maximalist glamour. Harmon’s modern approach to vintage flair has earned her a devoted following of customers, fans and fashion stylists from across North America. Her pieces have been sold in Saks Fifth Avenue and Holt Renfrew Canada, and her work has been featured in Elle Canada, Flare, Martha Stewart Weddings and Nylon. She currently focusses on one-of-a-kind couture creations for select clientele. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Colette Harmon has seen many trends come and go over the course of her career, but she has never let that influence her work. She has always found an audience for her one-of-a-kind jewelry, even when her hallmark maximalism is supposedly “out.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why she defines herself as an artist; how she nurtures her creative vision; and how her job as a leather accessories designer led to jewelry (and how that experience may come full circle in the near future). Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Colette Harmon, who is speaking to us from Canada. Toronto to be more specific. I have to say I’ve never met her, and I’ve never seen her jewelry in person, but it’s my kind of jewelry. It’s over-the-top kind of jewelry. You may have seen it on a celebrity on the stage or screen, but if you’ve seen it, you’d remember it. Welcome back. Do people bring the dresses? Do they bring the materials or some things? Colette: Yeah, sometimes they do. If they bring the actual garment, then I can see how the neckline falls and how the piece of jewelry would sit on the dress. Sharon: Has somebody, a client or a stylist, ever come and tried the dress on and you just didn’t like the dress? Forget the necklace; you just didn’t like the dress on them. Colette: Oh yeah, but if they’re wearing it, I can’t say, “I don’t like your dress.” Yeah, there have been people who have. Sharon: You told us that you like the fact that people like your stuff, that’s pleasing to you. Colette: Mm-hmm. Sharon: What are some of the bigger obstacles you’ve encountered besides sales, let’s say? Colette: In terms of? Sharon: In terms of anything. Being in the business, what are some of the obstacles? Colette: I mentioned before I found wholesaling difficult. Being a small business, I found that doing wholesale was challenging at times. Just being a one-woman show can be tough at times. There were times when I had people helping me, but often when you’re creating—as I’m working with the students at George Brown, it was difficult to tell someone because I don’t sketch. I create as I’m going. They are helping me create these pieces, but it’s difficult to tell someone what you’re creating if it’s in your head. A lot of times I might say to them, “O.K., do this this way,” and then they start doing it, and then I see something else and they have to undo it. It’s easier for me to create the original piece and then have someone duplicate it, as opposed to having people helping me create something. Sharon: You said the college is George Brown. That’s the university? Colette: Yeah, it’s a college here in Toronto. They’re doing a case study of me where they’re studying my creative process and documenting how I create. Sharon: What’s the first step they documented of you creating? Colette: The first session was just an interview of me and my background. The piece that we’re working on now—I brought a bunch of materials. I had no idea what I was going to do with them. So, they’re watching how I work and how I put things together. They’re asking me questions as I go on, like why did I do this? They’re documenting how I go from start to finish, if that makes any sense. Sharon: Are they talking to a lot of creative people? Colette: I think what happened was Leah saw my work on Instagram. I’m not sure how she found me. She found me on Instagram, but I’m not sure how she found my work on Instagram. She was really inspired. In her words, she said she was blown away by my pieces. Because we’re both in Toronto and she’s been in fashion for a number of years, she wondered why she didn’t know who I was. So, she contacted me and I went to see her. She asked me to bring some of my pieces, so I did. Then she came up with this idea and approached the college for a grant. There’s myself, her, and two students she recruited, and they’re documenting my creative process. Like I said, there really isn’t a creative process. I feel like—what’s that word when they say that—people will find out I’m a fraud because there really isn’t a creative process. I can make it sound more than what it is, but I just play. I think everybody has a gift, and my gift is just the way I put things together. There isn’t anything technical. Sharon: Can you tell us more about what you see the end product being with these students? Colette: That’s the thing; I have no idea. I could send you a picture of the piece I’m creating now. I can tell you a little bit about that, but it would be— Sharon: I’ll talk to you after the podcast about what we need for pictures. I want my listeners to know that usually I have a picture of somebody, even though I only post the audio, but I don’t even know what Colette looks like. Colette: Oh, I can send you a picture. Sharon: Are you the exotic-looking one in the ads? Colette: In the ads? Which ads? Sharon: The ads for the website, let’s say. Colette: On my website? Sharon: Are you the model? Do you have a model? Colette: Sometimes I model. I’m not sure which images you’re referring to, but I think there are one or two images of me on the website. There are a couple of me on Instagram. I wouldn’t call myself a model, but I do model my jewelry on occasion. A number of the images of myself were taken by a friend of mine, a photographer whose name is Michael Chambers. I’ve done some work with him over the years. I wouldn’t call myself a model, but I have modeled my jewelry. I have a shaved head, and I can tell you the story about that. My cousin worked in a hair salon. One day I was visiting, and there was a gentleman there; his name was Stephan. He had this beautiful, long, curly blond hair. He looked at me one day and said, “You know, I’m going to shave your head.” I was young, and when you’re young and crazy, I said, “O.K.” So, he took a straight razor—I would never do it again with a straight razor—and shaved my head. Then we did a photoshoot where he made bird’s nests out of—I couldn’t even remember what it was made out of. I think maybe feathers and all these different, crazy things, and he put them on my bald head and we did this photoshoot. But I didn’t like it because I was young, and I was wearing a lot of hairpieces. Hair was very important to me and to everyone, so I didn’t like it. I don’t know if I told him I didn’t like it, but I was like, “Oh god, what did I do?” I remember I came home, and my mom was like, “Why did you do that?” Everywhere I went, everyone hated it. This was a time when there were no bald women around. It was before social media. I didn’t know that in Africa there are tons of women like that, but you didn’t see any bald women around. I remember I would be walking by, and I would hear people whisper, “Maybe she has cancer.” A lot of people didn’t like it because it was such a drastic change from what I looked like before. Now all of a sudden, you have no hair. But I kept it for spite. Just because people didn’t like it, I thought, “I’m going to keep it.” I think I would shave it every week, like once a week or something. The more I did it, the more I liked it. Now that I’m saying it, I think that played a role with the jewelry because I would have this bald head, so the jewelry became more elaborate. Stephan saw it. My logo is now my head, like a silhouette. The silhouette of my head is my actual logo. I think he saw something I didn’t see. Do you know what I mean? A friend of mine designed my logo. He took a picture of my shadow against the wall with the bald head. Then he took a picture of my jewelry and scanned it onto the image of the head. I would never change that. I think it’s such a beautiful logo. I love my bald head, and I think it really works with the jewelry. It's so striking, for a lack of a better word. But I always remember after I did it, for years my mother kept saying, “Why don’t you grow your hair?” Then one day she looked at me and said, “You know what? I think of all the hair styles you’ve ever had, that suits you the most.” I do have a nice-shaped head, if I can say so myself, but everybody always compliments me on my—I can’t remember what your question was. I went off into a tangent, but I think you asked me. I don’t think of myself as exotic, but I think other people might use that word. Sharon: The model on the website is Black. You’re Black, right? Colette: Yeah, I can’t remember what’s on there. I think there are a couple of images of Black models on there. I think there are one or two of me on there with a shaved head, and then there are a couple on Instagram. Sharon: You’re Black though, right? Colette: I am a Black woman, yes. Sharon: Do you sell a lot through Instagram? You mentioned it several times. Colette: Do I sell a lot on Instagram? Sharon: Mm-hmm. Colette: No, I never pursued doing sales on Instagram. That’s why I was thinking of creating a collection of simple pieces like belts and bags, where I could sell online through social media. I find that the pieces I do, you have to try them on. If you’re not able to try it on, I think a lot of things would end up coming back just because you have to be able to see the scale. I’ve never had a problem with returns. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I think I’ve only had one piece returned. It was a charm bracelet. It was a woman in one of the eastern states. She saw it in a magazine. She ordered it, and she sent it back because it was too big for her. She wasn’t used to wearing that. It’s a lot. You have to try it on. That’s why I was thinking of doing some simpler pieces where I could sell in volume if some pieces come back, if one or two are returned. But I think the pieces I create now, a lot of them would end up coming back just because you need to try them on. Sharon: I never thought about that before, that if you don’t have hair, you need something else. You need the jewelry. You need something to replace it in a sense, to draw the eye. Colette: I don’t think you have to, but I think it works well with the jewelry. It’s like a blank canvas. There is no distraction. Your eye goes straight to it. I have necklaces. I have a preference when I create. If it’s a line, I always start off with the necklace, and then I create pieces that go with that. It always starts off as an elaborate neckpiece. Then I might simplify it or do some more simple pieces that are very similar: earrings or bracelets, a belt, maybe a beaded belt or a chainmail belt or something. But for me, it always starts with the neck. I used to wear earrings a lot when I was younger, but I haven’t worn earrings in years. Now, I mainly wear necklaces. I don’t like things on my hands, only because I work with my hands and I don’t really like things on my hands. It’s mostly neck pieces. I do a lot of belts, beaded and chain belts. A lot of the pieces I create in general are very versatile, where you can wear it on your neck or you can wear it on your waist. There are pieces I have that you can wear as a shawl; you can wear as a necklace; you can wrap it on your waist and wear it as a belt. A lot of the pieces I do are versatile. You can wear them many different ways. I do that purposely. I always try to create pieces that you can wear in multiple ways. Sharon: I’m surprised to hear that. What I have seen are the photos that are online, which are just repetitions of what’s on your website. Were you influenced by the baldness? I went through a period where I was bald, but I had people come up and say— Colette: You did? Sharon: Yeah, I did. People came up to me and they would say, “Oh, I wish I had the guts to do that.” Do they come up and say that to you or anything? Colette: Not so much anymore. You see it now everywhere, whereas when I was doing it, when I started, there was hardly anyone. Now, nobody even notices. People just walk by, whereas when I first did it, people would actually stop and stare. Now nobody cares because you see bald women everywhere, especially on social media. There are bald women. You see it quite a bit. For how long did you wear your hair bald? Sharon: Probably for a year, a year-and-a-half maybe. Colette: What made you decide to do that? Sharon: Well, basically I was going through chemotherapy and I lost my hair, but it really made me understand how important hair was to a woman or a man, what you did with it and all that. I hadn’t thought about it. Colette: Right, I think hair is important to a lot of people. People think, “Well, why would you shave it?” but I’ve never really cared about what people think about anything. As long as I like something, I don’t care. Your thoughts are your thoughts. I don’t mean you specifically, but whatever. Your thoughts are your thoughts and what you think about me is—why should I worry about what someone thinks about me? I’ve never really cared about what people say or think about how I look or about my appearance. Sharon: It’s interesting. I think most people think, “What will somebody else think if I do A, B, C or if I wear—?” Colette: Yeah, I think so too. I think as I got older, when I stopped caring about what other people thought, it was probably at the age of 16. I remember if I went shopping with friends, if you’re trying something on and they say they don’t like it, I was like, “Well, I’m going to get it just because you don’t like it.” If I like something, it doesn’t matter to me who likes it or who doesn’t like it. Sharon: I suppose you have to be that way with your jewelry. Your jewelry is gorgeous, but— Colette: It’s not for everyone. Sharon: Exactly. Colette: It’s not for everyone. There are a lot of people who think that’s gaudy. Maybe it is gaudy, but I like it. I don’t really care what people think. Sharon: It is an acquired taste. I flipped over it because I happen to like big, bold things, but there are some people who like delicate things. Colette: Who like delicate things, exactly. A lot of times, people will come to me and say, “Why do you do stuff like this?” People are always giving you advice, “Why don’t you do this?” and “Why don’t you look at this person and do what they’re doing?” Why would I do that? That’s her and I’m me. I have to be me. Why would I look at someone and imitate what they’re doing? For me, I always have to be true to myself. I have to create what is in me. I think that’s what makes us all unique; we’re all different. I find a lot of times, everybody’s trying to create or do what everyone else is doing. The last time I was out in the shops, it was maybe a couple of years ago. We have a mall here called Yorkdale. I was at Yorkdale Mall. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. It’s a high-end department store here in Canada. I’m looking, and there was—I can’t remember the names, but I’ll just say there was a Gucci chain bracelet. Then I would go somewhere else, and it was Yves Saint Laurent, but it was the exact same bracelet. It was just a different label. I’m not joking. It was the exact same. I don’t understand that. I find everybody, even with jewelry, it’s all the same. I don’t know if it still is because I haven’t really looked at anything, but it’s all the same. I’ve heard people say that to me too, that when they’re out, everything looks the same, like no one is different. I guess something sells, so everybody does it. There’s some jewelry, I think it’s Tiffany that does it. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s links and it has balls on the end. It’s a chain link at Tiffany. I think Tiffany did it originally, but I see that everywhere, even high-end designers with the same link they just copied from Tiffany. I think, “Why not just create your own?” Anyway, I guess if something sells, everybody does it. Sharon: We’re going full circle to why you’re an artist and not a designer, why you call yourself an artist. I really appreciate your being with us today. I hope we can do this again. Thank you very much, Colette. Colette: Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Sharon: It was great. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 27 May 2021 | Episode 117: Narrative Jewelry: Seeing the Invisible with Art Jeweler, Kimberly Nogueira | 00:26:40 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kimberly Nogueira Kim Nogueira is an automaton maker and art jeweler who received her education apprenticing as a production goldsmith for 16 years. Her BA in sociology from Smith College supports the multi-dimensional, thought-based yet intuitively-guided explorations that undergird her wearable narrative art practice. Kim's work has been in juried and curated exhibitions both abroad and nationally, such as the Museum of Arts and Design’s MAD about JEWELRY, and her work can be found in periodicals and books, such as 1000 Beads, Behind the Brooch, Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox and volumes 2 and 3 of the Society of North American Goldsmiths’ annual compendium Jewelry and Metals Survey. The Morris Museum recently acquired one of her automaton pendants for their permanent collection. Her home base for the past quarter of a century has been the tiny sub-tropical island of St John, in the US Virgin Islands. Additional Resources Photos: Title: “Salt is the Oldest Mystery” copper, silver, vitreous enamel, antique buddhist immortal bead, african trade bead, cord photo by artist
Title: “A Trio of Automata” copper, silver, vitreous enamel, nickel silver, brass photo by artist
Title: “Mundus Imaginalis” copper, silver, vitreous enamel, antique buddhist immortal bead, african trade bead, cord photo by artist
Title: “Vesica Pisces” copper, silver, vitreous enamel, South Sea pearl, cord photo by artist
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| 12 May 2021 | Episode 115: New Book Captures the Story of Mark Patterson Jewelry with Josette Patterson & Amy Elliott | 00:32:34 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Josette Patterson Josette Patterson is cofounder and creative director of Mark Patterson, a Newport Beach, California-based fine jewelry brand founded in 1985 in New York City. A graduate of the Gemological institute of America, Josette met her husband Mark during her studies. Soon after graduation, they both moved to New York City, where Josette was freelancing her designs and pursuing more design classes at the Parson School of Design and other art schools in New York City. In 2010, Josette and Mark opened their Flagship Store/Studio in Newport Beach, California. Together, they personally work with local clientele to custom design fine jewelry items and repurpose family heirlooms for the most discerning individuals. The Mark Patterson team of artisans meticulously hand craft from start to finish each piece of jewelry, whether it is an engagement ring, wedding band or any bespoke heirloom under the discerning eyes of Mark and Josette. The Mark Patterson brand is represented in over 50 independent retail stores nationally where their highly successful Promise Bridal Collection receives industry awards and acclaim. About Amy Elliott Amy Elliott is a writer, editor and brand storyteller who specializes in fine jewelry and fashion, and is fluent in other lifestyle categories, including food, weddings and travel. As a former staff editor at The Knot, Bridal Guide, Brides Local Magazines + Brides.com and Lucky, Amy is known for delivering high-quality editorial content across a variety of print and digital media. After recently serving as the Engagement Rings Expert for About.com, Amy joined the freelance staff of JCK as its All That Glitters columnist, while contributing articles about jewelry trends, estate and antique jewelry and gemstones to its prestigious print magazine (which will soon celebrate its 150th anniversary). Amy also serves as the Fine Jewelry Expert for The Bridal Council, an industry organization composed of luxury bridal designers, retailers and media, and her byline has appeared in Gotham, Hamptons, DuJour, Martha Stewart Weddings, GoodHousekeeping.com and more. Additional Links:
If you’d like a copy of the book, the Pattersons are requesting donations of $70 or more to the Lebanese Red Cross; email your receipt to josette@markpatterson.com. Photos:
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| 14 Apr 2022 | Episode 153 Part 2: How NYC’s 92Y Developed the Largest Jewelry Program in the Country | 00:30:32 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jonathan Wahl Jonathan Wahl joined 92nd Street Y in July 1999 as director of the jewelry and metalsmithing program in 92Y’s School of the Arts, the largest program of its kind in the nation. He is responsible for developing and overseeing the curriculum, which offers more than 60 classes weekly and 15 visiting artists annually. Jonathan is also responsible for hiring and supervising 25 faculty members, maintaining four state-of-the-art jewelry and metalsmithing studios, and promoting the department locally and nationally as a jewelry resource center. Named one of the top 10 jewelers to watch by W Jewelry in 2006, Jonathan is an accomplished artist who, from 1994 to 1995, served as artist-in-residence at Hochschule Der Kunst in Berlin, Germany. He has shown his work in the exhibitions Day Job (The Drawing Center), Liquid Lines (Museum of Fine Arts Houston), The Jet Drawings (Sienna Gallery, Lenox MA, and SOFA New York), Formed to Function (John Michael Kohler Arts Center), Defining Craft (American Craft Museum), Markers in Contemporary Metal (Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art), Transfigurations: 9 Contemporary Metalsmiths (University of Akron and tour), and Contemporary Craft (New York State Museum). Jonathan was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in recognition of "Outstanding Artwork," and the Pennsylvania Society of Goldsmiths Award for "Outstanding Achievement." As part of the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX, and The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, his work has been reviewed by Art in America (June, 2000), The New York Times (June 2005), and Metalsmith Magazine (1996, 1999, 2000 2002, 2005, 2009); his work was also featured in Metalsmith Magazine's prestigious "Exhibition in Print" (1994 and 1999). Jonathan’s art work can be seen at Sienna Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts, which specializes in contemporary American and European art work, and De Vera in Soho, New York. His work can also be seen in the publications The Jet Drawings (Sienna Press, 2008), and in three collections by Lark Books: 1,000 Rings, 500 Enameled Objects and 500 Metal Vessels. Before joining 92Y, Jonathan was, first, director of the jewelry and metalsmithing department at the YMCA's Craft Students League, and later assistant director of the League itself. Mr. Wahl holds a B.F.A. in jewelry and metalsmithing from Temple University's Tyler School of Art and an M.F.A. in metalsmithing and fine arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is a member of the Society of North America Goldsmiths. Additional Resources:
Photos: Available at TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: With more than 60 jewelry classes offered weekly, the 92nd Street Y’s Jewelry Center is by far the largest program of its kind in the country—and it’s all run by award-winning sculptor, jeweler and artist Jonathan Wahl. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the different relationships he has with jewelry and sculpture; why craftsmanship should be embraced by the art world; and what he has planned for 92Y in 2022. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Jonathan Wahl, Director of the Jewelry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The program is the largest of its kind in the country. In addition to his life in jewelry, Jonathan is an award-winning artist whose work is in the permanent collections of prestigious museums. Welcome back.
When do you have time to work on your jewelry?
Jonathan: I’m here Monday through Wednesday in the studio here. Then I’m in my studio the rest of the time, so Thursday, Friday, Saturdays and Sundays.
Sharon: Your home studio or a studio at the Y?
Jonathan: No, it’s not here. It’s in Brooklyn. I wouldn’t be able to work here. People would be finding me. No, I maintain a studio in Brooklyn. That’s where I’ve done all my work basically for the past 25 years.
Sharon: Tell us about your work. I was reading about you. You have a whole series of different things, drawings, collections.
Jonathan: Lest I forget, I have had a jewelry line. In 2005—and I’ll get to the larger bodies of work—when I moved to New York, my work was primarily sculpture. It was the tinware. It became the oversize tinware. I got a Tiffany fellowship which gave me a nice chunk of cash, and I made a series of work based on Frederic Remington, a series called Cowboys and Unicorns. I made a series of tasseled heads for this exhibition. It took about a year. There were many bodies of work, like Aztec Astronauts, which is inspired by Jared Diamond’s book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” There’s no jewelry in it at all, but it was interesting. I had a wonderful Foundation for the Arts fellowship for Cowboys and Unicorns. I had this Tiffany fellowship. I thought I was hot to trot. I was an artist, but because I’ve also been very self-directed in my work, I have made choices on my own, and I certainly hadn’t thought of the larger picture, like, “Who am I marketing to?”
At one point, I felt like maybe I should do something different. I saw these people putting jewelry lines together and I thought, “Well, let me try that. I’m going to throw together a jewelry line.” I did put together a jewelry line in 2004 and 2005, and it got a lot of press. Barneys called and Bergdorf called. It was exciting and, true to myself, I looked at this opportunity and thought, “What they’re asking for sounds like I’m going to have to start a real business.” Between my role here as Director of the Jewelry Center and my studio practice, I wasn’t sure I wanted to run a full-time jewelry business.
What this position here affords me is the time and space to work in my studio on what I want to make. I thought that if I put together a jewelry line, that was a different kind of hustle, and a hustle that was going to take over. As a consequence, I declined Barneys and Bergdorf. I did sell my line at De Vera in New York, which is a much more boutique, gorgeous store that has since moved. Interestingly enough, launching the jewelry line brought me to drawing. People who knew me and knew my work as a sculptor, when I said I’d launched a jewelry line, to put it politely, they looked confused. I’ve said this in many interviews: a jeweler in the art world, people don’t really get. An artist who makes jewelry is different than a jeweler who makes art, may I say.
Sharon: That’s interesting.
Jonathan: I think that has changed. It has changed to some extent, but it’s different. It’s a one-way street. A potter and a sculptor, interesting, particularly with clay being very hot right now. A painter and a bartender makes sense; people get that. Anyway, I found this look of confusion quite perplexing. I started these large drawings, renderings of jet jewelry. I was working on a series of drawings about jewelry, about history, about my love for history, and I happened upon jet jewelry. I thought it was so out of the ordinary: monochromatic, at times really epoch-shifting in terms of what it was. So, I decided to start drawing these objects to take them out of the realm of jewelry and present them to the viewer as an object. Rendered large, they took on a completely different identity. It paralleled my experience of having this conversation with people saying I’m a jeweler and a sculptor. I thought, “If I present them with these drawings that are straight-up portraits of jewelry, maybe they’ll think differently about what those edges are about or what those lines are, what those determinations are.”
Sharon: That’s interesting about people not getting a jeweler as a painter or an artist. That’s what you said, right?
Jonathan: I wish I could deny it. Again, this is 20 or 15 or 17 years ago; I can’t remember. Things have changed a lot in the art world. I’ll probably get in trouble for this; I don’t know if any of the Whitney curators are going to hear this, but the Whitney, one of my favorite museums, had an exhibition of artists who employ craft, I think. It was all artists who made objects or used material that represented craft in some way. It was such an artist’s use of craft, and done in a way that was pure aesthetics and abstraction, which was such a different experience with respect to the materials that I think a craftsperson has. I also find that curators are really only looking at artists who use craft techniques or craft materials from this artistic, old-school, may I say modernist perspective.
I truly mean that because it was fascinating to see how a fine art museum presented craft in this way. To me, it reiterated how these fields are viewed, certainly from each corner of the art world. I found the show at the Whitney really underwhelming in terms of how they represented craft. Just because you use yarn doesn’t mean it’s craft. That’s the takeaway. I think that represents this weird, one-way street or one-way mirror of how crafts and art are viewed together. Martin Puryear was not in that show.
Sharon: Pardon?
Jonathan: Martin Puryear, whose work definitely involves craftsmanship. He wasn’t in that exhibition. There were people who I thought could have been in that exhibition to represent how craft is employed in the fine art world and would have made the statement better.
Sharon: So, what is craft? It always seems to me the question that’s has no answer. How do you know, when you’re looking at something, whether it’s craft or fine art or jewelry made with yarn? What’s the difference? Not difference, but how do you separate it?
Jonathan: I think it’s many times subjective. To that point, the curators at the Whitney could have put whatever they wanted and called it craft, but I think when you see craft, you know it. I think you really do. I think their lines can be crossed. I think there’s craft that’s art, and I think there’s art that’s craft, but for myself, I know it when I see it.
I think it also depends on how you employ the materials and for what end. I’ve been thinking about this recently. Craft was never really thought of as espousing an agenda other than its function. That was how it started, but now in some ways, the art world is looking at craft that explores itself beyond its function. It’s making social commentary and is actually functioning in the way fine art would have explained itself, as material subjugated to the thought process of the artist. Craftsmen can be both, explaining or using functional materiality. They can also use a fine arts strategy, if they’re making a commentary or going beyond the object’s functionality into a realm that makes you think about the object differently. That is more of a fine arts strategy. So, it gets really sticky.
Sharon: It’s one of those questions. I’m thinking about craft in jewelry. I’m thinking about when you were in camp, the lanyards you would make, the necklaces you’d make with plastics. I guess you could call it a type of craft jewelry.
Jonathan: For sure. I don’t think craftsmen should be offended by lanyard jewelry. That’s how you start. It’s weaving; it’s one of the most basic weaving skills. Voice that history. Those are old skills. That’s how we built civilization. Believe in that. We wouldn’t be here without those skills. Don’t be afraid of that. I think my own jewelry journey, if you will, has been influenced by these experiences. I love jewelry. I love objects. I love technique. I love skill. I’m so in awe of people who can make, who can really fabricate something. It takes skill. It takes work. It takes focus.
I love jewelry. I wear one ring and a watch. I change my ring up whenever I feel like that. They’re mostly rings I’ve made, but they’re a specific type of ring. Apart from my look in the 80s, I’m a relatively conservative-looking guy, so I wear jewelry that reflects the aesthetics of myself. It tends to be kind of traditional, so I have no problem with great jewelry that has a great stone, that’s made well, that some would consider traditional. I’m O.K. with that. You know what? Wear whatever kind of jewelry makes you feel right.
I love art jewelry and I think it’s important in pushing the boundaries or the materiality of the field. I’m happy to see and support that. I love going to SCHMUCK. I’m always blown away when I see what’s happening in the world of contemporary jewelry. I think contemporary or art jewelry, the field is also changing. I have to say everything’s moving more towards the middle in a way, whether it’s contemporary jewelry, studio jewelry or art jewelry. When I look at work today, it’s all moving a little bit towards the middle, which is fascinating. But when it comes to jewelry, I don’t have any problem with good jewelry, period. I love good jewelry.
Sharon: Big stones are nice.
Jonathan: I’m just saying good jewelry, however you classify jewelry, I like jewelry.
Sharon: Why are things moving towards the middle? Why do you think that? Is that part of the ethos of the country, or that people don’t want to be extreme? They don’t want purple hair anymore?
Jonathan: With all that being said, the generation that’s coming up now wants to have purple hair, absolutely. I look at the trends that are going on right now, and I think of myself in art school in the high 80s with my hoop earrings and my dyed red hair and my capri pants and my corny shoes and my vests and yada, yada, yada. I look at this younger generation thinking, “Wow, it’s coming back around again, interesting.” Maybe I talk out of two sides of my mouth, but I think in general, the bulk of those fields are moving a little bit closer together. I think there’s an appreciation in the art jewelry world for techniques and processes that might not have been so accepted 10 or 20 years ago. I think there’s an appreciation all around. I think I see contemporary jewelry making gestures that might have only happened in the art jewelry world 10 or 20 years ago.
Sharon: You also talk about the rift between fine art and jewelry. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jonathan: I’ve got to say, I’ve met some great fine art collectors in New York and their jewelry has really stunk. I find it really funny when I see people who’ve got a great dress on and have a great art collection and mundane jewelry. It’s the last thing that people think about sometimes. Although, the one person I’ll say that always bucks the trend is Lindsay Pollock, who has great jewelry and has great art and knows great art.
Sharon: Who? I’m sorry; I didn’t hear.
Jonathan: Lindsay Pollock, who used to be an editor at Art Forum. Now she also works for the Whitney Museum of Art, I think, as Director of Communications. I’m not sure, but she’s a wonderful collector.
Sharon: And she has great jewelry.
Jonathan: Yes, and she knows the art world really well. Your question; please repeat it.
Sharon: The rift between fine art and jewelry. Is there a rift?
Jonathan: There’s a difference. I think for so long people were trying to justify themselves, so people got defensive. Now people are starting to own what they do and who they are without the defense: “I’m not an artist, I’m a craftsperson” or “I’m a craftsperson, not an artist.” I think there’s less apprehension about that now in terms of owning those fields. This is a conversation had by many people, but when modernism took its toll on craft, it stepped up its identity in many ways. I think since then, craftsmen and jewelers have been trying to figure out their way back to be on par with the rest of the arts. I think for a long time, because it wasn’t modern art or contemporary art, there was a real apprehension about how we define artwork.
I think about how jewelry was, for a long time, just photographed on a white background so it reads as an object, like you’re presenting it like a little sculpture. For many years, that’s how it was presented. I find that representative of how we explain the work we were making. When you saw it, you generally saw it sitting on nothing except white, in a void, outside of any wearability or reference to the person, which I get. But when you think about that, for me, it has resonance. I also think that’s kind of who we are and what we do. I think that’s changing to some extent, but the art world and the craft world have been trying to figure out the relationship for a while.
Sharon: Do you make jewelry now?
Jonathan: I do. I just made a ring for myself with a beautiful piece of lapis that I came across. It’s very plain and modernist. I had an old necklace from my former landlord who passed away and left it to me. I melted down this necklace, I milled the jewelry, I rolled down the sheet and I made a half-round wire that I put through the mill again so it was more like a trapezoid and set it again. Man, I was a jeweler for a day. I love good jewelry, and I like to represent.
Sharon: You like to represent? What do you mean?
Jonathan: I like to represent the field with a good piece of jewelry.
Sharon: Wow! You made the sheet metal and then you rolled your wire. The first time I saw somebody rolling wire, I thought, “You could buy wire. Why would anybody roll it?”
Jonathan: One great thing is I didn’t have to buy new gold. Another great thing is I’m recycling the gold. I recycle, recycle, recycle whenever possible. I worked it all the way down, but I do not have a jewelry line. I rarely make jewelry on commission. Most of my studio practice is focused in other ways, although as I’ve been drawing for the past 12 years, I recently picked up my tin shears again. I have actually been making more tinwork, which is also reflective of our current state of politics and our country again. It’s been fascinating to work in metal again, so stay tuned.
Sharon: How does it reflect where we are as a country or politically?
Jonathan: I’m making tinware again, and I think a lot of what’s in question right now in our country is what is traditional? Who are Americans? There’s a lot of questioning about do you fit, do you belong, what are those parameters, how are you judged as an American or not as an American. The painted tin I’m making right now is so understood as a traditional object and a traditional way of making. Mixing and presenting that work within this very traditional material and history of making is, again, a metaphor for traditionality. The viewer automatically looks at this thing and things it’s an original object. It’s meant to look very traditional, although right now I’m working on a six-foot-by-four-foot painted stenciled decal tray, which, after a few minutes of looking at it, you will know is definitely not from the 19th century. But again, the techniques and the feeling and the look are traditional, I find that that’s what we’re questioning right now. We’re questioning what is traditional. What are these traditions?
The more I dig into these traditions, particularly in painted tinware—Japanware is what it was called. It was meant to imitate Japanese lacquerware. It had nothing to do with America. Another iteration is painted tinware that comes from a German and Scandinavian aesthetic, also not traditional American. So, these objects that you’d see in a folk museum and be like, “Yeah, Ohio, 1840, I got it,” these traditions and materials were not traditional until they became traditional. There’s a lot of this material culture history that I find fascinating. It’s very layered for me. I hope it’s as interesting to the viewer. I have never really found the right format for many of my ideas or questions that fit into jewelry, and that’s one of those cruxes. I’ve never found the right way for me to use jewelry or engage in jewelry with the same intents that I have in other materials or formats.
Sharon: What do you mean exactly? It doesn’t fit into a category?
Jonathan: No, I can be really political with this tinware. I’ve never figured out how to get the same effect, with the same feeling, in jewelry. I find, for me, the wearing of jewelry is the great part of it, and I don’t want my jewelry to say the same thing as my tinware. This is personal: I don’t want my jewelry to work the same way as this giant tinware piece does, because I like this ring that fits on my finger. I love it, and I love when I get compliments on it. I think jewelry is special. It’s great because we wear it.
As a sidenote, it was fascinating that during the pandemic, jewelry took off. Sales of jewelry took off. All my friends in the field of luxury jewelry and studio jewelry, they had great years. Jewelry is the stuff you take with you. Jewelry is the stuff you wear. Jewelry is the intimate stuff, and I think it was fascinating to know that in this time of extreme stress and trouble, people were going to jewelers to buy these things they could hold and keep and literally run with it if they had to. There is this intimacy of jewelry that people sought out, and that’s special. It doesn’t exist in other places. Those are the kinds of things, the resonance, that I want to embrace and love about jewelry and that I will not run away from.
One of the reasons why I started even playing around with images of jewelry, which led me to the drawings, is because I did this class at the Met called Into the Vaults. We went through all these different departments of the Met, jewelry and old jewelry. I came across the story of the Hannebery Pearls, which were pearls that were given to Catherine de Medici from her uncle, who was the Pope. This string of pearls went through the Hanoverians and then eventually into the British Crown Jewels. I thought, “Wow, if this string of pearls could talk, what we would know. What has it seen?” I was fooling around with this image of a gem, a ring that I had Photoshopped a historical scene from a movie on top of, so it almost looked like this gem was reflecting what it saw. I thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a ring from ancient Greece that was passed down every generation until now, and that ring was held and worn by 200 generations?” I don’t know how many generations that would be. That intimacy and history of an object doesn’t exist in other places in the same way, where it’s worn and carried with it. There’s something about the intimacy of jewelry and the history that it can be embraced in a specific way that I really love.
Sharon: It’s something very different and novel. I don’t know if it’s been done already.
Jonathan: I have an idea for a novel. I’ll talk about it off-camera. We should talk about it. It’s about that same kind of story, a will to survive.
Sharon: All right. Jonathan, thank you so much for talking with us today.
Jonathan: You’re welcome.
Sharon: I expect an invitation to the opening of the 92nd Street Y in Los Angeles. I can’t wait.
Jonathan: In the meantime, I hope you can come with us to Korea. As you know, I do trips around the world. South Korea is on the books, and there are a number of other wonderful things happening. The only residency for jewelry in New York City, called the JAIR, Jewelry Artist in Residence, that’s happening this summer. Applications are open on our website. We had applications from 50 countries in 2019. It has been suspended since the pandemic.
Another little sidenote: I’m excited about a program called Team Gems, which is a fully-funded program for high school kids in New York City, Title 1 high schools in New York City. It’s a fully-funded program for kids to get experience in jewelry that they wouldn’t normally have, and will maybe create a pathway for a career in jewelry outside the academic model. I hope I’m going to be able to tell you more about it, but it’s the first year and it’s very exciting. Also, keep your ears open for my new series of talks coming up. I think this topic is going to be about enamel, and then hopefully a series in June in honor of Pride Month. A lot’s going on at the Jewelry Center.
Sharon: Well, thank you for being here. We want to hear more about it in the future. Thank you so much, Jonathan. We greatly appreciate it.
Jonathan: Thank you, it’s such a pleasure. Be well.
Sharon: You, too.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 03 Dec 2018 | Episode 7: The Art Nouveau Movement and Its Impact on Art Jewelry with Elyse Zorn Karlin, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Adornment, The Magazine of Jewelry and Related Arts | 00:18:34 | |
Elyse Zorn Karlin is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Adornment, The Magazine of Jewelry and Related Arts. She is co-director of the Association for the Study of Jewelry & Related Arts (ASJRA) and a former president of The American Society of Jewelry Historians (ASJH). Elyse runs the Annual Conference on Jewelry & Related Arts in various locations throughout the U.S. and spearheads the Annual Jewelry History Series in Miami, Florida every winter. She has written several books on Arts & Crafts jewelry and antique jewelry. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources:
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| 29 Nov 2023 | Episode 213 Part 1: The Inspiration Behind Esther Brinkmann’s Shapeshifting Rings | 00:23:55 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Esther Brinkmann Esther Brinkmann is an independent jewelry maker living and working in Switzerland. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the world and is held in the collections of the National Museum of Switzerland, Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Museo Internazionale delle Arti Applicate Oggi (MIAAO) in Torino, and the V&A in London. She established the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) in Geneva, the first jewelry education program of its kind in the country.
Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript:
Jewelry artist Esther Brinkmann makes her rings with intention, considering everything from the meaning of the material used to the way the shape of the ring will change how the wearer moves their hands. She has passed this perspective down to hundreds of students at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD), the jewelry program she founded in Geneva. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how living in China and India made her question her identity and influenced her work; why many of her rings are designed to fit different sized hands; and what makes the relationship between artist and wearer so special. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
I recently went to Switzerland with Art Jewelry Forum. One of the afternoons we had was at Esther Brinkmann’s home. It was a very memorable lunch and afternoon. We got to see her studio, and on top of that, we had an unforgettable luncheon cooked by her husband, Warner. Esther’s work is very well known, although it’s not known so much here. It is found in prestigious museums. She was influenced by culture, especially in India and China, where she lived for more than 20 years with her diplomat husband. We also met a collectors’ club, the Magpies, which you’ll hear about. She’ll talk more about her philosophy and her jewelry. Esther, welcome to the podcast.
Esther: Thank you very much, Sharon, for inviting me to talk about my practice as an artist and as an educator. Thank you.
Sharon: You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re here. I was going to ask you why you think there are only certain areas of the world where your jewelry is known. For instance, I don’t think it’s known here. I don’t know it. I haven’t seen the jewelry here. If somebody said to me, “It’s an Esther Brinkmann piece,” I wouldn’t know what that meant.
Esther: That’s a difficult question. I guess it’s because I have never been collaborating with an American gallery, although I think I have a few pieces in American collections. My focus was, for many years, on European countries. As you were saying, we were living in China and India for 10 years, so I could show my work in those two countries. But America, it was a little bit far away, I think.
Sharon: Do you have more work in China and India and Europe than other places? I guess I’m asking that about China and India. Is your work more well-known there?
Esther: China and India are huge countries with numbers and numbers and millions and millions of people. I’m not very known in those two countries, but I am known in different universities, in different cities, as an ambassador for jewelry. When I was living in China and in India, I was given the opportunity to have a lot of lectures and workshops with students there, so I could introduce this idea, which was quite a western idea of artisan jewelry. In India as in China, it was not at all a topic.
Sharon: The lectures or conferences you had, was it because you were part of a school? Was it just private?
Esther: No, it was because when we lived in those two countries, I contacted different universities that had jewelry departments or fashion departments, design departments, and I offered to give lectures and workshops about art jewelry. I was welcomed with open arms.
Sharon: So, you basically made your niche, I want to say. You created it. You weren’t asked, but you created it.
Esther: I would not say I created it, but I participated, and I stimulated young people in those two countries to go into individual creative and experimental jewelry. Things happen also because there is something in the air. The time was right to do that, and they were interested in it.
Sharon: If you had come 20 or 10 years earlier, would they have been interested?
Esther: I don’t think so.
Sharon: Your favorite piece, the one most written about, is a ring that’s a double ring. It’s not made of two rings, but it’s comprised of two rings.
Esther: Yes.
Sharon: How did that come about?
Esther: That came in the early 80s, when I started as an independent jewelry maker. It was the trend at that time. All of us tried to make multiple pieces. That means a big number of pieces, inexpensive pieces, for everybody. At that time, I had the idea of a ring. It was made of an industrially made aluminum tube with an incision on top where I introduced a rubber ring. This ring could regulate the size of the inner hole. I realized that I created this ring for a functional reason. Many people could wear the same ring and they filled the same space more or less.
At that time, I suddenly realized how interesting it is to have a ring with space around the finger. I focused on this concept, on this idea, and developed many different other shapes from then on. That’s how the double ring came, a ring which is too big for your finger and a second ring which is open. The tubular ring is open and leaves space around the finger, and you fit in a second, smaller ring which holds the thing on your finger. That is quite complicated to explain.
Sharon: I didn’t understand the big ring was supposed to be big and the little ring—
Esther: The big ring is too large for your finger. The smaller ring inside fits and is held back on your finger. It’s an aesthetic decision, but it’s also functional because the bigger ring can be worn again by many different sizes of hands because the smaller ring fits inside. I can adapt to different sizes.
Sharon: Do you have blanks you use, where you cut and these rings are this size and these rings are this size?
Esther: With the many years of experience I have, I know more or less the range of sizes of rings and fingers. I know, for instance, that women in China usually have very small hands and fingers, whereas in Holland, women have much bigger hands. Also in America, you have bigger hands and taller people. I don’t send very, very small rings to Holland, for instance. This is the experience of many, many years. So, you get a feeling for what range of sizes is fitting to different women.
Sharon: Why do you think it is that different nationalities have different size hands?
Esther: I think it’s not about nationalities; it’s about the body shape.
Sharon: I tried on one of your rings which actually fits. You could slip a ring underneath it. I was surprised because I have large hands and mostly, they don’t fit me. I was really surprised. You started making those rings when?
Esther: I started around 1985, something like that. That makes a long period of time.
Sharon: What did you do with the rings or the jewelry when you were in China? Did you just keep on?
Esther: In the beginning, I was a little bit lost, not in translation, but lost in this very different culture. I had many, many experiences of being the alien within a huge group of other people. That was a very special experience for me. That’s when I had the idea to create this series of brooches called “Red Face and Double.” That was really a Chinese idea. I would not have had this idea elsewhere.
I had the idea of the “Red Face” because I was wondering, “How do these people perceive me? How do they see me? I see them like this and like that, and they are looking at me; they are staring at me. Who am I for these people?” Also, I didn’t know anymore exactly who I was. There were a lot of questions. That’s how I started to draw these faces. I thought, “It’s a brooch; it’s like wearing another face of mine.” It’s like showing that I’m not a person who is only one. I am multiple. With different people, I might be a different person. I think that is a reality. It depends on with whom we are. We are different people. Luckily, we are not like a stone or something which would not change. That’s how I got the idea of those brooches wearing another face.
Sharon: Do you think people understood what you were trying to do?
Esther: I think so. I think they could feel that it has something to do with who we are and how we see each other, how we look at the world, how flexible we are or what our competences to adapt in certain circumstances are, etc. What was certainly surprising for them was to see that you could express such ideas in a piece of jewelry. That was completely new for them. That was something very—not disturbing, but it was somehow questioning them.
Sharon: Did anybody ever say to you, “That’s unusual,” or “That is really making me think twice,” or anything like that?
Esther: Many people said it is unusual. I had a lovely experience with a very young student. They came to see my first exhibition in Guangzhou in the south of China. I explained to them about this idea of having another face on me, and she said, “But you know, you are new here. I’ve lived in Guangzhou for 20 years and I have never had this idea.” So, I said to her, “Yeah, you see the fact that I am a foreigner here. I am a person who is in a new surrounding, in a new environment, so I have a new perception of myself. I have also so many emotions, so many things that I discover every day and every instant.”
Sharon: Did you continue to make the rings while you were there?
Esther: Yes, of course, I continued to make the rings, but I introduced a new material. I started to work with jade. I was very much fascinated by this very Chinese stone there. You can see it everywhere. It’s a very popular stone. I was really fond of starting to work with and realizing pieces with jade. The second thing is, in doing so, I could start to collaborate with Chinese craftspeople, which is an interesting way to get into another culture, by doing things together, developing things together. Not only observing or being a consumer of artifacts, but sharing knowledge, sharing skills, sharing ideas and concepts is extremely enriching. That was a fabulous experience.
Sharon: Did you make the rings out of just jade or other things?
Esther: I made the models and then I got them carved by Chinese craftspeople. I couldn’t have done this myself. I don’t have the skill for that.
Sharon: How did you communicate with these people?
Esther: By bringing them a model. The first time I went to one of these carving studios with a drawing. I went with a translator. I could not speak Chinese in the beginning at all, so I went with a translator, and he said, “Oh, no, I cannot do this.” It was a very simple shape. They are able to carve Buddhas and cabbage and absolutely crazy, very complex forms and shapes, and he said, “Oh, no, I cannot do this,” and I said, “O.K., I have to find another way to communicate.” So, I went home, and I made the ring of wood. I went back and asked him, “Could you please copy this ring for me in jade?” and he said, “Of course, no problem.”
Sharon: The same person?
Esther: The same person. It was just the way to communicate. When he saw the drawing, he was not sure he was able to interpret the right thing, whereas with the model, he could measure. He could copy exactly the same thing. It wasn’t a problem anymore.
Sharon: Did you produce a few in jade?
Esther: Yes, I produced a few in jade. It’s getting dark here, Sharon.
Sharon: O.K., all right, I’m sorry.
Esther: No, that’s why I turned on the lights, so you could see me again.
Sharon: Yes, I can see you. How long ago did you start making rings on a continuous basis?
Esther: 35, 40 years. It’s a long time.
Sharon: Can you tell us about your experience with the rings in India?
Esther: When we arrived in India, the first impressions that I got were the fabulous world of colors and patterns on textiles, on temples, on saris. Wherever you look, you will see fabulous combinations of colors and ornaments, motifs and patterns, flowers, birds and things like that. I thought, “This is the moment for me to try to introduce motifs and decorations to my very simple shapes.” So, I started to draw flowers and birds influenced by these jewelry pieces from the Mughal Period, which I find absolutely fantastic. I was lucky to find an enamel master, a skilled craftsman in Rajasthan, in Jaipur, who could realize my rings. I made the metal ring gold or silver. I drew the pattern on it, the motif, and he realized the enamel.
Sharon: Was there any problem in communicating with them?
Esther: There were many problems because our temperaments are completely different. Of course, our sense of aesthetics is also different. In the beginning, he said, “Esther, I will draw you things in a better way. I can do this for you. I can make much better motifs than what you are drawing,” and I said, “This is not the deal we did. I have my own ideas. I don’t want to make Indian jewelry. I make my own jewelry, and I want you to realize, with your fantastic skill, the best enamel I can get.”
It also took some time to discuss and to find how to communicate. In the end, it worked very well, but it worked very well because I went to his studio. I stayed a few days there; I worked together with him. I could not work with him from this distance now from Switzerland. That would not be possible.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 16 Jun 2022 | Episode 159 Part 2: Gold in America: A New Exhibit Will Make You Question Your Beliefs About Gold | 00:20:51 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Stuart Gordon
John Stuart Gordon is the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. He grew up among the redwoods of Northern California before venturing East and receiving a B.A. from Vassar College, an M.A. from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, and a PH.D. from Boston University. He works on all aspects of American design and has written on glass, American modernism, studio ceramics, and postmodernism. His exhibition projects have explored postwar American architecture, turned wood, and industrial design. In addition, he supervises the Furniture Study, the Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript:
Perhaps more than any other metal or gem, gold brings out strong reactions in people (and has for all of recorded history). That’s what curator John Stuart Gordon wanted to explore with “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power,” a featured exhibition now on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why people have always been enchanted by gold; what he discovered while creating the exhibit; and why curation is more that just selecting a group of objects. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. Welcome back.
I’m curious; I know you recently had a group from Christie’s studying jewelry that came to visit your exhibit. I’m curious if they asked different questions, or if there’s something that stood out in what they were asking that might have been different from a group studying something else.
John: Every group is different. I love them all, and I learn so much from taking groups of visitors through because you start looking at objects through their lens. Recently a group of makers came through and, wow, that was a wonderful experience, because I could make a reference to, “Oh, look at the decoration on this,” and then, “Is it chaste or is it gadroon?” “What kind of anvil are they working with?” We have to answer these questions. There are some things I can’t answer but a maker can identify easily, so I’m learning things.
Maybe someone who’s a collector or an appraiser is thinking about objects in a very different way, wanting to know how rare it is, if there are only a handful, where they are, how many are still in private collections, what’s in the museum collection. One of my favorite tours was with a small group of young children who had a completely different set of preconceived notions. I had to explain what an 18th century whistle and bells would have been used for because they’d never seen one before. I had to talk about what kinds of child’s toys they remembered from when they were kids, trying to relate. Every group has a slightly different lens, and you can never anticipate the questions they’re going to ask.
Sharon: Yes, they’re coming at you from the weirdest angles. In putting this together, what surprised you most about gold in America? What surprised you most about putting this exhibit together? What made you say, “Gosh, I never knew that,” or “I never thought about that”? There’s a lot, but what’s the overriding question, let’s say.
John: It’s such a nerdy answer, and I apologize for being such a nerd, but what surprised me the most was an archival discovery. Mind you, this all takes place against the background of lockdown and having way too much time on our hands and looking for distractions. I pulled a historical newspaper database that the library subscribes to, and I typed in the word “gold” and pushed enter. There were about three million responses that came back, and I just started reading my way through. Not all of them were interesting, but I was struck by the frequency with which people were discussing gold, and I was struck by the global knowledge at a very early period. I would find articles written in the 1720s in colonial Boston talking about the Spanish fleets leaving Havana Harbor with amounts of silver and gold onboard. They would describe how much gold, how much silver, was it coins, was it bars, was it unrefined. There was a newspaper report coming out of New York in the 1750s talking about a new gold strike at a mine in Central Europe. That was truly unexpected: to realize that this material was of such importance that people were talking about it on a daily basis, and that it was newsworthy on this global scale. People weren’t just talking about what was going on in colonial Boston or colonial Philadelphia. They were talking about what was going on in Prussia and Bogota. I think we often think of early history as very insular, and we think of our present day as global. History has always been global, and it was a lovely reminder of how global our culture always has been.
Sharon: That’s interesting, especially talking about global. I just reread Hamilton. They’re talking about Jefferson and Madison and everybody going over to France and coming back. I think about the boats, and I think, “Oh, my god.” I think of everybody as staying in place. You couldn’t get me on one of those boats. What a voyage. But that was global. Everybody was communicating with everybody else. So, yes, it always has been that way, but it’s very surprising, the movement that has been there for so long. We could go on and on about that.
Let me ask you this: Yale Art Gallery just received a donation from Susan Grant Lewin of modern jewelry, art jewelry, on the cutting edge. At the museum and gallery, is the emphasis more on jewelry as part of material culture and decorative arts? Not every museum or art gallery would have been open to it. What’s the philosophy there?
John: Yes, we just received a gift of about two dozen pieces of contemporary jewelry from Susan Grant Lewin, who is a collector and scholar. We’ve also received a gift from the Enamel Arts Foundation, which is a foundation that collects and promotes enamel objects and jewelry. We have a long history of collecting jewelry, and it’s based on historic collections. The core of the American decorative arts collection is the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection. It started coming to the art gallery in 1930. It’s this rather storied collection. It covers everything you can imagine: furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, you name it.
It was assembled by a man named Francis P. Garvan, who was a Yalee. He graduated in the late 19th century and he gave it in honor of his wife. His main love, after his wife and his family, was silver, and the collection at Yale is probably the most important collection of early American silver in any museum. Silversmiths and goldsmiths, the names are interchangeable, and it is mostly men at that period who were making silver objects and gold objects. They’re also making jewelry. As you take the story forward, it doesn’t change a lot. People who are trained as metalsmiths often will make holloware and/or jewelry. The fields are very closely allied, and the techniques are very closely allied. So for us, it makes complete sense to have this very important historical collection of metalwork go all the way up to the present.
We have a lot of 20th century jewelry, now 21st century jewelry. We also have contemporary holloware because we like being able to tell a story in a very long arc. The way someone like Paul Revere is thinking about making an object and thinking about marketing himself is related to how someone graduating from SUNY New Paltz or RISD are thinking about how to make an object and how to market themselves. Often it’s the same material, the same hammers, the same anvils. So, it’s nice to show those continuities and then to bring in how every generation treats this material slightly differently. They have their own ideas and their own technologies.
So, the Susan Grant Lewis Collection is a very experimental work. She has said she doesn’t like stones, so you’re not going to see a lot of gem setting and a lot of diamonds and rubies set in gold. There’s nothing wrong with them, but she’s more interested in people who are more out there, thinking about how you turn 3D printing into art or how you use found materials and construct narratives and make things that are more unexpected.
Sharon: I just want to interrupt you a minute. SUNY New Paltz is the New York State University at New Paltz?
John: State University of New York at New Paltz. Sorry, I gave you the shorthand.
Sharon: I know RISD is the Rhode Island Institute—
John: We’re going to have to submit an index on how to understand all my acronyms. Yes, RISD is the Rhode Island School of Design. There are a handful of institutions that have really strong jewelry departments and really strong metalworking departments, among them Rhode Island School of Design, State University of New York at New Paltz. You can add Cranbrook, which is outside of Detroit. There’s a whole group of them that are producing wonderful things.
Sharon: So, you studied decorative arts. What was your master’s in?
John: I was an art historian. I was very lucky in college to have a professor who believed in material culture, and I asked, “Do I have to write about paintings?” and she said, “No, you don’t.” I was very lucky to find that in college. Then I went to the Bard Graduate Center in New York. It was a much longer title, the Graduate Center for Material Culture and Design. It changes its name every two years. My master’s was in kind of a history of design and material culture. Then to get a Ph.D., there are very few programs that allow people to focus on material culture. Luckily, there are more with every passing year. When I was going to school, Yale is one that’s always focused on decorative arts and material culture. Boston University, their American studies program is a historically strong program that allows you to look at anything in the world as long as you can justify it. So, that’s where I went.
Sharon: Was jewelry like, “Oh yeah, and there’s jewelry also,” or was jewelry part of the story, part of the material culture, the material objects that you might look at? Was it part of any of this?
John: It was. I am at core a metals person. My master’s thesis was written on the 1939 New York World’s Fair, looking at one pavilion where Tiffany, Cartier and a few others had their big exhibition of silver, gold and, of course, jewelry. My entry into it was silver, but I had to learn all the jewelry as well. So, jewelry has always been part of my intellectual DNA, but it didn’t really flourish until I got to Yale, and that would be because of my colleague, Patricia Kane. She has a deep knowledge and interest in jewelry. We have done a few jewelry exhibitions in the past, and she has seen it as part of the collection that should grow. I arrived at Yale as a scrappy, young curator seeing what was going on in the landscape, and the jewelry is amazing. One of my first conferences I went to was a craft conference. I met jewelers and metalsmiths, and it’s a really approachable group. They’re very friendly. They like talking about their ideas. They like talking about their work, which is really rewarding.
Sharon: What were your ideas when you started as a curator? Did you have the idea, “Oh, I’d love to do exhibition work”? Curate has become such a word today. Everybody is curating something.
John: Yes, my head is in my hands right now. One of my pet peeves is that people talk about curating their lunches. The word curate actually means to care for, so I think about the religious role of a curate. It’s the same role. Our job is really to care for collections. If you care for your lunch, you can curate it, but if you’re just selecting it, please use a different word.
That idea of caring for objects, that’s what really excited me as a curator; the idea that so much of what we do is getting to know a collection, to research it, to make sure it’s being treated well, that things are stable when they go on loan, that when things need treatment, you work with a conservator or a scientist. I was really excited by that.
Over the course of my career, I’ve become much broader in my thinking. When you come out of graduate school, you’ve spent years focusing down deeper and deeper on one small, little subject. I was still very focused on a very narrow subject when I became a curator. That was early 20th century design. I love it dearly, but over the years my blinders have come off. I love American modernism. I also love 17th century metalwork. I love 21st century glass. You realize you love everything in the world around you.
Sharon: Would you say your definition of curate is still to care for? I’m thinking about when I polish my silver. I guess it’s part of curating in a sense, taking care of things.
John: Polishing your silver or your jewelry is actually one of the best ways to get to know it. We’re one of the few collections where it’s the curators who polish the silver. We hold onto that task because we don’t do it very often, because it’s better to leave things unpolished if you don’t have to. But when it comes time to polish something, the opportunity to pick something up, to turn it over, to feel the weight of it, to look closely at the marks and the details, that’s a really special thing, to get to know your objects so well by doing it. I give a hearty endorsement of silver polishing. It’s also a great emotional therapy if you’ve had a tough day. But to your question, I even more strongly believe that the role of a curator is someone to care for their collections.
Sharon: I really like that. It gives me a different perspective.
John: Yeah, because what we’re doing is not just physical care; it’s emotional care. In today’s culture we talk so much about self-care and these kinds of tropes, but that’s a lot of what we’re doing. We’re understanding history through our objects. We’re understanding the objects better to have something preserved for posterity, so it can tell future generations stories.
Sharon: That’s interesting. John, thank you so much. By the way, the exhibit ends in July, but the Susan Grant Lewin Collection is open through September. You’ll be busy, it sounds like.
John: “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power” closes July 10. The Susan Grant Lewin Collection of American Jewelry will be up through the fall. If you miss both of those or you’re in a place where you can’t get to New Haven, our collections are all online. All you have to do is go to our website, and you can just click through and spend a day looking at objects from the comfort of your living room.
Sharon: Yes, and very nice photos. As I said, I was looking at them before we started. I was very interested. What was that used for? Where did it come from? I guess being in Los Angeles, I’ll have to do that. I’ll be doing that from my living room. John, thank you so much. This is very, very interesting. I learned a lot and you have given me a lot to think about, so thank you so much.
John: Thank you for having me.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 15 Nov 2021 | Episode 137: Part 1 - Tess Sholom: From the Runways of Paris to the Goldsmith’s Studio with Goldsmith Tess Sholom | 00:22:08 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional Resources: Photos: Blue Sky Chalcedony
Byzantium Earrings
Byzantium Necklace
Circes Circle Necklace
Illusion Necklace
Ionian Necklace
Its A Wrap Necklace
Naiad Necklace
About Tess Sholom Warm and malleable but also strong and enduring, gold shines with the spirit of life itself. For designer and jeweler Tess Sholom, gold is both medium and muse. Tess Sholom began her jewelry career in fashion jewelry in 1976, designing pieces that appeared on the runways of Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar de la Renta and James Galanos, and the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Her fashion work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Museum of the City of New York, the Racine Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and other museums. After two successful decades in fashion jewelry, she trained as a goldsmith and fell under the spell of high-karat gold. She decided to stop designing high-volume fashion jewelry and begin again as a hands-on studio artist, creating one-of-a-kind 22k gold jewelry in the workshop. Tess Sholom always had an eye for accessorizing, but she didn’t realize it would lead her to a long and fruitful career as a jewelry designer. While working as a cancer researcher, a long-shot pitch to Vogue opened the door to a 30-year career as a jewelry designer for fashion runways. Her latest career move was opening Tess Sholom Designs, where she creates one-of-a-kind, high-karat gold pieces. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she designed jewelry for Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass and Karl Lagerfeld; why problem solving is the thread that runs through all her careers; and how she plays on gold’s timeless, mystical quality in her work. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Tess Sholom. Many of you may have been aware of her fabulous statement pieces she designed for the runway, or you may have drooled over the pieces without knowing who the designer was. Today, she has taken a different path and is now both a designer and a jeweler in high-karat gold. She operates Tess Sholom Designs. We’ll hear all about that today, her whole jewelry journey and about what she’s doing. Tess, welcome to the program.
Tess: Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. It must be an interesting one, because you’ve covered a lot of different areas.
Tess: It has covered a lot of different areas, and it’s been on for a long time. When I graduated college, I actually went into cancer research. I was working in a laboratory and found that I didn’t like the isolation, so I went to Physicians and Surgeons Medical Center for a year to become a physical therapist. That I liked; solving problems, helping people.
Then, the year I married my husband in 1976, we were invited to a wedding in the woods. We were told to wear jeans because we were going to be in the woods and rolling around in the woods, and I thought, “This is awful. A wedding? This is when I try to get all dressed up in my best, and I’m wearing jeans?” But I complied. I bought a pretty gauze top; they were in style in the 70s. I made a necklace of beads and seeds and ribbons, and I made a belt to go with it. At the wedding, people kept saying, “That’s beautiful. Where did you get it?” Every time I said I made it, they would say, “Well, you should be doing this professionally.” It’s crazy. It put a bug in my ear, and I’ve always been like that. When a path presents itself, I say, “O.K., let’s try this. Let’s try it. Let’s see what’ll happen.”
Sharon: I love that.
Tess: And so, I did. I started walking around looking in stores to see how necklaces were finished. What were the clasps like? Within a month, I took a couple of things to Vogue Magazine. They gave me an instant credit; they gave me an editorial credit right away. Saks Fifth Avenue bought that necklace, and it was featured as an editorial credit in the magazine. That’s how I started. Within a very short time, Vogue Magazine called me and said, “Oscar de la Renta is looking for a jeweler to make jewelry for his runway.” After that, it just kept growing and growing. One designer, Bill Blass, saw my work in Women’s Wear Daily and he got in touch with me; Giorgio di Sant'Angelo and on and on. Karl Lagerfeld sent his secretary to meet me in New York, and then I went to Paris and collaborated with him on one of his shows. I designed jewelry for that show.
Sharon: Did you turn around and go, “Oh my god! Look what I’m doing now”?
Tess: It was like having the tiger by the tail, seriously. I hadn’t planned it. Adornment is old. It’s probably the first attempt at art that man ever made, to separate his body with berry dyes, with beads, with leaves. It’s a very old idea, adornment, and I’ve always felt the picture was not quite finished unless you were accessorizing. It ultimately was natural for me to think about making jewelry to complement a look, an action look, a closing look.
Sharon: I can imagine the peasant blouse you had in that era, but you actually said, “Oh, I need something,” and you made it yourself. I would have just said, “Oh, it needs something,” and gone through my closet or gone without anything.
Tess: That’s interesting. I guess what makes me a maker—from the time I was little, my mother brought me up with the housewifely arts. One of them was embroidery. I learned to use my hands early, and I was always changing things around. If I had a garment and I didn’t like the way it looked, I just changed it. I would put a stitch here, a stitch there. I broke apart some costume jewelry beads of pearls at Claire’s and sewed them on a sweater because I wanted that look. I’ve always done that. I’ve always done things with my hands making things.
Sharon: Would you say you were artistic from a young age? Besides knowing how to do this, were you creative? It sounds like you were.
Tess: I was creative, but my family was focused on medicine, lawyers, doctors, that kind of thing. They did not think I was artistic. They thought I was a little fussy because I wanted things to look the way I wanted them to look. They didn’t really think of me as an artist.
Sharon: You studied what, biology in college?
Tess: I went to Barnard and I had a bachelor’s degree. My major was in science. It was botany, but I had just as many credits in fine arts, actually. That should have given me a hint, but I was focused on science. That’s where I wanted to be, but it turned out no, I did not like the isolation of a lab.
Sharon: I can understand that. Were you going full time? It seems like there was quite a swath of your career where you were doing jewelry for the runway. Did you do that full time for different designers for a while?
Tess: While I was doing that, I was also supplying boutiques and department stores. I started this in 1976 and very soon, I realized once again that I was alone. I looked in Vogue Magazine to see who else was doing this kind of jewelry, because it was different. High-fashion costume jewelry was very different from the prestigious houses, Monet, Coraux, Trifari. They made beautiful costume jewelry that to this day lasts, but our expression was quite different.
I found a number of other designers in the city who were doing the same thing more or less that I was. We got together and formed an association called the Fashion Accessories Designers Association, called FADA. My husband used to tease me and say, “You’re the mada of FADA,” but we were all entrepreneurs from some other place. One was a court stenographer; one was a potter; one was a knitter, but we all made accessories. So, we formed this organization and sold to the same places, so that we had an ability to protect ourselves a little. Sometimes the big stores would try to take advantage, and because we were all selling to the same people, we were able to defend ourselves.
Sharon: That’s very smart. How did you ferret the people out? How did you find these other people?
Tess: I looked in the back of Vogue Magazine. Wherever I saw a credit that looked more or less like the expression that I was doing, I would look them up and get in touch with them.
Sharon: I want to talk to you more about this, but I want to hear how you got into—now you make things in high-karat gold and precious, not diamonds and stuff, but nice gems, colorful gems. How did you get into making and goldsmithing?
Tess: I had a desire. I always had this desire to have my collection in a museum and to be recognized by a museum. It was a goal of mine somehow, but I never knew what to do about it. However, quite accidentally, the business began to change. The designers were not using accessories so much, so I began to shift my focus towards making sterling silver tea sets and boxes, because I was trying to make sure that if in fact the jewelry did begin to lessen, I would have some other outlet. At that time, someone came to my house for tea and saw a silver tea set. She was a curator from the Museum of the City of New York, and it was fascinating to see her expression. If you remember the scene in Julius Caesar where he’s offered the crown, he wants it; he refuses it, but he’s reaching for it. I saw that same kind of reaction from this lady who was looking at my tea set. Finally, she asked me for it for the museum. It was their first sterling silver acquisition of the 20th century.
Sharon: Did you make it or did you design it?
Tess: I designed it and it was made in my factory by my head metalworker. By this point, I had 20 employees. I literally had a tiger by the tail, because as an entrepreneur, I started out on my tabletop and eventually had to keep moving because I kept increasing. So, that was the first acquisition. I don’t quite remember how the Metropolitan Museum of Art got to me, but they came to me. The Brooklyn Museum of Art came to me, the Museum at FIT. There were a couple of museums in the Midwest that some clients donated to.
That got me thinking about my jewelry as art. I took a couple of courses at Jewelry Arts Institute, and I was fascinated by working with gold. There’s nothing like 22-karat gold. It is beautiful. It’s very malleable; you can do so much with it. There’s something a little mysterious, a little mystical about 22-karat gold, because gold is eternal; nothing can happen to it. It doesn’t rust; it doesn’t turn to ash. The only thing that happens is that you can melt it down and reuse it. So, any piece you have, it could have been a nose ring for a peasant girl; it could have been part of a tiara of queen or a pope. It could be anything, and because it doesn’t really disappear, it has this timelessness, this eternal quality about it. So, that’s how I got into fine jewelry. The gold is the main piece. The main thing about jewelry for me is the gold and the stones. I love color, so of course I’m drawn to stones, but the gold is a means of showing the stones off.
Sharon: Interesting. We will have to link to your website when we post this, and I’m encouraging everybody to look at your website and see the color in the jewelry. It’s just amazing. It’s really striking. It’s beautiful. Were these curators at the museums interested in your things because they thought, “Oh, that’s the most fantastic design?” I think of a museum as saying, “If Paul Revere made that, I’d like to put in a museum.”
Tess: It’s also a history because they wanted a provenance. They wanted to know for whom it was made, who wore it, what season. It was also a means of collecting and annotating history.
Sharon: The same thing with the tea pots?
Tess: No, the tea pot, she just loved the design. That was a different story. That wasn’t jewelry. That was something else and she just loved it. I wasn’t going to argue.
Sharon: I can think of, “Oh, I love it. I want it for my living room,” as opposed to “Oh, I love it. I want to put it in a museum.” I’m not sure I understand the connection between putting these in museums. It’s fabulous to do.
Tess: Why do we collect things in museums then? Museums have changed a lot, but museums essentially are treasure houses. They house treasures; they house things that are deemed to be beautiful. Also, they may spark your imagination or make you think about something differently. So no, I’m not surprised. I was thrilled and surprised that the museums wanted my work, but I’m not surprised that when they think something is beautiful, they want it for the museum.
Sharon: I have to say, I think my whole concept of what a museum is has been changing. I used to think that museums were all history. As I looked at museums in the west, anything over 50 years old is old. I used to think that when I went to a museum, “That’s not ancient,” or “It’s not 500 years old. It’s just from a decade or two ago.” Because I see so many things that are current in museums, or current within the last 25 years, I’m realizing that my concept of what a museum is is outdated.
Tess: Museums are having a difficult time also. In order to survive, they are switching gears. They’re trying many different things so they don’t only look to the past. They’re trying to stay current and be relevant to what’s going on in the world, which is part of what fashion does. Fashion does indicate, mirror and explain an era, always.
Sharon: You fell in love with metalsmithing and silver and gold. Your accessory business where you were designing for the runway, was that still going on?
Tess: No, that began to change, and I decided to stop doing that kind of work. As I said, I foresaw that it was going to begin to change, so I stopped that. I devoted myself more to learning the ancient goldsmithing techniques so I could make everything myself, and then I started selling. First, I stared with semiprecious and silver, and then I moved on to gold. Now I work exclusively in gold and precious and semiprecious stones.
Sharon: And you’re making everything yourself too.
Tess: I’m making everything myself.
Sharon: Wow!
Tess: I’m still learning things, and I still also use the jewelry arts as a studio. It’s fascinating. We all feel so privileged to be able to work in gold. It’s such a wonderful medium. We all have that same attitude of awe about this wonderful metal.
Sharon: It’s really true. I was at a conference several years ago, and someone pointed out that once you take the gold out of the ground, that’s it. It never goes back in, and I thought, “Yeah, that’s really true.” What are the differences you find, besides the fact that everything is a one-off, in terms of what you’re doing? How are you finding the audiences you’re doing this for compared to what you were doing before?
Tess: I started the costume jewelry business in 1976 and for a while, I essentially retired. Now, I find that social media is a very, very different world. I need a lot of help with that. I need help with social media. The younger people understand social media and are good at it, so I need help in that area to perfect everything. I have found that it has been very successful, especially Instagram. Instagram and my website, all of that, has been helpful. Before, I went to an editor, she liked my work and then the rest just fell in step, but now it’s different. For example, in October I’m going to California to do a luxury event. My work is gold; it’s heavy; it’s expensive. That is not something that is sold easily all the time. So, I go to these targeted events where people who are willing to spend the money attend.
Sharon: It is such a different world with social media. I entered the digital world in the mid-90s and the changes since then—it’s a different world. It’s amazing, and it keeps changing every two days.
Tess: I was in a restaurant the other day and this little, two-year-old girl was using her phone. I thought about how it took me many, many years to start using my phone.
Sharon: Yes, when I see kids on their phones, I’m like, “Oh my god!” When you see kids who speak a language you’re trying to learn, it’s amazing. Do you find that you get a response from Instagram and other social media? | |||
| 28 Jul 2021 | Episode 124: Jewelry and Shoe Lovers Unite: What Our Accessories Represent with Dr. Kimberly Alexander, University of New Hampshire Faculty | 00:30:11 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kimberly Alexander Dr. Kimberly Alexander teaches museum studies, material culture, American history and New Hampshire history in the History Department of the University of New Hampshire. She has held curatorial positions at several New England museums, including the MIT Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum and Strawbery Banke. Her most recent book, entitled "Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era" traces the history of early Anglo-American footwear from the 1740s through the 1790s (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). Dr. Alexander was Andrew Oliver Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society (2016-2017) and is guest curator of “Fashioning the New England Family,” (October 2018- April 2019) at MHS. Her companion book, "Fashioning the New England Family," was published in 2019. Additional Resources: Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era https://pwb02mw.press.jhu.edu/title/treasures-afoot Fashioning the New England Family https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5368
Photos:
Treasures Afoot - book stack with c. 1780s silk satin shoe, made in Boston, MA
Silver and paste stone shoe buckles, c. mid-18th century, French or English; in original 3shagreen, silk lined case. Collection of the author.
Silver thread embroidery with spangles. Collection of the author.
Advertisement for gold lace, 1734
James Davis, shoemaker, near Aldgate, London, c. 1760s, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum, public domain. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/112645 Transcript As an architectural historian with a relatively small shoe collection, Professor Kimberly Alexander didn’t anticipate becoming an expert on Georgian shoes. But when she encountered a pair of mid-18th century shoes with a curious label, she quickly realized the potential that shoes have to help us understand history and material culture. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the commonalities between shoes and jewelry, why shoes are a powerful way for women to express themselves, and how the historical shoe industry can help us understand the Colonia era in America. Read the episode transcript below. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, while we’re still talking about jewelry, we’re looking at it from a different angle. My guest is Kimberly Alexander, author of “Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era.” Kimberly is a historian and Professor of Material and Museum Culture at the University of New Hampshire. We’ll hear all about her own journey as well as some of the history she tells of shoes in early America. Kimberly, welcome to the program. Kimberly: Thank you so much for inviting me, Sharon. I’m very excited to talk to you today about something that’s been a fairly consuming interest and passion for quite some time, so thank you. Sharon: I’m so glad to have you, and it has been. I was just rereading your introduction and acknowledgements. You say you’ve been doing this for the past eight years, so that’s quite a journey. Can you tell us what material culture is and how you got into this study? It’s so interesting that you’re a professor. Kimberly: I’d be happy to do that. Material culture, in its broadest terms, is any item, artifact, object that is created by human endeavor, by human hands. It covers a broad swath of materials, from the work of indigenous peoples with beads and ceramics to shoemakers, which is where I’ve spent a tremendous amount of my interest and time, but also those who produce textiles, glass, furniture, paintings. All of those would be examples of a human endeavor to create an object. If you think about the early cave paintings and petroglyphs, that’s also part of a creative process which involves a human endeavor to create an object or a story. As we continue to explore these ideas of material culture, what I’m particularly interested in is the ability of material artifacts and objects to tell stories that are wrapped up in these elements of human endeavor. I think stories stay with us in ways that other types of information don’t always, because we can relate to it; we can put a hook on it. We can understand something more about someone else’s perspective or point of view from the study of material culture. I teach material culture and museum studies and these very much go hand-in-hand throughout public history. My own journey was an interesting one. I completed my master’s and my Ph.D. in art history with a focus in architectural history. Some people who’ve known me for a long time are curious as to how I got from being an architectural historian to writing a book about Georgian shoes, and it’s actually not as surprising as you might think. I worked as a curator at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, where I was curator of architecture and design. From there I went to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, and then to the Strawbery Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was at Strawbery that I worked not only with buildings, but also archeological finds and what they would tell us about the buildings themselves and human habitations. I worked with a wide of variety of different types of collections, and I found that it was more of a way that you envision the world around you. For me, if you think of a shoe as needing to support someone in their daily activities for a special event, it’s not that much different to think about how a skyscraper works. We need to have a good foundation on which to build. For me, it’s been a natural evolution. The shoe that got me started on this sojourn, if you will, is the one that’s on the front cover of my book. It’s in the collection at the Strawbery Banke Museum. It is a mid-18th century Georgian shoe that’s been quite well worn, seen a lot of damage through time and wear, but inside was pasted a simple paper label and it read, “Rideout and Davis Shoemakers near Aldgate in London.” That made me immediately wonder, “How did this shoe end up in this collection in Portsmouth, New Hampshire? What was its journey?” That’s really what sent me on this eight-year—and I’m still working on it even though the book’s published, so now I’m up to 10 or 11 years on this topic, but that was the question that I started with. How did people acquire shoes and why were they saved? How was this shoe saved for all this time? I found over the course of my research there’s a lot more relevance even to how we organize today’s lives. You might keep a pair of shoes that you wore to run a marathon or that you wore to get married or for your first job interview. You may never wear them again, but they’re small, they’re portable and they are infused with some fiber of you and your experience. That’s what makes shoes so exciting. Sharon: That’s really interesting. I’m thinking about the parallels between that and antique jewelry. As I’ve been culling my own collection, I look and say, “I may never wear that again, but I bought it here and I want to keep it as a keepsake.” I was looking at a piece I bought in Cuba and thought, “I may never wear it again, but it’s the only thing I’ve really bought from Cuba.” Kimberly: Right. Sharon: Why do people keep shoes? They’re small, they’re portable and they have memories, but why do they love shoes so much? Kimberly: That is an interesting question. I had the chance to do some work with the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire, about five or six years ago. They were hosting an exhibition that originated in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. “On Killer Heels” was the name of the exhibition—a fabulous show—but one of the things they did at the Currier was put out notebooks for women to write about their experiences with shoes. One notebook was “What were your best experiences?” or “What shoes do you remember?” and the other one was about shoes and feminism and wearing high heels. I went through them and eventually I hope, with the help of the Currier, to publish an article about it, because it’s really quite interesting. Women who wrote about high heels in many cases wrote about them as being part of how they perceive themselves in power. Some women did see them this way as well as something that was uncomfortable that they were forced to wear at a certain time in their lives. Other women saw them as something that was part of their role as a professional in a male-dominated world. One woman, for example, wrote that she loved her three-inch heels with her business suits because everybody could hear her coming; they knew she was on her way and people scampered to find something to do. She also said, “It put me on this eye level with men in a way that, if I wasn’t wearing heels, I wouldn’t be.” That was one example that I thought was really interesting. Another example from a woman of roughly the same age talked about the fact that she had foot problems and had to turn in her high heels for flats because they were uncomfortable. This is all paraphrasing, but she said, “The change-over to flats made me feel invisible, like I’d given something up. I was wearing shoes like my mother or grandmother would wear.” I don’t know if I really answered your question with these few examples, but I think shoes mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. As we’re moving through this Covid year-and-a-half pandemic, I think shoes have taken on an even different role again, as has fashion. People are used to their soft clothes. I was reading something recently on Instagram where somebody said, “Oh, I can’t believe I have to go to a meeting in person and put on hard pants.” I think the issue of levels of comfort has changed. They were already changed; I think they changed even more in this pandemic era. But, why do women love shoes? Any number of different reasons, and I’ve spoken to hundreds of women because I find it a fascinating topic. By nature, you might not know this, but I’m actually a somewhat shy person; I have a lot of social anxiety. Once I started working on shoes, I found I could always ask a question about shoes, and everybody piles on and I don’t need to continue saying much more. I guess everybody has something, and in these notebooks from the Currier, there were these incredibly detailed responses to people responding to their worst experience in shoes. There was one young woman who wrote about going to this college party in her Candies, which were these wooden shoes, terribly uncomfortable, but they were all the rage as I recall. She had hot pink Candies with open toes. She just loved them and she knew she looked like a million bucks, but she ended up with the biggest blisters on her feet. I was an “I didn’t care because I knew I looked great” kind of thing. There’s a lot of self-image, for some people, wrapped up in something that seems as mundane as shoes. The pair of shoes that I’ve kept out of my own collection and that I’ve carried with me—I grew up in Maryland; I’m now in New Hampshire—is a pair of Nikes from when I was on the cross-country team. I started at a private school, St. James, for my last two years of high school. I couldn’t even run the length of a football field. By the end of the semester, I was running five-milers and competing competitively. Those Nikes were symbolic of something really important, and I still have them. They are falling apart, but I still have them. What people decide to collect is also really interesting in terms of what people collect and save and the stories that go with those. Sharon: That’s interesting. I’m not sure I have any shoes that I’ve saved. I’ve tossed them out and I might have had a sentimental pang, but I don’t think I have anything I’ve saved. I especially did not save from decades ago my three-inch heels, which I can’t even imagine. When I see women walking on those now, I’m like, “Oh, my god, how did I ever do that?” The shoes you focus on, you focus on the Colonial Era in America. Why is that, especially because you’re talking about shoes that came from London? Kimberly: What it brought up for me, when I first started looking at the labels in women’s shoes from London, is that British Americans, in the time before the Revolution, there was a huge consumer culture revolution. You still conceived of yourself as British, so you wanted to be stylish as you would have been back home, not out on the periphery somewhere. So, you have these shoemakers in London who are exporting thousands and thousands of pairs of shoes to the colonies of all different types, from very, very high-end, some of which I show in my book, to examples for those who are not as—pardon the pun—well-heeled. The idea of this reliance on the market also meant there were shoes being made for everyday people and everyday wearers. In the book, I talk a good bit about the growth of the shoe industry starting particularly in Lynn, Massachusetts, and the switch during the Revolution. There’s this pivotal decade from 1760 to the 1770s where Americans start saying, “Look, don’t be buying your shoes from Britain. Why are you going to be sending your money to the Crown and to British merchants and shoemakers? Why aren’t you supporting your local shoemaker and local businesses and putting money in the coffers of your neighbors?” It becomes a huge political issue, and we even seen Ben Franklin talking about that during the Stamp Act controversy, where he says that Americans are going to hold onto their clothes until they can make themselves new ones. Even something that might seem as straightforward as shoes becomes highly politicized during this time period. All of this was of tremendous interest to me, but part of the reason I selected this time period and these shoes is that they are handmade—this is all obviously before the advent of machine sewing—and it also gave me a chance to talk about women’s voices, women’s perspectives that had previously been unheard. We read so much about the founding fathers and a few elite women, but what about the everyday person, the everywoman, everyman? Using shoes was a way I could talk about women who we otherwise would never have heard of. We would just know when they were born and when they died and possibly that they had a child, because that’s how the shoes came to us. It was sort of a reverse creating a genealogy or a biography and trying to give women a voice they didn’t have, because I had an object I could work with. Sharon: Whatever you said brought to mind the fact that the pictures, the photos in here are just beautiful. I want to say the name of the book again, “Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era” and tell everybody listening that it’s a beautiful book and an easy read. It’s history, but it’s a very easy, interesting read, especially if you have any interest in shoes. We also talked about the fact that with jewelry, taking something like antique shoe buckles and transforming them into bracelets or other pieces of jewelry has become so popular. Why do you think that is? Kimberly: First, I do want to give a plug to my publisher. It’s Johns Hopkins University Press, if any of you are interested in the book. There are over a hundred illustrations in the book, most of which have never been seen before, that were taken specifically for this project. I have a huge debt of gratitude to 30 different museum collections around the world, so thank you for bringing up the visual qualities. It was a really exciting opportunity to be able to have that many color illustrations. Back to your question about shoe buckles, for one thing, you didn’t have to have a pair of buckles for every pair of shoes; you could interchange some. Again, it goes back to things that you can save easily. You get a lot of pavé stone buckles more so than gemstones, although very, very rich people—the Victoria & Albert has a pair of shoe buckles, I think they were Russian in origin, that have actual sapphires and diamonds and rubies. I mean, wow. But what most people had would have been pavé stones that would have been set in silver or some other metal. Then they move onto leather. One of the biggest things that happens is that there were so many buckles because you had shoe buckles for men and women. You also had breeches buckles for men, which would go at their knees for their breeches. You actually have a pretty large number of buckles which can be reused. By looking at the size, you can generally determine whether they were breeches buckles or shoe buckles, but that’s often a cataloguing error that you find about what the pieces were. A small breeches buckle, for example, can be wonderfully remade into a pin if you’ve got the pair. They’re very small. I’m sorry. We’re doing this over the phone and I’m doing hand gestures— Sharon: No, no. Kimberly: At any rate, they are smaller, so they’re very easy to convert into jewelry. They’re easy to save. You can pick them up online everywhere from eBay to Etsy. Now, the other thing is that there was a huge Georgian revival of shoes, of course, in the 1910s and 1920s, and you start having shoes that either have attached shoe buckles or occasionally are using shoe buckles again. So, you have a wide expanse of this sort of shoe jewelry, if you will, and it’s not just buckles; there were also shoe roses and flowers, things you could attach to your slippers to spiff them up. The idea of reusing these objects, the way people do with silk ribbon flowers, which appear on so many 18th century and early 20th century gowns, makes a tremendous amount of sense. I would say there are certainly as many pieces of jewelry that have been made from buckles as buckles that actually survived. Sharon: I never realized there were breeches buckles. I guess it’s all lumped together in a sense. Kimberly: The breeches buckles were smaller, and they would have attached to the knee tabs for men’s breeches. A man could have both breeches buckles and shoe buckles, and then occasionally you’ll see trends in the 19th and 20th centuries of buckles being used as hat ornaments and things like that. The versatility, I think, is probably what has kept them around. Plus, anytime you’re dealing with shoes, you’re dealing with the fragility of textiles and that’s a big thing. Sharon: I’ll have to look more closely next time I look at what I think is a shoe buckle and say, “Oh, it’s possible it’s a breeches buckle.” It’s interesting when you talk about the trends, because in the past few years it’s been pearls. You’ve seen pearls in heels, and I think you have a couple of pairs of shoes where there are lots of rhinestones. Kimberly: Yeah, if you want to take the idea of jewelry as it connects to footwear, many of the 18th century—well, 17th and 18th century—shoes were embroidered with metallic threads. You actually have real gold spun around a linen thread, which is then woven into the fabric of the shoes. You end up with this amazing amount of gold on your foot. You’ve got the shine—and again, this is largely elite wearers—but you have brocaded metallic threads in a shoe. Then you’ve got a shoe buckle. Hose and stockings often will have down the side of the leg what was known as a clock, which might be done in metallic threads. So, you also have precious metals being used as part of the textile process. Sharon: It’s interesting to me that when you describe material culture, it’s such a broad subject and you homed in on shoes, and then even more specifically a certain period, the Georgian Era, the Colonial Era. Are you working on something now? What else is on your mind? Kimberly: I have a book coming out this fall based on an exhibition I was very fortunate to curate at the Massachusetts Historical Society which is called “Fashioning the New England Family.” It looks at a wide variety of textiles from the 17th century, from what is known as a buff coat, a lightweight military—well, relatively speaking—coat from the 1630s, up through pieces in the early 20th century based on their collection. What I’m really interested in is this idea of storytelling, of reading textiles like text. What can you discern? Everything from why they were maintained to how they were made, and it’s astonishing the things we’ve been able to uncover. As far as shoes go, I’ve been looking at issues of northern complicity in the shoe trade. Around the time of the Revolution, a number of shoe manufacturers in New England basically blossom from doing several hundred pairs of shoes to doing thousands of pairs of shoes. There’s one company in particular that I found during my research—I think I talk about it in the very end of my book—that started shipping thousands and thousands of shoes and I thought, “Well, that’s odd in this three-year time.” As it turned out, they were selling—the coded language was “for the southern trade” or “the Indies trade”—but essentially, they were selling shoes to enslaved field workers in the South. The coded language was “coarse, sturdy, cheap,” and so on. When I started researching where the shoes were shipped, they were being shipped to Baltimore, to Norfolk, to Charleston, in this case from Salem and Boston. There are entire towns in New England that owe their existence and their lucrative businesses to being part of the slave trade. These things are true in the textile mills as well, but I’ve been focusing on shoes. This is very coded language, and I’ve been able to locate a few pairs of shoes that were actually made for enslaved workers, and we have letters from enslaved workers who talk about how uncomfortable those northern shoes were. They preferred in some cases to go barefoot; they were that uncomfortable. So, I’m working on that now as well as another publication. Sharon: Wow! I look forward to seeing that. It sounds very interesting, and it really makes you think in terms of how they were supporting abolition and at the same time shipping the shoes down, right? Kimberly: Right. You realize just how much these are no longer separate economies. It’s a national economy. They’re sending cotton up from the South to the North where it’s being processed into clothing and then being sent back down to the South or being sent to customers. It’s really complicated and some amazing scholarship is being done in this area. Sharon: As you’re talking about the shoes and how you’re telling history through shoes, it makes me think about how hard it is to describe to people when you say you really love jewelry. They think you love big diamonds, but there’s so much history attached to jewelry, why it was done in a certain metal and at a certain time. There’s a whole journey behind it. Kimberly: Yes, exactly. People assume I have a big shoe collection myself. I don’t. I have a few pairs of shoes that I really like, and people give me shoes now. For my classes, I’ve gotten some really fancy designer shoes that people picked up at yard sales. I use the textiles I have and the shoes I have in my classes so that students can actually hold things, touch things, examine them and learn from them, because you can’t walk into a museum and say, “Hey, let me hold onto that 1785 pair of silk pumps.” Sharon: Right. I look forward to seeing your book when it comes out. That’s around the corner, and hopefully you’ll come back on and tell us more about that. Thank you so much for being here today. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for reading. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 04 Jan 2021 | Episode 101: How Phoenix’s Heard Museum Is Increasing Appreciation for Native American Art with Diana Pardue, Curator of Collections at the Heard Museum | 00:25:54 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Diana Pardue: Diana Pardue is Curator of Collections at the Heard Museum, a Phoenix-based museum dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. She is the author of several books, including “Shared Images: The Innovative Jewelry of Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird” and “Contemporary Southwestern Jewelry.” Native American jewelry has a long history in the Southwest, but few people truly appreciate the significance of this art form. The Heard Museum, a Phoenix-based museum dedicated to advancing Native American jewelry and arts, has been trying to change that since 1929. Diana Pardue, chief curator at the Heard Museum, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Native American jewelry has changed over the years, the innovative techniques that Native American jewelers have used, and which indigenous jewelers you should be paying attention to today. Read the episode transcript here: Additional Resources: Photos: Front of The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
Native American Ring:
Native American Butterfly Pins:
Book: "Native American Bolo Ties"
Book: "Contemporary Southern Jewelry"
Book: "Shared Images"
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| 05 Jul 2023 | Episode 91: Genre-Defying Jewelry: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with John Moore, Multi-Award Winning Artist | 00:31:49 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Moore: With unbridled self-expression at its core, the work of multi-award-winning artist John Moore inhabits a nameless realm of possibility without frontiers. Currently represented by Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery in London and Charon Kransen in New York, he is a unique and evolving presence in the world of art jewellery. His distinctive creations have appeared at high profile fairs and exhibitions in the UK, Europe and the USA, including Masterpiece London, Design Miami, SOFA Chicago, MIART Milan, PAD Monaco and PAD London. Moore’s work has been recognized with a number of awards, most notably The Goldsmiths Company Award both in 2016 and 2019. Affectionately known as The Jewellery Oscar, it is ‘only given when, in the [Goldsmiths Craft and Design] Council’s judgement, an entry achieves the highest standard of creative design and originality.’ Commissioned by international collector Tuan Lee, renowned for her taste in statement pieces, his 2019 winning entry, Lacewing, is the latest in the Verto series. Made from sterling silver discs embellished with 48 diamonds set with 18ct gold, Lacewing takes precious jewellery into a new realm, commanding attention and challenging the notion of jewellery as an accessory. Additional resources:
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| 07 Jul 2021 | Episode 121: From Investment Banker to Jewelry Innovator: The Story Behind Évocateur with Founder, Barbara Ross Innamorati | 00:23:56 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Barbara Ross-Innamorati For ÉVOCATEUR Founder and Designer Barbara Ross-Innamorati, the love of fashion, art and design has always been hardwired into her creative DNA. Many years ago, Barbara became fascinated with and passionate about gold leaf, particularly the way it can transform even the most ordinary objects into something extraordinary and magical. As someone who always loved jewelry, Barbara went on a mission to adapt 22K gold leaf to jewelry design. After years of research and trial and error, she perfected the proprietary technique for which ÉVOCATEUR is now known. Today, these opulent designs are infused with inspiration from Barbara’s extensive travels throughout the U.S., Europe, Africa and Asia. All of the designs have a sophisticated and unique spirit. From their Connecticut studio, Barbara and a team of skilled artisans design and individually craft each piece, wrapping them in 22K gold leaf and sterling silver leaf. Using an intricate process, the jewelry is gilded and burnished by hand and is fabricated over a period of five days, resulting in an exquisite work of art, each piece finished to a rich patina. With only the finest materials used and impeccable attention to detail, ÉVOCATEUR celebrates the compelling relationship between art and fashion. The line, which includes cuffs, bangles, pendants, and earrings, can be found in premier jewelry retail stores throughout the United States and the rest of the world. Additional Links Photo:
Transcript: For most of her life, Barbara Ross-Innamorati didn’t think jewelry would ever be more than a hobby to her. Little did she know that she would later invent an entirely new category of jewelry. Her company, Évocateur, specializes in gilded jewelry covered in gold and silver leaf and artistic motifs. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she developed her innovative technique, where she hopes her company will go next, and why she wants everyone to know that it’s possible to start a second chapter in life. Read the episode transcript below.
Sharon: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Barbara Ross-Innamorati, designer and founder of the jewelry company Évocateur. Her jewelry features 22-carat gold leaf and sterling silver leaf. Her line is sold around the world, and we’ll hear about her jewelry journey today. Barbara, welcome to the podcast. Barbara: Thank you, it’s very good to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. It sounds like you invented—it’s not the right word, but we’ll talk more about it. Barbara: No, that is close to the right word, Sharon. We’re an 11 ½-year-old company. We were established in 2009, but my jewelry journey probably began decades ago. I trace it back to when I was a student in London. I went to an art exhibit, and it was a retrospective of Gustave Klimt, the famous expressionist artist. I saw the painting “The Kiss” there, and even being 20-something, I was struck by something I saw in the painting, and that was gold leaf. I didn’t know what gold leaf was; I was just mesmerized by it and it stuck with me. I went on to finish college and got married, started work and had kids, and then I’d say about 12 or 13 years ago, the gold leaf came back to me, because I’d always loved jewelry. I had a wonderful collection of my own jewelry, and I got it in my mind, thinking, “Why can’t we make jewelry that features gold leaf?” We have less expensive plated fashion jewelry, and then you have fine jewelry. There’s got to be something in between, and there’s got to be something we can use gold leaf on. Gold leaf is different than plating; it’s actual sheets of gold. So, I went on in this fashion, to try and adapt 18-carat or 22-carat gold leaf to jewelry. It was a long process. I had no background in jewelry. I had never taken a jewelry class, not even an art class, although I loved art and I had a vision of what I wanted this to look like. 18 months later, through trial and error, I finally had a product, and I have to trace it back to that day at the National Gallery in London when I saw that painting. We have, in the process, continued to evolve over the last 11 ½ years. It was something we couldn’t read in a book; I couldn’t read in a book. No one was doing it the way I was doing it, or at least getting the look I wanted. People had used gold leaf as accents on beads, but no one was wrapping it the way we had come up with through this process. I say “we” because over the years, even though I invented this process, my incredible team—and we’re 100 percent woman owned and operated—has continued to progress and evolve and innovate to make this a much better process and product in the meantime. Even our signature flecking, which is little bits of gold, that was kind of an accident. The first time I was trying to get gold leaf on a cuff base, the little pieces of gold—gold leaf is as thin as a butterfly’s wing—would break off and end up all over the image. That was an accident, but I looked at it and said, “That gives it a unique vintage, one-a-kind look.” It’s been a very interesting journey. We have brought together two materials that heretofore haven’t been brought together, and that’s gold leaf and enamel. In fact, when we have a product issue—and we’ve had many over the years, because we are blazing a trail in this process and product—I couldn’t talk to my gold leaf guy in Florence, Italy, and I couldn’t talk to my enamel guy in Rhode Island, because their materials had never been married together, so to speak. We had to solve things here, not in the tools that we use, but the entire process. So, that’s how it began. I’m proud to say we’ve created this entire newly category of gilded jewelry, and it’s been a long process. Sharon: It’s an amazing story. Do you have metalsmithing or chemistry experience? Did you have any kind of background? Barbara: I have an MBA in corporate finance. I was an investment banker and corporate finance person before I did this, so no. I hope that’s inspirational to people who think they can’t do something. You just keep at it. I wasn’t intimidated by not being from the industry. Sharon: Is that just your personality? It’s intimidating. So many people grew up in jewelry families or they were chemists or something. Is that just you, you’re not intimidated? Barbara: I think it was passion; I can’t even tell you. I remember being up until 2, 3, 4 in the morning experimenting. The hardest part of this was not just getting the very thin gold leaf or silver leaf on a base, but how to seal it, because gold leaf heretofore has been used in the decorative arts. You see it on domes or churches. In New York, we have several buildings that have gold domes as well as gold statues. Those statues are covered with gold leaf, and when you put it on an object or even furniture, it’s not sitting against someone’s skin. It’s gold; you don’t have to seal it. Silver leaf, you have to seal because it will tarnish, so I had to find the right sealant that would protect it but not destroy it. It’s sitting against a woman’s wrist or her neck where there might be oils and sweat, and I had to find a way to protect that. I was passionate about gold leaf and loved art, and now we have a product that combines original art and gold leaf that’s all made in the U.S. It’s all made right here in Connecticut. Sharon: Wow! That’s very unusual. Did you find people who knew how to seal it? Barbara: No, I tried many different materials, and I would wear it and stress test it. I remember finally the third material, which is a type of enamel, was the one that worked. It was hard because not only was I unschooled in this, but there was no school where I could learn this. Sharon: You do the design of the jewelry. You’re the designer, right? Barbara: Yes, we design everything here. We work with graphic artists and we have different types of designs. We also work with contemporary artists to put their artwork on our jewelry. You can go to our website and see Monet’s Water Lilies or Van Gogh’s Starry Night. These are all in the public domain, so we can use them without paying any type of royalty or rights. However, we also work with contemporary artists. We take their artwork and pay them a royalty to use their art on our jewelry. We also work with Erté, who was a famous—he did many things: costume designer, sculptor, artist. We work with a company that owns all of his artwork, and we have an entire line devoted to his art. Sharon: Yes, that was surprising. I always think of the female statue—I don’t know if it’s in crystal, but that’s what I think of when I think of him. He was a him, right? Barbara: Yeah, his actual name was Romain de Tirtoff. He was Russian-born, but when you said his initials, which are R and T, in French, it’s pronounced Erté. Sharon: In today’s world that’s also unusual. You’re looking at antiques like that, but not contemporary so much. They’re beautiful. Tell us how you describe your jewelry to people when they ask what you do. What do you say to them? Barbara: We’re obviously very art-driven jewelry, but I think we’re colorful, whimsical, attainable. Everything retails for under $400. These are handmade pieces that take six to seven days to process. It is made, as in mentioned, in Norwalk, Connecticut, and it features 22-carat gold leaf. It’s very artistic, but it’s also travel jewelry in a way. That’s another thing I point out; you get a lot of bang for the buck. It’s bold, although we do have different widths. We go down to as narrow as a ¾-inch cuff. Earring silhouettes go from the smallest studs to the largest 2-inch tear drops. The same thing with our necklaces, but we do have that bold, gold look Sharon: It’s beautiful. I happen to love cuff bracelets. You have some fabulous cuff bracelets. Barbara: Thank you. It’s fun jewelry; whimsical, art-driven and unique. The other thing is that each piece is like a snowflake because it’s handmade. The gilding will go on differently each time, especially the flecking, the little bits of gold or silver, so that each piece is really, truly like a snowflake. We can’t replicate it. The image can be replicated, but the application of the gold leaf can’t. Sharon: That’s amazing. Did you target that specific price point? Barbara: We launched our business in the middle of a recession, the 2008-2009 recession, and there was a lot of price resistance and price sensitivity. I tried hard to keep it under a certain price. There is a target, I guess. That’s correct, that we try to be conscious of the price level. Sharon: It sounds like you had to go through so many iterations to develop the prototypes and find the one where you said, “O.K., we’re ready to go.” How did you feel? Did you know when you saw it? Barbara: Yeah, everything has to speak to me. I have to feel it. Sharon: How did you feel then? Did you know when you saw it? Like, “I’ve done 400 prototypes, but this is it”? Barbara: The biggest challenge for me was finding the right enamel. It’s what is called a cold enamel. It has to air cure. We can’t fire it because of the gold leaf. When I got up the next morning and felt it and touched it after it had cured, I felt like, “Yeah, this is it.” Then, of course, I had to wear it. I would wear it for three or four weeks every day to stress test it because, as I said, we blazed a new trail here. There was no way for us to know if this was going to work. Sharon: I’m amazed that you’ve been so successful with it. It’s so far afield from what you did before and what your education was in. l understand that you didn’t study as an artist. You didn’t study as a chemist or a metalsmith. Barbara: I had to learn a lot about chemistry while working with the enamels. We had problems, all kinds of issues that would—like if your studio is too humid, we’ve had issues with that. If the enamel doesn’t cure correctly, then we have to file it off and start again. It’s a laborious process. We’ve tried to short circuit it over the years, but the look is not the same. Sharon: No, it sounds like a laborious process. Barbara: But it’s very rewarding. Being relatively new to this industry, obviously there are a lot of challenges, but there’s so much joy that we can be part of something happy and positive for the most part. I hear from customers and from our retailers what their customers are saying, especially when we do a custom cuff. I’m sure most jewelers and designers know what I’m talking about when you feel that “wow.” You made a difference. You’re part of an important milestone. Maybe you’re just part of someone’s everyday life, but they get so much joy out of wearing something. That’s something I never take for granted, because I never had a job like that, frankly, never. This is the first time. Sharon: What kind of custom work are people asking you for? To mark an anniversary or a trip? Barbara: We do so many different types of custom. This is probably our largest-growing segment right now. We can take any digital image—of course, we have to make sure it looks good—but we can take any digital image that any customer has and create a piece of jewelry from it that’s embedded into the gold leaf or silver leaf. We do a lot of dogs. We do a lot of horses. Kids are a distant third behind pets. We’ve done cats. We’ve done a lot of map cups, mostly for our retailers. We’ll find beautiful maps and we’ll put it on a cup or a necklace, and then it becomes our retailer’s signature piece. We’ve done Charlotte, North Carolina, Charleston—you name the city, we have a map cup or earring or necklace to go with it. We’ve done those types of customs, but then we’ve done very personal pieces for the retail customer as opposed to the retailer. It really is all over the place. We actually put somebody’s car on one. She had a Ferrari, and she wanted a picture of her in her Ferrari on a cuff, so she sent this photo. She loved that. For a mother’s day gift, one was a picture of somebody’s childhood home. That was through one of our retailers. It was given to her mother. It was their home, and apparently the mother just wept when she got this cup. It’s fun. It’s very personal. If you can digitize it, we can generally create a beautiful piece of jewelry from it. Sharon: Wow! It’s endless what you can do in terms of custom work. It’s not surprising to me that pets are first. The first thing that flew into my mind was maybe a family picture, but when I think about things that make me smile—it sounds horrible—it’s my dogs. Barbara: We’ve done a lot of dogs that have passed. When they pass, the owner really wants to commemorate them on a necklace or a cuff. There’s always a story. That’s the other thing; with all kinds of jewelry, there’s always a story, and that’s what I love. I like to think our jewelry has a strong narrative. In fact our name, “Évocateur,” means evocative. That’s because when I started wearing my jewelry, when it was still just a hobby and I was trying to figure things out, people would ask me questions. They’d say, “That’s really unique,” or “Why is there a butterfly on that cuff?” It would evoke conversations and connections, and for me it would evoke nice memories of a trip, for example. That’s what I mean. Sharon: The Kiss is at the Neue Galerie right now, isn’t it? Do you go visit that because it’s so much closer than London right now? Barbara: Yeah, I’ve been to Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side of New York. It’s a beautiful museum. Sharon: Oh, it’s great. Barbara: Very inspirational. We also have the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which is another famous painting of his. We put that on a cuff as well. Sharon: Beautiful! The price point is approachable, not off-putting, and you can customize so many things. What’s one thing we haven’t talked about? What’s one thing I haven’t covered that you think people should know? Barbara: This is definitely a second chapter for me. As I mentioned, my background was very different. Had I not lost my job—I had a really nice job and was downsized—this would have never happened. I think it’s important for people to realize that sometimes great things come in not-so-nice packages. There’s always a second chapter, no matter where you are or how old you are. Things can happen that may not look so great at the time, as I said, but I can guarantee you—because I had a great job, and there was no reason for me to leave that job—I can guarantee you that if my hand hadn’t been forced and I hadn’t started playing around with my hobby, that Évocateur would have never happened. I’d still be in that job, or maybe another job that’s similar. That is an important message for anyone who finds himself in a less than desirable position or in something they didn’t plan. The other thing that’s interesting is that the event that launched us was the lineup at Open See at Henri Bendel. Unfortunately Henri Bendel no longer exists in New York, but this was a semiannual audition, if you will, where any designer could line up, preferably between 5 and 6 a.m. if you wanted to be seen. The lines were long. Anyone could line up in certain categories, and the buyers at Henri Bendel would see them. It was called the Open See; it was very famous, and I decided I was going to go and present our collections. It was successful for us because they accepted us in, and that’s really how we were launched. It gave me the commercial validation that I needed to turn this from a hobby into something more. That’s the other interesting Évocateur historical info. Sharon: That’s quite a launch. It’s inspirational. I can see so many people saying, “Oh, they wouldn’t be interested,” or they’re not willing to be rejected. Barbara: Whenever you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got to realize that you’re going to get rejections. It’s par for the course, and you need a lot of internal fortitude. So much of what I’ve done is hard. There’s no question. It’s hard owning a business and creating something from nothing, which is what we did. Even when you start a business—maybe you have a product that does exist, but you still have to start it. Anytime you start something from nothing, you don’t inherit it; you don’t buy into it; but you’re starting with zero, you’re going to have rejection. You need a lot of passion for what you’re doing and a lot of, like I said, internal fortitude to keep going. It’s not easy, but it is rewarding. There are lots of highs, lots of lows. Sharon: It sounds very rewarding. It’s the risk of living, but it sounds very rewarding. Thank you so much. It was a very inspirational story. I wish you continued success and growth, and it sounds like you’ll have it in the future. It’s coming; how can it not? Barbara: It’s been an interesting ride. My biggest achievement to date, I think, is that we survived 2020. I’m serious. Sharon: I’m laughing, but I know— Barbara: My team is still here and we’re still working away. Trade shows are coming back, and I’m optimistic for this year and the following year. Sharon: The fact that you’re still here is quite an accomplishment. Thank you so much, Barbara, for talking with us today, and much luck as you move forward. Barbara: Thank you so much, Sharon. It’s been a pleasure. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 20 Jun 2022 | Episode 160 Part 1: The Intangible Beauty of Gemstones: Why Stones Draw Us In | 00:25:28 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Caroline Morrissey Caroline Morrissey is Director and Head of Jewelry at Bonhams in New York. Her areas of expertise span diamonds and colored gemstones to 20th century jewelry. She has a particular interest in large white and colored diamonds. Since joining Bonhams in 2014, Caroline's exceptional sales include a diamond riviere necklace, which sold for $1,205,000 in June 2015; a diamond solitaire ring which sold for $1,807,500 in September 2017; and an unmounted Kashmir sapphire which sold for $1,244,075 in July 2020. Caroline discovered her passion for the jewelry business more than two decades ago, in a charming jewelry store in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she worked on weekends during high school. Her career started in the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, and she has also held positions at the prominent luxury retailers Cartier and Leviev. Caroline studied a double major in Economics and Politics from the University of York, England. Photos: New York–Bonhams will present more than 200 jewels from the Estate of George and Charlotte Shultzon May 23, 2022, including more than 70 pieces from Tiffany & Co. Charlotte wore her jewels to receive Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II, and countless world leaders as San Francisco’s chief of protocol for more than fifty years, serving ten mayors. She found her perfect match in George Shultz, a great American statesman who served as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and held four different cabinet positions under three presidents. Their personal collection will be featured in a dedicated sale at Bonhams New York that will celebrate their life of philanthropy and elegance. Below are a few photos of auction items.   
Additional Resources:
Transcript: What makes a gemstone stand out from the rest? You can talk about color, shape and cut, but sometimes a stone inexplicably draws you in. That’s the experience Caroline Morrissey has had many times as Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams in New York. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the most memorable jewelry she’s sold; why collectors shouldn’t be too rigid about maintaining a specific theme for their collection; and what qualities make a gemstone special. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Caroline Morrissey, Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams, located in New York and around the world. Caroline’s area of expertise spans diamonds and colored gemstones through 20th century jewelry, but her passion is large, white diamonds—she has a lot of company there—and colored diamonds. She’s had a wide and varied jewelry career, which we’ll hear about today. Caroline, welcome to the program. Caroline: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you attracted to diamonds and gems when you were young—well, you’re still young, but when you were a youth? Caroline: Yes, I was. I always enjoyed, probably more than the average child, my grandmother’s jewelry. I was interested in it, but the big change for me came when a friend of mine—I grew up in Edinburgh in Scotland—his parents had a couple of jewelry stores. When I was 16, they asked if I would be able to help over the holiday period in December, just with small bits of jewelry and to run any errands and so on. I did, and I loved it. I wanted to learn more, so I ended up staying as a Saturday girl and working through my summers until I graduated high school. It was during this that I realized there was more to a diamond engagement ring; there was more to a piece of jewelry. It meant something to the buyers. There was more than the just the stone behind it. Where did it come from? What was its journey? What was its quality compared to others? That never left me, and that experience put me on my journey to where I am now. It was wonderful. Sharon: When you were talking about the story behind the stone, were you starting to differentiate the stone from the entire piece of jewelry? Caroline: At that age, I realized that not all old diamonds were the same. To sell an engagement ring was a learning curve. It was about the piece of jewelry, but it was also about the clients. In many cases, it was actually about the client’s person who they loved. You didn’t necessarily meet that person, but it was going to be a specific piece of jewelry that was bought for this person. It really brought to light how personal it was. Pieces of art that are not jewelry, they might sit above your mantlepiece, but you don’t wear them. I think that is the difference for me with jewelry. It’s so very, very personal. Sharon: Would you say the personal aspect applies to jewelry in general as opposed to anything else? Caroline: I would, because people acquire jewelry in different ways. Any jewelry that has been passed down from a member of their family is personal for reasons that are different. But that piece of jewelry that you’ve bought for yourself, there’s a reason why you’ve bought it. The same again if somebody close, whether it’s a partner or a child or a friend, gives you a piece of jewelry. All of these different ways of acquiring jewelry are very personal. It goes to other people, but the journey is like a charm bracelet. The charms can be very personal to one person, but the next person might still be interested in that charm bracelet for different reasons. That continuing, varying personal connection with jewelry, for me, is quite unique in the collecting field. Unlike other pieces of art, you actually wear it, and you have to like it to wear it. It sometimes needs to mean something to you to wear it as well. Sharon: You must find a lot of that personal aspect at Bonhams, being able to tie one piece to a person to sell it. I mean that in a nice way, in terms of how to draw out what their story is and then be able to connect it. Caroline: Absolutely. Everyone has their own story, whether it’s from a selling point of view or a buying point of view. It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to connect with those people and understand what is behind them wanting to do a certain thing, whether it’s to sell or to buy, and to understand what is important to them. We can say, “You should be interested in this piece of jewelry or this stone for this particular reason,” and that may well be true in the grand scheme of things, but people personally can have different reasons. There’s nothing wrong with that. We are all attracted to different colors, different textures, for our own reasons. I think jewelry really shows different personalities and different trends, and it can also change. I’m always surprised by bits of jewelry that I like that might not necessarily be a standard for me, but it’s O.K. to deviate from that. Something is appearing that’s not necessarily something I can explain, if that makes sense. Sharon: Yes. How does all this tie to Bonhams? How does it tie to the auction market? As pieces come across your desk, do they talk to you? Caroline: Some talk really loudly in negative ways and positive ways, but mostly positive. I think one of the reasons I enjoy auction is that it’s a real opportunity to see the best of the best. I say that with honesty because I don’t think one can really appreciate the most spectacular pieces of jewelry and gemstones without fully comprehending that not every piece is of that same caliber, and that there are ones that really stand out. It affords me the ability to see pieces made yesterday and pieces made 150-200 years ago. You can see what was in vogue 70 years ago versus what is now, what colors, what gemstones, what shapes, what styles. Together with the variety in jewelry comes the huge variety in people that have owned them or bough the jewelry. I’m a people person, and it’s amazing to hear people’s stories, people’s situations, people’s needs, and tie that all together with jewelry. You get a greater level of understanding of what will make them happy and what jewelry is doing in their lives right now. Sharon: As a professional, how does Bonhams fit into all this? How does it fit into the whole auction market, as opposed a Doyle, a Christie’s, a Sotheby’s, that sort of thing? Where does Bonhams fit into all that? Caroline: First of all, at Bonhams we have more than 50 jewelry auctions a year throughout the world, which is a lot. One of the great things is that we offer pieces at almost every single price point, so there are no barriers to buy jewelry at Bonhams. There’s going to be something for everybody. For somebody who’s looking to sell, we have the ability to take an entire estate or an entire collection. We’re not going to come in and just take the top lots; it’s going to be a one-source solution for the entire collection, and that can be really helpful. On the other side of that, it affords the buyer a huge variety within a collection to browse through and see what works for them at Bonhams. I like to view Bonhams as being a boutique auction house. We have the ability to work with clients from the beginning to the end of their journey and put together something for them that is unique and custom and will work with their situation. It’s not cookie cutter. In some ways that could create a little more work, but it’s the end result that matters. There’s something wonderfully satisfying to meet clients on the first day of their inquiry and to shake their hands at the end of a successful sale. Being there to answer all of the questions and travel down the road together is very, very satisfying, and it’s a privilege. Sharon: Is that your role there? Are you called in when somebody says, “I need the big guns on this”? How does that work? Caroline: Yes, sometimes. It’s very collaborative here, so we work together. But, sure, I have a level of expertise where sometimes I can come in and give my opinion with other members of staff. It depends on the situation. There are some people where their situation is very straightforward and other people where it’s not straightforward at all. Some people can make decisions quickly; some people need extra time. There’s no right or wrong. I can’t say I do it with everybody, but I have a lot of clients that I deal with directly myself, and it is a true pleasure to go from the beginning to the end. Most people who deal with jewelry in New York at Bonhams will come across my place at some point in their journey here. Sharon: It must be satisfying to have pieces of jewelry come across your desk and then call a client you’ve worked with in the past and say, “You have got to see this piece.” Caroline: Absolutely. Sharon: Do you find that’s something you end up doing quite a bit? How does that work? Caroline: We’ve got a sale coming up next week, and we have some very interesting pieces in it. This doesn’t happen every day with every sale, but certainly with the pieces in this particular one. We have a beautiful emerald bracelet. It’s an amazing opportunity for me to call some of my clients and say, “You have to see this. I know you’re going to be interested in it. Whether or not you end up as the final buyer, even if you don’t bid, it is fabulous enough for you to make the effort to come see it with your own eyes. If you’re interested in jewelry, this is something you have to see.” I don’t always have that opportunity, but that’s what I’ve been doing this week and last week with this particular piece. It’s nice to see everybody come together and to hear their opinions. At the end of the day, everyone has their own opinions, but in most cases we agree. It’s nice to get people to come out of the woodwork for something special. Sharon: Coming out of the woodwork, that must be very satisfying. In reading about you and from what I’ve been told about your background, it sounds like your expertise is jewelry, but especially gems themselves, the colored diamonds, the diamonds. Is that the case? Caroline: Yes, I have to just admit to it and say yes. I started off my career proper in Antwerp, Belgium in the diamond business. I looked at so many diamonds in my training there that I think there would have been something wrong if I hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with diamonds. There’s something to me that’s special about stones, and not just diamonds, but colored stones. To me, they all have a personality; they all have a charm. I love how the different facets, the different colors, the different shapes all can combine to produce something absolutely wonderful. In many cases, it combines to make something not so wonderful, or they’re close to being perfect but not quite. Then it requires you to think, “Who can help get this stone to the next level?” because there might be a buyer out there who could make something a bit more perfect or a bit more desirable. That’s not to say I don’t love jewelry. I truly do, but if I had to choose, holding a really special gemstone in my hands without a mounting is always going to be a thrill for me. Sharon: When you say a really special gemstone, what’s making it special? The cut, the color, everything? Caroline: Where do I begin? It’s going to be a little bit of everything. Obviously, it depends on exactly what gemstone we’re talking about, but to keep things relatively simple, the shape and the cut of the stone is one of the most important things because that is what your eye sees the moment it lays eyes on the stone. The next thing is going to be color. If you think of a ruby, you think of red. So, you want the overall appearance of any ruby you see to be red. That sounds like a very simple request, for lack of a better word, but not all rubies are as red as you want them to be. That doesn’t make them inferior in the grand scheme of things, but it does alter how your brain processes that. Then within that color, how soft is the color, how clean is the stone when you’re taking a closer look, how old is the stone? In many cases, some of the most charming stones were cut 100 or 150 years ago. I have this joke in my head that the lack of technology when it comes to cutting stones can sometimes result in a superior stone. I think today we have all these wonderful techniques and technology to make everything perfect, but sometimes what they did with their bare hands and their eyes a hundred years ago can make a stone even more perfect than you can make today. Maybe perfect is the wrong word; maybe charming. But so many old stones are full of character that is rare to see today. Sharon: It takes somebody who really appreciates the stone to see what you’re saying. I look at a stone and I see a stone, unless it’s really—for example, this weekend somebody showed me a ring from the 40s with citrine. It was not a good citrine; it was too light. I knew it was way too light, but I’m looking at something from a real simplistic perspective. If it was an emerald, I’d say, “Oh, it’s green to me.” Do you see green in a ruby? Is that what you were saying? Caroline: Oh no, I’m just saying that a ruby is technically red, but there’s pinkish red; there’s purplish red. I have to say that even for somebody whose profession isn’t looking at gemstones in the way I do, I do think that somebody who is interested in gemstones and jewelry—for example, my father is an architect, so he’s got an eye for design and details. You would be surprised at how much the naked eye just looking at something will tell you. I reckon that if I lined up some stones, probably a lot of laymen could look at them and point out the best stone because in many ways, you’re just drawn to it. You might not be able to articulate exactly why you’re drawn to it, but you will just be drawn to it. That’s another reason why I love these stones. You can’t always get to the nuts and bolts of exactly why. There’s just something that is appealing to you. Sharon: You used the word charming a couple of times. What makes a stone charming? Caroline: Oh, wow! What makes a stone charming to me? Well, the old style of cutting, which is—and I don’t want to get too technical—but big facets, a big, open stone. Usually, they have soft edges versus straight edges, soft corners. If it’s in a piece of jewelry, the mounting is most likely going to be something simple which brings your eyes to the center of the stone, versus so much detail or clunkiness that you sometimes see in today’s mountings. Also, a lot of modern mountings try very hard. Old mountings don’t try as hard. They let the stone sing for itself, and I think it’s that perfect balance that can make a stone on a piece of jewelry charming. Sharon: Do you have collectors who collect jewelry because of the stone? Do you have stone collectors? Caroline: Sure, I suppose people who buy at auction appear in all shapes and forms. You never know exactly why they’re buying something, but I think you have your jewelry collectors, and you have your stone people. Those guys are fairly easy to differentiate between, but then you have a pool of collectors for whom the stones and the jewelry belong together. Both of them need to be correct, if that makes sense. You could have this fabulous old diamond, but it’s only fabulous if it’s in the original mounting. Even if it’s not a particularly exquisite mounting, it is in its original mounting, so the two work together as a piece. For those people, it might be a big collection they’re working towards, or it might not be. It might be something they’re going to wear occasionally, and they have statement pieces of jewelry that appeal to them. I always like to try and work out why people are buying certain things and what their end goal is, but as long as they’re enthusiastic about the piece and it talks to them, then I’m not sure anything else matters. Sharon: Don’t you at least have to have a sense of why it’s talking to them so you can identify other things? So you can talk to them about what’s talking to them, basically? Caroline: Sure, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily always specific. If somebody is interested in important colored stones, I will make sure to keep them on my radar for important pieces that come in. But they might turn around and say, “I’m not really interested in emeralds unless they are such and such.” I think you can get a lot of information from people to help them with furthering their collection or help them with what they want to do with an existing collection, but with the jewelry world certainly—and I can’t speak to any other field—I do like to think that if something special comes along, be it a piece of jewelry or a gemstone or a combination of both, it doesn’t necessarily need to fit into what they have or what they think they want. It’s like a wild card or a curve ball. It might just be the right thing at the right time, and they might have been in the industry long enough to know that some things are really rare, and this is an opportunity. I guess it is my role to keep those doors open. I don’t necessarily need to know too specifically what somebody is interested in because I don’t not want to contact them about something just because it falls slightly outside those parameters. If somebody has a level of understanding and a passion, they might be open to all sorts of options, and some jewelry items don’t come around that often. Like I said before, even if it’s just, “Come and look and touch and handle and see that color with your own eyes,” it can be worth it. That can allow somebody to follow their own jewelry journey, even if they’re not adding it specifically to their own personal collection. Sharon: That’s a really good point. As long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve never ascertained what I collect. I just collect things I like. Caroline: Absolutely, and it’s hard to articulate that. Also, just like styles and fashions, things come in sets. You might like something in one period of your life and change to something else. I currently have a little bit of a love affair with the late Deco, early retro jewelry period. This took me by storm a couple of years ago. It was a couple of pieces of jewelry that came in and landed on my desk, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. It was very out of character from what I normally like. I don’t know if it will last, but that’s why I never want to impose too many parameters because you never know what might take your fancy. | |||
| 18 Aug 2022 | Episode 167 Part 2: What It’s Like to Sell at London’s Famous Portobello Road Market | 00:28:04 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kirsten Everts Kirsten Everts is a jewelry dealer and the founder of FRAM, a jewelry business specializing in buying, selling, and valuing 20th century jewels. Kirsten founded FRAM in early 2018 after completing the Graduate Gemology course at GIA and a further 20 years acquiring experience in fields varying from auction (Christie’s, London and Bonhams, Paris) to retail (de GRISOGONO, Geneva) and art advisory (Gurr Johns, London). Kirsten holds a permanent stand on Portobello Road in London, and she participates annually at international jewelry trade fairs in Miami and Las Vegas. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: It’s not easy to get a stand on London’s Portobello Road, but with tenacity and some luck with timing, jewelry dealer Kirsten Everts scored a permanent spot to sell her unusual 20th century jewels. Since then, Kirsten has found a group of loyal clients who love “weird” jewelry as much as she does. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why Portobello Road is changing; her strategies for choosing the best vintage jewelry; and why she will never sell another style of jewelry, even if it means making less money. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Kirsten Everts. Kirsten is a jewelry dealer in West London on Portobello Road. Welcome back.
Was it difficult? It sounds like it was difficult. You had to knock on a lot of doors to get into Portobello.
Kirsten: Yes, the two years before Covid, it was a very vibrant, highly sought-after, extremely busy Saturday morning market. Nobody wanted to cede their showcase to anyone new, but I kept asking. Then, what I was given at the time was a stand when someone was ill. I didn’t know until Wednesday or Thursday of the week whether I was able to go. That left me two days to get my act together, and it was quite a challenge. Slowly it became a more general thing. I got my own stand in a different gallery, but I wanted to be in the one next door because that one had a better vibe, so I had to ask for that.
These were very different times. This was when you could hardly even push your way through, there were so many people. That was 2018. I suspect in the 70s and 80s it would have been even more so. I’m quite sad I didn’t see it then because it must have been something to be there. Portobello, sadly, is changing a lot. I’m quite sad to think that what’s probably going to happen is we’ll have more costume jewelry dealers who are going to take up more space than the actual antique and vintage dealers using real materials, real diamonds, real gemstones. I don’t know how long this is going to last.
Sharon: I think being crowded is all relative. I haven’t been there for a long time, but you still had to push past a lot of people. It was nice to see. It was more than pleasantly crowded. I would have loved to have had the place to myself to take my time, but it wasn’t crowded the way I think of something being so crowded you can’t move. What is it that you like about dealing and buying and selling jewelry?
Kristen: That’s a good question. As a relative newcomer, I think it’s the fact that you can buy something with your very own money. Buying is easy; buying well is less easy. But to buy something with your own money that you have to stand behind is another thing. For me, selling is a small victory each time not only financially—because sometimes it’s not really a financial victory—but it’s an affirmation of what you do, your style and your taste.
For me, it’s always about the relationships more than anything else, which might be the wrong way of business, but I don’t feel that. Now, because I’m a little more established, I enjoy the fact that people come to me and say, “Oh, I think I’ve got something for you.” There’s nothing better. They might slightly put you in a box because you do midcentury jewelry. Maybe they think you do only that, which is untrue, but I think it’s a huge compliment when people pull you over and say, “You must have a look at this,” or “Have you seen this at auction? It’s got your name written all over.” I think that’s a compliment. It shows that you’ve been around for a while, even though it’s only been five years. I like that side of the business.
I also like going into partnerships with people who have an equal eye for something more unique, as my jewelry can be, and who are willing to share knowledge or curiosity. I think that’s what keeps it going, and the fact that you never really know what you’re going to see on any day at any given time. I see jewelry all day long, whether it’s on a screen when you’re going through auctions, or when somebody calls you up and says, “Hey, my grandmother’s just given me something. Can you help me?” More often than not, it’s lower value or not that interesting, but it’s still good to stay in touch with those prices and that kind of jewelry.
Every now and then, you hit something and think, “My gosh, this is fantastic. I need to take it away and think about it because I can’t give you a price now.” Everyone’s very happy; they just want an honest result. If that means you need to go home and do some research, most people are more than happy to do that, but I say that from my level. If we’re dealing in hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe people are expecting more. But for what I do, it’s a very friendly give and take, and I enjoy that freedom. I can be exactly who I am. I have no employees, and I can be myself. I think that’s really important.
Sharon: Do you find it hard to let go of certain pieces if you really like them?
Kristen: I have absolutely not a single inch of hoarding in me. If I like a piece—and I do like a lot of my own pieces—I will wear it for a week or so. After a week, something will change in me and I say, “I’m ready to sell you now.” I’ve sold one or two things I know I will never again see in my life. I have always said to them, “If you no longer want this, I am happy to buy it back, because I will never see this again.” So, maybe some of these pieces will come back. With regard to jewelry, I have no collector mind at all. I prefer to collect ceramics, or I prefer to collect memories sailing or going to the opera with friends. With jewelry, I’m very matter of fact.
Sharon: It probably works better for you if you’re not so tied to it. I think I’d have a hard time, and I hear dealers who say they have a hard time letting pieces go. Do people come to you and say, “I want a particular piece of jewelry; I’m looking for an engagement ring” or something like that?
Kristen: Yes, with regard to engagement rings, which is really not my thing because an engagement ring is a very emotional thing, and you’re making something for someone who is so emotionally involved with someone else. I don’t usually know these clients. They are referred to me. It can get quite emotional. I’m happy to do that; it’s not what I enjoy most, but I’m lucky enough to be the exclusive, go-to person in this country for a professional sports bond, which means that the manager of this sports team, in this case golf, sends all these young athletes or professional golfers to me to do their engagement rings. That came out of the blue. It came through a contact of mine based in Europe who didn’t want to do it. It’s turned out to be a really good relationship, especially with the manager. These are all young kids. I’ve been there myself with an engagement ring. I know what it’s like. And because they were referrals, a referral will come to you if the experience has been good. They always come to me having heard a great story from another golfer or friend, and it’s actually an easy, pleasant job.
I enjoy sourcing stones, in this case diamonds. I try and steer them towards what I prefer, which are old cuts, old European and mine cuts, rather than the brand-new stone that’s fresh off the wheel. I much prefer those, but I do it gently because, of course, I cannot impose my taste. Funny enough, if I compare the two and show them both, they will go with the old cut, which makes it more pleasant for me because I prefer these diamonds.
Before I would do all the jewelry making for them with my jeweler, but I realized that was very time-consuming and I didn’t actually enjoy it. So, I sell them the diamond, everyone’s happy, and then I send them to my jeweler and he does everything with them directly. First of all, it means they save a little money because they’re not paying me a service charge, but they actually get to design it with the jeweler rather than me being in the middle with thousands of WhatsApps going between two entities. It works really well. They’re happy, and they know they’re saving money. So, I do enjoy engagement rings.
Sharon: When you went first to Portobello, you said you hadn’t known about it when somebody sent you there. What were your thoughts about it?
Kristen: It’s extremely daunting. I remember coming there for the first time and seeing a very long street on a downhill slope. For me, I was still young to this country. I had lived here 20 years before, but I was very European. Hearing these wonderful London accents, people shouting at each other, setting up their stands, it was almost like My Fair Lady. I had no idea, but I loved it because you can feel that energy there. All the silver dealers were outside at the time—I don’t know whether it’s still like that—with plates and door knobs and all sorts of things, and you understand that behind the scenes, big things are happening for a lot of them. The knives and forks and the little Victorian brooches you see displayed are not what’s keeping them going. I found fascinating. It was daunting, because you had to insert yourself with these people who run the place, who, by the way, are wonderful. Try and get an appointment with them.
They were never where they said they were going to be. I didn’t know which numbers belonged to which buildings in Portobello. It was challenging, but I understood it had to happen this way. This was going to be the part of my education I had never actually had. It’s fine to sit in a nice, big chair behind a big, beautiful wooden desk at Christie’s and have people check what you’re doing, but the actual responsibility was not there. If I made a mistake, I wasn’t going to be fired. I wasn’t going to lose money. They weren’t going to cut my salary. When I joined Portobello five years ago, I think I was a bit of a late bloomer, but at 45, I was actually ready to tackle that on my own and to make friends and see how these things worked. It wasn’t easy. It was daunting. It really was, but they were encouraging. It was great fun, most of all.
What happened, and what still happens, is that you can lock up your stand, go for a little walk, and come across something where somebody doesn’t know what they have, but you do. Then, all of a sudden, your output is better. You’re there to see, but you’re also buying. That also makes money. It really isn’t just selling. When I’m at Portobello, I set up and actually go for a very long walk and see what everyone has. I ask them, “What’s in your safe? Have you got something more than what you’re showing?” I spend a lot of time trying to find something that will make me money. Then I’ll go back when I know my clients come around, because my clients are mostly private clients. They’ll come in from about 8:30-9:00, so I’ve got a good hour-and-a-half to do this for myself, and it works. So, I like doing both, and Portobello is extraordinary. I really hope it doesn’t succumb to a lower level of jewelry or antiques.
Sharon: Do you see that happening now?
Kristen: Yes, sadly I do. I really do. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just that at the moment in this country, I think there is a bit of a lack of jewelry. This comes through Brexit, mainly, through the climate post-Covid, through people packing up. I do see a slight decline at Portobello in the quality of goods since the last five years. Yesterday, a client called me up and said, “I’ve got about 40 pieces of jewelry to sell. Can you take them to Portobello?” That’s rare, but I do have 40 pieces of jewelry to take tomorrow. There used to be a lot more with a lot more dealers. I don’t see that anymore. I think everyone is a little bit in the same basket, where it’s a bit more difficult to find jewelry. We’ve become, sadly, such an island now with Brexit. A lot of people are concentrating only in the U.K., and there sometimes seems to not be enough jewelry to go around.
Sharon: So, you don’t think it’s worldwide or Europe-wide?
Kristen: It could be. We see each other every Saturday in and Saturday out. When I go to Paris or the mainland, I get excited because I’m seeing jewelry I haven’t seen. Likewise for American visitors or dealers; they’re feeling a different vibe and seeing other jewelry dealers. When we went to the Miami and Las Vegas shows this year because we exhibit there—and when I say we, it’s me and another dealer, and sometimes even three of us. There was a very different energy in America. I almost felt there was more money to spend there, or there was a greater need or thirst for antique jewelry. I do midcentury, so I have fewer clients coming from there, but they’re very excited to see you in the flesh and to see something in the flesh, because otherwise it’s on Instagram or in a photograph. I don’t actually know about other countries, but I hear it because I speak to my colleagues and friends in Europe, and they are saying the same.
Sharon: What did you do during Covid? Did you shut down, or did you go online?
Kristen: I did shut down. I spoke with a friend of mine who does something to the likes of website analysis about what can be done for e-commerce and what can’t, and I think his conclusion was, “I think your jewelry is so different that you can’t actually sell this online.” Selling online means—I will use a very blunt example, but let’s say you have an enamel pansy brooch. If you’re into jewelry collecting or if you’re a dealer, you know approximately what it should feel like, what it should weigh, whether the enamel is damaged or not, is the pin on the back correct, has anything been altered. You know more or less what it should cost.
But I have mobile bangles by people nobody’s ever heard of. I know them because they’re artists from Denmark or Sweden from the post-war era made in gold, which is superbly rare for Scandinavians, dated and signed from 1963. I can’t sell that online. You can’t do it. When that friend said, “I don’t think you are a candidate for online selling,” I thought, “O.K., well, then I’ll do something else. I’ll just build a website,” which I had never gotten around to. So, that was interesting. That was a fun experience, to do a website on your own. That led to inquiries. It’s not up to date now, but it should be and it will be.
What I did do is I much more developed my Instagram. I spent a lot of time trying to make it look homogenous, trying to find the words that will get you the right customers. I had never really spent any time on Instagram. So, I did that, and that’s turned out to be quite good. Even though my account is still quite small—I haven’t got thousands and thousands of followers—the ones that follow me are good, kind and supportive.
Sharon: I would imagine, based on what you’re describing, that it wouldn’t be a real young customer because I think you would have to have some maturity to appreciate what you’re looking at.
Kristen: Yes, exactly. That’s why I love having these—we can call them mature—40-plusers because they concur with you. They say, “Yes, this is a very wacky mobile bracelet and I love it. I probably can’t wear it much, but it is a work of art. I want this.” That’s wonderful.
Sharon: Do you think because you grew up in the Netherlands and around the world, you have more appreciation for these as art pieces?
Kristen: That’s funny. I was thinking about that question even though you hadn’t said it. I was questioning myself earlier today. I think there’s something in me I can’t quite explain which attracts me to, like I mentioned earlier, the industrial and the groundbreaking, a group of people who—we call it jewelry, but actually I think they were calling it wearable art. The Dutch in particular in the 60s were hugely sponsored by the government to get the country going again after the post-war period. There were some very nutty creations that came out of that, but there were some very important, groundbreaking forms and materials that were being used. That really resonates with me. I don’t want to call myself modern, but I think I am. My flat is extremely modern. I don’t like anything fussy. I think it’s the Scandinavian things. I like practicality, but it’s got to be adorning. I forgotten your question, but I’m hoping this is—
Sharon: I was asking if your appreciation for pieces of jewelry as art pieces is because of your background.
Kristen: Yes, wearable art jewelry, I need that. For me to have a fizzy moment, I need it to be very unique and groundbreaking and daring. I think that’s great fun. For me, that’s special. I’d much rather have something by a wacky Danish mobile maker who made for children in the 60s and 70s and make a bracelet for his wife, of which there’s only one and that was never done again. It’s different. The Calder jewelry, which I probably can never afford, or the Art Smith of America, I love all that. They were real artists. That makes me take much more interest than a love bangle or a Victorian enamel pansy brooch.
Sharon: Do you wear some of the unique pieces yourself, or do you just collect them?
Kristen: No, I wear them. I found a system where when I wear my own jewelry, I can quite easily sell it off my body, so to speak. Time and time again it happens: I wear something for myself and I’ll cross someone in the street, not a random customer, but somebody who I know, and they will say, “My gosh, I would like to buy that.” Sometimes when I’m tired of a piece and it needs to sell, I wear it and it will sell. So yes, I wear them. I’ve yet to find a piece that I fall completely in love with and am incapable of selling. I think I don’t have that bug.
Sharon: I suppose it’s good for somebody in your business. We talked about this, but you said you made some notes about the questions I had asked. I want to know if I’ve covered everything or if there’s more you wanted to add.
Kristen: I must have a look. As a jewelry journey, I think it was important for me to mention the university. I was lucky enough to go university, and for that university degree of applied arts, I was taught a section, a module, that I wasn’t expecting at all to be taught. The module was maybe six months long. Sometime in that module, it spiked an interest in me for jewelry I never thought I would like. It’s so inherently who I am that I almost had to make peace with falling in love with a type of jewelry that is from a really small section in the history of jewelry.
I thought, “Can I survive loving this?” I think I go through ups and downs thinking, “No, I must start buying Victorian enameled pansy brooches because that will be my bread and butter.” But when I do, it betrays who I am. So, I sell less, but I’m selling what I love. I thought that was important to put across because I struggle sometimes. I struggle sometimes when I’m not making as much money as I’d like. When there’s a period of stagnation, I think, “My gosh, I really need to do something else now,” but I can’t sell my soul. I’m the worst jewelry dealer in the world because I actually care about what I sell, and I cannot diversify too much into other areas because I don’t stand behind it. I’m shooting myself in the foot, but I think if you stick to it long enough, maybe something good will happen.
Sharon: I’m sure that’s why people are attracted to what you have. If I wanted a pansy brooch, there must be a dozen places you can get one. If I saw one in your case, I would say, “What are you carrying that for?”
Kristen: Exactly. There was one interesting question you had, which was whether the purchases made through my business were impulse purchases. My reply to that is yes. There always are impulse purchases because we fall in love. However, I think an impulse purchase can be something you love, but it can also be bought out of a panic because you need something to sell.
Over the years, I’ve learned very much to slow down and take a breath and look at it again a bit better, maybe from below or beside. There are one or two dealers, who are much better dealers than I am, who come into my head. I can hear their voices saying, “Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that?” I think that only comes with the experience of spending your own money and sometimes not spending it very wisely. That can’t be taught. You need to make a mistake, maybe even several, and you need to be happy with those mistakes.
I have been on the verge of throwing jewelry away because I think I have made such a big mistake, but of course you can’t because it’s metal or gold, and it would be atrocious to throw a pair of earrings away just because you made a mistake. There will be someone for that pair of earrings. Just remember the mistake you’ve made. So, your question about impulse buying was an interesting one, especially if you’re a dealer like me who likes to keep a tight style.
Sharon: That’s very interesting. That’s a lot to think about. I was talking to a good friend of mine, a jewelry buddy, about impulse purchasing. Not to resell, but in terms of buying. I probably don’t analyze things as much as somebody else might because I like it. Don’t tell me; I don’t want to hear it. Kirsten, thank you so much for being with us today. It’s great to have you.
Kristen: It was a great pleasure.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 07 Feb 2023 | Episode 183 Part 1: The Neuroscience Behind Deaccessioning: Dr. Shirley Mueller’s Tips for Letting Go | 00:24:01 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Shirley Mueller Shirley M. Mueller, MD is an internationally known collector and scholar of Chinese export porcelain, as well as a physician board-certified in Neurology and Psychiatry. This latter expertise led her to explore her own intentions while collecting art, which, she discovered, are applicable to all collectors. This new understanding is the motivation for this book. Mueller not only lectures and publishes about the neuropsychology of the collector; she also was guest curator for Elegance from the East: New Insights into Old Porcelain at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (now Newfields) in 2017. In this unique exhibit, she combined export porcelain with concepts from neuroscience to make historical objects personally relevant to visitors. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: When you’re a collector, determining what will happen to your collection in the future is a difficult but necessary process. Whether that means selling, donating or auctioning off your pieces, it’s hard to let go of beloved possessions. As a neuroscientist who studies how collecting impacts the brain (and as an avid collector of Chinese export porcelain herself), Dr. Shirley Mueller knows all too well how bittersweet it is to deaccession a collection. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about her experience auctioning off some of her pieces; why collectors are different from dealers; and what to consider when passing on your collection. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. Today, my guest is Dr. Shirley Mueller. She is an M.D., Ph.D., professor and neuroscientist. She’s also an internationally known collector and scholar of Chinese export porcelain. She’s the author of “Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play.” She’s also been our guest on the podcast before. She’s interested in something I have heard a lot of talk about lately, which is deaccessioning a collection. She has done research in this area and has published her research articles in Fine Art Connoisseur and Psychology Today. Today, she’ll talk to us about her own collecting experience, what makes a collector different from others and what she has found out about deaccessioning a collection. Shirley, welcome to the program. Shirley: Thank you, Sharon. It’s great to be here. Sharon: I’m so glad to have you. What was your collecting journey like with export porcelain, which is different than a lot of us? What is export porcelain? Shirley: It was a long journey, not a short journey. I started really in the 1980s, and I have been collecting since then. I think my largest time in terms of spending the most money and devoting the most time was probably the 1990s and early 2000s. After that time I became more selective, so I probably purchased fewer things, but of higher quality. I think most of the pieces I have I purchased early, and then as every collector knows, as we develop, we want more and more choice things. Sharon: Right, yes. Shirley: Which are harder and harder to find. Sharon: And cost more money. Shirley: Exactly. Sharon: Were you young or older when you discovered that you’re a collector? Shirley: I was not a young person. I was in my mid to late 30s. I found that collecting relaxed me, and that reading about this particular area, Chinese export porcelain—that is China which was made in China and exported to the west—gave me a different perspective on life. I was a physician practicing up to 80 hours a week. I couldn’t stop thinking about my patients, which is really unhealthy because one wants to be more objective about one’s patients. It’s also good to relax once in a while so you can have a fresh perspective on your patients, but that seemed to be difficult for me. When I’d go home at night, I’d be thinking about them. Quite accidentally, I picked up a book about Chinese porcelain and found that I was totally absorbed, that the world was outside of me, and I was inside my special area with this book reading about something that interested me a great deal. Sharon: Export porcelain, is that different than regular porcelain? Shirley: There’s Chinese porcelain. When we talk about Chinese porcelain, we’re talking about a whole array of porcelain including early porcelain, which would have been made as early as the 14th and 15th centuries. When we talk about export porcelain, we talk about porcelain made specifically for the western market, that is for the European market. Early on, it was made for a market that was more local to China, which would be Malaysia, Japan, India. Those trading routes were the water routes that China had discovered. It wasn’t until later that a ship could sail to America, and so we finally became part of the trade then. Before that, of course, a Portuguese ship was enroute around the Cape of Good Hope to go to China. All of these routes were established in time, but early on, the specific export route for Europeans was not available until after 1492. Sharon: That’s when it became the export, because they were then sending things around in a different way. Shirley: Yes, right. At first it was the Silk Road, some water routes. Later, in order for Europeans to join in in any major way, they had to use a water route around the Cape of Good Hope. Sharon: What’s your definition of a collector? Shirley: A collector is someone who has a special interest in an area that fascinates them and as a result, they want to gather objects in that area. Now, what they gather can be as simple as fruit jars. It could be the tags that say “Do Not Disturb” on your hotel room door; there’s even a collector who collects that sort of memorabilia. Or it can be high-end art that costs thousands or millions of dollars. So, the range is from very little money to a great deal of money, but all these collectors are equally passionate, except the ones that collect to make a profit only. They may have someone actually select the art for them, and then the idea is that in 10 years, they can sell it for more. The collectors that are only interested in making a profit lack the passion that the collectors who collect for love have for their objects. Those who collect to make money are dispassionate about the objects, but passionate about the money they might make. I don’t even consider them collectors. Sharon: They’re dealers, right? Shirley: Right. In a way, yes. Some of them will select objects themselves and others will have a third person, another person, pick for them. They even keep them in storage sometimes. They don’t even see or use the objects. But 80% of collectors collect for love, and it enriches the collector’s life. The whole idea of collecting is to make your life better. I mean, Sharon, think of going to work every day, maybe at a job you don’t especially like, eight to five, eight to six, and coming home. You may have children and family, but what else is there? There has to be something else. For us collectors, it’s what we collect; it’s our passion. We have a collection, but the collection always requires love, care and filling in the gaps where we don’t have a specific object. The collector knows what the collector needs. It isn’t a want; it’s a need because you have to have the spread. If you collect something between 1800 and 1900 and you have a 10-year gap between 1840 and 1850, oh boy, you have to keep looking. You have to fill it. Sharon: So, it doesn’t matter where the money is. It doesn’t matter if the money is there or not. You mentioned hotel hangtags. You have to pay the money to go to a hotel. Shirley: Right, it can be so minor. It can be a little thing, but it has organization and there’s some thought about what to do with it. There was an exhibit in Zurich recently called “Collectomania.” They had the objects from about 20 different collectors, and one of the collectors actually did collect those doorknob hangers from hotels. Sharon: That would be an interesting collection. Don’t we all collect? Is the brain any different for a collector? Shirley: That’s a good question, and I wish I could answer that fully. All I can say is that for a collector, what he or she collects stimulates his or her pleasure center. When I see a piece of high-end Chinese porcelain that I don’t have in my collection and I know I’d like to have it, my pleasure center can just go wild when I see it. You could see the same object and it would mean nothing to you. You might say it’s pretty, but I don’t think— Sharon: Yeah, I would probably not even notice it. I’d say, “Shirley, it’s nice.” Shirley: I think what leads to this is genetics, essentially nurture, nature and experiences that lead us into a particular area that lights our fire, lights up our brain, stimulates our pleasure center. I think on one of the last programs I explained that I thought my love for Chinese porcelain came from a movie I saw in high school, “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” with Ingrid Bergman. She was the equivalent of a missionary in China helping all these Chinese children when the Japanese were invading, and I thought, “I want to be like that person. That’s what I want to do when I graduate from medical school.” When I graduated from medical school, I had a husband and a daughter, a small child, and I couldn’t go to China because I had other responsibilities. Mao Zedong might have stood in my way a bit too. At any rate, I think when I picked up that book about China, it’s like it was a circular pattern. I realized I can do more with China. I can learn about it; I can buy objects from it; I can associate with like-minded people who also are interested in the arts of China. There are avenues open to me to supplant my previous plan. So, that’s what happened. Since then, I’ve been to China five times, two with the invitation of the government, and probably will be going again. Now I do interact with a lot of Chinese people, and I would say to a certain degree, my original purpose has been fulfilled. Sharon: Wow! When it comes to deaccessioning, can you let go of them? Shirley: It’s a problem. All that love, attention, money, care, organization. I exhibit what is called the endowment effect, according to neuroeconomics. That means that what belongs to me, because of everything I’ve put into it, means so much to me, and thereby if I were to put a price on it, it would be higher than the price the market would probably put on it. I would think every piece I have would be worth thousands of dollars, and someone else might think they’d be worth hundreds of dollars. Sharon: Can you deaccession something that has sentimentality? Shirley: Exactly. The sentiment is there. I think that’s why people keep their family possessions even though they may not be worth a great deal. The sentiment is worth a great deal. You don’t want to throw away your family possessions like the quilt my mother made. I don’t want to ever throw it away; I want to keep it. You’re absolutely right about that. I had an experience recently when I did sell at Christie’s in New York City, and it was so painful for me. It wasn’t just because I was selling some of my best objects, but it also was because early in the sale, nobody bid on my objects. I was a nervous wreck because my objects reflected me and my very being, my very self. If nobody was bidding on them, what did that say about me? Maybe I didn’t choose wisely. Maybe I’m not the person I think I am. Maybe I’m not as good at selecting Chinese porcelain as I thought I was. I wrote in the article in Fine Arts Connoisseur that I ended up even having to take sleeping pills for a few nights because I was so bent out of shape. I was very stressed about it. I think I may not have been as pleasant to my representative at Christie’s as I could have been, and I think that may lead to my never selling at Christie’s again. Sharon: That’s putting yourself on the line, though. Shirley: It is. Finally, I just had to accept that things did not sell at the high price I thought they should. I wrote in my column that what brought me peace was that I knew, in time, inflation would make the prices of all of them higher. Because porcelain is breakable, there will be fewer pieces as time goes by, and when there are fewer pieces, that will increase the price as well. I finally felt O.K. because I had to. If I didn’t accept it, I would continue to be miserable. Sharon: Do you think all of us should think about deaccessioning before we die, before the time comes when we have to let it go and it doesn’t mean anything anymore? Shirley: Absolutely. It is so much better if we collectors direct deaccession instead of our families. The whole estate is just given to an auction house and they take care of it. We still know the value of our pieces better than anyone else, we know where they could be sold better than anyone else, and we know what museum might want them better than anyone else. We know what family members might like them. I personally think it’s always a nice gesture to leave some things to the family that they might have even picked out. I can give them a choice of five pieces, and they could pick out whichever one they liked. It’s a lovely gesture to do that, to give part of yourself through your piece to someone else when you are reaching a certain age. Sharon: What if you think you have time, but you don’t? Let’s say your car goes off a cliff and you can’t direct anything. Shirley: If it’s a very costly collection, the family will fight over it. If it’s a less costly collection, they’ll just give it to an auction house that suits it. If it’s high-end, it’ll be Christie’s or Sotheby’s or Bonhams, and if it’s lower-end, it’ll be a local auction house. The sentiment will be gone. If the relatives aren’t involved any more, there’s no knowledge of the person and his or her relationship to these objects. I think you have jewelry, so you know every object has a story. Every object has an experience associated with it which makes it meaningful, not only to the person who had it, but to some family members as well. Sharon: I’m thinking about a pin that I doubt I’ll ever wear, but it was my mother’s, the first piece of jewelry she had. I just can’t give it up. It’s just too hard to give up. What if your family doesn’t want the silver? They don’t want anything of their parents’, not because they don’t have a good relationship, but they just aren’t interested. They want experiences. What do you do then? Shirley: If a museum won’t take it, they have to sell it, and they’re likely to get a better price than any relative who sells it. Then there will be more in the estate for the family who doesn’t want the actual collection. The other thing that can be done these days, and which is a wonderful alternative, is to put your collection on the internet so there are pictures of the collection and a record of what is in your collection. Other people who are interested in the same things then would go to your site and would be able to appreciate what you had as a collection. It would require some work. You’d have to hire a website designer and have professional pictures taken, but it is a way to document a collection without actually having to sell it. Of course, the relatives might be interested in the collector selling it because it would increase the estate assets. Sharon: It seems like there’s a lot of fighting over collections that families have if they’re not told in advance which piece should go to which person. It can cause a lot of problems. What are your thoughts, or what actions are you taking with your collection? You said you sold at Christie’s a few years ago, but do you keep collecting? Shirley: I have stopped collecting now that I’m writing about it so much with the book and other articles in Psychology Today. I have four pieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and there will be more there. It’s possible that there will be an exhibit there that will be almost exclusively porcelain from my collection. If this exhibit takes place, there are a lot of pieces, maybe 150 at least. That means that part of my collection, which was originally 600 and now is down to 500 or so, that would bring it down to like 450. Then I would give people I know choices about what they might like to take. In fact, my granddaughter has already expressed what she wants. It actually is in my will that she will get that piece. It’s very important to me that she gets what she specifically indicated she liked. This is exactly what she said, Sharon. She looked at the piece one day and said, “Grandma, do you think I’ll ever be able to afford anything like that for my home?” You have it. It’s yours, but I didn’t say anything. Sharon: I’ve heard of relatives who’ve come through and said, not to me, but to other people, “Can have this when you die? After you pass away, can have this ring?” I don’t know what you do. Shirley: When a kid does it, it’s O.K. She didn’t even say, “I want it when you die.” She just said, “Do you think I’ll ever have anything like it?” Sharon: No, that’s different. That’s a nice way of hinting. Shirley: But this bald-faced saying, “May I have that when you die,” that’s too much. Sharon: Is there a difference between collecting or deaccessioning and curating? I have let go of a lot of the lower-end pieces I might have wanted when I was 20, but do I want it when I’m older? Shirley: I would say good for you for curating your collection. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 15 Feb 2023 | Episode 184 Part 1: The Jewels of Ancient Nubia: Inside a New Getty Exhibit with Assistant Curator Dr. Sara E. Cole | 00:26:29 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Dr. Sara E. Cole Sara E. Cole is Assistant Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Villa). She holds a PhD in Ancient History from Yale University. At the Getty, she is part of the Classical World in Context initiative, which seeks to highlight cross-cultural interactions in antiquity and explore the diversity and interconnectedness of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East through a series of special exhibitions and related publications and public programs. She has curated or assisted with exhibitions of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Neo-Assyrian, Persian, and Nubian art. About “Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan” from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston October 12, 2022 - April 3, 2023 Getty Villa Museum For nearly 3,000 years a series of kingdoms - collectively known as the Kingdom of Kush - flourished in ancient Nubia (present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan). The region was rich in sought-after resources such as gold and ivory and its trade networks reached Egypt, Greece, Rome, and central Africa. This exhibition presents highlights from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's extensive collection of Nubian objects and features superbly crafted jewelry, metalwork, and sculpture exhibiting the wealth and splendor of Nubian society. Learn more about the exhibit at https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/nubian_jewelry/ Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Nubian jewelry is often overshadowed by Egyptian and Greco-Roman jewelry, but the ancient Nubians were the world’s first jewelry pioneers. Their influential work is currently on display at “Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan,” an exhibit at the Getty Villa featuring pieces from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Dr. Sara E. Cole, assistant curator of the exhibit, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Nubians developed their own enameling techniques; why jewelry is the key to understanding ancient cultures; and how iconography was shared and adapted throughout the ancient world. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. Today, my guest is Sara Cole, who’s the Assistant Curator of Antiquities at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California. She’s the curator of “Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan,” an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which showcases Nubian material. These finds were jointly executed early in the last century by Harvard and the Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit is now open until April 3. Sara received her Ph.D. from Yale, which is amazing. She’s an expert in ancient history and a specialist in material culture of Greco-Roman Egypt. She has studied the cross-pollination of cultures, and we’ll hear a lot more about it today. Sara, welcome to the program. Sara: Thank you for having me. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your own journey. Did you come to jewelry through antiquities or archaeology, or the other way around? Sara: Yes, through my study of archaeology and Egyptology as a graduate student. That was primarily my introduction to this material. I became familiar with Nubia primarily through the MFA Boston’s tremendous archaeological collection of Nubian material. When I was a graduate student at Yale back in, I think, 2011, I took a graduate seminar on Nubian archaeology with a Nubian specialist named Maria Gatto. In one of our classes, we took the train to Boston and got to spend a day going through the storerooms of the MFA looking at Nubian material. We were primarily looking at pottery that day, but we did get to see some other objects as well. In 2014, MFA put on its own small exhibition featuring their Nubian jewelry collection, so that brought that material a little bit more into public view. Then in 2019, the MFA did a big exhibition bringing out highlights of their full Nubian collection that was called “Ancient Nubia Now.” Since 2019, they very generously sent parts of this collection to different museums for exhibitions around the world. We’re very fortunate at the Getty Villa that we were able to borrow some of these stunning pieces of jewelry and personal adornment from that collection for this current exhibition. Sharon: I have to ask you. When you were younger, you say you were interested in Egypt and ancient periods, but very few people go into archaeology. How is it that you stuck with it? Sara: Museums were really my entry point to the ancient world as a child, which I think is true for a lot of us. I grew up in a small town in Virginia and wasn’t exposed to major museum collections as kid, but we had a small, local museum. It featured mostly local contemporary artists, but one summer they put on view a small touring exhibition of Egyptian material from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. I was probably 11 or 12 years old. That was my first exposure to ancient Egyptian material, and I just found it incredibly captivating and compelling, and I stuck with that interest. I ended up doing a bachelor’s degree in classics and then my Ph.D. in ancient history, where I studied a combination of Egyptology, classics and art history. But I’ve always had a great passion for museums in particular because it was my personal entry point to the ancient world. We do have the opportunity, through putting on exhibitions like this, to reach such wide audiences and to bring this material to their attention, things they’ve maybe never seen or considered before. It’s a really wonderful opportunity. Sharon: It really is. When you say Nubia, a lot of us haven’t really thought about Nubia or Nubian jewels. That’s the entry point or the foundation. What is Nubia? What do you mean by Nubian? Sara: That’s a great question, because I think a lot of people have heard of Nubia but they’re not quite sure what it is. Traditionally it has received a lot less attention than ancient Egypt, which is this huge, looming civilization. When we talk about ancient Nubia, we’re really talking about a geographical region that was located immediately south of ancient Egypt. They were neighbors. In terms of modern-day geography, it reached essentially from Aswan in what is now southern Egypt down to about Khartoum in present-day Sudan. The contemporary political border between Egypt and Sudan cuts across part of what was ancient Nubia, when the border was located further north between Nubia and Egypt. So, it’s essentially this geographical region going across part of what is today southern Egypt and northern Sudan. For parts of its ancient history, Nubia as a region was actually home to several different cultural groups. It wasn’t always a single, unified culture. So, when we talk about Nubia, we’re talking about the geographical area, and then there were different cultures that lived within Nubia. Around the third millennium B.C., a political institute called the Kingdom of Kush—because the region was known as Kush in antiquity—arose at the city of Karma in what is today Sudan. It eventually came to conquer essentially all of the region of Nubia. The Kingdom of Kush lasted on and off for a period of almost 3,000 years, and it moved to different capital cities in different phases. It first arose at Kerma in the third millennium B.C., then moved further south to a capital called Napata, which was also along the Nile River, around 750 B.C. Then in its final phase, starting around 350 B.C., it was centered at a city even further south on the Nile River called Meroë. So, when we talk about ancient Nubia, we’re talking about that region, but for this exhibition, we’re really focusing on items of jewelry that were worn by royalty and the elite of the Kingdom of Kush that were found at these three successive capital cities. Sharon: I was going to ask you if Napata and—is it Morocco? Sara: Meroë. Sharon: Meroë. I’ve heard so much about it, but did they all have jewelry? Did the royalty all have jewelry at all three of these sites? Sara: Yes, absolutely. Throughout human history, I think in all cultures we see personal adornment as a universal means of self-expression. It’s a means of expressing status and power. But also in antiquity, much of this jewelry, either the materials themselves or the iconography incorporated into it, had symbolic religious significance. Items of jewelry were often amuletic and protective, or they could signify one’s status in society, one’s role. They reflect a lot about an ancient culture’s social organization, religious beliefs, communities, etc. These items of jewelry speak to so much more than being aesthetically beautiful status items. So, yes, even very early in Kerma and even in pre-Kerma archaeology, we find items of jewelry in the archaeological record. Jewelry was very essential, especially for rulers and for individuals of high status, to express themselves in ancient Nubia. Sharon: Did both men and women have jewelry? Sara: Yes, they did. Men, women, children, and sometimes even very prized royal animals were adorned with jewelry. Sharon: Were these from tombs or graves? Sara: Yes, essentially all of the items in this exhibition were excavated from royal and wealthy burials. This was material that people valued in life but also chose to take with them to the grave. As a I mentioned, a lot of these pieces have iconography that is protective or amuletic, which would have particular significance in the context of the tomb. These are images that are going to protect you as you are making your transition to the afterlife. So, all of the material was excavated from burials. That is primarily where we find these high-status jewelry items still surviving. They survive because they were buried, and people didn’t have the opportunity to reuse them or repurpose the materials. Sharon: First of all, I think I forgot to say that this exhibit is only on until April 3, which comes up quickly. I can’t remember if I said that or not. Sara: Yes, two more months to go see it at the Villa. Sharon: When you say it’s like a dynasty or the Kingdom of Kush lasted 3,000 years, I have this idea that it rose high and then it was—I don’t want to say nothing, but they weren’t reading. It was like the Dark Ages in a sense, really dark, and then it rose again in a different place. How did that work? Sara: The Kingdom of Kush went through fluctuations over that 3,000-year period. I wouldn’t necessarily call it dark ages. The Nubians simply never developed the same tradition of extensive written records like we get from Egypt, so much of our knowledge of Nubia comes from the archaeological material. We just don’t have extensive written historical documentation from this region. It wasn’t part of the culture. They had a very complicated relationship with their neighbor to the north, Egypt, which is largely the reason for these periods of rise and fall. The Kingdom of Kush arose, like I mentioned, at Kerma in Sudan, during which time in northern Nubia, there were other cultural groups inhabiting that region who were in conflict with Egypt. The Kingdom of Kush eventually was able to take that region and unify Nubia under its rule. Kerma flourished for almost 1,000 years, from about 2,400 B.C. until roughly 1,550 B.C. But what happened around 1,550 was that Egypt entered into a very powerful period in its history, the New Kingdom, the rise of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and those kings invaded Nubia and took over. They occupied Nubia for about 500 years, during which time we don’t have a tremendous amount of archaeological evidence for what was going on. But it seems like Nubians and Egyptians were essentially coexisting in Nubia during this period. As you can imagine, over 500 years, there’s a huge amount of cross-cultural exchange as a result of the Egyptian presence in Nubia. Some Egyptian religious ideas get incorporated into local Nubian tradition, as does a lot of iconography. There are a lot of ways in which the Nubians start adapting some Egyptian concepts to their own local practices. Then the Egyptians get pushed out of Nubia around 1,000 B.C. approximately. The Kingdom of Kush starts to regroup and rebuild itself, and it reappears fully around 750 B.C., now at the capital city of Napata. What’s interesting at the beginning of the Napatan phase is that the Nubians turn the tables on Egypt and invade them. They take over Egypt and rule for about 80 years. For that 80-year period, staring around 725 B.C., the Kingdom of Kush is at its greatest extent, going all the way from what is today Sudan up to the Mediterranean coast, ruling over both Nubia and Egypt. After that 80-year period, they get pushed out of Egypt but are still ruling the Kingdom of Kush from Napata. We see some really interesting ways in which the rulers of that 80-year period adapted an Egyptian mode of self-presentation. They’re trying to present themselves as legitimate pharaohs in Egypt. They start presenting themselves in a way that is adapted from earlier pharaonic styles of self-presentation. Even though the Nubian kings are spending some time in Egypt, they choose to be sent back to Napata for their royal burials, and they start using pyramid tombs during this period. They start practicing mummification and incorporating some Egyptian-style object assemblages into their burials. We see some of those practices get adapted during this 80-year period, including the incorporation of a lot of Egyptian religious iconography into their jewelry. We see those trends continue later, even when they’re no longer ruling in Egypt. Then during this Napatan phase, which lasts roughly 400 years, they start to gradually shift the capital further south to this third city of Meroë. By around 350 B.C., both the administrative capital and the royal cemetery have moved to Meroë, and this is the final phase of the Kingdom of Kush. This is a phase that lasts from roughly 350 B.C. to 350 A.D., when the Kingdom of Kush falls. It corresponds with the conquests of Alexander the Great throughout the eastern Mediterranean and ancient Near East, the rise of his successor kingdoms and then the rise of the Roman Empire. But throughout all of this, the Kingdom of Kush maintained its political independence. It never became part of Alexander’s territories; it never became part of the Roman Empire, unlike Egypt, which did. They had a complex relationship with Rome, who at times tried to take Nubia unsuccessfully, but they were also connected to these vast trade networks that connected the Mediterranean and the Near East throughout the Roman Empire. It was a very cosmopolitan place, ancient Meroë. They were very closely connected through trade networks to the rest of the world. They were also producing some incredibly high-status pieces of jewelry with really exquisite craftsmanship. Then the Kingdom of Kush falls around 350 A.D. That’s the big picture of what we’re looking at here, with the history of the Kingdom of Kush and its different phases. Sharon: When you say Nubia, is that the same as the Kingdom of Kush? Do you mean the Kingdom of Kush or Nubia are one in the same, I guess? Sara: Nubia in antiquity was known as Kush, and then the Kingdom of Kush is the political entity ruling over that region. Sharon: Did the jewelry change over the years? Sara: It did, yes. We do see that even across these different phases, each one has a distinctive aesthetic. There is no single, unified Nubian look to the jewelry. Different fashions change over time. Different popular materials come in and out of fashion. In Kerma, in the earliest phases, we see jewelers making items out of locally available and imported organic materials. They’re making use of things like hippo and elephant ivory to create cuff bracelets. They’re making use of shells they imported from the Red Sea coast and fashioned into different items. They were also importing faience from Egypt. Ancient faience was a man-made, blue-green, glazed, quartz-based ceramic material that was very popular in Egypt. The Kermans were importing it initially, but then they developed their own faience-making technology and were able to produce their own. So, we start to see the use of this man-made material. They’re using gold. Nubia in antiquity is known primarily as a land of gold because of their rich gold resources in the Eastern Desert. That was their main coveted natural resource. They had incredibly skillful techniques in working with gold. We see them using locally available semiprecious stones, things like carnelian and amethyst. They work with quartz in some really interesting ways. Quartz is found alongside gold, so it was probably symbolically associated with gold. Gold was valued not only because it was this very prized economic resource, but it was also an imperishable material. It was associated with immortality and the sun, and it was very highly symbolically valued. They would take quartz and do an interesting treatment that, as far as I am aware, is distinctive to ancient Kerma. They would take the quartz, either shaping it into spherical beads or taking chunks of it in its raw form to use as pendants, and they would put a blue-green glaze over it and fire it in a kiln to create a hard, shiny, translucent blue surface that creates this stunning, glass-like appearance when it’s done successfully. It was a delicate technique. You had to be very careful, because if you raised the temperature in the kiln too quickly, the quartz would fracture and burst, and you would lose your item of jewelry you were making. They had to be very careful in this process, but again, as far as I know, this is a distinctive Kerman technique, a distinctive way of working with quartz. Those were the types of materials they were utilizing to make items of jewelry. There’s also a particular ornament we start to see in Kerma that is really interesting and later gets adopted by the Egyptians, which is the fly pendant. They are these large pendants that were often worn in pairs strung around the neck, and they represent flies. We have an example in the exhibition where the head is made of gilded bronze and the wings are carved out of ivory. These are found in soldiers’ tombs. They appear to have been given as a medal of honor to high-status members of the Nubian military. We can ask why they would choose a fly of all things to honor a member of the military, and we believe it’s because if you go to Egypt, if you go to the Nile Valley, you will experience that the flies are very big and mean and aggressive. So, we think these fly pendants are a way of associating the aggression and the tenacity of the Nilotic flies with the aggression and the tenacity of Nubian warriors. Later these fly pendants actually get adopted in Egypt as well as a military medal of honor. So, those were the kinds of things we find at Kerma. As I mentioned, that period comes to an end with this big invasion of the Egyptians around 1,500 B.C. Then when the Kingdom of Kush rearises at Napata around 750 B.C., they invade Egypt. They take over, and we start to see how this 500-year period of intense cross-cultural interaction has resulted in the introduction of a lot of Egyptian iconography into the royal jewelry. We start to see a lot of images of goddesses like Hathor and Isis, who became very important in the Nubian pantheon. There is an Egyptian god called Amun who becomes introduced as the supreme god of ancient Nubia, but in his Nubian form specifically, he takes the form of a ram or a man with a ram’s head. We believe that before this period, there was probably an indigenous ram god who Amun became assimilated with. So, we see a lot of ram iconography in the jewelry. There’s a lot of iconography associated with the goddess Hathor, who was this Egyptian goddess of love, fertility, beauty and motherhood with whom Nubian queens and royal women became particularly associated. We see a lot of that kind of iconography. We see protective icons that have been introduced from Egypt, things like the Eye of Floridus, the scarab beetle, that kind of thing. They’re working a lot in faience still. There are some queens’ tombs from this period where these large faience plaques are very popular, again in the shapes of religious protective imagery, amuletic icons, gods and goddesses. They were big plaques that were strung on strings of beads and worn around the neck, essentially meant to sit over the chest to protect the pectorals. We see a lot of that kind of thing, this incorporation of new iconography, new religious ideas, sometimes a very Egyptian mode of self-presentation that they’ve adopted from the Egyptians. They’re working in faience; they’re working in gold. We do see some silver during this period. Silver was not locally available; it was an imported material, but we do see a lot of skilled gold work during this phase. They are developing some very sophisticated techniques for how to fashion items of jewelry, but also things like golden vessels. This is a phase where we start to see that Egyptian influence and some increasing sophistication in the techniques with which they’re working, with both these man-made and locally available resources. In the Meroitic Period, we see those gold working techniques really hit their stride. There is some tremendously sophisticated gold work made during the Meroitic Period, where they’re using techniques like granulation and filigree and very delicate wirework. At Meroë, they also start producing glass. Glass beads start to appear in the jewelry. Something that Meroë distinctively is also known for is the use of a wide range of enameling techniques. They would take powdered glass and apply it to the surface of items of jewelry, and then heat it to fuse it and create it a hard, shiny, colorful surface. There were multiple enameling techniques they developed at Meroë, some of which, prior to their discovery at Meroë, were thought to have not been invented until the modern era. There were techniques they developed at Meroë, and the knowledge of that technology was lost and rediscovered in modern times. This is also a phase during which we see, as I mentioned, a kind of cosmopolitan international style developing. We do see some Greco-Roman influences coming into play in the form of large, dangly pendant earrings and the development of new color schemes, for instance. There was a color scheme at Meroë that was especially popular, which was red, white and black. They would use cornelian, which was a popular material, to achieve the red and then import obsidian for black and travertine for white. Each phase has its own distinctive repertoire of objects and iconography and manufacturing techniques that were being used. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. END OF PART ONE | |||
| 01 Feb 2023 | Episode 182 Part 2: The Story of Jade with Expert Eric Hoffman | 00:27:45 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Eric Hoffman
Eric Hoffman is an aficionado of Chinese jades for over 40 years. He is the owner and operator of Far East Gallery, which is dedicated to lovers of Chinese arts, antiques, antiquities, and—most especially—jades and snuff bottles. A member of the worldwide organizations Friends of Jade and the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, jade consultant to the Chinese Cultural Relics Association, and contributing editor to Adornment magazine, Prof. Hoffman has written many articles and reviews on this fascinating subject.
Additional Resources: Introductory Articles on Jade: http://hoffmanjade.com/Adornment_Jade.pdf https://asianart.com/articles/hoffman/index.html
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript: Jade is a popular gemstone that even the most avid jewelry collectors often know little about. Much of the confusion stems from the fact that two distinct stones share the same name. Enter Eric Hoffman, a jade dealer and author who is an expert on identifying different types of jade. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about jadeite jade vs. nephrite jade; why jade can either be extremely valuable or basically worthless; and how new collectors can find quality pieces. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Eric J. Hoffman, who’s extremely knowledgeable about jade. Eric is the owner of Far East Gallery and HoffmanJade.com. He is a seller and a buyer, and he knows a lot about what makes jade valuable. He’s also an author. Welcome back.
But you said there’s a white jade that’s a nephrite, and then there’s another kind of white jade that’s a jadeite, right?
Eric: That’s right. When you’re talking about white jade, it makes a big difference whether it’s nephrite or jadeite. White nephrite is very desirable. White jadeite is kind of a waste material. In fact, it’s often dyed or polymer-treated to make it look like something it’s not.
Sharon: When you say something it’s not, what do you mean? Is it to try and fool people? Why do carvers value white jade so much?
Eric: Again, you have to distinguish between the two types of white jade. The nephrite is desirable to carvers because it can be carved thin and it’s not going to break on them while they’re carving. The jadeite is generally valued for jewelry, and people don’t want a white stone ring. They want the nice, imperial green, apple green jadeite. Back in the late 80s, around 1989, someone figured out how to polymer treat and dye white jadeite to make it look like the imperial green, desirable jadeite.
Sharon: Wow, there’s a lot to learn when it comes to stone. The white nephrite that’s called jade, when it comes to carving, it’s harder to carve. Am I right?
Eric: All carving is hard, but at least the nephrite’s not going to break on you. It’s not going to crumble. It’s not going to cleave like some minerals like fluorite, for example, might do. There are carvings in jadeite as well. It’s a little less tough and a little bit harder.
Sharon: But jadeite is what was in Burma. Maybe I’m getting confused. I’m trying to keep it straight. When you talk about the Chinese, that’s more of the nephrite jade, and when you talk about the Burmese, that’s more of the jadeite, right?
Eric: In terms of where they come from, but there’s not much of an industry in Burma carving jadeite. The jadeite comes out of the ground in Burma, and it goes immediately to China where it is made into jewelry and carvings and artifacts and so forth.
Sharon: I’m just getting confused. If somebody says to me, “This is a jade bracelet,” and it’s green, what do I ask? Where it came from, or is it nephrite or jadeite? What do I ask?
Eric: The question would be is it nephrite or jadeite. The answer will probably come back that it’s jadeite. When you see jade bangle bracelets, for example, they’re usually but not always jadeite. Usually if it’s a vivid apple green, it’s probably jadeite. If it’s a darker grayish green, it’s probably nephrite.
Sharon: What if it’s white? I’m thinking of a hand-made bangle. If they say it’s white jade, is that just treated jadeite?
Eric: They would probably not stop at white. They would try to dye it or polymer treat it to try to fool you into thinking it’s a more valuable type of jade.
Sharon: So, when somebody says to me, “This is jade,” they really mean jadeite, right? There’s nephrite, but most things are jadeite. I’m just trying to understand this.
Eric: It’s a complicated subject for sure. Most of the jewelry, but not all that you encounter, will be jadeite. There is nephrite jewelry, but it’s probably 10 to one in favor of jadeite.
Sharon: When I was talking to Elyse, she was saying that most of the time the carvings are too large to be used for jewelry, as you were saying, but there are smaller things such as beads and things like that. Is that jade jadeite? Why are they made into small items?
Eric: Jade is found in small quantities, so that’s one thing that limits the size. It’s costly material, at least the higher grades of jadeite. That would be another thing that limits the size.
Sharon: What would icy jade be? Tell us about icy jade.
Eric: That’s another interesting subject. When you’re judging jadeite, you’re looking at the color. You look at what’s called the texture, which is the fineness of the individual, microscopic crystals. It affects the kind of polish the jade can take. You look at the clarity. You’d like to find jade that doesn’t have inclusions or black spots in it. There’s also something called translucence. As jade becomes more and more translucent, you get to where you can almost read text through it. That’s called icy jade.
Sharon: Do you look at whether it’s jade or icy jade? Do you look at it under a microscope to decide if you’re going to buy it or judge it?
Eric: No, you can see right away that it’s an example of icy jade, but it’s fairly rare material. It didn’t used to be worth anything particularly more than other jades until Christie’s, some years ago in a marketing coup, changed the name from water jade to icy jade.
Sharon: Water jade to icy jade.
Eric: And it took off. In the many pieces I’ve handled over the decades, I only have one piece of icy jade.
Sharon: That’s you’ve handled or that you would be willing to part with?
Eric: Both.
Sharon: Putting icy jade aside, when you evaluate a piece of jade, do you look under a microscope at all? Is that part of your process? I don’t know what you look for.
Eric: Generally, no. Generally, a 10x loupe is about all you need to evaluate jade. For example, with a 10x loupe, you can look and see if dye is seeping into the little boundaries between regions on jadeite. The other instrument that is sometimes useful would be a refractometer, which is occasionally brought into play to distinguish between a nephrite and a jadeite.
Sharon: Somebody brought my mother a gift back from China, and she said it was jade. Would that have been an imitation jade? I don’t know what she paid for it. I don’t remember. Was it a jade jadeite versus—I mean, nephrite doesn’t sound like it’s in the picture.
Eric: It could have been any one of those. There are some fairly simple tests of hardness and specific gravity and so forth that you can run to tell what you’re looking at.
Sharon: As a collector and, as you can tell very obviously, somebody who knows nothing about jade or nephrite or Mawsitsit or icy jade, what would you say to a collector just starting out? What should they look for? What should they have with them? I got rid of my refractometer a long time ago. I said, “Forget it. I never use it.” What would they do with it?
Eric: The one thing you should always have with you is a 10x loupe. The other thing you should always have with you is a healthy sense of skepticism. I assume that any ancient jade I’m shown is a brand-new fake until proven otherwise. When you’re shown a gorgeous piece of jade jewelry, you should be a little skeptical as to whether it’s natural or has been treated in some way.
Sharon: Treated meaning coated with color to make it look a different color or a stronger color?
Eric: There have been examples of coating, but I was really referring to was what started back in 1989, with the polymer treatment of pretty much worthless white jadeite.
Sharon: How would I know? How would a collector know?
Eric: It’s a problem. At a certain price level, you would go to the GIA. They would look at your piece with an infrared spectrometer and tell you yes or no, whether it’s natural or colored or had been treated. But this test, of course, costs a few hundred dollars, so you’re probably up in the $20,000-$30,000 price range before it becomes worthwhile doing that.
Sharon: If you’re buying a less expensive piece that’s not a $20,000 piece, what would you say a collector should look for? Should we look for translucency? If they tell me something is old, how do I know?
Eric: If you don’t have a $100,000 spectrometer laying around in your basement, you should probably look for a dealer you can trust who does have access to one, either directly or through a lab like GIA.
Sharon: I can tell you’re on the East Coast if you say a basement, because who knows what a basement is out here? In fact, I did see a house with a basement, and I was floored. I thought a house with a basement in Los Angeles—
Eric: No basements in Los Angeles?
Sharon: No basements out here, or maybe just a few old, old houses. So, what attracts you? Do you like the color of the jade you buy? Whatever you put on your site, do you like it?
Eric: Yes, the colors of nephrite are more subdued and softer and more subtle, but I find them attractive. The colors of jadeite are brighter and a more vivid green. There’s also lavender, which is very attractive. So, yes, the color is one thing, and the extreme toughness of nephrite, what it lets carvers accomplish.
Sharon: If something is lavender, depending on price range, you could add polymers to make it lavender? Is it nephrite or would that be jadeite, or both?
Eric: That is jadeite, yes. Unfortunately, lavender is faked as well. Polymer-treated lavender does exist. It’s usually so garish looking that you can dismiss it right out of hand, but a really good imitation can be a little harder to tell. Once again, you rely on an infrared spectrometer to tell the difference.
Sharon: Do you have one lying around your house?
Eric: I have no infrared spectrometer.
Sharon: In the thousands of years they’ve been carving jade, whether it’s in China or Burma or wherever, is there natural lavender jade? What are the natural colors?
Eric: Oh yes, there is natural lavender. It’s a softer, more subtle lavender. It comes from Burma along with the other jades, so it does exist.
Sharon: Are there any other colors? There’s green; there’s white; there’s lavender. There are different shades of green, but what else? Is that it for all the jades?
Eric: There is a red. There’s a reddish brown, russet and black.
Sharon: And they all come from Burma and then they’re shipped off to China? Or are they in China?
Eric: The jade is all from Burma and it’s almost universally carved in China.
Sharon: So, if somebody shows me a piece—I keep going back to this example of a bangle bracelet—and somebody says it’s from China, it’s really been dug out of the ground in Burma and shipped off to China to be made into something. Is that what you’re saying?
Eric: That’s correct. If it’s jadeite, the raw material came from northern Burma and the work was almost certainly done in China.
Sharon: O.K. You must really take people aback when you start asking them questions. They probably think you’re just another person who doesn’t know anything about jade.
Eric: Once again, you want to find a dealer you have some faith in.
Sharon: Do you think you have those dealers? Because you’re a dealer, do you think the people you get your material and your carved objects from, are they trustworthy? If they call you and say, “Hey, do I have a deal for you,” do you say, “O.K., let me hear about it”?
Eric: There are dealers I buy from and there are dealers I sell to. I also sell jade books, books about jade.
Sharon: Tell us about some of the things you’re written about or the names of the books.
Eric: At one point, I might have been the number one seller of jade books in the world. I’ve written about that. I’ve sent a lot of the best ones to China. Even though the shipping cost can be horrendous for a big, heavy book, it doesn’t seem to bother anybody in China to pay it.
Sharon: You must have clients from all over the world.
Eric: Yeah, I’ve probably shipped to about 20 to 30 countries.
Sharon: Besides the books, who contacts you from all over the world to say, “Hey, I saw this object on your site”?
Eric: I get that all the time, people showing pictures. Invariably it’s imitation ancient jades.
Sharon: How about when they want to buy something from you? Do they come from all over the world?
Eric: I ship all over.
Sharon: Tell us what you’ve written about. If you’re the number one seller, people really trust what you have to say about jade. Are you writing from a mineral perspective for what to look for? What are you telling them? What are you writing about in the books?
Eric: As an engineer, it’s the technical aspect I appreciate the most. Telling jade from pseudo jade has been a side specialty.
Sharon: I shouldn’t send my bracelet from the swap meet to you because I should just assume it’s pseudo jade. That’s what you’re saying, right?
Eric: It pays to have a healthy sense of skepticism. I assume everything is fake until proven otherwise.
Sharon: How would somebody prove otherwise to you? Because it’s old and they’re brushing the dirt off of it? How would they prove it?
Eric: Perhaps the most reliable thing in dealing with ancient jades is to take a close look at the tooling techniques and looking for modern toolmarks, which would not have been used a thousand plus years ago.
Sharon: Do you often find when you’re evaluating a piece for you to buy to resell, will someone tell you, “Oh, this is made with old tools,” and then you’ll find a modern tool mark and hand it back?
Eric: There’s no handing back. A lot of times, you have to buy in a dark, dingy corner, no recourse, no refund, cash only.
Sharon: I guess I’m thinking about a big show or something like that. You’re saying they pull you aside. Do they open their raincoat or something?
Eric: At a big show, of course, the vetting has already been done for you. But that’s reflected in the very high prices, so it’s hard to buy anything at a big show for resale.
Sharon: As a collector, if we were going to buy or evaluate a piece and we don’t have our handy refractometer with us, what should we be doing in terms of the sense of skepticism? It’s like how on Antiques Roadshow you see people all the time who believe they have pre-Columbian artifacts and they’re proven to be fake. Should we look for contemporary toolmarks? Is that one tell?
Eric: You’ve opened another new subject, and that’s pre-Columbian jade. Jade was carved in Central America roughly about the time of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty. In fact, there’s some thought that perhaps there was communication between China and the jade carvers in Central America because a lot of the motifs are the same. But in Central America, at that time, they were using string and abrasives and stone files, not metal tools.
Sharon: When was this?
Eric: This would have been maybe 500 to 1,000 years ago.
Sharon: Not that long ago, really, when you compare it to China or even other places in the world.
Eric: That’s right. For the first several thousand years, China carved with the same kinds of tools before they had metals.
Sharon: That’s really interesting. Tell us a bit more about when we should come to a person like you, what we’ll find in the books and chapters you’ve coauthored. Are we only going to find technical stuff, or are we going to find history? Are we going to find anything else?
Eric: There are jade books that cover all of that. Unfortunately, they’re not all in the same book. The book I worked on most recently was by Richard Hughes in Bangkok. It’s a big, heavy book. It’s costs $200 just to mail it from Bangkok to the United States. It’s not the kind of investment everybody will make, and it does focus on the gemology aspects of both nephrite and jadeite.
Sharon: When are you going to be writing your book about history? You say there’s not a book that encompasses it all. Forget the minerology, but the history, the carving, how it’s done. When are you going to write it?
Eric: I don’t think you should wait for it. I’ve been assembling notes for about 20 years. Elyse asks that same question about once a week.
Sharon: So, I should come back to you in 10, 15 years?
Eric: 10 years would be good.
Sharon: For somebody like me, it would be an easier book to write because I don’t know the technical stuff. The history and the carving would be interesting and fast to write.
Eric: While you’re waiting the 10 years, there is actually a book that was written called “Jade Lore.” I’m not sure when it was written; possibly in the 40s. That does cover, in a very readable way, a lot of the history along with a little bit of the technical.
Sharon: But isn’t it out of print because it’s been so long?
Eric: It’s out of print, but you can find copies. It was written by a journalist who was on-site in China around the time the Qing Dynasty was falling apart, and a lot of these pieces were coming onto the market.
Sharon: When was that? How long ago?
Eric: The Qing Dynasty fell in 1911, 1912. I think this book was written either in the 30s or 40s. It was written by somebody who really knew how to write a lively story.
Sharon: Where have you been? If you’re saying you look at these objects or jewels, have you been to some of the places and seen them directly, or is it mostly when somebody brings you into a dark corner?
Eric: I’ve been to Taiwan. I have not been to mainland China. As I mentioned earlier, the Chinese really want to repatriate and bring back into the country the best jades as well as jade books. To get pieces of jade now, you pretty much have to stumble across American collections or European collections.
Sharon: I think that’s true of other pieces too. It seems that the Chinese are very interested in repatriating a lot of older jewelry. We’re being told they’re the ones who drive the prices up. Is that also true in jade?
Eric: Oh, absolutely. In fact, there’s a book on that subject as well.
Sharon: Which is?
Eric: On the whole subject of repatriating these pieces back into China.
Sharon: What do people do with them when they have them back in China?
Eric: What do they do with them in China?
Sharon: Yeah.
Eric: Some of those will end up in museums in China. Others end up in private collections of millionaires.
Sharon: Eric, I see Elyse in the corner there. You have to go pack your bags so you can get ready for your next trip to Myanmar or mainland China. You’ve been to Taiwan. Thank you very much for being with us today.
Eric: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Sharon: It’s been great. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 27 Jan 2022 | Episode 143 Part 2: The Theory of Jewelry: Why Do We Love to Wear It, and What Does It Mean? | 00:27:35 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About matt lambert matt lambert is a non-binary, trans, multidisciplinary collaborator and co-conspirator working towards equity, inclusion, and reparation. They are a founder and facilitator of The Fulcrum Project and currently are a PhD student between Konstfack and University of Gothenburg in Sweden. They hold a MA in Critical Craft Studies from Warren Wilson College and an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art. lambert currently is based in Stockholm Sweden and was born in Detroit MI, US where they still maintain a studio. They have exhibited work nationally and internationally including at: Turner Contemporary, Margate, Uk, ArkDes, and Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden, Museo de la Ciudad, Valencia , Spain and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, US. Lambert represented the U.S in Triple Parade at HOW Museum, Shanghai, China, represented the best of craft in Norway during Salon del Mobile, Milan, Italy and was the invited feature at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece during Athens Jewelry Week. Lambert has actively contributed writing to Art Jewelry Forum, Garland, Metalsmith Magazine, Klimt02, Norwegian Craft and the Athens Jewelry Week catalogues and maintains a running column titled “Settings and Findings” in Lost in Jewelry Magazine. Additional Resources: Photos:  Brooches 2019 Made in collaboration with Maret Anna Sara Image credit: Talya Kantro https://maretannesara.com/pile-power/ Pile Power is a new, elaborative section of Máret Ánne Saras bigger body of work: Pile O ?Sápmi. The project has developed into a multi prong exploration using the remaining material from Sara´s Pile O’ Sápmi as shown in Documenta 14. Sara invited matt lambert to enter a dialogue with the intent for finding methods to use all available material that was remaining from earlier pieces. Matt Lambert is recognized through international exhibitions in platforms such as craft, jewelery, performance, design, sculpture and fashion, and has been listed on the top 100 designers for jewelry and accessories by the Global Jewelry and Accessories Council as well as receiving the Next Generation Award from Surface Design Association. Sara invited Lambert to collaborate using the materials remaining from the Pile O´ Sápmi project after finding a connection through a conviction for socio-cultural sustainability as well as minority comradery between indigeneity and queerness. The Pile Power collaboration is producing larger performative objects using the remaining jaws of the reindeer skulls used in Saras earlier work, as well as more wearable works from the remaining reindeer-porcelain skulls that Sara commissioned to her Pile O’ Sápmi Powernecklace shown at Documenta 14. Both of these veins of working promote the conversation around sustainable practices of indigenous peoples. In Pile Power, body and material form a new basis for approach for themes addressed in the Pile O ?Sápmi project. Based on creative dialogue, a thematic jewelry collection will nomadically carry a new segment of an urgent discourse through bodies and humans.
the integumentary system as dialogical fashion installed at IASPIS Stockholm Sweden 2017 8 x 5.5 x 3 feet Comprised of 15 wearable objects
temporal drag only accepting gaudy currency, saving for kitsch omega and sugar free nirvana installed at IASPIS Stockholm Sweden 2017 10 x 5.5 x 2.5 feet Comprised of 55 wearable objects
Tools of Ignorance As installed at Pried The Society of Arts + Crafts Boston MA USA, 2019 Transcript: matt lambert doesn’t just want us to wear jewelry—they want us to question it. As a maker, writer, and Ph.D. student, matt spends much of their time thinking about why we wear jewelry, who makes it, and what happens to jewelry as it’s passed from person to person. They joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the inspirations behind their work, why jewelry carries layers of meaning, and why wearing jewelry (or not wearing it) is always a political act. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Matt Lambert, who is joining us from Stockholm. Matt is a maker, writer and performer currently pursuing a Ph.D. Matt’s jewelry journey has taken them from country to country. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Welcome back. You’re still making though, right? matt: I am. I am definitely still making. It has not left my bones. It will probably never leave my bones, but it is something I constantly question, like what does it mean to make? What are we making? Sharon: Do you think about where you’re making your jewelry? Like you were just in a show in Finland. matt: Those objects also push an interesting thing into play. I was having some hand problems because of Covid. I sleep in a very precarious position for my hands, and I was losing feeling in my right hand because I have an anxiety disorder. When I’m stressed, I basically ball up my hand, and I was pinching a nerve. I was thinking about Covid, the spike in the Black Lives Matter Movement, so many other incredible layers of politics and body awareness and attempts to consciously raise our awareness of what’s going on in the world. So, I started a dialogue with someone who’s trained in a lot of work but specifically in box making, which is a totally different skillset. We share knowledge of material, and I cast my hands in different gestures of resistance or solidarity. There are three that are new, which is the fist for resistance, the peace sign, and the opening/offering hand. I cast them, and I worked with the box maker to make jewelry boxes for my hands that are actually wearable on my hands. There’s a hole, and I can buckle a box around my hand. A lot of my work questions what jewelry is. Is this jewelry? Is my hand the jewel, or is the box that’s worn around my hand the jewel? I’m interrogating what a piece of jewelry is or what could it be. I also spoke at KORU7, the Finnish jewelry triennial, which was very meaningful to show and speak at because that’s the first place I ever went outside of North America. I told myself, “I’m going to be here one day,” and I got into the exhibition, so that was very emotional. Then they sent me an invite to ask if I would speak, and that was a proud moment. These are milestones in my career, and I have gratitude for the invitations. They mean something in that way of feeling herd, or at least wanting to be listened to for a moment. Sharon: I saw the boxes on Instagram, and I thought, “Oh, those are beautiful boxes,” but I was going, “O.K., do you stick your hand in them or wear them around? What do you do with them?” The leather was beautiful. I thought, “Wow, gorgeous purse!” matt: Those are probably more theoretical and abstract works in jewelry, but it’s questioning self-care and preservation. When we make gestures, when we show someone the peace sign or we have the fist of resistance or we offer someone something, do we mean it? Are we trying to freeze it in time? When does a gesture become shallow? It becomes commodified. Through jewelry, when you just consume it, when does our body also become that? It was me saying, “Hey, jewelry can talk about this,” and a lot of my work now is saying jewelry can do this. I call it a not-so-solo show that will be going up in the spring at Bornholm, which is a craft center on an island that is technically Danish. It’s between Denmark and Germany. I’ll have a larger solo show, but it’s a not-so-solo show. It will talk about the different collaborations I have with Masada, who’s indigenous, Sámi. Our work is talking about the rights of indigenous people, and there will be new collaborations: one set I’ve already been doing, one of the hand boxes will be there as well, and the work I do with the choreographer Carl Berg. It’s me playing with the elasticity of what jewelry is. There’s always some sort of wearable thing, but then it’s like, is that the work? Is it a marker of the work? Does it represent my research? Is it a token of that? Is it a souvenir? It’s also challenging you as the wearer. When you wear my work, to me, you’re also carrying what I stand for, what I believe in or what I’m doing, so we share something together. When people ask, it gives you an opportunity to share the possibility of jewelry, and that’s also what I love. When you wear my necklace, I want to know what you tell people. The best part is when I’m with people and someone goes, “What do you do?” at a dinner party, and whoever I’m with that knows me usually loves looking at that person. They go, “What do I do?” Sharon: That’s not an easy question to answer. What do you say? matt: I don’t. I literally look at the person next to me. I go, “What do I do?” And I love the multiplicity because my work exists. I teach now. I write. I will be announcing being an editor for publications. There are always 12 projects. I make wearables. I make unwearables. I work with dancers. I work with choreographers, so I’m a performer now. There isn’t an easy way, and that’s a challenge under capitalism. We want to define people by what they do, especially in a U.S. context. It’s not super common in Europe to be defined by what you do as it is in the U.S., so it’s challenging. I’m just me. I exist. That comes with its own set of consequences, but you’re talking about someone who wants to know. It’s also a very liberating space to be in. Sharon: Yes, I can see how it would be the most satisfying answer if I’m asking what you do at a party. Let me ask you this, because you mentioned Lost in Jewelry Magazine. Is that only an online publication? matt: Yes, that came out through Day By Day, which is a gallery in Rome. She approached me because she comes from a design background and has graphic design experience, and she discovered jewelry and became an addict like me. I think some people find it and it’s like the back of your head falls off, and you want to read as many books and info and see everything you can. I see you at all these events too, and there’s always something to learn. She wrote me and said, “Hey, you have a voice. What do you want to do with it? Could I give you space, and what would it look like?” So, I proposed a running column called Settings and Findings. Sharon: What did you mean by that, Settings and Findings? matt: It’s a play on words. There are categories if you go to purchase materials for jewelry. A setting is what usually would hold a stone, but it’s word play. You have a table setting. What are you holding on to? What are you making space for? And a finding is a component in jewelry, but it’s also what you’re discovering. I write about different people that have different projects. I like research projects, collaborations or specific bodies of work, looking at things that aren’t in the main canon. I often give people a space to say, “What are you setting and finding for this particular moment or for this project?” It’s a way to also show that we are doing artistic research, whether we’re aware of it or we frame it as that or not. It’s become a tool for me to see how different people talk about their research. There are some coming up that are poems. Some people have written beautiful, long things, or sometimes I help them write it. It’s finding that balance, since not everybody writes, but it’s working with and taking time with someone or a group of people to talk about research in the field, about using the word research. It’s a thing to point to in my Ph.D. as well. It’s an investigative tool. Normally when you do academia, you do what’s called literature review. You say what exists in the books. It’s a way for me to say, “This is research that already exists. This is stuff that’s happening.” I’m not alone in this and people might not contextualize it in an academic way, but I’m using my position to contextualize in that way if they aren’t. I’m putting it in a space so they can say, “This is research. We don’t need academia to do research as jewelers, but we could frame it as that.” Sharon: I can understand the settings and what are you holding onto. The findings are what you’re finding out about yourself or the pieces you’re making? matt: Really, whatever you want. I think there’s one article up by Viviana Langhoff who writes jewelry and adornment theory. She wrote a very beautiful, more poetic piece of writing about settings. She has built a platform to talk about equity and inclusion for diversity in the field, both in fine jewelry and in art jewelry, and she mixes the two in her space. She has a gallery in Chicago. The findings are about what you find when you do that. What is happening because you’re doing that? What are you discovering or what have you discovered through your work? She’s somebody who has created a space. So, what happens? How does the community respond? Who comes into that? If it’s an individual person, what have you learned by making this work? Where are you at now? You did this. You felt the urge. What are you holding onto? Your finding is what you find out there, where the setting is or what you could share. It’s purposely ambiguous because it’s to invite commercial jewelers and groups and galleries and spaces and art jewelers to share a space. There are some coming up where it’s like four sentences, and then there are people that have written me an essay. That’s what I think is beautiful, that we all can exist together in this one location. Sharon: It’s interesting. As I said, I hadn’t ever seen it before, Lost in Jewelry. Let me ask you this, because in introducing you or when you were writing the introduction, I need a translation of this. You’re described as a nonbinary trans collaborator and co-conspirator working towards inclusion, equity and reparation. I don’t know that means, I must say. matt: Yes, my body, as I identify, I am white; I am part of the colonial imperial system in that way. I identify as nonbinary, which is under the trans umbrella, as in transgender. Primarily, from where my body stands, I don’t believe in the gender construction. Like I said, my original background is in human sexuality and the psychology of it. It’s not a conversation I’m interested in defining, which then leaks into jewelry and gender and who wears jewelry. As we’re talking, that’s probably a big reason why jewelry also interests me. Co-conspirator and collaborator— Sharon: I get collaborator. Co-conspirator— matt: Co-conspirator, I’m interested in working with people that have goals or missions or focuses that are towards equity and decolonizing. I’m for reparations, and so I work, like I already mentioned, in the fight for indigenous rights in Scandinavia and Norway. The co-conspirator, that’s a goal. It’s conspiring to say, “This is what we need to do.” I’m on the equity train, and people that are seeking to find that and use jewelry as a vehicle, I want to co-conspire with those people to figure out what projects need to happen, what happenings need to happen to do that. I want to see jewelry do that, and I want to selfishly keep it in jewelry and see what happens when we do that through jewelry, because I think it’s where the potential is. I think jewelry’s the best from where I sit, and with my knowledge of these things, I want to see that happen. One of the other pieces for Settings and Findings is by SaraBeth Post, who’s a Penland resident in glass who is making necklaces out of simple glass pendants, but she was auctioning them off to raise funds for certain court cases or for other notable movements within Black Lives Matter. That’s a way of using more commercially-driven, wearable work to move to a different area. There are so many incredible ways to use jewelry. It disrupts and it challenges, and that’s why I’m excited about jewelry. Sharon: Do you think everything you’re saying about jewelry and how it affects people, the connections—the mining and the metal and all that—do you think it’s more accepted where you are in Europe? Are you in an environment where people talk about this, or do people look at you like, “What are you talking about?” matt: The United States, as far as talk about equity and those conversations, is very ahead of where it is, but that’s also because the U.S. is founded on imperialism and slavery, so it has no mechanism of denial. There are places in Europe that have that, and there are other places that do not. So, yes and no would be the answer. It depends on whom I’m speaking with or where we’re at. It is challenging because in the U.S., these are more contemporary conversations than we’re having where I’m based now in Sweden. They also exist differently because their history and involvement in colonialism and imperialism is different. It exists. That’s actually what I wrote my thesis on for my critical craft master’s. I was looking at examinations of the history museum in Sweden and representation within it. It’s a different conversation, so that’s been a challenge, but it’s a great learning experience for me because not everybody has the same knowledge. I think these conversations add an academic level. You see jewelry in a room and academics are like, “Wait, what? You want to play with jewelry?” Sometimes I find myself in this weird gray space, because you’re fighting a different wave, like, “Yes, let’s do this.” How do you make it make sense for everybody? I’m excited to see more people do what they love to expand the field so all of us can home in on exactly what we love doing. But it is a challenge right now because the conversations, there’s a lot of potential we could say in them. They’ve been going on, but I think there’s still a lot of potential. I think that’s the amazing thing with this idea around jewelry. Is it a field? Is it a format? What is it? What can we do with it? Sharon: As you’re making things, are you thinking about how you can express some of this through what you’re making? I’m thinking about the laser-cut leather necklace. To me, it’s a fabulous necklace. That’s why I say I’m fairly shallow. It’s a fabulous necklace; I don’t look at it and go, “What does it mean in terms of equity?” Do you think about those things? Are you trying to express these things through your jewelry? matt: I think I’m more in the camp of my body lives, breaths, eats and sleeps this, so whatever I make, it’s already going to be there. I don’t make things with the idea of “This going to be about this.” It’s more of, “What do I feel in my body and is this going back to being a craftsperson?” Sharon: You’re saying that because of who you are and because it’s what you live and breathe, it’s in your jewelry. You don’t have to say, “Oh, I think if I braid the leather this way, it means A, B, C.” matt: Yeah, no. I think there’s a lot of talk in the world now about being authentic and living your authentic life and going down those rabbit holes, but I think there are many different ways to be a craftsperson. I think you could love a material and use it throughout your whole life; I think there could be people that can stretch across them. I think we need everybody to sustain and talk about it as a field. I have a deep concern about jewelry being a field and how we continue that. I think how we broaden that is the biggest thing, not coming from a point of scarcity. I’m at a point in my career where I trust my body. It’s the same as trusting your gut. Also, sometimes, it just makes you feel good. There’s nothing wrong with art if it just makes you feel good. When I made that leatherwork, I knew nothing about computers. I had briefly worked and tried to be a woodworker. It was not for me. I like my fingers. I don’t like getting up at 4 a.m. I tried to work for a prestigious cabinet making company. I have a lot of respect for woodworkers; it’s just not a frame of craft that I can make or produce in. When I went to Cranbrook, they were like, “Oh great, you can go work in the woodshop then.” I worked in the library—you know me; I read everything—which I loved, but then they were like, “Great, woodshop,” and I was like, “Oh, O.K.” and then they were like, “You’re going to be the laser cutting technician.” I’ve made it a point in my whole career to use things that don’t plug in. I grew up half my life in the woods where the power went out easily, and I wanted to be able to make my work without an electrical cord. So, that was a challenge, but that series also developed. I was sitting there and thinking about the simple sash chain you get at the hardware store. It’s like one-on-one aluminum link, a very affordable, cheap, go-to chain, and then my brain was like, “What if I tweak it and do this and this?” If you look at the leather, it’s not mathematically proportionate; it’s hand-drawn. It comes from that. Then I was speaking to friends and all of a sudden, it was like, “This is what it could mean.” You see meanings after you do it when it’s done. What I also love about that work is that I can’t tell you how long it takes, because those pieces are family for me. I would lay out patterns, and then I would buy everybody pizza and beer and call my friends and I would prepare them. They have to be soaked in certain things, and other things we were figuring out the best way to weave. Everyone would sit around in a circle and weave necklaces. For me, it’s about family and community and the linking of things. That’s for me, but if you like my work because of something else, there is nothing wrong with that. That’s the research I’m interested in now. It matters why we make, but it also matters why we wear and why we buy. How do we talk about all of that together? That is what I think of as the work. As craftspeople, yeah, the work is the object we make, but even after we die, the work continues. How do we think about or frame what it means to you, then, to wear my necklace, and what do you get out of it? What fulfills you could be totally different than what I do, but that adds to what the work is. I think my jewelry is so beautiful because it could have this life. After you wear it, what happens to it? Does somebody else wear it? Do you give it to somebody? That adds another stratum of meaning, so over time, you continuously compress different meanings. Even if it goes behind a museum case—I’m not saying my work will do that—but when people’s work goes behind a museum case, when you see it and when a five-year-old sees it versus a 70-year-old, versus someone from one country and another, that’s another meaning: how they relate to it, how they could think of themselves wearing it, what they think it’s about. It just piles more and more meaning. It all goes back to someone’s body, not the body or a body, but all of our bodies. So, all of a sudden, you have objects that have this compression of people. If that doesn’t allow you to have a point to talk about equity and humanness and labor and class and all those complex things, that’s jewelry. It ties directly to us as people. It’s important what you get out of wearing my necklace, why I made it, but it also almost doesn’t matter in a way, because we’re contributing to the pile. In theory that’s called thickening, the thickening of a history. There isn’t one history of something; it's historiography. It’s the multiple possibilities of something. When you see jewelry, you can project yourself onto it. You can say, “I’m going to wear that to this party. I’m going to wear it to this thing, to this wedding, to a christening, to a birth, to this grocery store.” That’s a potential history when you see it, and what if we tied all of those together? Even when you look at an object, that’s why I love jewelry. Sharon: Matt, thank you so much. You gave us a lot to think about. I could talk with you for another hour. Thank you so much for being with us today. matt: Yes, it’s a super pleasure again. Like I said, you’re one of my very first collectors I ran into in Stockholm by happenstance. Sharon: It’s a great happenstance. Thank you so much. matt: Thank you, Sharon. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 03 Jan 2022 | Special Announcement! | 00:00:38 | |
We can't wait to bring you new episodes this year! | |||
| 25 Jan 2021 | Episode 104: How a Childhood Classic Is Repurposed Into High-End Jewelry with Emiko Oye, Multi-Award Winning Artist | 00:28:13 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Emiko Oye San Francisco artist Emiko Oye creates bold and colorful jewelry with repurposed LEGO® - from ready-to-wear, to one-of-a-kind conceptual work inspired by haute couture, art history, David Bowie, and Nonviolent Communication and community. She began her jewelry business, emiko-o, in 1997, dealing in retail, wholesale and private commissions. Collaborations with LEGO® System in Denmark have led to their endorsement of her as an “Influencer” for young female makers. Utilizing LEGO®, recycled and semi-precious materials, her jewelry universally tugs on the nostalgic heartstrings, and artfully interweaves memories into conversation-sparking adornment. In working with recycled media, Emiko discovered similarities in both LEGO® and jewelry: hands-on-story-telling capabilities, increased value with vintage, dedicated collectors, generational status as family heirloom. A BFA University Scholar from Syracuse University, her work has been shown in over 100 exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally; including solo shows at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design and Ombré Gallery, and in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Lois Boardman Collection and Racine Art Museum. She is often invited to speak on the business of craft and her own work for arts institutions and organizations, such as the Dowse Museum of Art (New Zealand), Bard Graduate Center (NY), Society of North American Goldsmiths, New York City Jewelry Week, Miami Art Museum and Miami University (OH), The Exploratorium (CA), California College of the Arts, and Oakland Museum of California. Additional Resources: Photos:
Eye 2: To Matter From the 2 Be Seen series Convertible neckpiece/brooch, 2019 Photo credit: artist
Eye 6: Empathy From the 2 Be Seen series Convertible neckpiece/brooch, 2019 Photo credit: artist
Cartier Blanc From My First Royal Jewels Photo credit: artist
La Reine de Pèlerin From Les Voyageurs de Temps (The Time Travelers) Photo credit: Marc Olivier LeBlanc
Portrait From the Musée series Photo credit: artist
Maharajah’s 6th Photo credit: artist | |||
| 07 Sep 2020 | Episode 80: Old Jewelry, New Methods: How Kentshire Galleries Has Modernized It’s Vintage Jewelry Business with Matthew Imberman, Co-President of Kentshire Galleries | 00:40:46 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Matthew Imberman: Matthew Imberman, along with his sister Carrie, are the co-presidents of Kentshire Galleries. Established in 1940 and spanning three generations of family ownership, Kentshire Galleries is one of the foremost dealers of fine period and estate jewelry. In 1988, Kentshire established a free-standing boutique in New York’s premier luxury store, Bergdorf Goodman. Their antique and estate jewelry department continues to occupy a select location on the store’s seventh floor. As the third generation of the family to lead Kentshire, Matthew and Carrie continue to refine the gallery’s founding vision: buying and selling outstanding jewelry and objects of enduring design and elegance. Additional resources:
A rare Iron Age style antique gold torque of engraved design with reeded terminals, in 14k. Michelsen of Copenhagen. See Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe's Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria, The British Museum Press, 2010, pg. 438 (plate 432) for an image of a nearly identical necklace as presented by Denmark to Princess Alexandra on the occasion of her marriage to Prince Albert of Wales. A Retro gold bracelet of ribbon loop design with alternating smooth and fluted links, in 18k. Signed Cartier-Paris. An Art Moderne clip brooch in the industrial style set with a cushion-cut aquamarine, in platinum and 18k white gold. France.
A gold, onyx, and chrysoprase ring comprised of curved, graduated onyx plaques separated by a chrysoprase plaque, centered by a domed gold fastener with gold eyelets, in 18k. Aldo Cipullo for Cartier.
A pair of antique rose-cut diamond earrings of foliate design terminating in drop diamond pendants in diamond surrounds, in sterling silver and 18k gold. France | |||
| 06 Sep 2023 | Episode 202 Part 1: Why Curiosity Is the Driving Force Behind Kristin Beeler’s Career | 00:20:52 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kristin Beeler
Kristin Beeler joined the faculty of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee, Scotland UK in 2023.
From 2002-2023, she was Professor of Art and Coordinator of Jewelry and Metalwork at Long Beach City College in the Los Angeles, California area. She is native to the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Appalachia and is a second generation graduate of historically interracial and craft-centered Berea College receiving a BFA in Crafts and Applied Design with a minor in Philosophy (1989). Her Master of Fine Arts in Jewelry from the University of Arizona (1994) was followed later by post graduate studies at Alchemia Jewellery School in Florence, Italy (2011) and Atelier Rudee, Bangkok, Thailand (2013).
Solo exhibitions include Integumentum 2021 at Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, Maryland, Archive of Rag and Bone at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Phoenix, Arizona (2016) and Beauty and Other Monsters at Velvet da Vinci Gallery, San Fransisco, California (2007).
Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryjourney.com
Transcript:
After two decades as a professor at Long Beach City College, artist and jeweler Kristin Beeler is heading back to school herself at Dundee University in Scotland. Although any international move comes with fear, Kristin has relied on a sense of curiosity to keep pushing her work froward. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why certain artists are drawn to metal; how she tries to create context through her work; and why some of the most important lessons she learned were from submitting her work to competitive exhibitions. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. If you look at Kristin Beeler’s jewelry, she looks like she’s a risk taker, but that’s not really true. She has followed a well-worn path, but she also has risk in her work. She received her master’s and then became a professor of art at Long Beach City College. She teaches both metal arts and jewelry. She is the Coordinator of Jewelry and Metalwork for Long Beach City College. She has been at the college for at least seven years, and this is her last term there.
She is not afraid to put herself and her work out there, as evidenced by the many exhibitions and jury situations she has been in. She’s not afraid for others to judge her work, but her biggest risk is upcoming. That is to be a lecturer in the metal arts department at the University of Dundee in Scotland. We’ll hear more about this today. Kristin, I’m glad to have you on the podcast.
Kristin: I’m so glad to be here, Sharon. Thank you.
Sharon: It’s great to have you. First, what are your trepidations about going across the world?
Kristin: It is an adventure for sure. I’ve actually been at Long Beach City College for 21 years. This was my 21st year, so it’s been quite an adventure. It’s been an amazing time to spend with the students and an impressive faculty at the school. It’s been an incredible privilege, and it’s also given me the opportunity to develop a really strong program. Our jewelry entrepreneurship program is only a few years old, but we’ve been able to grow exponentially because of it.
It’s interesting going to Scotland. I’ll be joining the faculty of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and the Jewelry and Metal Design Program. It’s an amazing faculty there. They’re one of the top design schools in the U.K. They have an amazing track record, and the faculty has also been working together for a long time. Here, I know where the funders are. I know where the suppliers are. I know where the galleries are. There, it’s all going to be new. I don’t know the funders. I don’t know the suppliers. I don’t know the metrics well enough. All these things are going to be so sparkly and new, so I hope they’re patient with me.
Sharon: Did they come to you, or did you go to them?
Kristin: It’s an interesting story. I have put quite a lot of time into the program at Long Beach City College. As I said, it had grown exponentially, and a lot of that growth happened during the pandemic. There was a lot of extra work that had to be done, and last fall, I took a term off to recover. I was a bit worn out. I was really burned out. So, I took a term off and had some time to think about what I wanted to do with myself after teaching for 20 years. I realized that what I wanted to do was go back to school. I was a bit jealous of my students because they were having such a good time. I’d always wanted to get a Ph.D., so I started talking to programs in the U.K. and EU because there are no practice-based Ph.D.s in our field in the U.S. I was looking for programs that I might be able to start either while I was still teaching and going into semi-retirement or after I retired.
I had had a wonderful conversation with Sandra Wilson at the University of Dundee. They have a wonderful Ph.D. program in jewelry. There are a number of programs they have practice-based Ph.D.s in, and I had a wonderful conversation with her. She was very supportive. I was getting ready to start putting together an application when they posted a full-time lecturer research position, so I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll try that.” I applied for the position and didn’t hear anything back for quite a long time. The university processes have their own pace. I think it was a Friday when I got an email saying, “Can you come and interview next Thursday?” There wasn’t even time to ask if I could do a Zoom interview. I talked to my family, and they said, “Just go.” I left on Tuesday, interviewed on Thursday, and they made their first offer on Friday and I accepted it. It was serendipitous that I happened to be looking at Sandra Wilson’s Instagram. I’d go for days and weeks, months without looking at Instagram, and I happened to look on the right day and see the post about the position opening. Now I’m surrounded by packing boxes.
Sharon: Wow! When you say a practice-based Ph.D. or a practice applied Ph.D., what does that mean and how is it different?
Kristin: Normally we think of Ph.D.s as being text-based. You present a dissertation that is all textual, and you have a verbal defense of the Ph.D. A practice-based Ph.D. can have other formats. Mine will likely have a text component, but also the practice, the work we do in the studio is part of the work for the Ph.D. That is a huge portion of the research. It requires very particular methodologies for approaching that research, but it’s an approach that isn’t very common in the U.S. It’s much more common in the EU, U.K., Australia. I can’t remember if there are any in Asia, but it’s not found that much in the U.S., a practice-based Ph.D.
Sharon: Yeah, you think of a Ph.D., at least the way I know it from the U.S., as “piled higher and deeper.” You’re going to be in a big city. It’s mostly what happens.
Kristin: It’s a wonderful acknowledgement of the actual work and contribution that artists make as opposed to, “Anybody can do that.” When you start to follow a line of inquiry to a very deep level, it allows so much more to unfold. You are able to connect with people who are doing similar work in different fields. I will be talking to people in the life sciences department. They have one of the top life sciences departments in the U.K., so I’ll be able to work with them to do some overlap. It provides some really interesting opportunities for study, which I’m very excited about.
Sharon: How long would it be if you walked in the door and were accepted? How long of a program is it?
Kristin: It’s difficult to say. Three to five years would be normal, I think. As I’m teaching, it’s actually a part of my job to do that research. I’d be similar to someone who’s in the lab doing research for a research lecture. So, I don’t know how long. We’ll see.
Sharon: I had trouble pinning it down because you’re described as professor of metal arts and jewelry arts, applied design and an artist, so I didn’t know. What are you, in a sense?
Kristin: I would hate to have to pick one of those things. We’re very multilayered creatures, aren’t we? I love making tacos, but I’m not someone who only makes tacos. I think that as makers we have our preferences, but just depending on what someone’s interests, inclinations or curiosities are. I primarily work in jewelry because it is a method of approach, a method of inquiry, but what is interesting to me is the relationship to the body, and I particularly enjoy the history of it, its attachments. It has a lot of layering that I find really interesting, but when I get bored or stuck on a problem, I’ll make a garment or I’ll do drawings. It’s not part of my practice to only do one thing. Not everything is a piece of jewelry, even though that’s what I am primarily known for.
Sharon: How does that fit with metal arts?
Kristin: My training is in metal. Understanding both the properties and the way metal works is an interesting challenge. It’s what I teach the most; working with metal and how to master it and develop skill bases. In my own practice, metal is a part that is foundational, but not complete.
Sharon: Do you see a difference in the way the mind works for the students who are more interested in jewelry versus those who are interested in metal? For instance, how do you differentiate? Is there a way the mind works that’s drawn to metal versus a different mind for somebody drawn to jewelry arts or a different area?
Kristin: A teacher that I had a long time ago said, “People who are drawn to metal are people that like a little pushback. They like a little resistance.” Metal has its own logic, and you have to understand and follow that logic. Clay, for example, has a lot of process. It’s very technology driven, but it also can be very intuitive. Painting can be very intuitive. You can go backwards and forwards. With jewelry, there’s a massive skill base that is required technically, so the students who like the idea of working with metal in particular love that challenge. They are turned on by that challenge. They light up when something goes right, and sometimes they even light up when things go wrong because now they have more information.
For students who are attracted specifically to jewelry, often that is a gateway. They’re attracted to the idea of jewelry. Sometimes they’re attracted to the idea of being able to actually make a living in the arts. One of the important things that jewelry has to offer is that you can actually support yourself with your design and art skills. Sometimes, once they get to know the properties of working with metal, they may love it or they may not. Often, they do. Often, they’re really compelled by it. Sometimes they have to find their own way to work with materials that have more flexibility in the processing. You’re right. They are different mindsets in that way.
Sharon: It seems like there would be.
Kristin: You’re absolutely right.
Sharon: You’ve been there for 21 years at the college. Did you pick up your master’s and your Ph.D. while you were teaching, even though some of it’s an applied Ph.D.?
Kristin: I will be starting my Ph.D. in Scotland. That’s part of that plan. I did my Master of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona. That program has closed now. Michael Croft was my primary graduate advisor. Michael is a very gifted educator, fierce when we were in graduate school, but incredibly knowledgeable. He’s not someone whose work you’re going to hear a ton about because he doesn’t aim for the spotlight. He’s a quiet guy, but he made a name for himself in the 70s. He's a very highly respected jeweler and educator.
His partner is Eleanor Moty, who you may know of. Eleanor Moty was a consistent presence. Even though she was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she was a consistent presence in Tucson, where our graduate program was, so she had an influence there. Arizona at the time had four graduate programs in jewelry and metalwork. There was a very strong jewelry and metalwork community in Arizona up until the early 2000s. All of those have either changed or closed in the meantime. So, my inculturation to the jewelry and metalwork community was formed inside, literally, a crucible of the desert of Arizona. There was a very strong community.
In some ways, my undergraduate education was equally or possibly even more formative than my graduate education. I went to Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. It was a small, private, liberal arts college that is one of the very few work colleges in the U.S. That means every student who goes there works for the school and, in exchange, pays little or no tuition. It is one of the top schools in that region, particularly in the south. It’s an amazing place.
There are a couple of things about it. It was founded by abolitionists in 1856 and since that time has had a history of coeducation. It was the first coeducational college in the south. Since that time, that has been its mission: to educate everyone equally. It has also been one of the very few schools that has its own crafts program. The students actually work in college-run craft industries. There is a huge ceramics industry; there’s a huge weaving industry. They closed the jewelry industry right before I got there. The work is made by students, produced by the school and sold by the school, and it’s sold nationally. It has a new designer residence program. Stephen Burks has been the first designer in residence. He is connected to Berea through Design Within Reach and a chair manufacturing company—
Sharon: Herman Miller.
Kristin: Herman Miller, thank you. The program has a tremendous amount of reach, and that program had a huge influence on how I think about craft and community.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to The JewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 27 Jan 2020 | Episode 58: Vintage Engagement Rings & Antique Jewels with Suzanne Martinez, Co-Owner of Lang Antique & Estate Jewelry | 00:23:55 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Suzanne Martinez: Suzanne is a highly credentialed senior gemologist, jewelry appraiser, jewelry historian and the curator for Lang Antique & Estate Jewelry, offering the largest collection of fine vintage engagement rings and antique jewels to be found under one roof. She joined Lang in 1992 and actively buys from sellers all over the world. Suzanne is also the founder of Lang’s Antique Jewelry University. Among her many jewelry credentials, include: Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America; GIA Alumni Chapter co-president since 1992; National Association of Jewelry Appraisers, Senior Member; Accredited Gemologists Association, Accredited Senior Gemologist; National Association of Jewelry Appraisers, Senior Member. Additional resources: | |||
| 11 Apr 2023 | Episode 190 Part 1: How Gallerist Thereza Pedroza Introduces Contemporary Jewelry to Art Lovers | 00:24:14 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Thereza Pedrosa
Thereza Pedrosa (Rio de Janeiro, 1985) is an art historian, independent curator and gallery owner. She graduated in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice with a thesis on art works on paper belonging to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. She continued her studies and obtained a MA in Management and Conservation of Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice with a thesis on the use of niello in contemporary European jewelry. In 2009 she collaborated as assistant registrar at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, cataloging all the museum’s works on paper. Her work led to the exhibition Revealing Papers: The Hidden Treasures of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, for which Thereza was the scientific coordinator (Lucca Center of Contemporary Art). Since 2011 she has been working as an curator, creating exhibitions, catalogues and projects for artists and galleries in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France and the Netherlands. In 2012 she founded the blog Beautiful People Live Art, dedicated to art, design, architecture, photography and art jewelly. In 2019 she established with her business partner Elinor Garnero a contemporary art gallery with a focus on art jewelry, the “Thereza Pedrosa Gallery”. In 2021 she joined as an expert the examining committee of the Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School in Florence. She brings a genuinely international perspective to her curatorial activity also thanks to her residencies in Switzerland, Germany and, since 2015, the Netherlands. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: For Thereza Pedrosa, no form of art is more important than another. At her gallery, contemporary jewelry, sculpture, paintings and other fine art are all given equal standing, and she’s helped numerous art collectors discover jewelry for the first time. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why contemporary jewelry is still unknown to most art collectors and why that should change; how she balances raising children with owning a gallery; and what she discovered at this year’s jewelry fairs. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today, my guest is Thereza Pedrosa of Thereza Pedrosa Gallery. Thereza is speaking to us from Asolo, Italy—I don’t know if I said that right—which is near Florence. It’s supposed to be a very lovely medieval village. She and her partner and friend, Elinor Garnero, founded the gallery in 2019, and it features art and art jewelry. Thereza has been in many countries studying, curating and exhibiting. She just took part in Schmuck, which, if you don’t know, is one of the world’s biggest art jewelry exhibits. Everybody in the world is there. We’ll hear all about her jewelry journey today. Thereza, welcome to the program.
Thereza: Thank you for having me, Sharon.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you considered artistic? Are people surprised when you tell them what you do?
Thereza: I think someone who knows me from when I was a child would not be surprised that I work with art and jewelry right now. I grew up in the family as an artist. My father is an artist, and I always went with him to exhibitions and art fairs. I loved to go with him when he was making Murano glasses and blown sculptures. I would go to the studio with him and take photos of him working. So, I think those who saw me growing up will not be really surprised that I love art and work with art.
Sharon: It doesn’t sound surprising at all. I didn’t know you were really exposed to art. Tell us about your jewelry education, then. How did you learn about jewelry?
Thereza: I started out with my father because he’s a plastic artist, mainly a painter and sculptor. Sometimes during the 55 years of his career, he made Murano glasses, sculptures, mosaics, paper, iron, brass; any kind of media. Around 2000, when I was around 15 years old, he made a collection of jewelry. To make this collection of jewelry, he bought a machine for soldering. He did this beautiful collection, and then he moved back to painting and other kinds of sculptures. I asked him, “Well, you have the machine. You know how to do it. Why don’t you teach me how to solder so I can make some jewelry for myself?” He taught me the basics and I made some jewelry for myself. Then some design shops sold my pieces and they wanted to start selling them. This is how I started to get involved with contemporary jewelry.
I grew up less than one hour from Padua, where there is a really important jewelry school, the Selvatico, where Babetto and Pavan and many others are from. Growing up, I saw some exhibitions of Giampaolo Babetto and Annamaria Zanella. I saw their works and I got to love their work. That’s how everything started.
Sharon: So, you didn’t learn classically, right? You didn’t go to school and learn. That’s not the way you learned.
Thereza: No, when I needed to decide what to study in university, I said, “O.K., I want to stay in the field of art,” but I didn’t see myself as an artist. I didn’t think I had it in me to make things except for designing my jewelry. I said, “O.K., what can I study? If I study history of art, then I can go into teaching; otherwise, what do I do with history of art?”
In Paris, in the university environment, there is this interesting course called conservation of cultural heritage. In conservation of cultural heritage, we had exams about the laws of art when you work in a museum or salon. Nationally and internationally for an exhibition, there are a lot of laws involving how long the piece can stay away from the museum and these kinds of things. I studied chemistry of conservation for paintings, drawings, and sculptures, and museography, which is what kind of temperature you need in the rooms and the lighting. So, everything you need for the economics, how to find funding for the exhibition. Everything you needed to be a curator or a registrar in a museum, that was what I studied.
I thought I would love to work in a museum as a registrar because I’m shy. I didn’t see myself as a curator that needed to be the first in line. I said, “A registrar, he’s more in contact with the art pieces, but a little bit in the background.” That was my dream at the beginning, but then I started moving around so much that it was difficult to find a permanent position in a museum. I started organizing exhibitions as a freelance curator for galleries in collaboration with some museums.
Sharon: You did that on your own with a museum? Did you come up with the idea, or did they come up with the idea for the exhibitions you did?
Thereza: The exhibition I did was a coordination with the drawings of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a collection in Venice, and I did the coordination with the Lucca Center for Contemporary Art in Tuscany. The idea for the exhibition was mine, and it was based on my bachelor’s thesis. When I was writing my bachelor’s thesis, I decided I wanted to write about the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, but I wanted to write about something new. I told them I wanted to write about the drawings, and I asked if could study the archives. They said, “Yes, I’m sure it would be lovely, but we never made a catalog of the drawings of the museum.”
So, my thesis became the cataloging of all the drawings in the museum. It covered how they arrived in the museum, how they received them as a gift from the artist. She bought them from the artist or from some galleries, so that’s how they arrived in the collection. I also cataloged which exhibitions they participated in, which books they were published in, the state of conservation, everything you needed to know about the drawings of the collection. Then we made the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which was at the Lucca Center of Contemporary Art and was only about the drawings of the museum.
Sharon: That sounds like a huge thing, the Peggy Guggenheim drawings. How many were there?
Thereza: I think there were around 80. More than 70, around 80. Drawings are sometimes considered less important artworks, but I’ve always loved paper media. Actually, in the collection, there are many works that are not just a preparation for a big painting. They are actually works in themselves. Klee, Kandinsky, many important artists from the collections also have works on paper. It really was a beautiful collection.
Sharon: How did you come to own an art gallery, you and your friend Elinor? How did you start an art jewelry gallery, I should say. What happened?
Thereza: I was organizing exhibitions for other galleries. I opened some exhibition galleries in Germany, in the Netherlands, in France. At the same time, I was still making my own jewelry. Then I got pregnant with my first son, and I decided to take a break from my jewelry to organize exhibitions. When my second child, my daughter, was around six months old, Elinor and I were talking and I was saying, “I would love to open my own gallery one day, but I cannot do it now because my kids are two and six months old.” They were too young, and I wanted to be there for them. I said, “I can do it in the future, but right now, I want to be flexible to stay with my kids. If I open a gallery, I need to be there.”
She told me, “Well, I don’t feel like I can open a gallery alone,” because her background is architectural. She was in architecture and then art management, but she didn’t study history of art as a main course. She was thinking, “O.K., I could be at the gallery, but I don’t feel like I can organize the exhibitions myself and do everything by myself.” So, we complement each other very well because she’s the one to actually stay at the gallery all the time, and I am the one that organizes the exhibitions and makes the selection of the artists for the gallery and the online shop, the online website. She’s the one who stays at the gallery and deals with the collectors.
Sharon: How did you come to art jewelry? It doesn’t sound like that was your initial interest. Did your father do art jewelry when he showed you jewelry? Would you call it art jewelry?
Thereza: Yes, he was an artist that made jewelry during some periods of his life, like many other artists like Picasso and Talbert. It was not their main thing, but between other things, they also made some jewelry. Also, in 2012, I opened a blog. The name was Beautiful People Love Art.
Sharon: Beautiful People Love Art.
Thereza: Yes, Beautiful People Love Art. I went on with this blog for seven, eight years. The main thing of the blog was to show how all forms of art are important and interconnected. All sides are the same thing. I don’t see drawings as less important than paintings, or sculptures as more important than jewelry. I think they are all important, just different media. When I opened my own gallery, I decided we would be an art gallery. We’ll have paintings and sculptures, but I was already showing a lot of contemporary jewelry with my blog.
I fell in love with contemporary jewelry while I was visiting Schmuck and Joya Barcelona and getting to know the artists. Actually, when I was finishing my master’s degree, I wrote a thesis about contemporary jewelry and the use of niello in contemporary jewelry. I got in contact with many artists, Giampaolo Babetto, Annamaria Zanella, Phillipe Cizetta. I got to know the field better and I really fell in love with it.
When I decided to open my open my own gallery, I wanted contemporary jewelry to be part of it. I truly believe the contemporary jewelry field should be more open. Not a niche, but more open to art lovers in general. I think to be an art gallery, it helps to make contemporary jewelry be known to people that love art. Really often, they don’t even know that contemporary jewelry exists. So, with the gallery we try to get the field of contemporary jewelry to be known outside of the field and the collectors of the field, to get it known to art collectors, design collectors, people that love art in general.
Sharon: Do you find a lot of resistance where people say, “I like the art, but the jewelry is just jewelry”? What do you find?
Thereza: We find everything. My experience at Schmuck was really interesting in this way, because we organized a contemporary jewelry exhibition with 15 artists we represent at the gallery. We were guests of Petenbone Auction House. They were having an auction week with design and glass, so a lot of people that were coming during the week weren’t there for the contemporary jewelry exhibition. They would just come inside the auction house and look at the jewelry and go out. There were people coming to see the purview of the auction house and the design and glass. They were just there to see the pieces of the auction and go out without looking at the jewelry.
But there were also a lot of people that came inside to see the jewelry, and they looked at me and were like, “Oh my God, these Murano glass pieces are amazing,” or “Look at this piece from the 70s or this lamp from the 60s. There are so many beautiful pieces here.” There were some people that came to see the purview of the design auction and discovered our exhibition, and they were like, “Oh wow, we’ve never seen contemporary jewelry before. We didn’t know it existed,” but they asked a lot of questions and were interested in understanding the different artists. There are some people that collect one kind of thing, and they want only that. Then there are people that love art in general and get excited about everything. It was very nice last week to see people going around and discovering contemporary jewelry or glass and design. It was a good mix.
Sharon: How do you choose your artists? When you have an exhibit, how do you decide which ones to have?
Thereza: For example, last week, we had an exhibition for Schmuck. We represent around 45 artists at the gallery, but we had limited space to show pieces. I wanted to show them as well as I could. I also wanted some space so you could enjoy each piece and show a little bit more of each artist, so even if you didn’t know that piece, you could have an idea of his work. I decided to invite 15 artists and not bring all the artists we have at the gallery to permit people to enjoy the ones with small pieces and finalize the decision about, “O.K., I want to show a little bit of what we have at the gallery.”
It was the first time for us at Schmuck, so I invited some artists that are really well-established, who showed that we have masters of the field. I also wanted to show that we have young artists with careers and artists that work with traditional materials, and others that work with different materials like paper or food or plastic, resin and anything else. I really liked the mix. I don’t like to show all pieces from the same artist here and five pieces of the other artist there. I like to mix them, and I like to have a dialogue between the pieces. I wanted the artists of the exhibition to have harmony when you saw it together. That was the important thing I wanted to get across with the exhibition, and I hope people enjoy it.
Sharon: It sounds like they would enjoy it and be exposed to things they wouldn’t see a lot. Tell us a little more about who buys from your gallery.
Thereza: All kinds of people. We have contemporary jewelry collectors that love contemporary jewelry, and they come back all the time nationally and internationally. We work in an area where there were many important contemporary jewelry galleries in the past. In the last 10 years, they all closed. They closed more than 10 years ago, because the gallerists retired one after the other. For example, in Padua, there aren’t any galleries specializing in contemporary jewelry anymore. We have a lot of collectors that live there who don’t have a gallery close by anymore to find contemporary jewelry, so now they come to us.
We also have art collectors that love paintings and sculptures. They come inside to see the paintings, but then they discover contemporary jewelry. They get involved with contemporary jewelry and start buying contemporary jewelry also. That’s very nice. We like it when that happens.
Sharon: When you say people are collectors of contemporary jewelry and art, are they people who might say to you, “I want a Babetto piece. Call me any time you get one,” or do they just come in and look around?
Thereza: Both. Sometimes there is someone who is really looking for a Babetto piece, and they come to us because they are looking for a specific piece or a specific artist. We also have collectors that just come inside because they want to have a look, or they come every two or three months to see what is new at the gallery.
With the internet, now we are working a lot online also. It happens often that whoever comes to the gallery was already checking our website, especially our Instagram page. So, when they come to the gallery—because we publish almost every day—often they come to the gallery and already know what they want to see in real life. They come and say, “Oh, I saw this artist and that artist on your Instagram page or on your website. I want to see this and that piece in real life and decide between them.”
There are people that come inside without knowing what they are looking for. There are people that come to have a look at specific pieces, and there are people that really collect. They decide before, “I want a piece of this artist,” and they come to see what we have of this specific artist.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 14 Dec 2020 | Episode 99: Capturing the Human Experience with Tiny, Wearable Sculpture with Art Jewelry Maker, Asagi Maeda | 00:22:25 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Asagi Maeda Asagi Maeda lives in Tokyo, where she makes jewelry and lectures on jewelry making at Jyoshibi University of Art and Design. She is fascinated by the notion of the city being a mass of boxes we can peer into and catch a glimpse of a stranger’s life. She’s translated this idea into her necklaces, bracelets, and rings, which feature tiny worlds. What delights her most about her creations is that people can both wear them as adornment and become part of the worlds they depict. Asagi has been included in solo and group exhibitions at Mobilia Gallery, SOFA Chicago, LOOT, the National Ornamental Metal Museum, and Dan Ginza Gallery in Tokyo. Her work is part of the jewelry collections at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and numerous international private collections. Additional Resources Stories on the planet - Newest work which must be exhibited at Mobilia Gallery right now Necklace (consists of 7 brooches, a pair of earrings and a pin) Sterling Silver, K18 yellow gold, Acrylic plate, Enamel, South sea pearl, Akoya pearls, CZ, Opal, Coral, Rock crystal quartz plates "Folding the Laundry" pendant. 2019. sterling silver (rhodium,k18 plates), amazonite, methacrylate resin
"An objet d’art for players" 2018. Sterling silver, k18, Akoya pearls. W88 x D 88 x H69 mm
"JOY" Necklace. 2007. Sterling silver, k18, enamel on fine silver, enamel, milky amber, white sapphire
"Escape from the routine life" Bracelet. 2002. Sterling silver, k18, acrylic glass, onyx, coral
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| 15 Jul 2022 | Episode 162 Part 2: Why Fair Trade Is the Gold Standard for Ethical Jewelry | 00:28:06 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Ute Decker Ute Decker, born 1969, Germany, lives and works in London, UK. The jewels of Ute Decker are described as “a powerful statement” that “sets a shining ethical example” (Financial Times). The Economist 1843 compares her “avant-garde sculptural pieces” to “swirling sculptures” while Christie’s simply calls them “wearable works of art”. Ute’s pieces are exhibited internationally and have won prestigious awards including Gold Awards from The Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council, UK. Public collections include the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; the Crafts Council, UK; the Goldsmiths’ Company, UK; the Spencer Museum, USA; Musée Barbier-Mueller, Switzerland; and the Swiss National Museum. As a political economist-turned-journalist-turned-artist jeweler, Ute Decker is a pioneer of the international ethical jewelery movement. She works predominately in recycled silver and was one of the first worldwide to work in Fairtrade Gold. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: When it comes to ethical jewelry, artist-jeweler Ute Decker is the real deal. She was one of the first people to use fair-trade gold when it became available in the U.K., and she has spent her career advocating for the use of truly ethically sourced materials in the jewelry industry. Above all, she’s proven that ethical can be beautiful: her sculptural works have won several awards and are in the collection of museums worldwide. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what fair trade means; how she approaches the creative process; and what makes an artist-jeweler. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today my guest is Ute Decker, talking with us from London. Ute is an artist-jeweler who’s known for her innovative method of sculpting, bending and twisting metal into three-dimensional, wearable sculptures. She works in fair-trade gold and recycled silver and is considered a pioneer in the international ethical jewelry movement. Welcome back.
So how did all of this lead you into recycled material? Was that something you decided you wanted to do, and that was it? How did it happen?
Ute: As we talked about at the beginning, as a teenager, I wanted to change the world. I was always quite environmentally mindful. Then studying political economics, working as a journalist, you think that is very far removed from being a creative, and at the time it certainly felt like a big break, but in hindsight I think it was an important apprenticeship I needed to take to become the jeweler I am today. As in political economics, you don’t just look at the piece and take it as art for art’s sake or design for design’s sake. You want to know the meaning, the context, the economic, the social, the political, the gender.
All those different histories and intersectionalities, that’s my training to look at those. As a journalist, your training is to ask questions, so when I started out making jewelry, I did ask questions. Like many people, I’ve seen the film “Blood Diamonds,” and I thought, “Oh well, thank god I don’t work with diamonds. I work with metals.” Then I started to look into gold, and the story is very similar to “Blood Diamonds” with gold. Of course, my reaction was, “I can’t possibly work with this kind of material. I can’t be part of the status quo. I’d have blood on my hands. It’s discretionary. It's something I’m making. There’s absolutely no need for those horrible stories.” So, I researched quite a bit and asked many questions about ethics.
In 2009, when I started, there was no information out there whatsoever. In fact, I was met with a lot of hostility. Once you start asking about the ethics of jewelry, you’re tainting the story because jewelry is sold as that beautiful, luxurious love, but it’s such a tainted story. So, in the jewelry industry, those questions were certainly not welcome. I was met with either belittlement, “Don’t you worry. Everything is fine,” or outright hostility. I think as a journalist that meant, O.K., if people avoid your questions, that means you’re asking the right questions.
I searched high and low and found a like-minded person who’s been very active in that field. I was one of the very first to work with fair-trade gold when it was launched in the U.K. It was together with Fair Trade and Fair Mined Gold. Those two organizations have now separated. I know in America more jewelers work with Fair Mined; in Europe, more work with Fair Trade, but it’s very similar standards. The main thing is it’s fully traceable. We know exactly where it comes from. I know from which mine in the highlands of Peru my gold is coming from. I know it’s not smuggled out from the Congo, supporting atrocities there. I know it’s not smuggled out of Russia or somewhere else. It’s fully traceable, every single gram. I’m registered with the Fair Trade Foundation in the U.K. The mine is registered as well as the importer, and the refiner is registered. We all have a number and we all declare how much we buy, and it’s fully traceable. As a smaller maker, I’m audited every two to three years. I have to be able to show every single invoice; every single gram, I have to account for. It’s being checked. It is quite bureaucratic, but that is the guarantee. The whole fair-trade ethos is trade not aid. It is about paying a fair price rather than the small-scale miner selling to middlemen, middlemen exploitation. It’s very much about dignity: avoiding child labor, more gender equality, environmental standards of not burning down the Amazon. Fair-trade gold and fair-mined gold is a little more expensive, but in the great scheme of things, it is worth it.
It’s also quite interesting that we started with just 20 jewelers. In 2009, we launched jewelry. All the other jewelers were also very small, individual jewelers. The entire industry said, “Traceability is not possible. Our gold is clean.” Well, where does it come from? “It’s clean.” But where? Traceability is impossible, we were told by the industry. Gold comes from all over the world, it’s then refined mostly in hubs like Switzerland or Dubai. The gold from all over the world comes through those hubs and then is distributed again all over the world. Gold has no identity, and they said it is absolutely impossible to have traceability. So, as 20 tiny, little jewelers, and unimportant jewelers in the great scheme of things, we gave the proof of concept that it was something that is possible. The entire industry no longer could deny that this was a possibility. Sometimes you get so disheartened thinking, “Whatever I do as an individual, what difference could it possibly make? It couldn’t be more than a drop in the ocean.” But the ocean is nothing but an accumulation of drops. We can change the waves. We can change. So, we have more power than we think we do.
Sharon: First, let me ask you: What is Fair Trade and Fair Mined? What is fair-trade gold?
Ute: I’ll answer both of them together because they started out together. It was called Fair Trade and Fair Mined gold. Later those two organizations separated, but they wrote the standards together, so they’re still very similar. When I say Fair Trade, you could almost consider it Fair Mined as well. They’re almost interchangeable. I think I did once read the standard. It’s pages and pages and pages of small print standards of environmental guidelines, of engaging with gender equality. It is about the minimum payments.
Quite often with small-scale miners, it’s not a job you do for fun. Artisanal sounds romantic, but it’s not. It’s a dollar-a-day, often horrible job, sometimes bonded labor, sometimes involving an awful lot of child labor. All of that is why the Fair Trade Foundation or Fair Mined works with the mine for a long time to come up to standard with certain environmental standards. They have to form a cooperative. We pay a premium that is then invested into community development. Women have a voice. Child labor is not allowed. Those mines are audited, and for their efforts they receive more money. It’s really enabling those miners to have more dignity, to live in a cleaner environment, to help protect the environment for all of us, and hopefully earn enough money for those children not to go down the shaft, but to go to school.
The question is, “Well, let’s just not use any gold at all,” which I also heartily agree with. But as we said, these miners almost subsist on a dollar a day, quite a few of those small-scale miners around the world. 100 million depend on that income, and it’s a poverty-stricken income. For us in the West to say, “Well, it would better if you didn’t do that,” is not going to work. It is helping those communities to work more environmentally friendly but also to earn more money to eventually get out of mining. It is a slower process. It’s not that we have all the answers. It’s a process of empowerment.
Sharon: How about the recycled silver you use? Do you only use recycled silver? How did Fair Mined lead you into only working with recycled silver?
Ute: Fair Trade and Fair Mines initially were only gold mines. When you mine gold, in the ore there is some silver, but it’s a much smaller percentage. So, there was availability of fair-trade gold, but very, very little of fair-trade silver. Of course, it’s much cheaper to work with silver, so there would be a much higher demand. I would occasionally get a few grams of silver. I think now the availability of fair-mined silver is a little bit better. In fact, I’ve been told that it’s quite good now, so I need to look into that again. It is a continuous journey, but at the time and until recently, there was not just enough availability of fair-trade silver. Otherwise, I would prefer to work in fair-trade silver.
Recycled silver—now we call it recycled because we’re all so green; we used to call it scrapping. So, we’ve always done that. We’ve never thrown away precious metals. For me, it is not necessarily an ethical proposition to work in recycled. It is a little bit better than nothing, but I wouldn’t say I’m working ethical because I’m using recycled materials. I think that’s almost the bare minimum we should be using.
But then we come back to your earlier questions about art jewelry, artist jewelry, ethical jewelry. I don’t like the term ethical at all, ethical jewelry. It seems to be a standard term now. Sustainable jewelry, it definitely isn’t sustainable. We’re using finite resources. Responsible is probably a better term. I quite like mindful, but then mindful is so occupied with other things, so you can’t use that term. So, I use ethical jewelry as a term because I think we all know what we mean by that, but I don’t particularly like the term.
Sharon: Do your clients care? When you’re having a showing or people call about your jewelry and you mention it, does it make a difference to them how you’re working, whatever you want to call it? Do they care?
Ute: Not as much as I would have thought. Not as much as I do. It is not what people call a unique selling point; it’s not. If you do make small wedding bands, I think young couples, especially younger people, are much more engaged in that sustainable question. For them it’s much more important. People find their way first and foremost because there is something that speaks to you about the forms I make. It’s only afterwards, when they look closer and they see the materials I use. I think it is a certain appreciation of individually made, sculpted pieces that are unique even when I make a series, because they’re all hand sculpted. I will never be able to make the same piece again, so even with a series, pieces are unique.
If that somebody goes to the trouble and cares to choose the best material possible, I think that is appreciated, but nobody comes to me to buy a ring because it’s made in fair trade. I would love to stop talking about this subject because I would love it to be normal, nothing special anymore, but after being met with so much hostility all those years ago in 2011, if you look at any website of jewelers now—especially high street—they all proclaim to have responsible sourcing, conflict-free diamonds. As a consumer, if you look, you think, “Oh, thank god all of it has been sorted.” I think our biggest problem now—because there are more and more responsible and ethical options available—is greenwash.
Sharon: Greenwash, did you say?
Ute: Yeah, greenwash. Greenwash means painting the status quo green, changing nothing, just making it sound green. Unless you have fully traceable, unless you know 100% where your materials come from, you can’t make those claims. For me, using recycled is not necessarily ethical because there are huge issues with recycled. I’m always asked about that. I put a whole section on my website with several articles: “Is recycled or fair mined better?” because a lot of jewelers want to do the best. Rather than answering that question each time, I put quite a few articles on my website.
Sharon: May I ask you this about your jewelry, about something you said before? It’s always seemed to me that if you’re doing a show, you’re putting your work out there for people to judge. “Yes, I want a ring like that,” or “No, it doesn’t appeal to me,” and they move onto the next thing. It must take thick skin.
Ute: Interesting question. You would think so. Before I outed myself, I made jewelry for myself for nearly 20 years. I made what I wanted to wear, what I enjoyed. For me, it was totally unimportant if anybody else liked it.
Sharon: Are the pieces you make for the shows pieces you like or pieces you want to make?
Ute: When I started out only making jewelry for myself, I didn’t show it to anybody. I made it for myself. It was out of interest and the creative joy of it. I wore the pieces, and it didn’t matter whether somebody liked it. Then I accidentally showed my work for the first time, and I thought, “Who else is going to like this? I love it and some of my friends do, but maybe they’re just being nice.” I did win a prize and things happened. It’s quite amazing, to my greatest surprise, that several of my pieces are now in several museums including the V&A. I would have never, ever thought so. I think as any creative, to be authentic, you can’t try to please everybody. You don’t want to please everybody. It’s wonderful that there are several people out there in the world who think that what I do speaks to them, but I’m quite happy for many people to just walk past.
Sharon: It doesn’t matter.
Ute: Yes, it doesn’t matter. There are some lovely older ladies who come. They giggle and say, “Oh, you couldn’t do the gardening with that one.” I love that comment. It’s still engaging, and they’re interested in the shapes. It’s so obvious it’s not for them, but they still engage in a way. Jewelry, for me, is a way of making connections. You can’t connect with absolutely everybody, but when it makes those connections, it's beautiful. So no, I don’t have thick skin, because I guess enough sparkling eyes gives me joy as well. I see artwork that others are enthused about, and it doesn’t speak to me. Maybe a few years later it does. So no, I’m not trying to please anybody. It’s a joy that there are many people I can share the work with.
Sharon: Your work is unusual, but if your work is not for gardening, as these women say, who is it for? Is it for younger people? Is it for people who appreciate the art and when they go garden, they’ll put it aside? Who is it for?
Ute: Every piece I make is a piece I want to wear. Maybe in a way it’s firstly for me, so I can keep making them. I sell my work to support my habit. Mostly the people who are drawn to my work are mature, mostly women, but also men. Mature people who are confident that come in all shapes, sizes, ages, everything, but who feel quite confident wearing a piece like the ring I’m wearing or the beautiful ring you’re wearing.
Jewelry can also be very empowering. You put on a piece, and here I am talking nonstop, but I can be quite shy. Being in a gathering of people, especially for me to go up to somebody, yeah, I dread being in groups of people. When you wear a piece, it allows other people to approach you. It gives that invitation to speak to you. It doesn’t say, “Hey, look what a cool piece I’m wearing.” It says, “Yes, I’m open to have a conversation.” It’s amazing how many doors wearing my jewelry has opened. Then you start a conversation, and it naturally flows. Coming back to the question, it is for confident people, but it’s also for non-confident people like myself. It’s both.
Sharon: I can see how it would be for confident people. I invite everybody to take a look at our website. We’ll have picture. It’s very unusual jewelry. I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much.
Ute: Thank you. That time passed very quickly, Sharon. Thank you.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 24 Feb 2020 | Episode 63: A Look into Copenhagen’s Thriving Jewelry Scene with Diana Holstein, Goldsmith & Partner at Emquies-Holstein | 00:16:56 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Diana Holstein: Diana Holstein has worked as a designer for Tiffany & Co., Ralph Lauren, Royal Copenhagen and Georg Jensen Damask, among others. In 2006, she trained as a goldsmith at The Institute of Precious Metals and shortly after, teamed up with designer Hanan Emquies to found Emquies-Holstein. The studio creates personalized jewelry with respect for modern tradition and an eye for renewal. In 2014, Diana was appointed Master of the Copenhagen Goldsmiths’ Guild. Additional resources:
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| 22 Oct 2020 | Episode 90: Design For Yourself First: Following Your Passion To Create Expressive Jewelry wtih Sylvie Corbelin Paris-based Fine Jewelry Designer | 00:30:01 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Sylvie Corbelin: Antiques dealer turned gemologist Sylvie Corbelin is renowned for intricate, exquisitely detailed designs that celebrate jewels in many forms. Antique and rare stones feature prominently in Sylvie Corbelin jewelry, delivering many designs that are truly one of a kind. Ethereal, graceful subjects such as butterflies are a prominent theme, expertly realized on striking mobile earrings or lifelike brooches. Visually stimulating and dripping with luxury elements, Sylvie Corbelin jewelry delivers statements that will be talked about for generations. She launched her eponymous fine jewelry brand in 2007 and today works out of her studio in the Le Marais district of Paris. Additional resources Photos of Sylvie's work:
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| 30 Nov 2022 | Episode 174 Part 2: What’s Next in Artist-Jeweler William Harper’s 50+ Year Career | 00:26:13 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About William Harper Born in Ohio and currently working in New York City, William Harper is considered one of the most significant jewelers of the 20th century. After studying advanced enameling techniques at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Harper began his career as an abstract painter but transitioned to enameling and studio craft jewelry in the 1960s. He is known for creating esoteric works rooted in mythology and art history, often using unexpected objects such as bone, nails, and plastic beads in addition to traditional enamel, pearls, and precious metals and stones. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum Craft+ Design, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Philadelphia, the Hermitage Museum, totaling over 35 museums worldwide. A retrospective of his work, William Harper: The Beautiful & the Grotesque, was exhibited at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2019. Additional Resources: William's Instagram Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Rather than stifle his creativity, the constraints of quarantine lockdown and physical health issues helped artist-jeweler William Harper create a series of intricate jewels and paintings imbued with meaning. After 50+ years as an enamellist, educator and artist in a variety of media, he continues to find new ways to capture and share his ideas. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about his creative process; why he didn’t want his art students to copy his style; and why he never throws a piece in progress away, even if he doesn’t like it. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. I’d like to welcome back one of today’s foremost jewelers, William Harper. To say he is a jeweler leaves out many parts of him. He’s a sculptor, an educator, an artist, an enamellist, and I’m sure I’m leaving out a lot more. Welcome back.
Yes. Is that how you got to the collection you did during lockdown quarantine?
William: Yes. I live in New York, and New York had almost a complete shutdown. My husband and I were afraid we were going to come down with a disease if we intermingled with too many people. We essentially were in lockdown or quarantine for several months. In that period, I decided I wanted to do something absolutely different from anything I had done before, and I wanted it to be politically motivated. So, just as Goya or Manet or Picasso did important paintings based on criticizing a political body—in Guernica, for instance, Picasso was painting the disruption of the small town of Guernica in Spain. Very powerful. I wanted to see if I could do that in jewelry, which was really strange, I have to say.
I had been playing for at least a year with the idea of trying to do a piece inspired by the expression “the tainted fruit of the poisoned tree.” That’s an obtuse way of approaching a piece of jewelry, but I thought of it in terms of the bottom of the tree, the poisoned tree, was our ex-president. At the top, there were elements that represented his monstrous children. You see my politics right there. It’s a beautiful piece. If you know the substance behind it, it will mean more to you, but you don’t have to. I wanted each piece to be beautiful. Now, my idea of beauty can be unlike a lot of people’s, but I think an artist has to know his guidelines for what he wants to be beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with the term “ugly” if it has an aesthetic purpose. I did this entire series on that idea.
Sharon: Does quarantine mean something besides—
William: No.
Sharon: Do people ever choose your pieces because of the political message?
William: In this last group, the Quarantine Pieces, there were 10. The first two I sold were to a collector who appreciated very much the political leanings behind it. You don’t have to know. If I had someone come in that I knew was a staunch Republican, I wouldn’t tell them what the motivation was. Well, maybe I would, and then I’d tell them they weren’t special enough to own one of my pieces.
Sharon: I was asking about quarantine, and you said you didn’t mean more. Let me ask you this. You taught for more than 20 or 25 years at Florida, right?
William: I taught for 21 years at Florida. Before that, I taught for three years at Kent State. Before that, I taught for three years in a Cleveland high school.
Sharon: So, it’s 30.
William: Yes. I came to the conclusion not too long after I started teaching in college that a lot of people were there and didn’t really know what they were doing. They were able to get tenure simply by hanging on long enough. But in teaching at a high school, it forced me to be very exact about what I wanted them to do, and yet allow them to have a lot of leeway to do anything original and outside the box. I consider those three years in high school to have been very important to me as a college instructor. I guess it worked, because at the end of my 21 years at Florida State, I was named a distinguished professor. So, I guess my teaching methods paid off.
Sharon: Do you think you can impart your ideas? It sounds like you imparted them to high school students, but can you teach your ideas?
William: No, I don’t want to teach my ideas. I want to teach a subject matter or a format in terms of a specific media. Maybe it’s a drawing problem. I remember early on in my first year of teaching, I came across a group of toadstools in the yard that were starting to shrivel. I picked up enough to give each table triple toadstools. I simply put them on a piece of white paper on the table, and I said, “This is your inspiration. Now, what do you do with it? And it has to be in pencil.” That was how I handled that situation. If a student’s work starts to look like mine, they were not a successful student and I was not a successful instructor.
I have always urged students to find their own voice. A lot of people can’t do that. They have mastered a technique, but if the technique leaves you cold when it’s finished, then it’s not very successful. I want some kind of emotional connection with whatever they feel when they’re creating or painting or making a piece of jewelry. I want to see that they have made a connection to what they are deep, deep down and have it come out in their work.
When I taught at Florida State, I was a very popular teacher. Students who were in engineering or communications or theatre would take my course and then decide they wanted it to be their major. I would tell them their father was paying far too much money for them to go to college to major in something that was going to be totally useless to them when they were out of college. I considered that a very important part of my teaching, because I didn’t want people getting bogged down. I didn’t need high numbers of students. As long as I knew they were taking it as an elective, I was fine with it. If said they wanted to major in it, I had to make sure I foresaw that they would have it in them to do well.
Sharon: When did you decide you could part ways and make a living from this?
William: That was a rather difficult thing to determine. It was a goal, but I didn’t know if I would ever get to it. In 1995, I had been represented for a few years by an outstanding New York gallery, Peter Joseph Gallery. He handled high-end, handmade furniture. It wasn’t anything you would find in a furniture store; it was artist furniture, and he decided he wanted to add me to his group. I was the lone jeweler within the group of artists in his gallery, and it was a gallery that only represented a small number of people. I think when I was in it, there were only 11 or 12 artists he represented. He was able to sell my work very well.
I always wanted to be able to just throw in the towel and see if I could do it on my own. In the spring of 1995, when I found out I was being named distinguished research professor, there were two other gentlemen in meteorology who were also named. I was always upset at how low my salary was in comparison to a lot of other people. In Florida, every library had to have a book of what every professor made and what they taught in terms of their load. The gentlemen in meteorology were making three times what I was making.
I spoke with my then-wife and said, “It’s time to take a chance and see if I could do it by myself.” I prepared myself the next day with a folder that had a resignation letter in it. I went to the vice president who was in charge of everything and said, “There’s a disparity of treatment with the three of us.” They were all making three times as much money as I was, and I at least wanted to be brought up closer to what I should have been paid considering what my title suggested. When I told the vice president that, he said, “Bill, you know you have the weakest team in the college. I can’t depend on your department to bring any enhancement of reputation,” and I said, “Well, in that case, I resign.” He looked at me quizzically, and I pulled out my letter and said, “Here it is,” and I signed it and gave it to him.
It was the only way I could do it. Then I was forced to go home and get a studio and do things I knew could sell enough to keep us at the same level we had been at when I had a university job. I should say the one cog in the wheel I was able to overcome—and people don’t necessarily know this about me, but in 1990, both of my retinas detached. I had to have emergency surgery. After several surgeries, my right eye was fairly stabilized. I don’t have much peripheral vision, but it was stabilized. My left eye, I’m totally blind. I’m halfway towards Beethoven, who wrote his last symphony without being able to hear the music. My one eye serves me well enough, obviously, to continue making rather intricate work.
Sharon: How come your jewelry is so different? It’s certainly not mainstream. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not mainstream. What would you say makes it so different?
William: I’m just special. It’s the format I’ve already described. I don’t want to make jewelry that’s like anybody else’s. I definitely don’t want to fall into categorization.
Sharon: Have you thought about doing production, more than one?
William: I tried it once and it was a total failure. My daughter had a boyfriend who knew someone who was the vice president of one of those TV networks where you could call and buy things. Carl said, “Bill, come up with a group of pieces, and I’ll see that so-and-so is able to see them so you can become part of the team.” I worked and worked and worked, and they weren’t me, and I didn’t think they were vanilla enough for the home shopping network to carry. So, that was the end of that. I knew it wasn’t within my set of talents to do that. You asked how it is—
Sharon: I can’t remember what I asked. Do you see people on the street, let’s say two women, or a man and a woman who wears a brooch and says, “Oh, that’s a William Harper. You must know him,” or “I know who that is”?
William: My funniest story about that is when my ex-wife and I were in Venice. It was a foggy morning, and we sat down in a café to have some cappuccino or hot chocolate or something like that. I had to turn my head because I don’t have any sight in the left eye, but from my left I saw a couple coming. They were chattering away, and then I could tell the gentleman was trying to describe to the woman the piece of very large, spectacular jewelry my wife was wearing. They passed close enough so I would hear it. They thought they were insulting me. The gentleman said, “You see that piece of jewelry? There’s a man in the United States named William Harper, much, much better than that.” I didn’t correct him. I thought it was a story I could hold onto the rest of my life. Actually, it was a compliment.
Sharon: It is. Why do you say your work is fearless? I would say it is fearless, but why would you say that?
William: The word I was trying to think of before was branding. I’m not a brand.
Sharon: Right, you’re not a brand.
William: But anyone who sees one of my works, if they’re remotely familiar with the field, they will know it’s mine. Many ladies tell me that they were wearing a piece of my jewelry and a stranger would come up to them and say, “Excuse me. That’s a beautiful piece of jewelry. Is it a William Harper?” Or maybe they didn’t even know who it was, and the wearer would say, “Yes, it’s Harper. Isn’t it beautiful?” That’s happened a number of times. I love when a lady reports that back to me.
Sharon: Is it fearless?
William: It’s not your everyday piece of jewelry that a lady’s going to wear. It is more potent than that. I also hope—although I can’t force it, obviously—when someone owns a piece of mine that they dress accordingly, where the outfit they have is secondary to the piece of jewelry. I have seen my jewelry on the lapels of a Chanel jacket, and that combination doesn’t help either one of us.
Sharon: I can see why that doesn’t work. When you’re deciding how to do something, are you thinking about how you can be different or fearless, or how the piece can be different?
William: I don’t worry about that. I have enough confidence in my creative ability to know that it will come out strange enough. Even within the art jewelry movement, my work is fairly in the category of not being a decorative pin, let’s say, that has no life to it, that’s put on somebody’s sweater. That kind of work becomes an adornment to the costume the lady is wearing. I want my work, as I said, to be strong enough that the lady is going to have to sublimate what she would like to wear and get clothes that are very plain.
For instance, the red blouse you have on would be a perfect foil for one of my pieces in navy blue or black. In a way, she is becoming like the wall that holds a beautiful painting. It’s the same way. Her body is the presentational element for my piece of jewelry to really perform.
Sharon: What have you been doing in terms of your jewelry since the restrictions lifted?
William: When I finished the tenth piece in the Quarantine Series, which was March 22, 2020, I had worked until 2:00 in the morning. I was very happy with what I had done. I had just finished the piece absolutely and I went to bed. The next morning, I woke and could not move anything in my body. I thought I had had a stroke, but after several days in the hospital, I was diagnosed with a very rare affliction. It’s an auto-immune disease called Guillain-Barre syndrome It’s not fatal, but it’s a menace because you lose almost everything, like walking. I couldn’t sign my own name, for instance. I had to go through a long process of physical therapy. I’m 95% functional, but I don’t feel that I’m ready to take a chance with a torch or deal with anything where I could hurt myself or, god forbid, burn down the apartment. The entire building would shake.
So, I tried to keep away from that, but in the process, I knew I had to do something. My husband and some close friends said, “Bill, you love to paint. You love to draw. You love collages.” So, I have spent the time since then doing very intricate collage drawings that became very, very colorful. They’re all 24x30, I believe, and they’re really very beautiful. About a month ago, I was giving a lecture at Yale, and when I showed these slides and drawing collages to the head of the department, he said, “I can see they’re absolutely you. They look just like something you would have done without looking like your jewelry.” That was the highest compliment he could give me. I really have enjoyed doing it. I think making those saved my mental health because I’ve had something to do.
It’s still hard for me to go to a museum because I can’t stand long enough to walk around, and I refuse to go in a wheelchair. I don’t want to do that. So, I’ve been restricted to what I can do in terms of being ambulatory. For instance, it was just this week that I finally, with the aid of my husband—who’s also a Bill, incidentally—to start using public transportation. Until then I had used car services, which over a month’s time, when you can’t do anything else and you have to go to doctors and physical therapy and stuff like that, becomes disgustingly expensive. I knew I didn’t want to keep doing that. It was eating into my savings. So, I thought, “O.K., Bill, it’s time to start using public transportation.” I’ve used it three times without any problem, but my husband is with me. I have trouble going up and down steps sometimes, so he wants to make sure I don’t trip and fall and get mangled by all the other troops coming out of the train that just want to get wherever they’re going to.
Sharon: But you give lectures still?
William: Oh, yeah, for a long time. Colleges, art schools, universities with art departments. We’re not really in session, so there wasn’t any lecture to give—
Sharon: I keep forgetting, yes.
William: —when all those things are shut down. The lecture at Yale—and that’s a pretty good place to start—was the first time I had done that for years.
Sharon: Wow! I want to say thank you very much because I learned a lot about you today.
William: Thank you, Sharon. It’s been lovely to be here with you.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 29 Aug 2023 | Episode 201 Part 1: How Anna Johnson’s Jewelry Connects Wearers to the Natural World | 00:25:39 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Anna Johnson Anna Johnson is a studio artist, craftswoman and educator residing in Asheville, NC. At a very young age she stumbled upon jewelry making and from then on it became not only her creative outlet, but a space of untampered personal expression that guided her through her educational, professional, and personal development. Equally taken by the depths of the natural world, organic elements began to be her main source of inspiration as her language in jewelry developed.
Today her work revolves around the question of where and why our culture perceives value by creating jewelry - often used to display worth, lineage, cultural hierarchy, believe affiliations, etc - with raw elements from directly from the natural world, unique and unpretentiously beautiful, in efforts of providing a fresh line of visual communication, a display of acknowledgment, consciousness, and in alliance with our natural world.
Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryjourney.com
Transcript:
Most people who are drawn to Anna Johnson’s jewelry for the first time have no idea it’s made from leaves, animal bones and other items from nature—and that’s exactly what Anna wants. Adapting techniques to highlight natural materials, she hopes that her jewelry will make people reconsider the world around us. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what attracts her to delicate materials and how she works with them; how she defines jewelry; and why she considers herself an artist first. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Anna Johnson’s jewelry is very different. It’s made of the bones of small creatures—for example, the mandibles of small reptiles—mixed with gems. You’re so taken with the designs that you don’t even realize what they’re made of. That’s exactly what happened to me. I loved the earrings I saw, and I have several pairs, but I didn’t realize they were made of different parts of animals until a jeweler said to me, “Oh, look what these are made of.” I didn’t even realize it.
Anna is a city girl who grew up in Appalachia and went to college in Boone. She’s won several international awards and has been exhibited in a lot of different galleries, but she’ll tell us all about that. Anna, maybe you can tell us. I know with Covid, it must have been really hard for you. Can you tell us about how you came to work with all these animal parts?
Anna: First, thank you so much for having me, Sharon. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to chat with you again. I’ve been working with lots of different elements from nature, and those have really spoken to the development of my body of work. I think of all the little bones in the same way I think of plants and the gems and minerals I use in my pieces. In looking at nature, the animals and their lifecycles, which would include the bones, are equally important to highlight. They’re also so beautiful and interesting in their shapes and textures and all of those things. The bones are also durable, especially when you pull the idea of taboo off of them. I feel like a lot of times when bones are used, they’re used in the context of the taboo or the macabre. I’m trying to take the focus away from that and put them in the same context of how I use plants and minerals, which are elements that you see highlighted and recognized as being beautiful more regularly. It’s leveling the playing field a little bit, if that makes sense.
Sharon: It makes a lot of sense. From what I understand or what I’ve seen, all of it is one of a kind, right? It’s not production.
Anna: I do have a body of limited-edition pieces I can repeat. Those are things I would be able to multiply. For example, I have a collection, my serpentine collection, and that whole collection was born from this little scientific specimen a friend of mine found in an abandoned high school in Boone, North Carolina, which is where I went to college at Appalachian State University. She had gone in and found all these specimen jars. There was a crawfish and hermit crabs. One of them had this perfectly coiled little snake. It was just incredible. She gave it to me, and I cast it because I couldn’t know if I wanted to have an infinite supply of tiny snakes. One, I have a great respect for snakes, and two, when do you come across an item like that? I was able to take a mold of the original casting and make multiples. Because of that, I was able to develop a limited-edition line of the serpentine collection. But for the most part, my work is one-of-a-kind pieces.
Sharon: That’s what I thought. You’re in a lot of different galleries, right?
Anna: Yes.
Sharon: I first saw you in Mora Gallery, but looking at your website, I see you’re in a lot of different galleries I’ve never heard of. Maybe you could tell us.
Anna: I’m in Mora Contemporary Jewelry in Asheville. I’m in Hecho a Mano, which is located in Santa Fe. I’m in the gallery shop at the Metal Museum located in Memphis, and I’m in Galleria Alice Floriano located in Brazil.
Sharon: Are you a distributor? Do you go to these places, or do they come to you?
Anna: These were places that came to me. I used to show at a lot more galleries, but because of how I produce and how I work, I can’t produce as quickly. So, I had to limit the amount of places because if I show somewhere, I want to have a strong, full collection of work there. The galleries I work with now are places where I value the relationship I have with the staff and where I know they want to know my work and share that with the consumers. It’s enabled me to focus on them and create that relationship. Because I make my living off of it, it’s important that I’m working with places that are going to actually connect the work with the clients. I really like the places I work with.
Sharon: What did you do during Covid? If you’re doing one-of-a-kind, did you line them up and hold them in your studio and then release them?
Anna: Somewhat. Covid was a funny time. It’s interesting, especially talking to creative people and people in general. Covid affected everyone in a bunch of different ways. Talking to different artists, I heard a lot of folks that dove in and thrived during that time and were able to be really creative. Unfortunately, it really shut me down. I think the brain is such an interesting thing. I heard it described this way: think of it as though you’re trying to sip through a straw, and stress and anxiety start to close that off. The creativity is what you’re trying to get through that straw, and all of a sudden it’s constricted. It’s funny. It’s weird, because I would have never thought it would have affected me in that way.
In a lot of ways, when everything was happening at the beginning, I was trying to find the positive in it and thinking that I was going to have this time I wanted. I could go in without having as many deadlines and having to focus on producing rather than the artistic and creative side of it. I was like, “O.K., this will be great.” Except that it shut that down for me. It was a struggle, but it was interesting. I think I was creative in different ways, but not necessarily where I normally expressed it. There was a lot of gardening. It was such a weird time, and I wish I could say I was able to go in and just produce, but that wasn’t the case for me. I feel like after that, I was with a lot of people also in that boat, trying to regroup and reprioritize and feel grounded again. I feel like it put a lot of things in perspective. Yeah, it was a weird time.
Sharon: When you talk about reprioritizing, did you say that gardening was more important than jewelry making?
Anna: No, because I wanted it. I would go in my studio and try. It’s just that things weren’t flowing the way they normally would. It was really frustrating, having to force something that normally flowed pretty well. Another thing was the structure of the business. I’m running a business as a creative person and having to do the business side of it, but also the business is based off my passion and that spirit and how much I believe in what I create. I kind of lost my train of thought. I think the gardening thing came in with things that I didn’t have time for before. Then when I started doing it, I really dove into that.
Another reason was that it was very much in the creative vein and still feeding the work. Because I do cast a lot of plants, I was able to focus on getting out of the studio and looking at different plants. A lot of plants I grow I am actually able to cast. I think it brings it full circle, that I can be working in my studio but also be outside. Examining and cultivating plants is also cultivating my work, in a sense.
Sharon: How did you come to the fact that you like plants and animals so much? Your videos and your website show you’re looking for these things. How did this come to you?
Anna: I think it’s just in me. As a small child, we would come up to the mountains a lot and go hiking, and I think it sparked a lot of my imagination. Actually, the other day, I was going on a hike in this area that I specifically remembered going to when I was a child. If you’re hiking, sometimes there are little offshoots; they might be little deer trails. I called them bunny trails. I would always want to go down them, and I appreciate my parents for being really tolerant of letting me follow my imagination, which in that sense would be following a little bunny trail. It was like, “Ooh, what’s going to be there?”
I remember this one trail I went on. I was walking, and I specifically remember following a little trail. It was a rock face, and I remember it being filled with tiny, little garnets. It very well could have been, because there are garnets found in this area. It was so magical. Of course, I loved hiking to the big landscapes and waterfalls and all that stuff, but I was really engaged with the tiny, little elements and animals. That was something I always liked. I just loved animals.
I was talking with one of my old assistants a couple of years ago. I told her this story, and she looked at me like, “Well, this makes sense of what you do.” This was probably in early elementary school. It was kindergarten, I think. It could have even been before that. There was a little baby robin that had fallen out of the nest, and my sister and I found it. It was in my backyard, and we took it in and were feeding it. You have to feed baby birds constantly, and my mom was helping. The bird stayed alive through the week, but then my sister and I both went to spend the night at friends’ houses. When we came back, the bird was not in good shape and ended up passing away. We buried it in my backyard.
I had three pet snakes when I was little. We would find lizards and frogs and all these little things. Sometimes we would keep them, and sometimes we would bring them to the nature center. Anyway, we buried this little bird. Some of my best neighborhood friends down the street were at the beach. When they came back, they had missed the baby bird, but I wanted to show Hannah, my neighbor. So, not understanding, I was like, “I’ll just show you,” and I started to dig up the bird. My dad comes and sees it, and he’s like, “Oh no,” and stops me. I just didn’t understand. Luckily, I didn’t open it because I probably would have been mortified, but it was interesting at that point.
I wonder if that had an effect in some way on what I make. At that point, there was this innocence of not understanding the separation between life and death and what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. There are these little events in people’s lives that might tick them or might not. Aside from that, I always had this fascination and this really strong imagination when it came to looking at these elements.
Sharon: So that’s how you got interested. Coming from a city girl aspect, were you afraid to touch some of these things or pick them up or look at them?
Anna: Going back to the snake thing, I was little; I just loved them. Now I don’t love them quite as much. I don’t seek out holding them, but I still have a tremendous amount of respect for these different animals. My mom was and still is a wonderful gardener. I used to go out and help her with gardening. There were worms in the yard, and I’m like, “Hooray!” I would get so excited about these different elements.
For some reason, it didn’t dawn on me to be grossed out or scared of those things. I just embraced that. My grandfather also always had a big vegetable garden, and I would be out there helping him. I think there was this fascination in watching the plants grow. Seeing this cycle really resonated with me. l never lost that. That fascination stuck with me, and I found this way to not only express and continue that curiosity, but also share it with others so people can be like, “Oh yeah, that is amazing. That’s not gross.” I feel fortunate that I found what I consider a gift. Hopefully I can share that excitement with other people in my work.
Sharon: What led you to incorporate it into jewelry?
Anna: That was another love as a small child. That’s something that always stuck with me. I’ve loved doing things with my hands ever since I was a small child, and jewelry was one of the first things that landed. I think it was because I could, going back to what I said before, enjoy focusing on these teeny, tiny little objects. I first started with macramé, little friendship bracelets, very simple things. Then I went to a bead store. At some point in elementary school, my brain exploded with the possibilities and all of these tiny, little curios that were filling space and how I could put them together.
I always liked to pick up different mediums. I went through an origami phase. I was playing with sewing, but jewelry always popped back up. It continued to challenge me and intrigue me. I could always make things that were different, which was exciting. There were textures and colors. It was engaging for me as a child, through adolescence and into adulthood.
Sharon: First of all, I want to know about Boone College. Were your professors or teachers supportive or understanding about what you wanted to do?
Anna: I went to Appalachian State University through their metals program. I went into the program of studio art knowing I was there to go into the metals program. I knew that coming into it. It’s in the Appalachian Mountains, so because of the area, it makes sense that I was pulling from nature for subject matter. So were other people in the class. I think if people are going to that school, they’re probably there in part because they love the outdoors.
Margaret Yaukey was my metals professor until she went on sabbatical. My senior year, Angela Bubash was my professor. I was very lucky to have had both of them. They were really supportive. The first casting class I took was when I discovered casting plants. It was so exciting because all of a sudden, I could take these plants I loved and actually put them into jewelry. Otherwise, they wouldn’t hold up; they’re not permanent. This was the amazing alchemy of turning plants into metal. That was so exciting.
Sharon: You are described in different places as an artist, a metalsmith and a jeweler. I didn’t understand how the artistry came in. What do you consider yourself?
Anna: I love this question, especially because I’m at a point right now where I’m looking at that a lot. The first thing I consider myself wholeheartedly is an artist. I came to that because I really consider art an expression. To me, it’s a language. It’s also a space for me to feel innovative, even if I’m working within a medium. So, because it’s such a form of expression to me, I consider myself an artist.
Again, I always like the little, tiny, small things. I love jewelry, and I am a jeweler for sure. I make jewelry, but I didn’t come to it to be a jeweler necessarily. I think it was the fascination of focusing on this small scale. I was also into miniatures and collections and things like that. I was attracted to that, so jewelry made sense because it’s the idea of little things that don’t have a function. They’re little tchotchkes. I feel like it doesn’t get enough credit for the potential it can hold, but jewelry has this innate sense of preciousness. I also have always loved jewelry. I always wear jewelry, so it was enjoyable for me to make something I could actually put on my body and bring out into the world.
I think jewelry is also interesting because it’s a craft. It’s considered a functional object, but it’s not functional in the same way that a cup is. It doesn’t serve a utilitarian purpose necessarily. It’s site-specific, which seems like that’s the function of it to me, but so is sculpture. If it’s a sculpture that’s meant to live outdoors, you have to accommodate the space it’s going into. With jewelry, it’s site-specific, but it can still be artistic and sculptural.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to The JewelryJourney.com to check them out.
| |||
| 15 Oct 2020 | Episode 88: A Century of Mexican Silver Jewelry Design: How Taxco Continues to Innovate with Dr. Penny Morrill | 00:33:36 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Penny Morrill: Dr. Penny Morrill has developed a history of modern Mexican silver, using primary sources. She participated in establishing the Sutherland Taxco Collection at Tulane University’s Latin American Library and has assisted in the development of modern Mexican silver collections at the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art and at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Morrill’s books include Mexican Silver, Silver Masters of Mexico, the exhibit catalog Mastros de Plata, and Margot Van Voorhies. She remains committed to supporting contemporary Mexican silver designs. Morrill’s other passion, colonial Mesoamerican art, is revealed in her monograph on a sixteenth century urban palace in Puebla, Mexico, The Casa Del Deán. Additional Resources:
William Spratling. Carved green stone shell necklace, cuff bracelet, earrings, and ring. c. 1940-44. earl Zubkoff, photographer
William Spratling.Stela 1 cuff bracelet. c. 1940. John McCloskey, photographer. Photographer: John McCloskey.
(second view)
Margot de Taxco. Encircled Lines. Necklace and bracelet #5652. Enamel on silver. c. 1955. Luisa DiPietro, photographer
Los Castillo (Margot Van Voorhies). Surrealist Fish. c. 1940-44. Luisa DiPietro, photographer | |||
| 07 Dec 2021 | Episode 140: Part 1 - Creating Modern Jewels with an Old-World Feel with Multiple Award-Winning Jewelry Designer, Cynthia Bach | 00:22:05 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Cynthia Bach Cynthia Bach has been a jewelry designer for more than four decades. After studying art in Munich, Germany, Cynthia received her BFA degree in art and jewelry making from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas, where she met and apprenticed bench jewelry making with master jeweler Jim Matthews. In 1989 Jim and Cynthia were recruited by Van Cleef & Arpels in Beverly Hills to run design and fabrication of the jewelry department. In 1991 Cynthia launched her own collection with Neiman Marcus nationwide. She has been the recipient of numerous awards from the jewelry industry including the coveted International Platinum Guild Award, the Spectrum Award, and the Couture Award. Her designs have been recognized and awarded by the American Gem Trade Association. She is internationally known and respected and in 2014 was invited to Idar-Oberstein, Germany to judge the New Designer Contest. In 2015 her work was part of the international traveling exhibition “The Nature of Diamonds” organized by the American Museum of Natural History and sponsored by DeBeers. An important piece of her work resides in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In 2019 Cynthia’s jewelry was featured in Juliet de la Rochefoucauld’s “Women Jewellery Designers”, a magnum opus book of women jewelry designers throughout history. Additional Resources: Photos: 18 karat yellow gold Crown Collection maltese cross crown ring with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds
18 karat yellow gold Flower Bouquet Collection flower hoop earrings with multi-colored gemstones
18 karat yellow gold Gitan Collection, filigree paisley's with diamonds and rubies
18 karat yellow gold Royal Charm Bracelet
Transcript: Cynthia Bach has loved jewelry for as long as she can remember. That enthusiasm is what helped her land an apprenticeship with master jeweler (and later, her husband) Jim Matthews, scored her a 25-year partnership with Nieman Marcus, and continues to fuel her desire to create timeless yet innovative designs today. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the old-world techniques that inspire her designs; her experience working with Van Cleef & Arpels, Neiman Marcus, and red-carpet stylists; and her advice for budding jewelry designers. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, our guest is multiple award-winning jewelry designer Cynthia Bach, who has been designing jewelry for 40 years. Her designs are in demand by celebrities and high-end jewelry showcases. She’s recognized for jewels that harken back to yesterday with a nod to the Renaissance. She is also included among an extraordinarily talented group of jewelry designers in the beautiful book “Women Jewelry Designers.” We’ll hear all about her jewelry journey today. Cynthia, welcome to the program. Cynthia: Thank you, Sharon, for having me today. I’m very excited to be here. Sharon: I’m so glad to have you, and I’m looking forward to hearing about your jewelry journey. Tell us a little about that. Did you play with jewelry when you were young, or were you creative when you were young? Go ahead. Cynthia: Sharon, since I was a little girl, I was very attracted to my mother’s jewelry and all the sparkly stones and the colors. I would take her costume jewelry apart and redesign it. I don’t know how old I was, very young, maybe six, seven, eight years old, and I always had this fascination with sparkly jewels. I can remember back in the day when W Magazine had the paper magazine that was like a newspaper, probably before a lot of people were born. We’re looking at probably the 80s. I remember looking at pictures of Paloma Picasso and Tiffany and Elsa Peretti and thinking, “I want to be a jewelry designer. I love jewelry.” Maybe I was 12, 13. That was in the back of my head. Sharon: So, it was early on. Cynthia: Early on. When I went to college, my grandmother, who was living in New York in a retirement home, wrote me a letter that said, “Cindy, make up your mind what you want to do because you have opportunities that I did not have as a woman.” She was born, I think, in the late 1800s, turn of the century. She said, “Decide what it is you want to do and do it.” I was taking art classes at the university, and I said, “I’m going to be a jewelry designer.” We didn’t have a jewelry department, but I was determined. I went to the sculpture teacher and said, “I want to learn how to make jewelry,” and he said, “I’ve never taught jewelry, but if you get six students together, we’ll form a class.” I recruited six students and we made a class and learned together. We would do casting behind the art building in the sand, like the old, ancient art of sand casting, where we would put our wax in a coffee can and dig a hole in the dirt and then pour. At that time, I worked in brass and copper because silver was like what working in platinum would be to me today. That was the start of a passion for me that I pursued. Sharon: You went to college in Texas if I recall. Cynthia: Yes. My father was in the military. He married a war bride. He was in World War II, and he met my mother in Berlin during the bombing of Berlin and he brought her back. She was a war bride, but she loved living in Europe, so my father always asked to be stationed in Europe. I spent 13 years growing up in Germany. I did a year of college in Munich, Germany, before I went to Texas to finish my degree. My father was stationed in Texas then. Sharon: How did growing up abroad in Germany influence you as a jewelry designer? Cynthia: My mother really focused on culture more than anything. I don’t know why. She wanted us to be very cultured and well-rounded and to experience good food. She would take me to the Stuttgart Ballet, and she’d take me to Berlin and say, “You’re going to see the Berlin Opera. It’s the best opera in the world.” Living in Germany, we would travel every summer and go to Greece or Italy and go to museums and concerts. In Europe, it’s much easier for everyone to enjoy the culture, the opera, the ballets because it’s affordable to everyone. For $30, you can go to the opera. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to become a member. Everyone is more a part of culture there, and of course Europe is so cultured because it’s so old. It’s hundreds and hundreds of years old, so you have that sense of history and architecture and the castles. It was a very creatively fertile place for me to grow up. I do equate that with a lot of my jewelry designs and my love of art and culture. Sharon: I can see the influence in your jewelry when you say that, because your jewelry has a lot that appears Renaissance-like, let’s say, and it has a granulation. Cynthia: Yes, I think it has a very European look to it. In 1991, when I officially became my own jewelry designer, creating my own vision and designs, it was based on medieval history and Gothic and Renaissance and crowns and all the symbolism I researched at the library. It really did harken back to a lot of what I saw growing up in Europe. Sharon: What is it that still attracts you decades later? You still have that sense in your jewelry, which is so elegant in many ways, in terms of having that European feel. What is it that still attracts you today? Cynthia: I think there are several things. One is that I look at a lot of jewelry books. One of my other passions is jewelry history and all the different designs throughout history: the 30s and 40s that were so industrial, when casting was invented back in the 40s, and the 50s, where jewelry could be made en masse, as opposed to when it was all hand-fabricated by the French and the Italians and the Russians. That was a turning point in jewelry. What was the question? You were asking why it is still European. There are two reasons. One is I study art jewelry history. Art history, jewelry history, they’re all related. The other is my husband who is my partner, Jim Matthews, who I met during college because I needed someone to help me set a stone. It was an amethyst, and I didn’t have the equipment in college. I heard about this amazing jeweler downtown in Abilene, Texas. I went from Munich, Germany, to Abilene to Beverly Hills. Anyway, he is just a genius. He started whittling wood when he was five years old. He ended up owning this jewelry store, and he would hand-carve the waxes making his own tools, which is very old-school and a dying art. I think it’s the combination of my love of jewelry history and my influences of being in Europe, and then his old-school jewelry carving and filigree and this amazing, intricate carving he could do. To me, it’s like Castellani or some of the Italian handwork that was done in the 18th century. I think it’s the combination of that that gives it that old-world Renaissance feeling. Sharon: Can you tell us about the division of labor you have now? You work together, so how does that work? Do you design and then he takes the designs? Cynthia: Yes, we have been working together since I was in college, so for over 40 years we’ve worked together. We were brought out here with Van Cleef & Arpels. He ran the design and fabrication of Van Cleef in Beverly Hills. He had 13 jewelers there on Rodeo Drive when it was still family owned. We were hired by Phillipe Arpels, and they brought us out here from Abilene, Texas, which to me was like, “Wow, we’ve been discovered. Now, we get to make jewelry for kings and queens in Hollywood.” We’ve worked together so long that we kind of read each other’s minds. It’s like we have ideas, and he has ideas. We have all these ideas on paper I’m sketching. I’m constantly sketching; I’m constantly thinking, and then he will take that and carve it in a three-dimensional space. Sometimes it changes a bit from two dimensions to three dimensions, but it’s almost like we have one mind. Like if you cut us in half, maybe neither one of us could function. I hope not. Sharon: You sort of touched on this, because you describe your career over and over. When I was reading about you and reading different biographies, you say that your career was a fairy tale. Can you tell me more about why you say that? Cynthia: Yes, I often say that it was a fairytale for me. First of all, I’ve wanted to make jewelry since I was a very little girl, and then I had the opportunity to start jewelry in college. They actually have an official department now, and I feel like the six of us instigated that. At that time, I just wanted to be a bench jeweler. I wanted to sit down and hand-make pieces. That’s what I loved. I loved fabricating with metal, not so much casting. Then I had the opportunity to start designing and working with Jim, and to have Van Cleef & Arpels call us and bring us out to Beverly Hills and start making jewelry for that milieu of clients. It was very Cinderella-like. My whole collection is about Cinderella. I even have a chain called the Cinderella necklace. It’s making everyone princesses and kings and queens and adorning your court, bedecking them with jewels. I don’t know if it’s because I’m creative and an artist, but I go into a fantasy when I’m designing. It’s a fantastical world. It doesn’t have anything to do with the day to day, but that is what creativity and art is all about. Sharon: Wow! It sounds like a dream. Cynthia: Well, it’s not always a dream. I call it a fairytale journey. I didn’t think when I was a young girl, and even when we owned our own store in Abilene and then went to Van Cleef & Arpels, I didn’t think I would actually be my own jewelry designer, Cynthia Bach, with my own vision, making my own jewelry. To me, that was like, “Wow!” That’s what I always wanted to do and now I’m doing it. But it wasn’t always easy because it’s hard. It’s a hard business. When Nieman Marcus bought my collection, it’s very demanding and competitive. There were many times where I wanted to throw in the towel, but I kept pursing, persistent, persistent. You get your obstacles in life. I think the most important thing, if you really want something, is to be persistent about it and never give up. It is a fairytale, but there are a lot of hard knocks. Sharon: It sounds like that’s what you would tell somebody starting out in the field, that they have to overcome the obstacles. Cynthia: Yes, because anytime you’re starting something, any vision you have, the beginning especially is going to be one obstacle after another. You need to break through it. Sharon: When you graduated, did you work with your husband-to-be before you married him and then the two of you had a store? Cynthia: Yeah, when I met him—Jim’s about 13 years older than I was, so I think I met him when I was in my mid-20s going to college studying jewelry. I went to his shop, and I was very enthusiastic about how much I loved jewelry and wanted to be a jeweler and make jewelry. Two weeks later, he called me and asked if I would like to work in his trade shop. He also had a trade shop that was doing repairs and sizings and setting stones and casting jewelry, which was probably my best education because it was all basic, hands-on making jewelry. One of the things I am really proud of is that I started out making jewelry from the basic beginning onto now making fine jewelry. He had opened a jewelry store with some other investors, and I was apprenticing with him. After college, all the investors left. I don’t know why. Maybe it was me; I ran them all off. Sharon: Probably not. Cynthia: We were the only two people left owning the jewelry business, but we were really the jewelers in it anyway. They were all businesspeople, and we were creative people. So yes, he opened the store before I finished college, and then after I finished college we worked together for three or four years before we married. Sharon: It’s impressive that you say you were a bench jeweler before you were a designer because there are not many designers that can say that. Cynthia: That’s very true. Jewelry’s one of the fields in art that you can actually sit and hand-make the pieces yourself and call yourself an artist, or you can just be a designer and have a collection made by a shop somewhere. Back in the old days, to be a jeweler or a designer, you had to actually make jewelry; you had to actually be a jeweler. But what also sets jewelry apart is the creative. You look at Fabergé, he had a whole shop of artisans working for him, and he just had this vivid, fabulous imagination making some of the most brilliant jewelry in the world. The creative is, to me, one of the most essential parts to a great piece of jewelry. Schlumberger had the creative. He didn’t sit down and make jewelry himself, but he knew the shape of a woman’s ear, and he would make this earring that would set his jewelry apart because of the shapes. He had such an eye for shapes. I always thought to myself, “Ultimately, what is jewelry? It is a beautiful shape to make a woman look beautiful.” That’s not necessarily true, but that’s how I look at jewelry when I’m designing it. How the wearer going to look in this piece of jewelry? How is it going to make her feel beautiful and look beautiful and enhance her beauty? Sharon: That’s interesting. I’m thinking about a few things. First of all, that Fabergé and Schlumberger had an eye, whether it was for a shape or they were just extremely creative. What do you feel you have an eye for? | |||
| 22 Mar 2024 | Episode 220 Part 2: Secrets from a Jewelry Brand Strategist: How Lionel Geneste Gets Jewelry Brands on the Map | 00:22:43 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Lionel Geneste Lionel Geneste is a fashion and luxury industry veteran, having worked for John Hardy, Givenchy, Catherine Malandrino and Randolph Duke in various capacities, from global marketing to communications and merchandising. He is also the founder of the gift-giving service b.Sophisticated. Born in Tehran to French parents, Geneste grew up as a modern nomad: Cairo, Istanbul, Lagos, Beirut, Paris are just a few places he once called home. And so he acquired an eclectic eye, at an early age, for the refined and urbane—only further encouraged by his clotheshorse mother and her like-minded friends. Additional Resources Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does an independent jewelry brand get noticed? For some lucky jewelers, the secret is Lionel Geneste. Lionel is a jewelry strategist and advisor who has launched iconic brands, shown new collections at Paris couture week, and gotten small jewelry artists into top stores. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how the jewelry industry compares to the fashion industry; the trends, opportunities and challenges jewelers are facing today; and how he chooses his clients (and why he has to believe in their work). Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, I'm talking with Lionel Geneste. He's an independent strategist in the jewelry industry. He does this after 15 years in fashion, so he knows fashion and jewelry. Welcome back. Let’s say people haven't seen the lines of these jewels or the independent jewelers that you represent. Do they say, “Oh, I haven't seen this. I want it for my store”? Lionel: Right. They do that. Everybody has access to everything pretty much now, with Instagram or even stores posting on their websites. I tend to have a collection or a certain number of pieces with me, and then I distribute it amongst the stores I work with. I still give the list of everything I have within the U.S. So, if a client has seen something and it's not within their store, I will send it to them to present to the client. It's very interesting. Once the client knows the brand, they really go for it. They dig into the Instagram to see other pieces. I think you have to be very fluid and flexible, and you have to be able to move around your jewelry if you want to accommodate your plan. Sharon: What are the first things you advise people, your new clients, on? Is it to get involved with social media? Lionel: I know we all hear the stories of people selling off Instagram. I think the brick and mortar is still—at a certain level, we're talking about jewelry. It’s different below $8,000. It's very rare when someone buys it from a website. Even a website like Moda Operandi, for example, if there is a piece— Sharon: Which one? Lionel: Moda Operandi. It's a website that was launched on the idea of doing trunk shows on there. For example, they will very often ask for the piece to be sent so they can show it to their clients. It's rare that they buy it directly off the website. I think for pieces that are $500 to $2,000, maybe $3,000, but above a certain price, the clients want to see it, feel it. Sharon: And touch it. When you look for new clients, what do you look for? What would you consider new? Would you consider if the way they make it is new? Lionel: There are there a few things. If I take them, for example, Mike Joseph is very interesting. He has great technique. The jewelry is going to be well made. He made this entire collection of flowers in titanium, but he used the reverse side of titanium to have it as a matte finish, as opposed to a very glossy one. I think with this collection, when he was at couture, he won two prizes. So, I think he is both innovative and has great technique. Vishal, I like his take on traditional Indian jewelry, which has a lot of gold and stones, but he makes it much more sleek. The thing is not to see the metal. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the portrait cut. Sharon: No, I’m not. Lionel: The portrait cut is a slab of diamond. It's the Maharaja who built the Taj Mahal who actually asked his jeweler to do this type of slab of diamonds to put on top of their portraits so it would bring a shine to the miniature. So, it's a technique, and Vishal does rings and earrings. I think that's an interesting new way. I'm always looking for people who bring something new to the table. Sharon: You mentioned the perspective. How could their perspective be new? When you talk to other art jewelers, sometimes you look at a piece and it looks normal, then they tell you the stories behind it and you understand it better. Lionel: True. You can always try to understand the story. When you see Vishal make some of these pieces, I think you almost don't need the explanation. You see that there is something new there. I'm not saying it's wrong to try to have the story behind it, but I kind of like when—I’ve had numerous jewelers come in. They're coming to me and showing me things, and the thing I hear the most is, “I couldn't find this on the market.” And I look at the pieces, and I'm like, “I can bring you in 10 stores when there's exactly the same thing.” And I think, “No.” Sharon: So it's their technique with the materials they use. Lionel: The technique, the material, the inspiration. With Vishal it’s the reinterpretation of traditional Indian jewelry, but it's still very modern and light. Sylvie has more inspiration from literature or drawings. She goes to museums to find her inspiration. Sharon: I was just thinking, do you represent people who are goldsmiths themselves making the jewelry, as opposed to them designing it and they have a goldsmith make it? Lionel: Mike and Vishal have their own factories, so they are really following from the beginning, from the start. Sylvie has an atelier. She draws. Sharon: Were you a maker of jewelry? Lionel: No. Never. I’ve always liked jewelry, but I was never a jewelry maker. Sharon: Have you learned over the years how something is made? Lionel: Yes. I've learned more about the stones. I’ve learned more about the techniques. It's important to sell something, as you said earlier, to bring the most information. People are really curious today about how it’s made and the story behind it. Sharon: No matter who your client is, are they interested in the way it's made? Do they ask you questions? Lionel: There are different profiles. People who just respond to the look of it are not curious, and it depends on the jewelry itself. With Vishal, because of this new way and this new cut of diamond, people are asking. It's always interesting to get the background on it because there is a new historical background. Mike, for example, with his flowers connection, people were really intrigued by the use of titanium and how it was not used traditionally. So, yes, you get questions on that. Sharon: How often do you see something new that you haven't seen before? Is it once a year? Lionel: It's rare, actually, when you see people who are bringing something really new, a new proposal. Some people are doing stuff in a great way. Not everything has to be groundbreaking, and I get that. I go to couture every year, so I kind of scout, but just for myself. I like to see what's going on. That's not where I'm going to have a new client or anything. It's interesting to me to see what's new. Sometimes I see someone, and I refer them to all the stores, saying, “You should go and see that brand. It’s really cool. It's new.” Sharon: Do you advise a store to go look at the different jewelry? Lionel: Yeah, I would, even if I don’t work with them. I think stores appreciate that I do that. I think the one thing I'm known for is taking on brands that are different and unique. When I point out someone that I think is great, they will listen. Sharon: Do you only work with people who work in gold or emeralds? You mentioned John Hardy. He only works in silver. Lionel: No. For John Hardy, I went for the one-of-a-kind collection that was very stone oriented. No, I don't. The next big thing I did, I worked with Hearts on Fire, which was kind of relaunching and just hired a new designer. That was very interesting, to work with a big company. The idea of bringing this new designer on and kind of starting from scratch was an interesting thing. We worked on opening different stores and more classic, more bridal. That was an interesting strategy to implement. Sharon: Did you advise them of a designer or did you walk in and they introduced you to a new designer? Lionel: They already had the designer in mind, so we looked at the collection. They asked me about their archive and what I thought they should bring back on. I think my background with fashion and jewelry always interests people because they know I still have a foot in the fashion industry in a way. Sharon: If somebody is in the fashion industry now, can they segue? How can they segue to doing what you're doing if they got tired of fashion? Lionel: I think I know people who did the transition from fashion to jewelry. In the end, it’s the same actors. In the press and the stores, it's the same people, except for the jewelry stores. But if you talk about all the concept stores that carry jewelry as well, it's easy to do. It's the same work, basically. Sharon: So, they wouldn't be getting away from that. Do you do pop-ups? They have become popular here. Lionel: They do. I don't necessarily do pop-ups. They call it differently. For example, Vishal did something at Bergdorf called the Residency. We were in for three months, and it was very successful. It is now going to be permanent for Vishal. We’ll be at Bergdorf all the time. I think the model of trunk shows is a bit overused. It's kind of difficult to make typical trunk shows today. Again, in a certain world, once you’re at a certain price point, some stores are doing a lot of them, and it's the same people that you're soliciting over and over. There's only so much you can do. Sharon: With Vishal, what do you consider successful? You said he was successful in this residency. Was that Vishal? Lionel: Vishal. The brand is called VAK. Sharon: What was successful? What was the purpose of the residency? Lionel: The jewelry is very well-made. It's a beautiful product and not terribly expensive. I think the proposal is that the value is great, and it was new. It's a new look. The salespeople were excited about it, and I think they really reached out to their clients. That's what made it successful in the end. Sharon: You say now he's there permanently. Lionel: Yes. Sharon: He has what, a cabinet? Lionel: Yeah, a vitrine. There’s a vitrine now in the salon. Sharon: Do you ever have to pay to have prominence? Lionel: No. Sharon: What are your favorite things to sell? Lionel: I like two things. I like rings, and I like earrings. Sylvie Corbelin has a quote that I always liked. She’ll say that earrings are a gift for the other. You don't see it on yourself, but it's the people who see you, see the earrings. My mother, for example, would never go out without earrings. She would put on a pair of earrings to match, and it was for her to feel dressed. She didn’t feel that she was dressed if she was not wearing earrings. And I like big cocktail rings. Sharon: What kind of jewelry do you like for men? Do you like bracelets or necklaces? Lionel: I do like bracelets for men or a nice pinky ring, I guess. Sharon: I was surprised. I went out to lunch with somebody who had what I consider a fabulous necklace, but I would never consider it for a man. He got so many comments on it. Lionel: I’m sure. A lot of guys now are buying diamond pieces. I think there’s a way to wear it that’s chic. Sharon: How long have you been in the jewelry business? Lionel: 18 years. Sharon: It's a long time. What changes have you seen over that time? Lionel: A lot of jewelry coming. A lot more jewelry. Sharon: Really? Lionel: Yeah. You see all the brands. Now the big trend—I was just saying yesterday, Prada is launching fine jewelry. Saint Laurent has launched fine jewelry. There’s Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci. Everybody's betting on jewelry being the moneymaker. I think the biggest growth we can see right now is men's. Men are buying jewelry. Sharon: Would you say there are a lot more independent jewelers today than there were? Lionel: Not only independent, but also all the houses are launching their own lines. Clothing houses, like Prada is launching a line. Saint Laurent is launching a line. Dior did it 20 years ago, but everybody's hopping on the jewelry train. Sharon: Why do you think that is? Lionel: I think there is a real interest again for jewelry. A wider interest than just buying, but as an investment. I think also during Covid, jewelry kind of proved to be Covid-proof. I think a lot of people got the idea that jewelry was the next big thing, because it's true that 2021 was an extraordinary year for jewelry. However, I don't think it's really a trend. I think it was at the moment, and we've seen since that the numbers have been down. The money that women would put in clothes and handbags and shoes, they were not going out, so that money went to jewelry, which was great. But I think it was instant. It was not necessarily a trend. Sharon: Did your business go up because of Covid? Lionel: Huge. We saw a huge difference. Sharon And you've seen it go down or be flat? Lionel: Go down and then flat. But go down, definitely. Sharon: When you take on new clients, do they have to be making a certain amount? What do they have to have? What criteria do you use? Lionel: Well, yes, I make sure they have enough finance to launch a business and to make it start. First of all, you need to have at least three or four years in front of you. There's no instant success. However, I'm always conservative in their growth. I'm not going to ask them to put out a lot of pieces. I think it's always about opening two or three key stores that are generating enough buzz as marketing, if you will, to help grow. But try not to overflow the market. Sharon: What if they’re independent and making things you usually don’t represent, but you think there's something there, an innovation or a passion? Maybe they make pieces that sell for $3,000 or $5,000. That's their niche. Would you take somebody like them on? Lionel: Yeah, I do. All the jewelers I work with, the price point starts at $5,000, $6,000. Sharon: I won't even ask you how much it goes up to. Thank you so much for being here today. Lionel: Thank you. Sharon: I feel like I roped you in from a plane ride or something. Lionel: No, no. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Sharon: Thank you for being here.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 05 May 2021 | Episode 114: Translating Antique Jewelry For Today’s Jewelry Lovers with Konstantinos Leoussis, founder of KIL N.Y.C | 00:26:57 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Konstantinos Leoussis Konstantinos Leoussis is the owner of KIL N.Y.C., a company specializing in antique jewelry from the late Stuart to Edwardian era as well as a jewelry line greatly inspired by antiques, travels, and world history. After years of experience working under the tutelage of jewelry historians and as a former operations assistant of a fashion jewelry firm, Konstantinos has honed his skills and aims to create an entirely new type of jewelry business with a youthful and humanistic approach. Additional resources: Photos:
Large mourning pendant Set of portrait miniatures and mourning sepia Memorial sepia for Shakespeare with blue enamel and diamonds French jet bug pin Large Whitby jet brooch Tiny Whitby jet brooches
A lovely late Georgian garnet pendant brooch. This was likely a segment from another larger piece converted into a brooch.
From his personal collection; a set of miniatures: 1700s of a brother and sister and a sepia miniature for a departed family member - most likely the grandmother. | |||
| 24 Oct 2023 | Episode 209 Part 1: Why Rhinestone Rosie Is One of the Last Costume Jewelry Dealers of Her Kind | 00:29:23 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Rosie Sayyah Rosie Sayyah has been selling and repairing vintage and estate jewelry from her shop, Rhinestone Rosie, in Seattle since 1984. In the early 1980s, Rosie felt her family tradition of dealing in antiques calling to her. Upon leaving her corporate career in television, she decided to open a jewelry store that not only had unique, exciting items for sale, but also where she could restore greatness to jewelry that had fallen into disrepair. Teaching herself about vintage costume and estate jewelry culture and repair through books, hobby shops, and hands-on experience, Rosie has become a national expert in the field. In the late 1990s, she began appearing regularly on “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS TV and continues today as one of their expert appraisers.
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Additional resources: Transcript: Rosalie Sayyah, aka Rhinestone Rosie, first got jewelry lovers’ attention as an appraiser on Antiques Roadshow. But she has earned her customers’ loyalty for her ability to repair vintage costume jewelry and perfectly match missing rhinestones when no one else can. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why so few jewelers will repair costume jewelry; what she looks for in the pieces she buys; and how to start a costume jewelry collection of your own. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today, I’m talking with Rhinestone Rosie. You may already be familiar with Rosie. She has her own retail outlet in Seattle, and she does a strong mail order business. You may be familiar with her by seeing her on Antiques Roadshow giving the price of vintage jewelry to people who want to know.
All I know is that whenever I have a piece and I can’t find the stone that’s the right size, or I know it would be impossible to find the right kind, the color of the stone, or I know it’s out of production—maybe it’s a really old piece—I turn to her. She hasn’t let me down yet. Many of her stones are out of stock elsewhere, but somehow she manages to find them. We’ll hear all about her business today. Welcome to the program.
Rosie: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. I love to talk about jewelry.
Sharon: I’m so glad you’re here. How did you choose the name Rhinestone Rosie?
Rosie: It was kind of a joke. I was an English minor in college, and alliteration is something that’s very memorable. I was dealing with my sister over the mail. She was sending me pieces and I would sell them. Just as a joke, I signed a check Rhinestone Rosie and it stuck.
Sharon: So, from the get-go, from day one, the name of your business was Rhinestone Rosie.
Rosie: That’s right. That’s correct.
Sharon: Does Rhinestone Rosie refer to any kind of costume jewelry stones or just rhinestones?
Rosie: Oh no, we deal with all kinds of jewelry. Beads and metals and pearls, all materials, and actually all ages. We do a lot of repairs. In our shop, our inventory goes from, I would say, the 1870s through present day.
Sharon: I know you have some pretty old vintage pieces, but I don’t know how old the antique line goes. A hundred years?
Rosie: Exactly.
Sharon: When did you first become attracted to rhinestones?
Rosie: It’s hard to say. My parents had a secondhand business, and they repaired things and sold them. This was in Orlando, Florida. I helped my mom reupholster furniture, and sometimes in the old furniture, we would find a piece of jewelry and she would give it to me. It wasn’t always rhinestones. I collected rocks when I was a kid, and they always had cut glass in the store. They had a secondhand store, and I just loved that cut glass. I’ve always liked shiny things, so that must have been what led me to this.
Sharon: And that includes all the shiny costume jewelry.
Rosie: Exactly, yes. And I like to work with my hands. I’ve been doing that since I was a little girl. So, working with things, that was just a natural offshoot.
Sharon: How did you get into the repair aspect of it? From your parents?
Rosie: No, actually after I had my baby, Lucia, I had a friend who had a vintage store in Seattle, and I would help her. I would bring home clothing and patterns and do mending on clothes, and she always had broken jewelry. I asked her one day, “Do you ever fix this?” She goes, “Oh, nobody really does. I do it once in a while.” So, I did some research and found out that nobody really repaired this jewelry. I thought, “Hmm, this is something I can do,” and I went to the local hobby shop, the guys that did model cars and model airplanes. They told me what lead solders to use, what glues to use, what paints to use. They were very helpful. They told me all kinds of stuff. I’m self-taught, so there it is. I bought a bunch of books and read the books. I learned how to knot in between beads and practiced through trial and error. I had to go through a lot of stuff.
Sharon: But you did this all yourself. As you were saying, there aren’t that many other places that do it.
Rosie: No, I don’t think there’s a full business anywhere that does it. A lot of dealers will do some of their own. A lot of my contemporaries who did similar things have all either passed on or decided to go a different route. I think I’ve got a monopoly on it.
Sharon: I don’t know anybody else who does it or has a store like yours, but I didn’t want to say it without knowing for sure.
Rosie: I think you’re right.
Sharon: That’s why I’m surprised you’re not in New York.
Rosie: Oh, no, we left Florida in 1973. We got as far across the country as we could. We wanted a big city, which Seattle is, and water and a temperate climate. We ended up settling here.
Sharon: It sounds like you made the right choice, but in terms of jewelry and being surrounded by jewelry, I think of New York first, Chicago maybe.
Rosie: I know. A lot of my contemporaries on the Road Show are from back East. I am an anomaly for sure, but it is what it is. That’s what I do and I do it well, if I might say.
Sharon: I know in my jewelry cabinet, I have a pile of things and say, “Oh, that should go to Rhinestone Rosie’s because I know she can fix it. There’s nobody else that does that.” Until I found you, there were pieces I would toss or, like you’re saying, give away or just say, “I can’t do anything with it.”
Rosie: Exactly, I remember. You did come into my shop. It was a pleasure to meet you in person one time. We did close for about three months during the pandemic. Now we’re only open three days a week in the brick-and-mortar store, although our online is still going on. I have people coming in almost daily with their pile of stuff that’s been saved for two or three years. They’re finally in the shop to get fixed.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I noticed that you’re only open a few days a week, which seemed to be fewer than before.
Rosie: Yes.
Sharon: What percentage of your business is mail order?
Rosie: I would say mail order and repair—because we do local repair. Of course, people walk in, and then people mail us things from all over the world. I think it’s about a 50/50 split, for online sales and for walk-in sales and repair.
Sharon: Wow! I have a friend who was a little hesitant about sending something that was precious to them. It wasn’t a precious item, but it was precious to them. I did it. I didn’t have any compunction. She did it, too. Where do you source the stuff you have, your vintage pieces? Where do you get them?
Rosie: People just bring it into the store. Sometimes, I’ll go to a yard sale or something and pick a piece, but mostly it’s people that are downsizing or someone just passed. The family has chosen the pieces they want. Sometimes there’s even a note in the collection, “Take this to Rhinestone Rosie.” It’s kept me going, and I don’t have to go out and beat the bushes.
Sharon: That’s great. Have you found it’s harder to get things in or harder to find things because costume jewelry—
Rosie: Oh yeah, the good stuff. I know there were a lot of manufacturers at the time, but I’d say the high-end pieces are in collectors’ hands, and they go from one collector to another collector. They’re not normally available in the market. Every once in a while, you will see that someone found something in a box of junk or something. What was so fun on the Road Show is uncovering something like that, but most of the time, it’s hard. It’s hard to find the good stuff, so you’ve got to change your focus. Right now, it’s more modernist and clean lines, big, chunky necklaces. It’s different than it was in, say, the 20s, 30s and 40s. Some people change.
Sharon: Do you think that costume jewelry has become more popular over the years or right now?
Rosie: People need to learn about the vintage pieces because there are lots of ones like dress clips or fur clips. They have a different way of attaching to the fabric, shall we say, but today a lot of stuff is coming out of China and Korea. There are very, very good contemporary artists making costume jewelry.
Sharon: With eBay and all the online sources, do you think it’s harder to find? People know what they have, let’s say.
Rosie: I don’t think they know what they have, but I think there’s a lot of the lower-end stuff. You could buy costume jewelry in a dime store. You could buy it in a pharmacy. You could buy it in a department store. You could buy it at a jewelry story. Jewelry stores and department stores usually sold the best quality. A lot of people bought the lower-end pieces because they were cheap, 10¢, 25¢, sometimes $1. I’ve seen more of that and less of the higher-end pieces.
Sharon: The audience can’t see this, but maybe you’ll send a picture. You have a beautiful Juliana necklace on. Do you think people know if they have a piece of jewelry on, I shouldn’t bring that to you, I should try and sell it elsewhere?
Rosie: It’s funny because they say, “I didn’t think you wanted that big, ugly stuff. It’s too gaudy,” and I’m like, “I want that. I want big, bold and ugly.” This is what people don’t understand, especially in the plastics. It’s very hard to find good Bakelite and celluloid and other plastics these days because people just toss them. But if they have something like the necklace I have on, I think it would give them pause, and they would bring something like that to me and I would be glad.
Sharon: As the market changes, like you mentioned, if it’s cleaner lines or contemporary, do you change with it?
Rosie: Oh sure. Part of my job, Sharon, is educating people on what they have, how to wear it, where it came from, when it was made, what the materials are. I’ll have someone come in. Let’s say they’re going to a wedding and they want a pair of earrings, and they think rhinestones can only be that clear, diamond-looking thing. When they walk in the shop, they realize it can be red, green, blue, purple with an iridescent coating like the necklace I have on, and they go out with a green pair of earrings instead of the clear ones. My job is not only educating people on what they have, but how to wear it, how to take care of it and, yes, it can be fixed. Don’t let your high-end jeweler tell you that it can’t be fixed. Just keep looking and you’ll find me.
Sharon: That’s really true. I have found that a lot of high-end jewelers tell me they can’t do anything, and somebody who’s more an engineering type feels they can do something with it. They can fix it.
Rosie: Exactly, yeah. I spend a lot of time re-repairing things that someone else did. “My father soldered it or my husband,” or “I used this kind of glue.” A lot of our repairs are removing the glue and old solder and getting it down to a basic where I can rebuild it back.
Sharon: Is it you or does somebody else work with you on repairs?
Rosie: Me and my daughter, we both do it in the shop. We don’t send it out. We don’t work with gold, and we don’t do silver solder. We do lead solder. But yeah, these hands, that’s what they do.
Sharon: Did you approach Antiques Roadshow or did they find you?
Rosie: It’s funny. In 1997, they did the first launch of the program, and Seattle was one of the test cities. Some of my mentors who do fine antique jewelry said, “Rosie, you should have been there. We had so much costume jewelry come in and we didn’t know what to tell people.” Long story short, my background is in television. I used to be a producer. I made commercials, and I knew the producer was the one to call.
So, I called WGBH, a guy named Peter, and I said, “Hey, my name is Rhinestone Rosie,” and there was a beat. I said, “I’m not a stripper. I can walk and talk at the same time. I’m fairly presentable on camera and I know about costume jewelry.” He said, “Yes, we would love to have you.” So, in 1998 in Portland, Oregon, it was my first show. I don’t think I taped. I was a little bit afraid. I’ve always been behind the camera, not in front of the camera, but I got over that pretty quick. Yeah, I did call him up and I said, “You need me.” I did it for 20 years.
Sharon: That’s sort of connected to this question. I didn’t know how to phrase it, but it seems to me that a lot of stylists would come in and say, “I’m doing a 40s show. What do I need?” Does that ever happen, that you have a stylist come in?
Rosie: It happened a lot more before the pandemic. Whether things changed in that industry, I don’t know, but yes, we had a lot of stylists or a magazine shoot. If they were doing a shoot, they would come in and pick out pieces. We used to rent our pieces, but we don’t do that anymore because people just wouldn’t return them. But yes, we get stylists. We would get theater seamstresses, the designers, the costume makers for theaters. We didn’t get a lot of movie people in, but maybe this’ll help. We can help them if they need us.
Sharon: Is it hard to decide what color or what kind of jewelry somebody should have?
Rosie: What I do is ask them about their lifestyle and what they want the piece for. I look at them. I see how they’re dressed, how their hair is cut, and I can pretty well sus out if they’re an edgy person or they’re a modest person, kind of timid. We have tiny, little earrings, big, bold, down-to-the-shoulder dusters, and you can usually tell by talking to someone. Someone who’s got nose piercings and whole-body tattoos, they’re not going to go for something real mild.
You can pick up on their body language. That’s helped me a lot, plus I encourage people to bring in outfits and put them on. It’s like the Barbie doll thing, just dress them and put jewelry on. They can try it on, and if the necklace is too short, we can adjust things. We can change earrings. Most of our earrings are clip-on or screw-back. We can change them to pierced if they want. We do that with our jewelry, or we can do it with your jewelry.
Sharon: What’s your return policy if they decide they want to take it home and try it?
Rosie: They get a store credit.
Sharon: A few of the pieces don’t work. Maybe it’s your daughter who told me that something wouldn’t work. I can’t even tell the stone apart from the original stones. How do you decide that? How do you decide if it’s going to work? Can you tell us about some of the pieces that haven’t worked, where you’ve had to come back to somebody and say, “I can’t find anything”?
Rosie: Some of the older stones, I would say pre-1910 to the late 1800s, a lot of those stones, I can’t find. I’ve taken stones out of pieces. I try very hard. If the piece comes in and the stone I’m matching is slightly discolored, I’m not going to put a brand new, shiny stone in its place. I will try to find in my pile of stones one that is slightly discolored. I try very hard to match it.
But, yeah, there are times when we just can’t fix a clasp or it’s in a place that’s too thick for us to solder or the thread is so weak and the restringing cost is prohibitive. We do understand sentimental value. We try to let people know that we appreciate what they have and we understand. It doesn’t matter to us if it cost 25¢. If it’s important to you, it’s important to us. So, if we honestly can’t fix it, we tell them, “No, we can’t fix it. We can’t help you.”
Sharon: How did you get your inventory? You have quite an inventory of stones that you can put in pieces.
Rosie: 40 years. I do have a source for new stones. Sometimes I’ll even go to Etsy and try to find something, but I’ve taken a lot of stones out of pieces. There have also been people through the years—like there was a lady who made earrings that sold in Nordstrom. Her name was Nellie, and she called me up and said, “I’m going out of business. Would you consider buying some of my stones?” That kind of thing. Jewelry stores have back inventory. When they close, I love to go in and dig around in their storerooms.
But I can’t buy stones that are unfoiled. I don’t do a lot of that because if you glue an unfoiled stone in, the foil is what makes a rhinestone shine. It’s like a little mirror. So, if it has no foil on it, I can’t really use it. A lot of stones out there have no foil backing, and I can’t use those. But most of time, it’s just here and there. People hear about me, or they have a hobby or they know somebody who’s fixed their own jewelry and they’re wanting to sell. I’ll look and see what they have, and I’ll pick and choose what I might use.
Sharon: Did you have any reservations about opening this kind of store in Seattle?
Rosie: No. I had it all over the kitchen table, and my husband said, “Hey, you’d better start a business because this has taken over our house.” I had no idea how to do it, but all I needed was the license. I shared space. Actually, right next door to where my shop is now, I was in the front of her store. I just had a desk and some jewelry behind me.
Now, this is a really good story. Again, my background is television, but I also have a degree in advertising and public relations. So, I printed up business cards and marched into I. Magnin and Frederick & Nelson and the major boutiques in downtown Seattle. I said, “This is what I do. I can help you,” and I walked out of every place with something to repair. That gave me street cred, so I could say, “I repair jewelry for I. Magnin or Nordstrom.”
I’ve never been afraid of talking about my abilities to do what we do and that we do it well, and I’ve always been true and honest and open to my customers. I learned that from my parents. That’s how they ran their business. I started with very little cash. I didn’t get any loans. It was a bootstrap business, and it’s grown to what it is. I’m very proud of it.
Sharon: As I was putting these questions together, I kept asking myself, “What are you doing in Seattle?”
Rosie: Why in Seattle? I just ended up where I was.
Sharon: It’s a nice place, but I wouldn’t think of it as the first place I’d open anything.
Rosie: We’re busy enough. There’s a lot of money in Seattle and there are a lot of people. They might dress in Gore-Tex or flannel or whatever, but they like a little bit of bling. The thing is it belonged to grandma or Aunt Masie or somebody, so it’s sentimental. It’s not always something they’re going to wear all the time. I don’t wear jewelry all the time, but it’s something you look at and hold and treasure. I wanted to preserve that for people.
Sharon: You don’t wear jewelry all the time. That’s interesting. I don’t have jewelry on today. A lot of times I realize I don’t have any jewelry on. People used to say, “Well, you’re the kind of person who wouldn’t go out without earrings.” Do you stop and put on a vintage piece?
Rosie: Well, I’m not an earring girl. I wear rings, watches, necklaces and brooches. Usually, I only wear them when I’m in the shop or if I’m giving a talk, a lecture. I do a lot of lecturing for groups about the history and culture of rhinestones. Sometimes I’ll even dress totally vintage, the shoes, the hat, the dress, the jewelry, usually from the 40s. That’s what my era seems to be. This is a 50s, 60s necklace I have on. Of course, when I did the Roadshow, I always wore jewelry and people loved it. I would get so many emails, “I love your jewelry. That’s cool.”
Sharon: I always say something. If he’s watching the show, “Oh, it’s Rhinestone Rosie.” I can see why the jewelry gets attention.
Rosie: Oh, yeah.
Sharon: Do you collect anything?
Rosie: I didn’t start as a collector. I started as a merchant, so my collection is just based on what I learned about. Since I did so much lecturing, I liked to have a piece of almost every major name that I could show to people. I do have that type of a collection. For some reason, I collect vintage watches. I have maybe 50 watches. It’s insane.
As far as jewelry, I think my whole collection is very modest because I purge occasionally. I find if I’m not wearing it, I will take it to the shop. We’ll sell it, and people get excited when they find out it is something I have worn and loved. I don’t mind doing it. I’m not afraid to separate myself from some major pieces. Right now, I’m more into the clean, modernist lines, a lot of metals. Mexican 40s jewelry I really like to wear. Usually my clothes are very simple, one color, and then the jewelry is the standout part of it.
Sharon: Do you think that older Mexican jewelry is included in modernist?
Rosie: In what?
Sharon: In modernist?
Rosie: Oh yes, they were influenced by it greatly. In the 40s and 50s, some of that jewelry is –
Sharon: It is beautiful.
Rosie: Yeah, I would say it’s definitely influenced by a modernist approach, yes. It shows in the Pre-Columbian and the Spanish people that came over, but that’s what makes it intriguing. Look at Georg Jensen. You can have that flow, that feel in the 40s Mexican pieces. I have seen new designers make pieces that take my breath away. They’re crazy, like things that wrap around your neck and stand out, nothing I could possibly wear, but I certainly appreciate.
I don’t know what we would call today’s costume jewelry. This term came about because Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, they made costumes. Their clothing was costume, and they said, “It needs something.” So, the jewelry that went with it, the term costume jewelry came from that happening.
Sharon: That’s interesting. What if they had made it out of real pearls and real gold?
Rosie: Chanel combined both. She wasn’t afraid to wear costume and fine jewelry at the same time. As matter of fact, the word rhinestone—the best costume or stones came out of Europe, near the Rhine River. The first piece of rhinestone was a water-washed piece of crystal that came from the Rhine River. So, the name rhinestone has become ubiquitous, like Kleenex or anything like that. It is actually from a piece of crystal from the Rhine River, because the best stuff still does come out of Europe.
Sharon: That’s interesting.
Rosie: They make the very best. Certain brands or names in costume jewelry use these incredible stones. You just can’t find them anymore. They don’t make them anymore.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 28 Sep 2022 | Episode 170 Part 1: Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture with Jewelry Designer, Warren Feld | 00:21:08 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Warren Feld For Warren Feld, beading and jewelry making endeavors have been wonderful adventures. These adventures over the past 32 years have taken Warren from the basics of bead stringing and bead weaving, to wire working and silver smithing, and onward to more complex jewelry designs which build on the strengths of a full range of technical skills and experiences. He, along with his partner Jayden Alfre Jones, opened a small bead shop in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, about 30 years ago, called Land of Odds. Over time, Land of Odds evolved into a successful internet business. In the late 1990s, Jayden and Warren opened another brick-and-mortar bead store – Be Dazzled Beads – in a trendy neighborhood of Nashville. Together both businesses supply beaders and jewelry artists with all the supplies and parts they need to make beautiful pieces of wearable art. In 2000, Warren founded The Center For Beadwork & Jewelry Arts (CBJA). CBJA is an educational program, associated with Be Dazzled Beads, for beaders and jewelry makers. The program approaches education from a design perspective. There is a strong focus on skills development, showing students how to make better choices when selecting beads, parts and stringing materials, and teaching them how to bring these together into a beautiful, yet functional, piece of jewelry. Warren is the author of two books, “So You Want to Be a Jewelry Designer: Merging Your Voice with Form” and “Pearl Knotting…Warren’s Way,” as well as many articles for Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Links: Warren Feld Jewelry Warren Feld – Medium.com So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer School on Teachable.com Learn To Bead Blog The Ugly Necklace Contest – Archives Land of Odds Warren Feld – Facebook Warren Feld – LinkedIn Warren Feld – Instagram Warren Feld – Twitter Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Warren Feld didn’t become a jewelry designer out of passion, but out of necessity. He and his partner Jayden opened their jewelry studio and supply store, Land of Odds/Be Dazzled Beads, due to financial worries. But coming to the world of jewelry as an outsider is what has given Warren his precise and unique perspective on how jewelry should be made. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the language of jewelry design; why jewelry making should be considered a profession outside of art or craft; and why jewelry design is similar to architecture or engineering. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is jewelry designer Warren Feld. Warren wears several hats. He has an online company called Land of Odds. He has a brick-and-mortar store, Be Dazzled Beads, and he’s a jewelry designer. He’s located in Tennessee. He has been a jewelry designer for decades and has written a book called “So You Want to Be a Jewelry Designer,” which sounds very interesting. The book sets up a system to evaluate jewelry and discusses how designing jewelry is different from creating crafts or being an artist. Warren will tell us all about his jewelry journey today. Warren, welcome to the program.
Warren: Sharon, I’m so excited to be here with you.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you artistic as a child? Did you study jewelry? How did you come to it?
Warren: I think I was artistic as a child, but my parents and teachers, my guidance counselors in high school, discouraged it. They put me on a track to be either a doctor or a lawyer, so I never had artistic training. In my thirties, I got into painting with acrylics. Not in a deep way, but in some artistic way. I never formally studied art. I became a health care administrator, and I was a professional hospital administrator at several hospitals. I was a policy planner in healthcare for the governor of Tennessee. I was director of a nonprofit healthcare agency. When I was around 35, I experienced a major burnout. I didn’t like healthcare and I felt very disconnected. I was doing a great job, but I just didn’t feel it.
At the same time, I met my future partner and wife, Jayden. It was a recession, and Jayden was having trouble finding a job. At one point I said, “What can you do?” and she said, “I can design jewelry,” and I said, “We can build a business around it.” I thought it would also be a good idea to sell the parts, and it worked. We first had a garage sale, where she made a lot of jewelry and sold a lot of parts, and we made $7,000. Maybe it was a fluke. So, six weeks later, we tried it again. We made the same jewelry, got the same parts, and made $4,000. So, we thought we were onto something. We eventually did the Nashville Flea Market and craft shows. We had a little store in downtown Nashville. We have a bigger store in downtown Nashville now. It worked. It was really around her jewelry designing and my business sense. I made some jewelry, but it was just to make money.
Sharon: Wow! So, you have two businesses. You have an online business, and you have the brick-and-mortar. Tell us about Land of Odds and Be Dazzled Beads. Tell us about the differences.
Warren: Originally it was Land of Odds. Jayden was the designer. We made jewelry, but it was more like I put a bead on a piece of leather and tied it in a knot. Eventually I started learning. While working at learning silversmithing, I did a lot more complex things, but she was the designer. She had country music artist clients and did a lot of custom work. The first few years, I really made jewelry just to make money. I didn’t see it as an art form. It wasn’t my passion. I wasn’t interested, but one thing I noticed was that everything I made broke. It was really bad, and I was clueless. This was in 1987. There was no internet, no jewelry or bead magazines. Nashville did not have a jewelry-making culture, so everything was trial and error, things on fishing lines, things on dental floss. I didn’t know how to attach a clasp, didn’t know about clasps. Everything was so trial and error, experimental.
At some point, I started taking in repairs. That was a really strategic move and a major turning point, because I got to see how other people made things and made bad choices because of what broke. I got to talk to the wearers, and they told me how they wore it, what happened when it broke, where it broke, lots of inside stories. I started formulating some things, and I started putting them to the test and making jewelry. I was in my mid-to-late thirties, and I started getting interested and focused on the construction and the architecture, not quite the art form. Jayden’s health also declined. She lost a lot of dexterity in her hands to be able to keep making jewelry. She retired, and I started making the jewelry and doing the custom work. The business started getting organized around my work. That was Lands of Odds. We were downtown in Nashville.
Sharon: At Be Dazzled Beads, you teach a lot of classes. You sell beads. You do everything.
Warren: It just evolved. It had to do with the fact that we were downtown. Nashville, at the time, was what Greenwich Village in New York was. It’s a lot of little specialty shops, a lot of excitement. It was really high-end, very sophisticated. It was so successful that the big companies started moving in, Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, Nascar Café, Wildhorse Saloon. When the city decided to redevelop the area for them, they took away 6,000 parking spaces in 18 months, and parking went from $2 to $20 a day. We lost all our customers really fast, and tourists changed. They were looking for low-end souvenirs, not high-end jewelry, so our business collapsed.
We put ourselves in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the liability is under my name. I closed Land of Odds, the physical store, and I put the assets under Jayden’s name. We opened a little shop in a little house, and Jayden wanted to call it Be Dazzled. At the same time, I was developing Land of Odds as an online business. Be Dazzled was a real place in a store. About a year after declaring bankruptcy, I got out of bankruptcy and the catalogue took off. We were doing really well all of a sudden, and I combined both businesses again. So, I just had this horrible business name, Land of Odds/Be Dazzled Beads. We managed those as two separate businesses, but it was really one business.
Sharon: So, you were online way before Covid or anything.
Warren: I was online in 1995. I was one of the first catalogues online. We’re still online. It’s a little hard to compete today online, but we’re still online.
Sharon: That’s interesting because so many jewelers are not. You call yourself a jeweler. I don’t mean you’re not a jeweler; you are, but they don’t work with beads. They work with silver; they work with gold. So, it’s unusual.
Warren: No matter what the materials, you end up with something with a hole in it or a loop on it so you can string it on or dangle it. I taught myself wire working, fiber art, micro/macro maze, silversmithing. Even though the tools are different, the materials are different, when you’re designing a piece of jewelry, you end up thinking through the same kinds of issues. The focus on parts was another lucky break because it made me realize early on that jewelry design was quite different than art or craft.
I started as a painter. When I first started making jewelry, I tried to paint it. I was very frustrated because I couldn’t get the colors I wanted. You can’t squish the beads together; you can’t do little nuances and subtleties like you can do with paint. There are these annoying gaps of light, negatives spaces you can’t control, and they destroy the whole idea of color. You have three-dimensional objects that reflect and refract light differently. It changes from room to room with lighting, the sun, the position of the person, how they’re moving. I have some beads in the store, green, transparent beads that cast a yellow shadow. You can’t duplicate that with paint, but you have to worry about if the jewelry starts to look weird on a person because you picked the wrong materials or the wrong colors. Jewelry applies to the person wearing it. You don’t want that to happen as a designer.
So, I realized that whether it’s beads or string materials, findings, whatever you’re using, they assert their needs within the piece of jewelry. It’s not just for the visual grammar, the color and pattern and texture, but they have needs for architecture. They affect some of the functions based on materials you pick, and the durability and how the piece moves. They affect the desirability and the value, how people perceive the piece. So, I began to see that I had to start with the parts and understand how they want to be expressed within a three-dimensional object that’s going to adorn someone’s body and move and meet someone’s psychological and social needs. It’s very focused on the parts.
What I was doing as a jewelry designer was very different than what I had done as a painter, as an artist. The lights went on, and it just was really intriguing. I struggled and dealt with it. It was very exciting and enjoyable to figure out, with that green bead that has the yellow shadow, what effect does it have on the piece, on the person wearing it, on people seeing it? I asked those questions, and that was really important. I was lucky to start with the parts and the business and not start with just designing jewelry and worrying about the visual grammar. Then I realized, both from being in business as well as teaching students, that most jewelry designers are very naïve to the impact of the parts. They’re very focused on the visual, the color. They don’t realize that so much more is going on in a piece of jewelry, so they don’t think about managing it.
Sharon: So that’s how you came to write this book, “So You Want to be a Jewelry Designer”?
Warren: Right.
Sharon: Wow! Being a painter and working in different materials, you’re all over the place.
Warren: I had been thinking about or trying to write this book for at least 20 years. Having all these insights, I wanted to write them down. I would write them down in these articles, sometimes fun articles and sometimes very straightforward, more academic articles, and I struggled with how to pull this all together. I was getting ideas about what was important. One of my goals is to say that a jewelry designer is not an occupation. It’s not a substantive art. It’s really a profession. It has its own discipline, its own way of thinking and writing and doing and asking questions, solving problems. It’s a profession, but how do I make it that way? I’ve worked that way pretty much on principle.
At one point, an education professor in town said that I might be interested in ideas about literacy and how you teach literacy to students. While I was researching that, I came across the idea of disciplinary literacy. This is an example of how a historian has to think very differently than a scientist. They use different evidence. The historian has to infer from different pieces of writing and histories and costuming to come up with an idea about cause and effect. A scientist has this rational, step-by-step approach for coming up with an idea of cause and effect. They think differently. They use different evidence. I thought, “Well, that sounds like me as a jewelry designer. I think differently than artists.” I’ve had to think differently than artists because as an artist, my designs weren’t successful.
That was the organizing principle, disciplinary literary. So then, what does it mean? What does someone have to know if they have to comprehend it? When you say someone’s fluent in design, what does that mean? How do you believe it’s real? What’s nice was that I had done all this writing, and everything started clicking into place. The organizing principle wasn’t as much of a struggle as it was to try to put it together as an idea of you need to learn A, B and C.
You need to learn about design elements and how to decode them, but in a way like you’re learning how to read them or write them or speak them. You have color. You can put colors together and create a sense of movement, another design element. Color is very independent, but movement depends on your positioning of color or line or whatever to get a sense of movement as a design element. So, here we have independent and dependent variables, vowels or consonants. Some of the design elements sounded like vowels and some sounded like consonants. How do you put it together? I realized you could put together a couple of design elements, like a T and an H in word, and you could know that E will work next. Another element or one of its attributes might work next, but a Z won’t work. THZ doesn’t work. That happens with design elements when you’re trying to put them together. When you understand design elements as sort of an alphabet, then you begin to formulate meaning and expression and words, and the words can get more and more complex.
So, you realize you’re talking about composition. You’re arranging design elements, and you have to arrange them in a way that they can be constructed together, which is another element. Then you want to manipulate them because you want to control as best as you can someone’s reaction to it. You want them to like it, to want to wear it, to want to buy it. This is all controlling meanings, as you’re taking something universal, where everyone knows what they mean. A certain color scheme, everyone knows it’s satisfying, but a simple color scheme in jewelry might be boring. It might be monotonous or it might not fit the context. It might not show power or sexuality or compliance, whatever you’re trying to do with your jewelry. You have to change that scheme a little bit, perhaps color it differently.
So, I’m going through these ideas and working them together with literacy. You want someone to be able to identify problems, identify solutions. You want them to understand how to bring all these elements and arrangements together in a certain kind of form, sometimes with a theme. And towards what end? You have to have an end. I struggled with this. What’s the end? What the jewelry is trying to get to, is it the same as an artist? And it’s not. In art, it’s about harmony with a little variety. In jewelry design, that could be monotonous, not exciting enough. In jewelry design, you want the piece to go beyond evoking an emotional response. You want it to resonate, excite, be just a little bit edgy so people want to touch it or wear it or buy it. They don’t just want to say it’s beautiful. You want to bring them the piece of jewelry so they actually will put it on, keep it on, cherish it, show it around, collect it. It has to do something more than an art. In the end, it has to do partly with how it resonates.
It seems to have more levels to it. It has to feel finished, and in order to feel finished, it has to be parsimonious. In art, there’s a concept called economy. You use the fewest colors to achieve your balanced end, but it’s very focused on the visual. In parsimony, you focus on every aspect of design, from the visual to the architectural and textual to the psychological. Parsimony means you can’t add or subtract one piece without making it worse. You’ve reached some kind of optimal set of all the design elements, all the understandings of other people that you’re bringing into the piece, all your understandings that you’re imposing on the piece. If it’s parsimonious, it feels finished, and that’s a success. So, you go a little bit beyond what an artist does for your piece of jewelry.
Sharon: Are these different in craft? I’m sorry; that’s what I’m trying to understand. Are they different in craft or fine arts?
Warren: In craft, your goal is to end up with something. Ideally, it should have some appeal, but it’s got to be functional. You just end up with something. In art, it’s got to be beautiful. It’s doesn’t have to be functional. In art, you judge jewelry like it’s a painting or sculpture, like it’s sitting on an easel. In jewelry design, you can only judge it as art as it’s worn. It’s not art until it touches the body, and that brings in all kinds of elements, the architectural, psychological, sociological, physiological. Jewelry functions in a context and you have to know what that means. So, it’s different.
Sharon: It’s only a piece of jewelry when it touches the body? Is that the same for metal and beads, for any kind of jewelry?
Warren: It is. You have art jewelry, let’s say. It’s art when it’s on an easel on display. It’s jewelry when it’s worn. You can appreciate it as a piece of art, but to me, as a jewelry designer, I want to appreciate it as a piece of jewelry. So, it’s got to be understood as it’s worn. You have to see it in motion. You have to see it in relationship to the body, the costume, the context. It has to meet the artist’s intent, what they wanted to do, and the wearer has to want to wear it. It must fulfill other needs, too. So, it’s much more complex than dealing with a painting. | |||
| 15 Mar 2024 | Episode 219 Part 2: Power, Politics and Jewelry: Marta Costa Reis on the Second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial | 00:23:30 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Marta Costa Reis Marta Costa Reis started studying jewelry in 2004, as a hobby, in parallel with other professional activities. She dedicated herself fully to this work in 2014. Costa Reis completed the jewelry course at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicacção Visual, in Lisbon, and the Advanced Visual Arts Course at the same school, in addition to workshops with renowned teachers including Iris Eichenberg, Ruudt Peters, Lisa Walker, and Eija Mustonen, among others. In addition to being a jewelry artist, Costa Reis teaches jewelry history at Ar.Co, writes about jewelry, and curates exhibitions. She also serves as artistic director of the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and as a board member of Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does jewelry symbolize power, and where do jewelry and politics intersect? That’s the central question that Marta Costa Reis and her fellow curators, artists and speakers will explore at this year’s Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. Marta joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why this year’s theme is so timely; how Portugal’s turbulent political history influences jewelry today; and how to plan your trip to make the most of the biennial. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, we're going to be talking about the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I am talking with Marta Costa Reis, who is going to tell us all about it. Welcome back.
Sharon: Are you a maker?
Marta: I am a maker.
Sharon: Have you been developing jewelry that's linked to power?
Marta: Actually, not so much. My themes are a bit more, maybe spiritual is the word. I don't know. I'm interested in themes that revolve around time and our connection to time and what is behind us. It's quite different, but this was already the theme of the first biennial. We have to move on and have different themes. Of course, I couldn't do work myself for this biennial. I don't have the time or the mindset to be making at this time. I'm fully focused on the biennial.
Sharon: I was noticing you have several curators. How did you choose the curators of different seminars and exhibits? How did you choose them?
Marta: I can speak, for instance, about the main show that is called Madrugada, daybreak. The main title. I wanted someone that was not a Portuguese person so we don't stay too closed in our own bubble. I wanted someone from another country but who could understand what happened here. Mònica Gaspar is Spanish. Besides being an amazing intellectual and teacher and writer and very knowledgeable about jewelry and design, being Spanish, they had a similar process as ours. They also had a very long dictatorship, and at almost the same time as we did, they became a democracy. So, she could understand more or less the same events. That was important, to have someone with that experience of changing from the dictatorship into a democracy.
We spoke last year Schmuck in Munich about it, and she was interested, but she has a lot of work, so it took a little while to convince her. It's because we are a team and we can share the work that were able to do it and Mònica is able to do it. Patrícia Domingues is the other curator. She's Portuguese, but she's younger than we are.
Sharon: Who is that?
Marta: Patrícia Domingues. She recently had a show in Brooklyn. I can write it down for you later, maybe afterwards.
Sharon: Okay. Patrícia. How do you spell the last name?
Marta: Domingues, D-O-M-I-N-G-U-E-S. I think I got it right. I know how to spell it, but sometimes saying it in English is more difficult. She has been living abroad for a quite a long time, but she's Portuguese, so she has a perspective that is both an insider but also an outsider. I wanted that very much, someone that is not closed here in our little bubble. She's she recently finished a Ph.D. She's younger. She's very much in contact with everything that is being reflected about jewelry in the world right now.
I think they are amazing curators, and they bring a lot to the biennial and to the show. I am there as well not only because I enjoy it, but I wanted to help out with the work, sending the invitations and keeping track of everything so that everything goes smoothly. We are a very small organization, and we do a lot of it ourselves on a voluntary basis. We have to take different jobs in this process. But I'm happy they joined us, and I'm very happy to be working with them on this show.
Sharon: Are you the main curator? Is there a main curator who chose the other ones?
Marta: Yes, that is me. I am the main curator for the whole biennial. Then there is a team and we discuss. We basically invited Mònica and Patrícia and they agreed. The other shows, for instance, the tiara show is curated by Catarina Silva, who is also the head of the jewelry department at ARCO. I'm also taking care of, it's called Jewels for Democracy. That's the show that I mentioned about the women being honored. There's a lot of people involved, but it's quite smooth.
Sharon: Somebody has to keep everything moving and coordinate. How are you promoting the show in Portugal and in general? Anything?
Marta: We will start promoting now. We have the two shows in April. We did the launch last November for the whole biennial. We try to be active on Instagram. Not so much on Facebook, but mainly on Instagram. We will start a more intense campaign. We have a professional communications person that will take care of this. We will start a more intense communication campaign very soon. We have it in two parts, so we are focusing on April. Then we'll have the other show in May, and then it's the end of June. It will be in different parts.
We will also announce the masterclasses very soon. I haven't mentioned the masterclasses yet. That's what I was forgetting. There will be two masterclasses, one with Lin Cheung and one with Manuel Vilhena from the 22nd to 26th of June. We'll open the registrations very, very soon. This week we'll open the registration. You'll start seeing more about it, and we will promote it in different venues. I did an interview for SMCK Magazine, the European magazine about jewelry. It just came out in their last issue. I did it in October or at the end of September, but it just came out. So, we're doing a number of things, but it will become more intense at the end of this month, in February. We will reinforce the communication and the advertising.
Sharon: How long are the shows in the biennial? Does it go through the summer, or is there an ending point or beginning point?
Marta: The main thing is that in the last week of June, everything will be open. The shows in the Royal Treasure Museum, the shows at the Design Museum, the colloquium, the schools, the masterclasses, the students, the galleries. Everything will be open in that last week of June. That will be the right moment to come to Lisbon. That's when we are concentrating everything. On the 30th of June, the two shows at the Royal Treasure Museum will close, but the show at MUDE, the Design Museum, will continue until the end of September, so it will go through the summer.
Sharon: Why do you call it a masterclass? Who's teaching it and what are they teaching?
Marta: It's Lin Cheung. She's from the UK. Manuel Vilhena is a quite well-known Portuguese artist and amazing teacher as well. It's five days. I'm not sure how to differentiate between a workshop and a masterclass, which I guess is a workshop with the masters, and they are masters. They are some of the top teachers I know. I did a small course with Manuel Vilhena a few years ago. Not yet with Lin, but I know they are amazing teachers. I'm sure everyone who comes will enjoy it.
Last biennial, we also had masterclasses, one with Caroline Broadhead and the other with Christoph Zellweger. They are very interesting moments of sharing and learning and deepening your understanding of your own work, not just for students but for artists in every moment of their careers. It's super interesting to be able to have these few days to stop and look at what you do, what you want to do next with very good teachers like they are. This can be a very special moment. For a long time, I did as many workshops and masterclasses as I could, and it was so great.
Sharon: The people who teach the classes, do they vet the people coming, or can anybody who wants to come into the class and take it?
Marta: There is a small vetting process, but basically you send a CV and your motivation, not even a letter, but a few words of why you want to do these classes. That will be the vetting process. But it's pretty much open to everyone in every stage of their education or career.
Sharon: The exhibits and going to galleries, are there charges? Are they free? What is the story with that?
Marta: To visit the galleries, some of the venues will be free. The museums have tickets, but most of the venues that are not museums are free.
Sharon: MUDE is the design museum that just opened.
Marta: Yes. It opened a while ago, but it was under renovation for a long time. It's the only museum in Portugal that has a contemporary jewelry collection. They have been building a collection, and hopefully it will grow. They also have lots of fashion and all kinds of product and graphic design. It's a very interesting collection, very interesting building. They haven't opened yet. We will be one of the first shows. The first temporary show after the renovation will be this one.
Sharon: Wow.
Marta: Yeah, it's exciting.
Sharon: Do you think there'll be a triennial?
Marta: Hopefully we'll do the next one. I have a few ideas. I cannot say yet, but yes. I like to start thinking about the next one while still doing this one. If the team wants to, if we get the support we need, for sure there will be another one.
Sharon: Now for somebody who wants—I started thinking of myself and other people, but members of the audience, if there somebody who wants to come alone, who wants to come to Portugal alone to see the exhibit, where do they stay? You said the end of June is the best time to come.
Marta: The last week of June, yes.
Sharon: Okay, and they stay at a hotel?
Marta: Lisbon is a wonderful, very safe and, I think, easy to navigate town. We don't have a special hotel to recommend, but you can reach out to us and we can help give some suggestions. Stay in a hotel, you will get your program, tell us you are coming. We will try as much as possible to help you out. If you want to organize a group, we can help organize the group as well. But it's easy. Uber goes everywhere, taxis go everywhere, you have the subway, you have buses, you can walk, bike. There are all kinds of ways to travel in town. It's not very big. We're not always able to do it, but many of the events, the venues, will be quite close. There will be a few groups in different locations, but you can visit a lot of things by foot that will be very close by. I think it will be very easy to come even if you're alone.
Sharon: Okay. As long as I have you, tell us about the market for art jewelry in Portugal. Has it grown? Do people care about it?
Marta: I think like almost everywhere else, it's a specialist market that certain people enjoy a lot. Actually, it's not very known by everyone. Most people, when you say jewelry, think about more traditional, more commercial jewelry. Like everywhere, there's a way to go, I think. But there is a group of interested people. There's certainly very interesting artists.
We've had contemporary jewelry, art jewelry being done and presented in shows here since the 60s. We've had a school, the specialized school in Lisbon, since the 70s. We have two galleries. One of them just turned 25. The other I think even more, maybe 30. So, we have had the market for a long time. Now, of course, it's a little bit slow, but I think that happened everywhere with the recent crisis. But it exists, and it's been here for over 40 years, 50 years now. Like everywhere else, it's a continuous work, but people love it. Many people love it. I think it will never stop being interesting and important to a number of us.
Sharon: Okay. Go ahead, if there's anything else you wanted to say.
Marta: About the market, that's basically it. It's an issue, and also what we wanted to promote. That's why we did the biennial, to help people see there's a lot more jewelry than the ones they're used to in the traditional way. That's part of the reason we're doing this, not just for ourselves or the ones who already know what jewelry content actually is all about, but for the ones who don't and might be interested in knowing. Getting the beautiful works that are done out there and reaching out to more people, that's it.
Sharon: Okay. I'm trying to read my handwriting here. I was reading your information last night again, but let's see. The cost, the people and most of the stuff is in English as well as Portuguese.
Marta: Yes, everything will be translated. The colloquium will be in English. Everyone will speak English at the colloquium, and in the museums you will have English. Everything will be translated. Our website is translated. Our Instagram, not all is translated, but because it translates automatically, it's not even an issue anymore, I think. But yes, usually you will always have Portuguese and English, except the colloquium that will be fully in English. It will be quite easy for everyone. English is indeed the common language for almost everything, so we just assume. In Portugal everyone speaks English more or less.
Sharon: Do they learn it in school?
Marta: Yes, yes. In school, movies. The movies are not dubbed. They are in the original English, so we are used to listening to English from when we are very young. It becomes a very common language.
Sharon: That's interesting. We'll have the Instagram and the website listed when we post this.
Marta: Okay, great. Going back, if people want to travel to Lisbon, if they by chance come before June, they will still have very interesting things to see besides the program of the biennial. There are the galleries that will have shows in Lisbon. There's Galeria Reverso and Galeria Tereza Seabra. They both will have shows as they usually have. In April and May, if you visit Portugal, come, because there will be jewelry to be seen. If you plan to come for the biennial, June is a very exciting month. The city is beautiful. It's when there are flowers, there's green, there's the sun. People are just happy in June, everywhere I guess.
Sharon: How is the weather then? Is it hot?
Marta: No, it's warm. June is still quite good. End of July, August is maybe a bit too much, but June usually is still quite good. I won't say the number because I would say it in Celsius so it doesn't mean anything, and I don't know how to say it in Fahrenheit. I won't say a number for the temperature, but it's really nice. The best thing is that the evenings are warm. That's the best, when in the evening it's still warm and it's nice outside. That's June.
Sharon: Are there a lot of people in the streets still when it's warm outside and warm in the evenings? I know you don't live in the center.
Marta: Yes, people will go out. As I said, in June you have traditional parties. The patron saint of Lisbon, his day is in June. From there, you have many, many parties. People go outside, they will eat outside. There will be concerts outside, there will be movies outside, everything will be outside and it will be very nice.
Sharon: I hope that we can all go. I have here the official name is the Second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial, right?
Marta: Exactly.
Sharon: What is the theme once more again?
Marta: The theme is political jewelry and jewelry of power.
Sharon: Okay. And PIN is involved with this also? PIN is the art jewelry—
Marta: PIN is the Portuguese Contemporary Jewelry Association, and it's the organizer of the biennial.
Sharon: Reading through this information I was ready to book my flight. It looks wonderful.
Marta: Yes. I'm happy you come. But surely, if people want to come, reach out to us. If you write to us through Instagram, the website, it will be easy to reach out to us, and we will help in any way. If you want to come, we can help make it happen in the easiest way possible for you. We're happy to have you and everyone who wants to come.
Sharon: Well, thank you very much for telling us about it.
Marta: Thank you for having me and helping us tell our story.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 13 Oct 2021 | Episode 132: Every Box Tells a Story: Marc Cohen’s Box Art Jewelry with Art Jeweler, Marc Cohen- Part 2 | 00:21:23 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional Resources: Photos: Museum of Israel Exhibition
Currently on view at SFO Airport
Marc Cohen and Lisa Berman (no relation)
About Marc Cohen: Marc Cohen is a highly regarded artist known for his wearable box art. As a former actor, stage manager and set designer, Cohen’s two-inch-square boxes resemble stage sets with three-dimensional figures and images. His one-of-a-kind pieces sit on the shelves of numerous celebrities and can be worn like a brooch or pin. The archive of Cohen’s work is housed at California art jewelry gallery Sculpture to Wear. Transcript: Inspired by his time in theater and created to resemble a stage, Marc Cohen’s box art pieces are well-known among rare jewelry lovers and Hollywood’s most famous artists, actors and producers. Part three-dimensional art, part jewelry, the two-by-two boxes feature images and tiny figures that reflect our world. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about his process for creating box art; what it was like to work with theater greats like Tom O’Horgan and Paula Wagner; and why his pieces are more than just shadow boxes. Read the episode transcript for part 2 below. Sharon: You’ve arrived, it sounds like. Marc: It’s kind of an affirmation. Sharon: Absolutely. Do you think the boxes would be as effective if you hadn’t had this experience as a set designer or stage manager in the theater? If I sat down and made a box, I could just stick some figures in it. Do you think that really impacted your work? Marc: To answer you in an honest way, I think if I hadn’t done those things—all I did before was put little seashells in boxes. I’m skirting away from your answer, so excuse me. I think because I already was someone who had been traveling around the world and already had experiences that were theatrical, because I was meeting people and talking to people standing in the middle of the street in Paris, I was already getting the idea. It was being planted. When I got involved in theater—I also did film—I saw what that was about and how everything was in a frame. A stage in a theater on Broadway, it’s in a box. Sharon: That’s true. Marc: It all made a lot of sense to me. There are also ironies about it for me. For example, when I talked about when I was going to high school and people would look at me and think I’m an artist, what they were doing was putting me in a box. I like to think the boxes I create are about that, but they’re beyond. Once someone engages themselves in looking at it and then they end up talking to somebody, it opens up a whole other kind of thing. It breaks down that barrier that a lot of us have with each other. It came from working in theater with someone like Tom O’Horgan, who was way ahead of his time as a Broadway theater director. He did a lot of avant garde, off-off Broadway stuff. He’s no longer alive. He was my best friend in the entire world. There’s not a moment I don’t have gratitude about that friendship, but since then I’ve married. I have a beautiful wife. My wife is a filmmaker, and she and I are developing another kind of box art. I know; we don’t make jewelry. I’m doing video with her. We have a series called Traveler’s Ball. It's on YouTube. People can watch it if they want. It’s very cutting edge. She was inspired by what I do, where I do images layered in a box. A lot of our videos have layered images. Along those lines, I have always wanted to create a box video on a small scale. A long time ago, when I first started making these things—I’m a man with a lot of information and ideas in my brain—the technology wasn’t there yet. The nanos and the microscopic things, images on the head of a pin, that wasn’t around when I first started. For example, I made three-dimensional, two-inch-square watches on a band. I don’t have one to show you—Lisa might have one—but I made these. When I was selling on the street, I would wear one and boxes on my lapel. People would see this thing on my wrist and go, “What is that?” I would show them, and they would all go, “Wow, that’s unreal! It’s big, but that’s amazing! When are you going to sell these?” I said, “I’m not ready to sell them yet.” I did eventually sell some. I only made two dozen of them in my life. If you look at an Apple Watch, they finally did what I was thinking about doing in 1985. The only difference is theirs is a one-dimensional object you wear on your wrist. It is amazing to see somebody with an Apple Watch and all the different things it does, but for me, there’s a missing ingredient. The missing ingredient is a point of view. A point of view is putting characters in front of something, like we are in real life; people standing on the street corner talking, meanwhile the bus is going by. I always wanted to take that idea and put it on a small scale and add the element of art to it. I didn’t want it to be cookie cutter, we’re making five million Apple Watches and everybody’s going to have one. Not everyone’s going to have a Marc Cohen version of that, and I want to keep it that way. I’m famous for a lot of things, but I’m also famous for the fact that I never like to make any of these things more than once or twice. There’s something about that I only made one-of-a-kind images. In the beginning, I used other people’s images—the fine art of appropriation. There’s a guy who’s no longer alive who I learned a lot about; his name was Joseph Cornell. Joseph Cornell is probably the grandfather of appropriation art. Rauschenberg and Warhol, when they talk about their own art and their influences, they always bring up the name Joseph Cornell. Joseph Cornell made boxes. He handmade them himself. He was an eccentric guy who lived in Utopia, New York. Think about that: Utopia, New York. Joseph Cornell was this rather interesting guy. He was a poet. He was curious. He made all these different boxes, and you can’t buy one. They’re incredibly expensive. But I’ve had people along the way say, “You’re like a modern-day Joseph Cornell.” I don’t know what that exactly means. I’m a modern-day Joseph Cornell? But they talk about what I’ve done and what I’ve accomplished. It’s an interesting thing for me that has followed me in this jewelry story. What else could I tell you? Sharon: I’m curious. Do people commission you and say, “It’s my husband’s anniversary. I want a box with us and our wedding picture with it.” Marc: Exactly. For example, Lisa Berman has a relative whose name is Virginia Apgar. Virginia Apgar is famous because she created the Apgar Score. I don’t know if your viewers know what that is, but they can look it up. There was an event Lisa was going to be doing. Lisa, being an old friend of mine, I felt like I wanted to give her a memento. There’s a forever stamp, and this is Virginia Apgar. Sharon: A frame with the brooch. Marc: A frame with the brooch in the middle, and all around are these images of Virginia. Warhol and Hockney did this thing where they took a person’s face—I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of those silkscreens that Warhol used to do. I’m influenced by that too. That’s how I came up with this idea of making Lisa a one-of-a-kind, object of art concept. Sharon, I want to tell you another thing: how the box art thing really started. Originally, when I first started doing things, I started a company called Still Life. Still Life was the early stages of box art, but it wasn’t in a box. It was a flat piece of plastic, circular most of the time, and it was either blue or white or green. On top of that, I would marry other things. I had little three-dimensional palm trees, and I would glue them to the surface of this round, circular piece of plastic, and then I would glue those figures I’m telling you about. I would have people at the beach. If it was a travel map, I would have people with suitcases. I had a whole series. I had like Still Life Creations Beach, Still Life Creations Travel, on and on. Still Life creation stages is how it evolved to the boxes. The point is that when I was doing Still Life, one night, I came across the idea of taking a little box and turning it into something you wear. That doorway I was speaking about earlier opened me up even further into where I am to this day. I’m still very fertile with a lot of ideas. You live in this visual world. Sharon: Right, absolutely. I love the idea that they’re door openers and conversation starters that break down barriers. It’s not easy to do in New York or anywhere, but I don’t think New York is the conversation-starting capital of the world, let’s say. Marc: Right. All the world’s a stage, and all of us are players on that stage. Some people have the ability to get on that stage and act and do, while other people are off on the side watching. They’re not as easily going to jump in. Ruth Bader Ginsberg whom we all love—who didn’t love Ruth Bader Ginsberg? What an incredibly magnificent woman. When she was out of being a Supreme Court justice, Lisa had this idea for a show. She invited all her wearable art friends to come up with a collar idea. She mentioned it to me, and I was trying to figure out what I could do with boxes to make a collar. I’m going to try to do this carefully. Behind me— Sharon: We’ll show a picture of this when we post the podcast so people can see it. Marc: Right, behind me is this. This is a series of 18 boxes in a square. I mounted it on leather. I made it in such a way that you could take this off and wear it around your neck as a necklace. My wife, who is very gorgeous—she used to be a model, among other things in her life—she wore it. Lisa has a picture of her wearing it. It’s one of those objects that, if you wear it among the other incredible collars that all of Lisa’s artists made, this is even more of a conversation piece because of the image of Ruth. In each box I put her most-known rulings, the titles of them. Wearing that, going to an opening somewhere, it’s going to draw people’s attention. That’s why I keep on saying the same thing over again: every box tells a story. Sharon: Where do you get the little figures? Do you buy them at doll stores where people make doll houses, or do you go to the toy store? Marc: It used to be a trade secret. I tried in the beginning to keep everything I did very secret, but if you’re a creative person and you buy one of my boxes, if you really want to know how I made it, you can take it all apart and figure it out. If they’re really curious, they could look at the figures, and now that we Google everything, they could find out that the figures are made in Europe. When I first started, I bought the figures at a model train store. Model train stores have everything for making dioramas. Sharon: They’re too large for what you’re doing, but I was thinking about the little plastic toy soldiers my brother used to have. Marc: Exactly. I have made boxes bigger than two inches square to be worn. That’s easy to wear, but suddenly six inches to wear—that’s a major statement. I used to take top hats and other hats and make a whole diorama around the hat, one-of-a-kind. I made a whole bunch of those, and I sold those pretty quickly. I made sunglasses that had a whole scene in the rim of the sunglasses. They didn’t last very long because they’re fragile; the wrong windstorm and they break. That’s why the box, in the end, became the most utilitarian object to protect what was inside, the image and the little characters. There’s meaning in that, protecting ourselves. Sharon: Where are you getting your ideas from? Are you walking down the street and seeing the World Trade Center and saying, “Oh, that would be great”? Marc: That’s interesting, too. I don’t live in New York City anymore. I really wish I was living in New York City. I can’t afford it right now, but in the early days when I first was doing this, the mid-80s, early 90s when I was selling on the street, I would walk up and down all the fashion streets where all the storefronts are, a million different shops. There are boxes, but they have mannequins inside them. They are large versions of what I was doing on a small scale, and I would get inspired just by seeing what other window display people were doing. I would go to Barney’s. Barney’s uptown was amazing, the designers of the windows there. So were the windows in Tiffany. Because I’m a box artist, I see these things and they inspire me. I’d hear political news of the day, and then I’d try to match something with what was happening in the world with an image, either one I would create or one I would find and appropriate. Sharon: Do you call yourself a box artist if people ask, “What do you do?” Do you say you’re an artist or a maker of jewelry? What do you call yourself? Marc: I call myself a box artist. Sharon: A box artist. Marc: I want to call myself a box artist. First of all, I like to think I created that name. Let’s put it another way. When I was doing what I was doing, people used to say, “Oh, it’s a shadow box,” because that’s how people can connect with the idea. Shadow boxes, if you know what they are, are mostly that. They are cardboard most of the time, and people put things in them and they create shadows against the inside of the box. When I first started making these things, everybody was asking, “What is it? What do you call it?” and I would say, “It’s a box and it has a little bit of art inside of it. It’s box art.” The name stuck, and every time people would come up to me, they’d say, “What’s your latest box art?” When you could get on the internet and Google things, I never saw the word box art in relationship to what I do, but I also never saw the word box art in relationship to anything. Once I started using the name, and when I would make my business cards and they would say, “Marc Cohen, Box Art,” then people would have that. You know how it is. The buzz gets out, so the word eventually stuck. So, I claim box art and I claim myself as a box artist. I claim myself as a lot of other things too, but some of them I can’t mention. It’s a funny journey, all of this. Now, it’s Box Art Dreams. What is Box Art Dreams? Box Art Dreams is video, because that’s the next level. I want to get even more intimate. I’d like the store to be even bigger in its depth and in its message. One image can do that on a certain level. For the person that’s looking at it, one image can stimulate a lot of images in their head, but think about on top of it. If I have a two-inch square box and it has a little video screen inside of it, and there’s a little movie in there and there are characters standing in front of it looking at it, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make them fast enough. Sharon: It’s an interesting idea. Marc: That’s the goal. Now, I can’t do that alone. My wife is a video maker and editor. I’m plugging Julia Danielle—she’s a genius at video. One of our goals is to take the wearable art idea and give it even more of an attraction. It’s not just on your lapel; there’s something flickering in the box. Sharon: That would be really cool, yes. Marc: If it lights up, God almighty, what people would think. That’s where I’m at. Once I do that, I don’t know. Then, the next is large-scale exhibition. Starting with little boxes and leading me on a journey of jewelry and art. Sharon: I do want to mention, for those who are interested, that your boxes at this stage are with Lisa at Sculpture to Wear. We’ll also be posting a link and a lot of other information about today. It’ll be with the podcast. Marc, thank you so much. That was just so interesting. Marc: I appreciate it. Thank you. I want to tell you I’m honored for what you’re doing. Sharon: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 08 Mar 2024 | Episode 218 Part 2: Gina D’Onofrio’s Tips for Choosing a Qualified Independent Appraiser | 00:27:24 | |
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Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That’s exactly why Gina D’Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here. What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Gina D'Onofrio With work in the retail, auction and manufacturing sectors of the jewelry industry since 1989, Gina D'Onofrio's experience encompasses jewelry design and production, appraisals, buying and selling of contemporary, antique and period jewelry, sales and management. Gina operates an independent gemological laboratory, appraisal service and consulting firm and has been catering to private individuals, banks, trusts, non-profit organizations, insurance companies, legal firms and the jewelry trade in the greater Los Angeles area. Gina received her Master Gemologist Appraiser® designation, upon completion of appraisal studies, written and practical examinations and peer appraisal report review with the American Society of Appraisers. In addition, she was awarded the Certified Master Appraiser designation with the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. In 2013 Gina received Los Angeles Magazine's coveted "Best in LA" award for her Jewelry Appraisal Services. She conducts presentations and entertaining speeches about appraisal and jewelry related topics to private and corporate groups in Los Angeles and throughout the USA.
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources:
Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That’s exactly why Gina D’Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, I am glad to welcome back Gina D'Onofrio, an appraiser who just returned from being an independent appraiser. She returned to the auction house Heritage as co-director of jewelry. She was also on the podcast in the very beginning, and it's good to have her on again. Welcome back.
If you become a certain kind of appraiser, let's say real estate or antique jewelry or I'll call it regular jewelry, how do you continue your education in those areas? What do you do if you're a real estate appraiser and you want to be an expert, or an antique expert? What would you do to continue education in that area?
Gina: You mentioned real estate. So, you mean you're appraising houses and all of a sudden you want to appraise antique jewelry?
Sharon: No, if you're in a particular area, is what I mean. You work in jewelry. What do you do to further your education besides going to the conferences, handling the jewelry? Are there other things you can do to further your education in those areas? In that area, I should say.
Gina: If you're working in jewelry, you're basically filling all the educational holes that you might have. When you say you work in jewelry, if you work for a contemporary jeweler, then you need to have more exposure to vintage jewelry. If it's vice versa, maybe you're working with antique and estate jewelry and you're not as exposed to what present day Tiffany and Company and Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels are doing, then you have to self-educate and gain more exposure to that kind of jewelry. As a jewelry appraiser, anything can cross your desk. Quite often, I might receive a collection that belongs to somebody, and she may have something that she bought last week and she may have something that her great-grandmother owned and she has inherited. You need to be able to recognize and evaluate and appraise both pieces. So, you do need a very well-rounded education.
Sharon: You raised the point of Cartier and David Webb and the high-end pieces that designers make, but not everything you see is going to be that. As you said, there's the piece that the grandmother passes down. Heritage, I presume, isn't all Cartier. What do you do then? What do you do if a piece comes across your desk and it's not a Cartier or it's not a David Webb? Do you look at a David Webb as the benchmark and then go from there?
Gina: No, you don't, because a piece that has no stamp or signature doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a fine piece. That's where having an understanding of jewelry manufacturing is critical. You do need to gain an education on how a piece of jewelry is made. GIA is teaching a class called jewelry forensics. In that class, they teach appraisers and other members of the industry how to look at a piece and recognize how it was fabricated. Was it made entirely by hand? Was it made by carving a wax and casting it? Was it made via CAD/CAM design and 3D printing? Was made by using a die struck method? These are all different methods of producing a piece of jewelry, and as an appraiser you need to have an education in that so when you're holding that piece of jewelry in your hand, A) you recognize how it was made, and B) you recognize the quality of the workmanship. That plays into the value of the piece.
For example, you might have a piece of jewelry, and you recognize that it was made entirely by hand. A great deal of time and effort has gone into making it, and the workmanship is excellent. Flawless, in fact. That is going to inform you as to what it would cost to replace that piece if your client wants to insure it for another piece that has been made entirely by hand.
Or, you might look at a piece that is mass produced using CAD/CAM and 3D printing, but it's a piece that's not finished very well. It's poorly made, and the setting work is very poor, too. In fact, some of the stones are a little bit loose because they weren't set properly, or perhaps they're not straight in the piece. That's going to tell you that it's a mass-produced piece. If it's not signed, you're going to be looking at other mass-produced pieces of the same type of lower quality in order to determine what it would cost to replace that piece. Understanding production is really important.
Sharon: Can you be an appraiser without having this background of manufacturing and that sort of thing? Could you be an appraiser?
Gina: You can. I'm really sad to say that there is no licensing of jewelry appraisers. There is no regulation, no government regulation. We self-regulate. That's why if you want to become a professional appraiser and you want to be the best appraiser you can be, you should join an organization that gives you excellent education and network with other very experienced appraisers who can help guide you in the right direction to get the education that you need.
Unfortunately, anybody can appraise jewelry and nobody can stop you. As a consumer, it's best to look for an appraiser that has reached the highest level they can possibly attain within an appraisal organization that requires their members to requalify every five years. The International Society of Appraisers has a requalification program. So does the American Society of Appraisers. They do require their members to requalify every five years. Then you have the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers that have different strata of membership, different tiers of membership, so look for an appraiser within that organization that has successfully completed the Certified Master Appraiser program, the CMA, and at the very least is a certified appraiser. Someone who has sat for the exams.
Sharon: What is requalification? Is that a test on paper or a computer, or is it just that you came to class?
Gina: It varies. It depends on which organization. I failed to mention the American Gem Society, I apologize. They also have an Independent Gemologist Appraiser program. For requalification, you have to attend a minimum amount of education every year. You have to prove you have done that. There is also an exam you have to take as well.
Sharon: You answered one of the questions I had, which is what you would ask somebody you want to be an appraiser for you. What would you ask them to know if they're good or not? What should I ask? What would somebody in the public ask if they're looking for an appraiser?
Gina: Yes. Everything that I just told you. Make sure that they have reached the highest designation they can within those appraisal organizations.
Sharon: I took some antique jewelry to an appraiser not knowing that they did all kinds of jewelry, but they weren't an expert in antiques. Was there any way to suss that out in advance?
Gina: That's a great question, Sharon. That's tricky. As I mentioned earlier, I feel that it's difficult to get a formal education in jewelry history today, so you are getting it piecemeal from wherever you can, which is why I developed my courses. There is no way to look at an appraiser and have them prove to you that they are a specialist in antique and period jewelry. Unfortunately, that's something that comes by way of reputation. You may have to ask, "How did you become proficient?" You may have to just ask them to explain that to you. It's a tricky one. As a consumer, I'm not quite sure how that could be proven.
Sharon: What would you suggest the public ask if you want to know if an appraiser is credentialed, a credible appraiser?
Gina: You ask them what level of certification, what designation, they have achieved within their appraisal organization. Are they a member of the ASA, the NAJA, the ISA, the AGS? If they are a member—you could be a member and not attain any education. You could be a candidate member, or you could just simply be a member. Ask them, "What education have you completed with these organizations? Are you designated? What is your designation? What is your experience with antique and period jewelry? Are you proficient with that type of jewelry?" Just outright ask them to show you what their education and designation is.
Most appraisers who have achieved this level of education and designation have spent a great deal of time attaining it and are proud of what they've achieved, and they usually put up on their website for everybody to see. But if they haven't done that, you can ask them for their professional profiles so you can read through what they've achieved, and you can even check it. You can call those appraisal organizations to see if the information you've been provided is true and accurate.
Sharon: I'm thinking about something you said earlier. If somebody says to me, "I don't have a formal education in this, but I've handled a million and one pieces in this era, and I can tell right away if it's fake or not and who made it," what do you say to that?
Gina: That's quite possible. Absolutely. Then that makes them a connoisseur and a specialist in antique and period jewelry. But are they an appraiser? Do they have an education in appraisal report writing? Can they write that appraisal report for you? That's the other part. That's the other side of the coin. That's the other thing they have to have to be an appraiser. Otherwise, they're an expert in that period of jewelry, but they're not necessarily an appraiser.
Sharon: That's interesting. When I thought about being an appraiser myself, it was the report writing that scared me off. That's very detailed and very scientific in a way. Very precise.
Gina: Yes, and that education is something that you can study.
Sharon: Okay. I think I'll pass.
Gina: You almost looked like you were considering it, Sharon.
Sharon: No, I think I've heard too much about the classes for the report writing and how they're pretty onerous, in a in a good way.
Gina: They're fascinating. I highly recommend it. Anyone out there who is writing appraisal reports and doesn't have a foundation in appraisal report writing from one of the major organizations, I really suggest that you go out and get that education. You'll be amazed at what you'll learn. It's going to make you even better at what you do.
Sharon: Why would you say it makes you better at what you do?
Gina: This education is written by appraisers, not just one appraiser, but collaborative groups of appraisers who have been immersed in that profession for many, many years. They have learned the best approaches and the pitfalls. They have studied the government requirements. They may have had a lot of experience in appraising for litigation, and this collective information has been formally put into a course. It's only going to help you as an appraiser. It's going to help you avoid ending up in court or possibly being disqualified as an appraiser for the IRS because you did not follow the proper procedures. If you know what pitfalls to avoid and how to arrive at a more informed opinion of value, it's only going to make your appraisal a better product for the person that's using it.
Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. I keep going back to Antiques Roadshow. They talk about the auction value and the retail value and the insurance value. It drives me crazy because you see the glassy-eyed look in somebody's eyes. I want to say, "Didn't you hear what they said?"
Gina: As an appraiser and as a specialist for an auction house, this is the biggest problem. This is the biggest obstacle for a private individual, understanding that there is not just one value. There are multiple values for the same piece of jewelry. It just depends on the market. It depends on whether it's the auction market, whether it is the liquidation market, or whether it is the retail market or whether it is the antique and estate jewelry market. Is it being sold as a brand-new piece? Is it being sold as a pre-owned piece in a retail scenario? Is it a custom-made designer piece? The same piece of jewelry could have various values depending on what you need that information for.
Sharon: I wonder, you talked about this handmade piece. Is there a replacement? Yes, there's an insurance value, but could you find a replacement somewhere in the market?
Gina: That's a great question. You know what? Appraisal organizations, we all have forums, email chat groups where we ask each other questions and use the collaborative brain trust of your peers to help you solve a problem, and a problem came up today. There was a photograph of a bracelet that was posted by a professional appraiser. This appraiser recognized the designer. The designer and the manufacturer—they are one in the same—was a French designer called Georges Lenfant. He was a manufacturer of chains, particularly beautifully constructed chains and bracelets, and he manufactured for all the major jewelry houses, Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, goodness me, so many of them. He was very active in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s. He had his own trademark that he would put inside a piece, but he didn't sign it. The piece was often signed with the jewelry house, Cartier, and then it had the Georges Lenfant stamp inside the piece. He was a French maker. I tell you all of this to explain that today, when pieces of jewelry come to market made by this particular maker, there is an extra layer of interest and value because these pieces are so beautifully made. This appraiser posted a piece of jewelry by this maker. This is one of those pieces that wasn't signed by a major jewelry house, but the appraiser was very good and was able to recognize that it was the Georges Lenfant trademark and posed the question, "Can anybody tell me where I can find examples of this piece so I can arrive at an opinion of replacement value?" It was a 1970s bracelet made by this French maker. Where would you replace a 1970s piece made by this maker? It would be with somebody who typically sells vintage jewelry, high-end vintage jewelry. That should have been the answer to this question.
Unfortunately, one of the answers provided was, "Contact the manufacturer and ask them what they would charge you to make it today." It's not being made today, not that particular piece. It's a vintage piece by a collectible maker. I guess that's a very long example to your question. You need to determine, is this a piece that's typically being made today, or is this a vintage piece that has collectible value? Do you recognize who the maker is? Is there a stamp inside there? Is there some way you can look this up? If you can't look it up, who do you go to? How do you find out? You need to know to ask all these questions. All this happens by networking with your peers, by attending appraisal conferences, by self-educating, and by handling a lot of this jewelry.
Sharon: Do you have a favorite period that you like to appraise, or a favorite stone that you are more partial to?
Gina: Oh, boy. Gosh. Well, my focus is 20th century jewelry. I have no favorites. I love all periods of jewelry, but because I am very much immersed these days in jewelry from 1930 to 2000, which I feel is an area of education that is not being covered enough, I tend to focus on 20th century jewelry and preferably the latter half.
Sharon: I can understand. How do you bring the jewelry in, and what do you do with it once you have it?
Gina: A typical day as a consignment director at Heritage Auctions. Well, that varies from day to day, but if you're talking about the consignment process, I could be going to visit with a client. It could be in his or her home. I could be looking at the jewelry and studying the jewelry and learning about the history behind the piece from the owner. Based on that information and based on the collection, I could be coming up with estimate ranges of what the piece of jewelry may sell for at auction. At that point, the owner of the jewelry may consign it to the auction house, at which point I take the jewelry with me and it goes through the auction process.
It gets shipped to headquarters, where it is professionally photographed. If there are any repairs that need to be done, it's done at that point. If lab reports need to be obtained, they are submitted to the labs for grading reports or gem origin identification reports. Then they go through the cataloging process, where the pieces are tested, gemstones are measured, and weight estimates are provided and entered into the system. Then all this information is compiled into the digital online catalog. If it's a signature sale, it also goes into the printed catalog and it goes to print. Those catalogs are distributed to all the bidders.
Then the marketing begins. Biographies are written and researched. Anything that will assist in helping to provide more information to a potential bidder is entered. Then the publicity begins and the public previews begin. The pieces are shipped and sent off to our major satellite offices where they are set up in jewelry showcases, and they are available for public preview. Sometimes special events are planned around these previews, and the planning behind those special events takes place as well. Once all of that is complete, then the pieces are offered up on auction day. When the pieces have successfully sold at auction, then they are packaged up again, money is collected, and the pieces are shipped to the new owners.
Sharon: Do you ever have repeat clients or repeat people who call you and say, "Gina, I have something I want to show you," because you've developed a relationship?
Gina: Yes, definitely. I have regular consignors and I have regular buyers, and sometimes they are one in the same. There are people that are constantly refining their jewelry collections, so sometimes they'll sell a piece that they no longer need, but they're also collecting pieces that are more to their evolving tastes. We have collectors. Then we also have repeat consignors. I have many clients who have accumulated lovely jewelry collections over the years, and they're very slowly thinning the collection or letting each piece go once they're ready to sell it.
Sharon: Is that because they're aging out, let's say, or they get tired of a piece?
Gina: It could be either. If you're a collector and you're refining your collection, then yes, you're refining it and you're selling pieces that no longer fit in with your style that is evolving. If you're downsizing, you could be downsizing everything in your life, including your home, your clothes and your jewelry collection. Sometimes lifestyle. Especially today, lifestyles change. We no longer wear the jewelry we used to wear, and it's just sitting around. Maybe it's time to sell those pieces to put it into something else. Maybe you want to start a college fund for your child, and that jewelry you're no longer wearing anymore is going to go into that fund. There are all kinds of reasons why people sell their jewelry. Sometimes it's a divorce settlement. Sometimes it's by court order. We've had many sales that have been by court order. The government wants to collect their taxes and it's a liquidation. Jewelry is going up for sale because it's by court order.
Sharon: It's certainly true that lifestyles change very fast and what you wore. I think, "Well, you're a middle-aged woman now. Am I going to wear what I wore when I was 20?" It's very different.
Gina, thank you very much for being here. I learned a lot. It was great to talk with you and I hope you will come back soon.
Gina: Thank you so much, Sharon. It was such a pleasure to talk to you as well.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 21 Dec 2022 | Episode 177 Part 1: History at Your Fingertips: How Beatriz Chadour-Sampson Catalogued 2,600 Historic Rings | 00:33:22 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Beatriz Chadour-Sampson
Beatriz Chadour-Sampson studied art history, classical archaeology and Italian philology at the University of East Anglia, and at the University of Münster, Germany. Her doctoral thesis was on the Italian Renaissance goldsmith Antonio Gentili da Faenza. In 1985 she published the jewelry collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne. Since 1988 she has worked freelance as a jewelry historian, curator of exhibitions and academic writer in Britain. Her numerous publications on jewelry, ranging from antiquity to the present day, include the The Gold Treasure from the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (1991), and 2000 Finger Rings from the Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland (1994). She was the consultant curator in the re-designing of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum (opened in 2008), London and was guest curator of the ‘Pearl’ exhibition (2013-14). She is an Associate Member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, London. Today Beatriz Chadour-Sampson works as a freelance international and jewelry historian and scholarly author. Her extensive publications range from Antiquity to the present day.
Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript:
Working in jewelry sometimes means being a detective. As a freelance jewelry historian and curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum, Beatriz Chadour-Sampson draws on her wealth of knowledge to find jewelry clues—even when a piece has no hallmark or known designer. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she creates jewelry exhibits that engage viewers; how she found her way into the niche of shipwreck jewelry; and what it was like to catalogue 2,600 rings. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. My guest today is Beatriz Chadour-Sampson. She’s been the curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum for almost 35 years. She’s also a jewelry historian, art historian, educator, author and a whole bunch of other things I’m sure I’m missing out on, but she’ll fill us in today. Beatriz, welcome to the program.
Beatriz: Thank you very much for your invitation.
Sharon: Can you tell us about your jewelry journey? It’s been quite a journey.
Beatriz: Yes, the journey starts many years ago when I was a small child, in fact. I’m not a young chick at the moment, but I started off in my childhood with jewelry. I have to tell you a little bit of the family history. I was born in Cuba. My father was Russian and my mother was British. There’s a whole story of European history, including being five times refugees from Europe within Europe. That’s the aside, but my father learned how to cut and polish diamonds during the war in Cuba. After the war, he opened an import/export business for gemstones. It’s not unknown. You’ll probably find on the internet a picture of me, age three, sorting stones in his office in Cuba. We left Cuba during the Cuban Revolution. I was a Cuban subject as well as my father, but we left and never returned.
He opened a business called Chadour Charms, Inc. in New York. I always spent my holidays in New York. My mother was working in a company where I couldn’t tag along. I spent most of my free time as a child on 47th Street, which was called the gold and diamond alley at the time. My father designed charms. He had the gold cast and then set the stones himself. On 47th Street we had many friends we visited. One had a refinery for gold and silver; the other one sold supplies for goldsmiths, which was quite exciting. I encountered pearls, corals, diamonds and all sorts of jewelry experiences.
That was from three years to early childhood. It was about three years altogether in New York. Then my father was offered a job in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He spoke fluent German. It was an American company building a pearl business in Frankfurt. That’s when I got even deeper into jewelry. Of course, there was also the trade. You can call it child labor today. In those days maybe it was seen slightly differently, but I did my homework with the secretaries. After that, I was stringing pearls, writing invoices and doing all kinds of things with pearls. When I was slightly older, I was allowed to make pearl pairs. Don’t think that a pearl is white. It’s nowhere near white. There are so many different colors and lusters that come in the pearl. So, I was setting pearls, hundreds of pearls, sorting them by a quarter of a millimeter, and then pairing them for earrings and matching the pearls in their luster so they could be worn as earrings.
From there we went on to jewelry, so stones and charms. Something interesting with the charms—I have a little anecdote. I was researching a book, “The Power of Love,” which came out in 2019, and I was looking in an auction catalogue for a famous love ring that Sir Laurence Olivier gave to the actress Vivian Leigh. Late at night, as I do very often, I was searching on the internet for the auction catalogue, and suddenly I see a charm bracelet. I couldn’t believe my eyes. One of the charms she had on the bracelet was designed by my father. I can prove that because I have the same charm on my charm bracelet. It was a ship in the sunset, as you see in the background. So, that was going down memory lane.
When I reached the age of 18, I said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with jewelry ever again.” I had enough. I grew up in the jewelry trade. It was all trade. Lo and behold, I then decided to study art history in Germany and England, but I did my thesis in Germany at the University of Münster. My subject at the end of this was Antonio Gentili, a Renaissance goldsmith. He came from Faenza. He worked for the Medici and the Farnese families, two very high families. He also did works for the Vatican. I remember in my early years after my dissertation, I used to see the Easter Mass on television in Germany. I was looking to see if the cross and candlesticks I worked on were on the show on the altar, which most years they were.
I then got into goldsmiths’ work. It’s through my jewelry background and my thesis on Renaissance goldsmiths’ work that I was awarded a scholarship to write the catalogue of 900 pieces of jewelry for what is now called the Museum for Applied Arts, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst. The collection covers 5,000 years of jewelry history. I was really plunged into the deep history of jewelry. There weren’t so many books at the time. They were more archaeology books. This explosion of jewelry books is something that came after I had finished the catalogue. There was a lot of research that was quite complex, but I enjoyed it. It was wonderful to gain that experience and knowledge of a wide part of jewelry history. That was in 1981. I finished the catalogue. It was published. That was also my first experience doing an exhibition because when the catalogue was launched, we had an exhibition with the jewelry. More recently I’ve been with the Cologne Museum since 1981. It was the first time. They’re now doing a new display of the jewelry. They’re still planning it. I think it’s due to come out next year, so there will be a new display of the jewelry I catalogued.
Then I was offered a job in Hanau, Germany. Many will not realize that Hanau has a history in jewelry that goes back to the 17th century. Up to the First World War, it was a center for producing hand-manufactured jewelry. Today, they have an academy where you can learn how to make jewelry. That goes back to 1772. So, it’s a city of great tradition of jewelry. I was Managing Director of the Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst. I was organizing exhibitions and competitions and catalogues, and it was all contemporary jewelry. When I was working in Cologne, that was my first encounter with contemporary jewelry. I met people who I became great friends with. I also took part in the many events of the Forum für Schmuck und Design, which still exists. So, those were my early experiences with contemporary jewelry, but when I got to Hanau, I was plunged right into it. I had all kinds of jobs to do, as I said, exhibitions, catalogues and competitions.
I stayed there for about three and a half years. In 1988, I was asked if I would catalogue the Alice and Louis Koch Collection. Louis Koch was a very famous jeweler in Frankfurt au Main, Germany, and he and his wife collected rings, among many other collections. It was a family of collections. By 1904, they had about 1,700 rings. There are over 2,600 rings now. I was asked to catalogue the 1,700 rings, which took me quite a long time, but I was doing all kinds of other projects in between. The collector allowed me to do that, which was great fun. In 1994, the historical collection was catalogued fully. It’s like an encyclopedia of rings from ancient Egypt on. It covers 4,000 years of jewelry history.
In about 1993, just before we finished the catalogue—and there are a few contemporary rings in the 1994 publication. I believe this collection from Louis Koch in 1904 went to a second and a third generation after he died in 1930. The fourth generation, we discussed it, and we came to the conclusion that they should make it their own and continue where their great-grandfather had finished. Now, their great-grandfather was, as I said, a very famous family jeweler in Frankfurt. The shop was called the Cartier of Germany, so you can imagine royalty wearing it and the national business. He was a quite a jeweler. They also expanded to Baden-Baden. He was a very fashionable jeweler, and he was a contemporary of René Lalique. He didn’t buy rings from any other contemporaries, but he bought a ring by René Lalique, so he must have realized there was something very contemporary about Lalique. He was the modernizer of French jewelry at the time, using glass and gold that was unthinkable.
So, we went on this venture from 1993 until the publication in 2019. We amassed a collection of 610 rings from the 20th and 21st century, which are all catalogued. Then the collection went into the Swiss National Museum. There was a small exhibition, but since 2019, there’s a permanent display of 1,700 rings. May I add that the 610 contemporary rings are all on display, so we reduced repetitions within the historical part of the collection. Interestingly, this room’s showcase is also round like a ring. With 1,700 rings, it’s not an easy task because you have to go in a circle. We had big, brown panels of paper and played around with the rings. It starts with themes and then goes on chronologically to the contemporary. You couldn’t make a mistake because once you got to ring 200, you couldn’t go back to number 50. You can imagine going up to 1,700. I can say there are two rings that are not in the right place, but that’s not too bad with 1,700 rings.
Sharon: Did you have to photograph them?
Beatriz: I’m very lucky to finish up on the Koch Collection. I’m now consultant curator to the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. I was responsible for the display there together with my colleagues in the museum. That was quite an experience. It’s wonderful after 35 years to still be able to do this. I think they were a bit concerned about my babies and that I would want to run away from it, but that isn’t the case. I really enjoy working with them. It’s a pleasure. It’s so rewarding, after 35 years, to see the collection on display, which was always in private hands from the 1900s onward.
I’ve just written six blogs for the Swiss National Museum. One is on the Napoleonic Wars, and the stories are all told by the rings. The next one coming out in November is on Josiah Wedgwood and his sculptor, John Flaxman. Rings tell lots of stories.
Sharon: Are the blogs in English?
Beatriz: Everything in the Swiss National Museum is English, German, French and Italian. So, you take your pick which one you want.
Sharon: Did you have to photograph everything? When you say you catalogued them, I think of a catalogue being a photograph and description.
Beatriz: Oh, no. The photographs of the historical collection were all done by a photographer. It’s very difficult because we had to choose one background for all. That was complex. It’s pre-1994, so it’s sort of an old, pale, gray blue. One color fits all because it was the encyclopedic nature of the books.
With the 2019 book, I was working with the photographer in Zurich. I spent many weeks and months in Zurich sitting next to the photographer and choosing which angle because contemporary rings don’t just have a hoop and a bezel. It’s a piece of sculpture, so you have to know exactly which angle to take the photograph to show as much as you can of the ring. I was actually working together with the photographer. You learn a lot with such jobs.
Sharon: Wow! Today there are all kinds of degrees you can get with exhibitions. Was it something you learned hands on or learned by doing?
Beatriz: I was working at the practice in my second home of the Victoria and Albert Museum, because I was consultant curator to the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery. I worked there for four and a half years on the displays. When you see the displays in the gallery, the concept was from me. I had little black and white photographs of the old gallery, nothing in color. It didn’t matter that I knew the pieces by heart and each piece of jewelry was about the size of a small fingernail, and I got a damp hand from cutting out 4,000 images of 4,000 pieces of jewelry, very high-tech, of course. I had my pieces of paper, and I started thinking that every board has to tell a story. For me with an exhibition, the exhibit has to tell the story, and the text below on the captions really helps you understand it. Visually, I think it’s very important that the pieces also talk. So, yes, I started before the architect was allocated and we worked together with 4,000 pieces. My colleague, Richard H. Cumber, worked on the watches, but otherwise all the jewelry is designed on black and white photographs on white sheets of paper with double-sided tape.
Sharon: Do you have thoughts about why you got so immersed in jewelry? You said you didn’t want anything to do with jewelry, but here you are immersed in it. What were your thoughts?
Beatriz: You mean deep diving in it?
Sharon: Yes.
Beatriz: I grew up in the jewelry trade and experienced the Cuban Revolution and hardships, being refugees in New York and so on and then moving again to another country. It was complex. As a child, it wasn’t quite easy. It didn’t do me any harm. I’ve survived, but it was a really hard trade. What I was doing later, and still do now, is historical jewelry. It’s a very different thing. I think I’ve gotten my love of jewelry back, yes, but I’m very keen on the wide picture of jewelry covering thousands of years.
In fact, I’ve been doing courses for the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2008. When I do the “Bedazzled” one, which is a history of jewelry, I start with 150,000 B.C. I jump off it pretty quickly, but for me, it’s so important for people to go back to that time to understand what jewelry was about. To me, it was certainly more amuletic rather than status. It was status as well probably. We can’t follow that, but certainly I think amuletic to protect from the dangers. They lived in a very natural world, so the dangers were much worse than we could imagine. I think it’s fascinating to see what was in other periods of jewelry history. It makes it much more exciting to understand what’s happening now.
Sharon: When you came to contemporary jewelry—it seems that you’re pretty immersed in that also—what stood out to you? What made a piece different or jump out at you? There seems to be so much copycatting in many ways.
Beatriz: Definitely, a lot of copycatting. I’ve worked on a collection of 450 pieces of, and I can tell you that’s one of the most copied ones. On Instagram, I have to be careful that I don’t get nasty remarks because I do point out, “Yes, we’ve seen that before. He was ahead of his time, but his style is still modern today.” When we were putting the Koch Collection together with the 610 rings, 20 from the 21st century, the individual l idea was very important for me. It has to be innovative; the idea has to be new; it has to be interesting. For the materials, it should be an experiment with new materials; different materials; materials you wouldn’t use for jewelry. We talk about sustainable jewelry. Pre-1994 we have two rings in the collection made of washing-up bottles. We were way ahead of the times. Of course, Peter Chang used recycled materials, and we commissioned a ring from him. We did commission people that never made rings before just to put them to the test. It was very interesting.
Sharon: I didn’t know that Peter Chang was recycled.
Beatriz: The materials are all recycled materials, yes. That is the amazing part, the recycled materials. These two crazy rings we bought from a German jeweler, it’s just washing-up bottles. If you’re creative and imaginative, you make something interesting.
We have many important names who made rings. We have some wonderful rings from Wendy Ramshaw and so on. We have a lot of big names, but that was not the point. We have a lot of ones that just graduated or were young or completely unknown. It’s more the idea and what they made. Of course, I was approached many times regarding rings and I had to decline, saying, “Sorry, we already have something like that.” I couldn’t say it was not exciting. The idea was already there, so it makes it difficult. Unless it was interpreted differently, yes, that’s fine.
So, I think we got a lot of crazy pieces. The collector always teased me. He said, “Can you wear the ring?” I said, “Of course, could you wear the ring? What do you think?” I always choose rings for wearing. Of course, I have to admit there are a few that are not wearable. I’ll admit to that, but I think with a collection like the Koch Collection, you’re allowed to do that. There are few you really can’t wear, or you can wear them with great difficulty.
Sharon: Yes, I think about that. I always think about how it would be to type with a ring like that, or how it would be to work at a keyboard, something like that.
Beatriz: I always say you don’t wear the big, high jewelry pieces when you go shopping or washing up.
Sharon: That’s true.
Beatriz: I won’t say any company names, but the high jewelers of New York, Paris, wherever, they make those pieces. Those are rings. If they look great, they’re wearable, but you wouldn’t wear them every day while you’re washing up or shopping or doing other tasks around the house.
Sharon: That’s true. That’s probably why people don’t buy them as much anymore. They don’t have places to go, Covid aside.
Beatriz: I think with Covid, the interesting thing is that we have rings that are sculptures. If you’re doing a collection and somebody makes a ring sculpture, I think it’s valid to be in the Koch Collection. We do have a few ring sculptures, including Marjorie Schick. But it’s interesting that you mentioned Covid and when the pandemic was on. I don’t want to go into the pandemic, but we have a much-increased Zoom culture. It did exist before the pandemic, people trying to reduce travelling and climate change and so on. It did come before the pandemic, but it is definitely an increased media. You can’t really wear a ring and say, “Well, here’s my ring.” You have to wear something that’s in the Zoom zone. That’s earrings and brooches. Fortunately, I’m somebody who likes earrings and brooches. I always have on earrings and brooches.
Sharon: What you have on is very Zoom culture. It shows up well.
Beatriz: The color shows up, yes. The earrings, they’re made of silver and made by Eve Balashova, who works in Glasgow. Zoom is not a problem with this jewelry because, as I said, I love the earrings and certainly the brooch that goes with it. In fact, when I bought the earrings I asked, “Can you make a brooch I can wear with it?”
Sharon: Wow! When you go out, do you see rings that make you say, “That should be in the collection”? Can you add new ones?
Beatriz: Since the display in 2019, there are only a few additions. It sort of finished with the publication and the display, but there have been the odd new rings. I write a lot about that. We have had a few, and I’m hoping that next year they will be on display. Maybe half a dozen rings; not many. We might have another exciting one, but we have to wait. Until the collector has actually gotten his hands on it, I don’t want to jinx things.
Sharon: But you identify them and then they say yea or nay.
Beatriz: Yes. They have bought things on their own as well, but we’ve done this together, yes. I’ve identified and advised. For me, it was wonderful. First of all, they don’t know the collector. It’s always the Koch Collection, but the family’s name is different, so it was always very modest, without great names. I was the one who negotiated everything, and it always gave me great pleasure when I could stand up and say, “We’ve chosen a ring for the collection.” You find this great joy on the other end, especially for those young or unknown ones. You could imagine what it meant for them. It’s always great joy.
I love working with contemporary artist jewelers. I worked for 13 years as a visiting tutor under David Watkins. I always said I learned more from them than they learned from me, but I helped them with their Ph.Ds. I really enjoyed working with them, and it continued with being able to buy or acquire what they made for the collection.
Sharon: You do a lot of teaching. You’re teaching other classes in January at the V&A.
Beatriz: Yeah.
Sharon: It started online.
Beatriz: Yes. In 2021, I did an online course, “Bedazzled.” Next year, in January and February, it’s called “Jewels of Love, Romance and Eternity,” which is a topic I’ve worked on because I published the book “Proud Love.” We have a few other speakers who can bring another slant into it. Again, I start with antiquity, because you can’t talk about love jewels without actually talking about Roman jewelry. Many people don’t realize that the engagement ring or the proposal ring or marriage ring started with the ancient Romans.
Sharon: I didn’t know that.
Beatriz: Diamonds in engagement rings started in the 15th century. It might be a little bit earlier, but that’s more or less the dateline. So, there are lots of interesting things to talk about.
As I said, I’ve been doing courses since 2008 at regular intervals. Also at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was co-curator of the pearls exhibition. I did a lot of courses on pearls as well, and that is a fascinating topic. It was wonderful to work on that exhibition. It was together with the Qatar Museum’s authority, but I was asked by the Victoria and Albert Museum to create an exhibition for the British public, which was very different to what they had in mind, of course.
Sharon: There are so many new kinds of pearls, or at least kinds that weren’t popular before. Tahitians and yellow pearls, that sort of thing.
Beatriz: Yes, all these extra pearls are the cultured pearls. It’s a history of the natural pearl. Qatar was a center where they were diving for pearls, so we did all the diving history, how merchants worked in that area in Bali and Qatar. The cultured pearl is, of course, Mikimoto. There are theories that the Chinese started the cultured pearls, but the one who really got the cultured pearls going was Mikimoto. He certainly did the science with it. He worked together with scientists and had the vision. Natural pearls were very, very expensive, and his philosophy was that every woman should wear a pearl necklace or be able to afford a pearl necklace. I think his task is fulfilled.
It’s interesting because the natural pearl doesn’t have quite the luster of the cultured pearl. By the 20s, you have the cultured pearls coming in, and then by the 50s—when I did the exhibition, we had so many stories being told. Of course, some ladies from the Middle East are probably kicking themselves because they sold the family natural pearls because they didn’t have the luster, and they bought the nice cultured pearls that are more flashy. Of course, now the value of natural pearls is unthinkable.
Sharon: Was there a catalogue?
Beatriz: With cultured pearls, you have the golden pearls and the Tahitian pearls and so on, but the color of the pearls depends on the shell they grow in, unless you have some that have been tampered with and are colored. But there are Tahitian pearls, golden pearls and all these different shades. Melo pearls have an orangey color. The color of the pearl is dependent on the shell it grows in. The rarest pearl is the pink pearl that comes from the Caribbean. That’s the conch pearl; that’s hugely expensive. You asked about the catalogue.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 26 Mar 2023 | Episode 108: How the Vintage Boom Changed How We Buy and Wear Jewelry with Cameron Silver Founder of Decades | 00:24:20 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Cameron Silver Cameron Silver is the Fashion Director of the H Halston and H by Halston brands. Bringing extensive knowledge about the history of the iconic American brand, Cameron works with a design team to offer seasonal inspiration and styling guidance in line with the Halston brand legacy and unique design DNA. As a global celebrity stylist, international best-selling author, and fashion expert appearing regularly on shows such as Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, he is widely recognized as a fashion and style authority. Cameron is also the founder of Decades, an acclaimed vintage retail store in Los Angeles worshipped by fashionistas and collectors alike for an unparalleled collection of designer clothing and accessories dating from the 1920s to today. In 2012, he published the global best-selling book, DECADES: A Century of Fashion, and has written for publications including Harper's Bazaar and C Magazine. Cameron brings his expertise on the history of fashion to speaking engagements around the world, focusing on the past, reflecting on the current state of fashion, and contemplating the future of fashion. Cameron also starred in the Bravo television show Dukes of Melrose which profiled his store, Decades. Named one of Time Magazine's "25 Most Influential Names and Faces in Fashion,” he has styled celebrities for major red carpet appearances including the Golden Globes and Academy Awards and consulted for fashion and luxury brands around the world. Additional Resources: Photos:
Decades Showroom:
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| 01 Mar 2024 | Episode 217 Part 2: Cara Croninger’s Creativity Lives on in Her Daughter, Musician Saudia Young | 00:23:45 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Saudia Young Saudia Young is a New York City-born actress/singer and storyteller in theater and film. Born on the Lower East Side and brought up between Tribeca and LA, Young explores the notion of home, love, justice, and identity through her art.
The recently repatriated artist lived in Berlin, Germany, for a long chapter of performing, writing, and producing. The Ameripolitan Awards 2023 Female Rockabilly Singer nominee released her 7" single ‘Noir Rockabilly Blues,’ produced by Lars Vegas-DE and featuring 'The Wobble' on the A and Iggy Pop’s 'Lust for Life' on the B side, in 2017, followed up by her 12” debut ‘Unlovable’ in 2018. The LP was recorded live at Berlin, Germany’s legendary Lightning Recorders.
Young founded a Dark Kabarett and a Rockabilly Noir Blues band in Berlin, co-created the Lost Cabaret and the Schwarze Liste Kabarett theater projects and wrote and produced the award-winning short film The Gallery. While in Berlin, she was cast in the lead voice-over role of Oskar in School for Vampires (the English version of the Hahn Film cartoon series).
Young co-wrote and performed the solo show Sneaker Revolution and is currently writing a theater/film piece about her actor father, Otis Young, and sculptor/designer mom Cara Croninger. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources:
Transcript:
To jewelry lovers, Cara Croninger was a groundbreaking artist whose work was shown at iconic galleries Artwear and Sculpture to Wear. To musician and actress Saudia Young, she was just mom. Today, Saudia is working to preserve her mother’s legacy and secure her place in art jewelry history. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Cara made her pioneering resin jewelry; how Cara’s work evolved with the times; and why Saudia thinks of her mom every time she performs. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, we’re speaking to my guest, Saudia Young, who is located in Philadelphia. She has an interesting background. Her mother was a very well-known jeweler, and her father was an actor. She was born in New York and grew up between New York and Los Angeles. Welcome back.
Were you aware she was doing this? Were you aware that she went to different galleries, that she didn’t have a sales rep when you were growing up? Were you aware of this?
Saudia: Yeah, of course. There was one point in the 90s where she had a showroom. Tony Goldman and Janet Goldman had a showroom called Fragments, and she was in the showroom for some years. She had different reps throughout her life. Ten Thousand Things was a store. They still exist, and they have incredibly beautiful work. For a while in the Meatpacking District, they had a nice cadre of artists, and my mom was one of the artists. They also did wholesale for her. So, they represented her work to other people.
Sharon: I have a few pieces, just a smattering, but do you have a lot of her work? Do you have an archive of her work?
Saudia: Oh, yeah. That’s part of what I’ve been dealing with. My sister and I have our own personal collections. Throughout the years, my mom collected the best pieces of each group and gave us our personal collections. Then I have basically all the work she left behind when she passed away. I’ve been trying to organize that. There was a big section of it shown at the Aspen Art Museum two years ago for about a year. Jonathan Burger had a show called The Store. My mom’s jewelry and sculptures were in one show. That was really exciting, to have both together. Actually, 14 small sculptures sold during that show and, fingers crossed, about seven pieces will be donated to an institution. I’m not going to say which one. That takes a long time.
Right now, there are pieces that are actively being sold. Lisa Berman—not a family member, just the same last name—from Sculpture to Wear sold some of my mom’s work at her first gallery. She also helped sell some pieces when I came out and was trying to figure out what to do and how to secure the legacy, meaning literally a storage space to hold everything. It's a big responsibility.
Sharon: You’re referring to Lisa Berman.
Saudia: Yeah, who is not your blood relation but of the same name. Obviously, she introduced us and was part of the first interview. She’s consulted with me. She’s another one of the angels. There’s a whole host of people who are still in awe of my mom’s work and in support and cheerleading. It includes Robert Lee Morris.
I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the work to secure the legacy. It is being sold at Studio Hop in Providence, Rhode Island. That’s introducing the work to some people who have not seen it before. It's introducing it to a new audience, which is really nice. Jussara Lee, who used to sell it in Manhattan and is now in Connecticut, has been selling it. Other than that, I have an Artwork Archive website for her so people can see the work. I’m not selling it from that website, but there is a section of it that’s still being sold. Then there’s a section I’m holding in case I can get it accepted into an institution.
Sharon: I remember a few years ago, I fell in love with a bracelet and I didn’t end up getting it. I think it was the first time I ever heard of her, and I thought it was so neat.
Saudia: Yeah, it sold a lot of work. They stopped selling after she passed away. They also had a hard time. Everybody is just recovering now from Covid. A lot of people had a very hard time in the past few years. Some stores closed and sales went down. There were several stores who were carrying her work who have closed since Covid.
Sharon: What did you do to make it through Covid and to have money come in?
Saudia: I cried. I don’t know. I did whatever I could. I was going back and forth between Germany and here. There was a grant in Germany—actually, it wasn’t a grant; it was a loan—but there was a Covid loan they were giving to artists in Germany. Here, I went on unemployment for a while and then I went off it, whatever I could. We all did what we could to survive.
Sharon: That’s very true. I know there were different things we had to do. I agree with you that people are just coming out of it now.
Saudia: And now we have two wars, so it’s like, “Great, thank you.” Can’t catch a break.
Sharon: Which is worse? I don’t know. I guess if you’re in the field over there, it’s worse.
Saudia: Yeah.
Sharon: A lot worse. How does it feel to have a mother who’s mentioned by people you don’t know? You say you’re the daughter and all of a sudden, they say, “Oh, I love your mom,” or “I love her jewelry.”
Saudia: What do you mean? How does it feel?
Sharon: Yeah. If I said, “Oh, I have a really neat bracelet,” and the person says, “I’ve not heard of that person,” how does it feel?
Saudia: First of all, a young man—he’s probably my age. It’s so funny I still think of myself as a teenager. Timothy Reukauf is a stylist. He’s another angel who introduced me to the manager and owner of Screaming Mimis Vintage clothing and jewelry store in New York. When I brought the work, because they brought the work to a vintage show, and they’re showing the work and trying to sell it, she was so enthusiastic and happy and excited. It was nice because it’s an extension of my mom, and I miss my mom. I feel like it’s that, as opposed to anything ego-based. It’s more emotional—now you’re going to get me emotional. But it’s nice to know because I really miss her, and when I hear people loving her work, it’s heartening. It’s heart filling.
Sharon: That’s a good word, heart-filling. I’ve heard different things. It’s Croninger with a hard g. I’ve heard that as Croninger with a soft g. Which one is it?
Saudia: Oh lord, that’s a good one. It’s Cara Croninger with a hard g, but people have called her Croninger with a soft g. People have called her Cara. She’s even called herself Cara, but it’s Cara Lee. Her Michigan name was Cara Lee Croninger, but it depends on who you are. Are you Dutch? Are you German? Are you from New Jersey?
Sharon: Did she support your career as an artist?
Saudia: Do you mean my dreaming? Yeah, she supported me being a dreaming, silly person, definitely. She put me in dance school. She always thought I should be a painter, actually. She’d say, “You should be a painter,” because I had a natural ability to draw and to work with my hands. After being a child laborer with her, I could make things. But all jokes aside, she was very supportive of me being an artist or whatever it was that I wanted to be, political activist or artist. My sister was an architect. She was very supportive of that. She was beloved by a lot of the young artists who were around Dumbo, our friends, our extended family. She was a positive influence, a positive auntie, elder, second mom, to a lot of people.
Sharon: It sounds like it.
Saudia: Yeah. I shared her as a mom figure with a lot of people.
Sharon: Tell us more about your singing. Do you think of her when you sing?
Saudia: Yeah, I think of her with whatever I do, for sure. There’s one song—I think you wrote it down on the question list—It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing), doo wop, doo wop, doo wop, doo wop. I think it was Louis Armstrong. She was working on some kind of saying or branding because she was really into the earrings having a nice swing. She coined it when I was helping her make them. The holes had to be big enough so the lyre could be comfortable enough so the earrings could swing. She incorporated that into some of her branding.
But yeah, I listened to a lot of music growing up. She was very into Judy Collins and Kurt Weill, a wild range. She dated one of the Clancy Brothers—they were very into folk music in the 60s—and my dad and her were into soul and Otis Redding and Taj Mahal and Bonnie Raitt. I’m wandering, but yes.
Sharon: What years was she most popular? It seems like she had a real high.
Saudia: I think the 80s. The minute she started doing the resin stuff, she went into Sculpture to Wear, which was a very prestigious gallery. I’d say the early 70s through the 80s. Then Artwear closed and she was on her own. She did really well in the 90s as well. She was pretty prolific, but I think the 80s were the time when there were tons and tons of fashion articles and fashion shoots with all the supermodels of that time.
Sharon: Talk about wandering, because I’m looking at my list of questions. Tell us how you were involved in making her jewelry. You told us a little bit, but did you ever cut the hearts?
Saudia: The hearts were made in molds. She created molds and poured, and then we would open the rubber molds. I would help sand. I would help drill holes. I can drill a hole. I would help with polishing. Like I said, I would help with finishing work and stringing cords on the hearts. Trying to influence her businesswise, she was not having it.
Sharon: Would she say, “That color doesn’t look better in the green. It looks better in the purple,” or something that?
Saudia: No, not really because once something is poured, it’s a done deal. That would be like, after you’ve made 500 brownies, saying, “I wish we had blueberry muffins.” It’s too late now.
Sharon: She could say, “Well, you can have it then, and I’ll try and sell the purple one,” or something.
Saudia: No, the work was too labor-intensive. Once things were made, you really needed to get them out there. They were like donuts in a way. You need to get them out so they don’t go stale. Keep the energy, keep them moving. The only thing she was conflicted about was pricing. There was a point in jewelry where everything—remember when the Y necklaces came out? Everything was really tiny. There was a point where it was trendy to have really tiny jewelry, and that freaked her out because her work was so big and sculptural. She would get freaked out about that kind of stuff. The editors loved her work because it was big and you could see it. It went incredibly with beautiful clothes like Issey Miyake and these avant garde designers. The tiny stuff, you can’t see it in an editorial. It’s so funny; you’ll have a cover article and it’ll be like, “Earrings by whomever,” and I’m like, “Where are they? What earrings?”
Sharon: That’s interesting. Miyake or Yohji Yamamoto, they’re high-end, but they’ve become very—they’re not that valued anymore.
Saudia: Now they’re mainstream, yeah.
Sharon: Do you think your mother’s jewelry would be considered avant garde today?
Saudia: Yeah, it still is in a way because of the designs and the fact that it was really handmade. She was making her own work. Maybe Lisa would call that studio jewelry. She was in her studio making it herself. She did have a short relationship with a company in Japan where they were making work that would only be sold there. It was fine, but you could really see the difference and feel the difference. It wasn’t Cara. It wasn’t special, unfortunately. We’re grateful that they did it, that she had that relationship and that we could go to Japan and travel there. That was awesome.
So, I think she was avant garde as an artist. I don’t agree that Yohji is no longer avant garde. His designs are so beautiful. He’s really focused on craftsmanship, having amazing makers creating his work. In a way that is avant garde, as opposed to crap being made. You know what I mean?
Sharon: You’re right, 100%.
Saudia: In a factory.
Sharon: I can’t think of another one, but there are a lot of designers whose work you can’t afford—I’m talking about clothing—who have developed their own less expensive lines.
Saudia: Yeah. I remember when they would call it the junior line, and it would be for the younger kids. It would be lighter and cheaper and faster and funnier and all that. Now there are lots of layers of that, but you have these throwaway clothes being made by companies like H&M and so forth.
Sharon: Do you think she would fit in, like she’d make a smaller version of something that she made large?
Saudia: She did do some smaller things when she was working with the Japanese company. That led her into making some tiny silver hearts and medium-size silver. Then she had to do her big pieces. She could not let go of her love affair with big, sculptural pieces. I think she was conflicted about the McDonaldizing of fashion and accessories. Of course, she wanted to put food on the table, but she was really conscious of the environment. Even though she was working in plastics, she was very conscious of workers and workers’ rights. Where does something come from? How is it made, and what’s the impact of it being made?
Sharon: It sounds like she carried that through the 80s, into the 90s, into today.
Saudia: Definitely. She definitely had something to do with me being political, her and my father. She was very righteous.
Sharon: I know you do cabaret and rockabilly. What else do you do? What do you sing?
Saudia: My main focus is mental health. It’s a really hard time right now, I feel, but I think it’s actually a good time to continue to do the rockabilly, but to circle back to the dark cabaret I was doing before the rockabilly. So, I’m working on that. I’m working with a few musicians here in Philly, and I have some shows with musicians in other parts of the country. For Thanksgiving, I’m going to be in Illinois with Patrick Jones and 3 On The Tree. It’s a band. We’re going to do a rockabilly Thanksgiving tour. Then in March, I’ll be in California, in Orange County.
Sharon: Doing what?
Saudia: Doing rockabilly with The Hi-Jivers and Abby Girl. In Orange County, we’re going to do just a rockabilly R&B show. Then in April, I’ll be with Viva Las Vegas again, which is a rockabilly weekend. I’ll do an R&B show and rockabilly. In between, I’m just trying to stay sane, make a living, take care of my mom’s work, tell her story. I’m supposedly writing a story about my mom and my dad, sort of a solo show. I don’t know if it’s a solo show or a documentary, but it’s about their relationship as an interracial couple in the 60s and an interracial artist couple.
Sharon: That’ll be very interesting
Saudia: They were both known as being difficult people, but most artists are in a way. It takes a lot of energy to do that work, so you can ruffle a lot of feathers. So, that’s what I’m doing.
Sharon: I hope I’ll get to meet you then. Thank you so much. This was very interesting.
Saudia: Thank you so much. Sharon: Thank you. Well will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. She would always think about, “What am I going to pour?” It might be a ruby red, which was really popular and beautiful. One of the most popular pours, I think I said in the last interview, was the black and white, where she would have black and white and it would come out in a striped formation. Then she would pour into her different molds, the bangles, the C cuffs, the earrings.
Just as important as the colors were the processes. For the slice earrings, she would pour the layers so it would be striped into a block like a loaf of bread, a small, little, long brownie. Then she would slice it on a bandsaw and you would get to see the stripes. Part of her process was the actual cutting, carving, sanding to get the shapes, and then making the decision whether she was going to have them polished or matte without polish.
Sharon: A mask?
Saudia: Matte, sorry. What the finish would be. If she had faceted bangles or hearts or whatever, she was very aware of not making anything perfect. She used the fact that it had scratches to show the layers of work and to show that it’s made by a human. It wasn’t something that needed to be absolutely perfect. She was very into wabi sabi, the Japanese art of the imperfect. She loved wavy shapes and asymmetry in her designs.
Sharon: Who did the selling for the first years, when you were getting it off the ground?
Saudia: I was a kid, so I wasn’t going to get it off the ground. I was just eating the food she was putting in the refrigerator. When she first started with the leatherwork, she was just going around to different boutiques in the Village or whatever and selling them, either having them buy it straight out or on consignment. I think one of the worker’s galleries was the original Sculpture to Wear. That was near where MAD Museum is right now. I’m forgetting the name of the hotel. That was one of her galleries. I’m sure there were other stores I don’t know about.
That was in 1971 or something like that. That was very close to when she started working in plastic. She got taken in and accepted really quickly. At that time, Robert Lee Morris was also selling at Sculpture to Wear. He was a wunderkind. He was opening up his own gallery, Artwear, and brought my mother into that gallery. During that time, that also gave the artists recognition and amplified their voices. They were able to have their work in stores in Boston and in California because of being in Artwear.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 26 Apr 2021 | Episode 113: Simply Brilliant: How Independent Artists of the 60s and 70s Influenced Jewelry with Jewelry Expert, Amanda Triossi | 00:34:00 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Amanda Triossi: Amanda Triossi F.G.A. is a jewelry historian, author, curator, lecturer on the history of Western jewelry design and consultant to luxury goods companies. She was born and educated in Rome, Italy, and obtained a History of Art degree at Cambridge University. In 1992 at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, Amanda initiated a unique course, “Understanding Jewelry with Amanda Triossi,” the first intensive course on the history of Western jewelry. From 1997 to 2015, she was a consultant for Bulgari, heading the project of the Corporate Historical Archives and Heritage Collection. From 2009 to 2013, she curated five major exhibitions on Bulgari worldwide. She has published extensively on the history of jewelry and on Bulgari. Today, Amanda writes, vets Bulgari jewels, gives lectures and seminars, curates jewelry-centric trips internationally, and consults for major luxury brands and private collectors. Additional resources:
Photos:
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| 10 Mar 2021 | Episode 109: Collecting Fewer, Better Treasures with Dana Kraus, Founder of DK Farnum Estate Jewelry" | 00:24:46 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Dana Kraus The DK Farnum collection is a reflection of years of luxury goods experience. Dana Kraus was in management at Gourmet, Elle, and Fortune magazines, where she cultivated jewelry clients, made excellent contacts and learned how to navigate the finest jewelry houses to ferret out exceptional design. Her extensive research and vigilant, disciplined eye are the forces behind the collection. She studied art history and decorative arts at the Brearley School and Smith College and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Dana Kraus took a unique path to the jewelry industry, which might be why she has a unique approach to collecting. As the founder of DK Farnum Estate Jewelry, she helps her clients refine their taste and often advises them to cut back the size of their collections in favor of quality. Her personal approach and expertise in 20th-century jewelry has endeared her to a loyal group of buyers—including millennial buyers, who are notorious for their lack of interest in estate jewelry. Dana joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about her path to jewelry and where she see the industry heading. Read the episode transcript here. Additional Resources: Photos:
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| 06 Apr 2023 | Episode 189 Part 1: Napier Co. Expert Melinda Lewis on What Sets the Iconic Company Apart | 00:23:10 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Melinda Lewis
Jewelry historian Melinda Lewis spent 11 years researching the history of a single American jewelry manufacturer —The Napier Co. Determined to bring the first book about this company to the public, she interviewed over fifty former employees from around the country spanning multiple generations. Those interviewed included the great-grandson of William Rettenmeyer, the designer who started in 1891; to designers who worked for Napier from 1941 to the close of the plant; as well as executive management, including the former CEO, Ron Meoni; and traveling salesmen, whose careers were no less than 30-plus years with the company.
After publishing her book, Lewis and her husband have spent the last year curating an extraordinary collection of vintage jewelry from around the country for her customers with The Jewelry Stylist and Vintage Jewelry Collect. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ THE NAPIER BOOK: https://napierbook.com FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ THE JEWELRY STYLIST: https://thejewelrystylist.com VINTAGE JEWELRY COLLECT: https://vintagejewelrycollect. CJCI : http://cjci.co This forwards to https://www.
Transcript:
Some collectors don’t give costume jewelry a fair shake, but for jewelry historian Melinda Lewis, vintage costume jewelry has only brought her happiness. She spent over a decade researching The Napier Company, an influential costume jewelry manufacturer, and created a community of fellow costume lovers along the way. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the process of researching and writing her book, “The Napier Co.: Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry”; what costume jewelry is trending and where the hot markets are; and why the joy of jewelry often lies in connecting with others. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today, we are talking with Melinda Lewis, the author of the definitive work on Napier Company jewelry, “The Napier Co.: Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry.” She’s also one of the founders of Costume Jewelry Collectors International. If you look at their website, CJCI.co, you’ll be able to find all you want to know about costume jewelry. Melinda is passionate about costume jewelry, which we might consider a pejorative term, but once you take a look at this book and the range of jewelry that was produced and the manufacturing techniques that were pioneered, you’ll never think about costume jewelry in quite the same way. We’ll hear about her jewelry journey today. Melinda, welcome to the program.
Melinda: Thank you for having me, Sharon. It’s my pleasure.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. How did you get into this?
Melinda: I was interested in costume jewelry as a teen by playing with and holding my grandmother’s costume jewelry, but it wasn’t until my late 30s, early 40s, that I really became interested. I went to an estate sale and bought a couple of sets, one being Hobé. I went home to begin my research and became completely fascinated by it. I stumbled upon an email list called Jewelcollect, which was owned by Liz Bryman, and from there, I went to my first jewelry conference held by Christine Romero at the Center for Jewelry Studies. I became completely intrigued with costume jewelry.
Sharon: Did you know you were buying a Hobé, or did you just like the way it looked?
Melinda: I loved the way it looked. It was marked, but I didn’t know what Hobé meant. It meant nothing to me because I had never really owned a piece of jewelry before. It opened up a whole new world for me.
Sharon: Had you liked any other kind of jewelry? Had you been a collector before this?
Melinda: No, not at all. I was working in hospital pharmacies, so it was a complete change. I appreciated fashion because my grandmother was a hat designer during the 20s, and I think a little bit of that rubbed off on me. I wanted to be a fashion merchandiser before I got into hospital pharmacy, but I never had any interest or knowledge about costume jewelry prior to going to that estate sale.
Sharon: Wow! Did you start collecting once you became more knowledgeable?
Melinda: I did start collecting and going to more estate sales. I was able to purchase the inventory from a business that was going out of business. My first big purchase literally filled my Volvo station wagon, front to back, with costume jewelry. From there, I opened up a shop. I had a physical shop for a year and went online after that.
Sharon: Was this jewelry that filled up your Volvo all different kinds?
Melinda: Yes, it was all different kinds. It was great fun.
Sharon: Why did you think it was necessary to write a book? Melinda has corrected my pronunciation. How do you say it?
Melinda: Napier.
Sharon: Napier, O.K. Do you think most people know that?
Melinda: Probably 50/50. I always tend to correct people. I think when people say it “Napié,” it maybe has more prestige to it, but Mr. Napier was Scottish, and in the Scottish pronunciation it’s Napier.
Sharon: Did you ever meet him?
Melinda: No, he died in 1960. But through my studies and after interviewing 53 former Napier employees, I was very clear about his preferences. He was a very strict man.
Sharon: I’ve been saying it wrong. I remember the ads I used to see in Seventeen Magazine a long time ago. I always read it as “Napié,” but I never had a reason to say it out loud.
How did you decide to write this book? I have to say to anybody who hasn’t seen the book, this is the definitive work. It’s beautiful and it’s big.
Melinda: It is big. In 2002, I had the opportunity to purchase part of the Napier archive. When it arrived at my home, I had all this jewelry and knew nothing about it. So, I went on the internet and saw the same paragraph being repeated over and over on all of the websites. I knew there was a void that needed to be filled, so I began my journey of doing research on the company.
I started with one name. Mr. Ron Meoni was the President of Napier before it was sold. I wrote a letter to him explaining that I wanted to write a book on Napier and asked if he would give any guidance or assistance. From there, he gave me six names. I reached out to all of those folks, including my coauthor, Henry Swen, who has since passed away. Henry worked for the company for 35 years. During my research, Henry and I literally corresponded every day for eight years back and forth. He really gave me the inside knowledge of how the industry worked and the history about Napier. It was a phenomenal experience. I’m forever grateful to him for his assistance.
Sharon: So, you’re ready to write your next book on a different company.
Melinda: I don’t know. I still research Napier all the time. There’s still more information, but I put them up on our Facebook page.
Sharon: There are so many illustrations and drawings. It’s hard to believe there are more.
Melinda: Oh, there are a lot more. I just put a fraction of it in. Finally, I had to say stop, because I could have kept going when the book was already way larger than what I had anticipated.
Sharon: How long did it take you to write this?
Melinda: It was 11 years of writing and research, 12 years altogether with the layout. So, the project was 12 years long, but 11 years of that I spent researching and writing.
Sharon: When you say it’s different than what you thought it would be starting out, did you think it would be a paperback or a pamphlet? What did you think?
Melinda: Normally books in this genre are about 288 pages, so that was our goal. But what I realized as I was writing was that there was so much I wanted to include that hadn’t been included in other costume jewelry books: the marketing, the manufacturing, the designers, so many aspects that were different than just having a picture book. The more we got into that, the bigger the book became. I have about 60 pages just on marks and bindings and that type of thing alone to help guide the collector to circulate their jewelry.
In the beginning, I thought it would be a normal price book with a little bit of history interjected here and there. I felt if I did that, I was doing the company a disservice because I wouldn’t be representing it as fully as I felt it needed to be represented. It really became an encyclopedia; it’s so huge.
Sharon: It’s a beautiful book. Besides the pictures of the jewelry, there are things about the business you’ve never seen. That was interesting; the marketing, the design, the manufacturing.
Melinda: Yes, I think because we covered those areas, it can give the collector a greater appreciation of what went into the manufacturing of the lines. I’m quite proud of that.
Sharon: Did you have any resistance in terms of people who wouldn’t provide information or photographs? Would they say it’s a company secret?
Melinda: The one thing I felt and experienced was that everyone was very protective of Mr. Napier, extremely protective. He had been gone for over 40 years, but his privacy and their unwillingness to share things sometimes because they didn’t want to paint him in a negative light was quite interesting. So, yes, some employees were very protective of Mr. Napier. They respected him highly.
There are certainly stories I learned about him that will never be published, but his reputation was protected by his employees. They never really said anything negative about him. He was a very strict manager, so to speak. He held his employees to the highest standard, and if you didn’t comply with that, you were out with no ifs, ands or buts. Napier means “without equal,” and he stood by that as a company mantra. He expected nothing but the best.
Sharon: What language is that in? I didn’t think it meant anything.
Melinda: I’m not sure. I thought it was Scottish. The employees talked about that, about Napier meaning without equal. I haven’t studied the etymology of that particular word, so I can’t say for certain.
Sharon: Tell us about the book. You have so many beautiful images and pictures and photographs. Tell us how many pictures and how you got them.
Melinda: The book is 1,012 pages long. There are over 4,000 images and 250,000 words. A lot of the pictures came from employees themselves, especially the early renderings for E.A. Bliss and pictures in the 1920s. A lot of it came from Napier employees supplying me with the information. Unfortunately, I did not have access to the Napier paper archives, so basically everything in the book was given to me by Napier employees, in terms of ads and that type of thing.
99% of the pictures are images I took of the actual jewelry. While I traveled across the country, I would photograph the collections, and then we had them edited for the book.
Sharon: Did employees tell you, “This person has a collection in Wyoming,” or “This person is in Kentucky”? How did you find it?
Melinda: I found it through the collections of the employees I interviewed. I didn’t interview anyone that was outside the company. Some people did supply their images. When I noticed something on eBay, I would write them and say, “I’m writing a book on Napier. Would you be interested in allowing me to include your image in the book?” So, some of them are from people in the trades who were selling on eBay, but for the most part it was either Napier employees’ collections or pieces I had acquired from the archives.
Sharon: Do you think that Napier, because he pioneered a lot of the manufacturing techniques, do you think it’s true that it was without equal? Or were all the costume jewelry companies doing the same thing?
Melinda: The thing that made Napier stand out from the other companies was that it used multiple manufacturing techniques. It had die-stamped jewelry, things that involved wire bending or casting or what they called stranding. They did pioneer some new techniques, especially during the war time when they were under government contracts. So did other jewelry companies, but what made them unique was that they had the ability to manufacture jewelry in multiple ways so they could respond to the market quite easily.
Sharon: I always think of the big three of costume jewelry being Napier, Trifari—I talked to a Trifari expert who told me that’s wrong, but Trifari, and the third one is—
Melinda: Monet.
Sharon: Monet, that’s right.
Melinda: Yes.
Sharon: What made Napier different?
Melinda: Monet did what’s called metal. Trifari did color, more rhinestones. Marvella, which was another big one, did pearl. Napier did all three. It could go into a department store and fill the needs of a jewelry department with its entire line. That’s what made it quite competitive. They would go in, probably often before the other salesmen got to go meet with the jewelry buyer, and they would sell their entire lines. If that store needed metals, they could supply metals. If they needed pearl, Napier could provide them with pearl. If they needed color, Napier had that.
Now, Napier’s color or rhinestone jewelry sometimes had a distinct look because they utilized the dye-stamping technique. You’d get those really great, embossed, highly detailed metal pieces that were accented with rhinestones. But Napier also did rhinestone jewelry like Weiss—I mean the styles and techniques would be similar to Lee Serge or something like that. People are often surprised when they see the glitzy Napier rhinestone jewelry and don’t realize Napier did that too. Yes, they did. They were able to offer the jewelry buyer a broad spectrum of inventory. They were a small company playing in a big pond with big players.
Sharon: Were they mostly manufacturing back east?
Melinda: Yes, in Meriden, Connecticut. Later they had a satellite factory for their model making in Providence, Rhode Island, because that’s where most model makers lived. They did some of their manufacturing in Providence, but mainly it was in Meriden, Connecticut.
Sharon: Somebody who’s into costume jewelry—I can’t remember who—told me that one of them is still collectable and reasonably priced. It wasn’t Napier, but I think it was Trifari. They said if you saw a piece of Trifari, you should grab it. Would you agree with that?
Melinda: Trifari is very hot right now. So is Schreiner in part because of the Chinese and Russian markets. 90% of the higher-end Trifari or Schreiner is going out of our country right now to collectors in China and Russia. That’s a new phenomenon. Costume jewelry collecting tapered off a little or hit a lull, but these new markets have really changed things in the last year or so. The realized prices have been phenomenal.
In terms of Monet, there are still a lot of bargains to be found. There are some things that may cost a couple of hundred dollars or so. With Napier, the prices have remained steady over the last 10 years, but I’m now shipping to China. That’s a new phenomenon. I’m starting to sell a lot of the higher-end Napier to our Chinese customers.
Sharon: There are not that many department stores around anymore. I can think of two maybe, but when you see costume jewelry, do you go in and look at it? If you haven’t seen it before, do you look at the back? Do you look at the way stones are put in it? What do you look at, or do you look?
Melinda: I do. You look at all of the above. The back is just as important as the front in terms of looking at the construction. On occasion, when we go to the city, I’ll go look at the jewelry departments, but I haven’t really been looking at new contemporary jewelry because my focus has always been on jewelry that’s made prior to 2000. I don’t go shopping that much for the new lines.
Sharon: I guess I’m thinking of Oscar de la Renta, which has a costume jewelry line. They license it to whoever did it. Do you look at the back? Do you look at whether it was done 20, 30 years ago?
Melinda: Sure, you look at the back and the front. Oscar de la Renta has been made in the U.S. by Gem-Craft in Providence, and it’s really beautiful. A lot of the contemporary pieces for the Oscar de la Renta line are wonderfully made. It’s a great example of a contemporary line being made in the U.S.
Sharon: I’ll find myself saying, “Oh, it’s just costume.” Why do you think “costume” was pejorative? At first it wasn’t pejorative, but now it’s become, “Oh, it’s costume.” What happened?
Melinda: For me, I haven’t experienced that. Maybe that’s because of the people I surround myself with. Costume jewelry elicits feeling of happiness. I don’t think of it in a negative term, but perhaps some of our younger people who are minimalists do. If you were a minimalist, I could see why you wouldn’t want to deal with costume jewelry. That’s just frivolous. There are more important things to deal with. But in my community, costume jewelry is nothing but a positive. I don’t have that negative attachment to it.
Sharon: Maybe it’s just me. Why did they start making costume jewelry? What I’m always surprised by is that everything was just as nice about it, but it wasn’t a real ruby. That’s all. It was a synthetic one.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 24 Jan 2023 | Episode 181 Part 1 How Jessica Cadzow-Collins Gives Old Jewelry New Life | 00:21:36 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jessica Collins
Jessica Cadzow-Collins fell in love with jewelry and gems aged 18, whilst working as an intern at Sotheby’s, and trained as a professional gemmologist. For over 30 years since then, she’s held senior roles in fine jewelry at luxury retailers such as Harrods, Garrard and Asprey where she helped all kinds of amazing clients with their precious pieces, from tiaras to engagement rings, all over the world.
Jessica is now a personal jeweler. She started a business, Jessica May Jewels, to help people find their dream designs and remodel their unworn pieces. Using her high-jewelry know-how, she creates bespoke pieces that don’t compromise on luxury, quality, service, value or ethics.
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Additional Resources:
Transcript:
When Jessica Cadzow-Collins isn’t designing jewelry, repurposing her clients’ old jewelry, or developing her own line of jewelry, she’s talking to people about jewelry on her podcast, Inside the Jewel Vault. A lifelong jewelry lover, Jessica joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what it means to be a personal jeweler; what she would include in her fantasy jewel vault; and why wearing jewelry is distinctly human. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today, my guest is Jessica Cadzow-Collins speaking to us from London. She is the founder and designer of Jessica May Jewels. She is also the creator and host of the podcast Inside the Jewel Vault. She’s a gemologist and a designer, and she has worked with many well-known jewelry houses. Jessica, welcome to the program.
Jessica: Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. It’s so lovely to be your guest. It’s nice to be on the other side of the process instead of being a host for a change.
Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry journey. When you were a child, were you interested? Were you artistic?
Jessica: Yes, I was artistic. I was also quite academic. I was an all-arounder. I grew up in Scotland. I was educated in Edinburgh, and I had my heart set on being an art dealer as a teenager. That’s what I wanted to do more than anything. So, as soon as I could, I got into my old, beaten VW and drove all the way from Edinburgh to Florence. I stayed with the Prince and Princess Corsini as their paying guest, and I did studies in Italian and history of art.
Luckily, I managed to win a job as an intern at Sotheby’s. I had a very menial job filing, but the desk next to mine was the jewelry expert’s. She would value the pieces that came into the Florence office, and I would send them to London if they were good, or New York if they were very good, or they’d go onto Rome. That is how I got into jewelry. It was so amazing seeing these piles of new pieces. Every day fresh pieces would come in, and we would stand and talk about the age of them, the condition, the composition, and the gems.
She said, “You shouldn’t do paintings. You shouldn’t be an art dealer. You should do this.” So, I did. I phoned my father that evening and said, “I’m going to London. I’m going to study gemology,” because that is what she told me she had done. So, there it was. It was just fate.
Sharon: You were an art history student and then you went into jewelry?
Jessica: Yes, that is the way it worked.
Sharon: There are not that many courses for jewelry history except gemology. Tell us about that.
Jessica: I went to London. What I loved about studying gemology was it was glamorous and academic and unusual. None of my friends were doing it. At the time, the only course I could take was in London, in the city. It was night school. I was only 18 at the time. I was studying gemology at night, and I had to get a job in the day. So, I won a job again. It was a long process, but I got a job basically as a tea girl.
I was in the trading department of this old jewelers on Bond Street called Collingwood. Really, from the get-go, I was expected to trade. I was trading loose stones and antique period jewelry. I would take a bag of jewels and go to Miami and New York and Boston, all over Europe, trading, buying and selling jewels for a 10% profit or whatever, just as an antique dealer would. I wasn’t a very good dealer, I have to say. I was too keen on being able to sleep at night and a bit too fair to be a very good dealer. That’s how I ended up in retail in the end.
Sharon: You say it’s glamorous. I don’t understand why gemology or gems are glamorous.
Jessica: Oh, it is. I loved it, absolutely loved it, because I was surrounded by gems in my day job, and in the evening, I was understanding how they were formed in the earth’s crust and the processes they take to go from the mine to the market. It was fascinating. I absolutely loved the whole world. I’ve been very happy in this world now for 34 years—no, 35 years. I was definitely in the right job.
Sharon: But you said you couldn’t sleep at night because you wanted to make sure everybody was treated fairly.
Jessica: I think a really good dealer would need to be a little bit sharp. I think I was a bit too concerned about being fair.
Sharon: Most of the time, dealers say they have a hard time letting go of the things they acquire.
Jessica: Yes, I know that feeling, but this is perhaps why the job I do is perfect. I’m making something for someone. When they’re happy and their face lights up, you know you’ve done a good job. That’s a joy. That’s the thing I love most.
Sharon: So, people come to you to have things designed, or do you design them and put them out?
Jessica: That’s right. That’s what I do now, but most of my career I was running departments or boutiques on Bond Street for all the first-class brands, especially those with royal service like Asprey and Garrard. That was my world.
Sharon: Wow! When did you decide to go out on your own? What was the catalyst for that?
Jessica: It was perfect. I had just begun a new project, a very exciting major project, and then Covid came and everything went dead. My new job collapsed. It just fell in on itself. I think that was the catalyst for me saying, “Well, do you know what? This is the sign to set up my own business I’ve been waiting for. Let’s just get on with it.” So, it all kicked off during Covid at the same time as starting the podcast.
Sharon: So, that was the catalyst.
Jessica: Yes.
Sharon: Covid was the catalyst.
Jessica: Yes. I seized the opportunity, because suddenly the whole world seemed in flux. It was an exciting time if you could seize that wave and roll with it and see where you went. I must say I’ve been very happy working for myself as my own boss ever since.
Sharon: So, the podcast is Inside the Jewel Vault.
Jessica: Yes.
Sharon: Tell us about it. It’s so different. Did it take you a while to come up with the name? Tell us, what does the podcast entail?
Jessica: Thank you for mentioning the podcast. It is a passion project of mine. It was during Covid. It was shortly after the first spring lockdown in 2020. I’m lucky I have friends who are very talented, including my neighbor, Lizzie Wingham. She’s a digital editor who’s worked for the BBC. She’s very well regarded, and she has an interest in jewelry herself. I was talking to her over the garden fence, and she said, “I’ve been looking, and there are no podcasts on the subject of jewelry that really spark my imagination as a specialist. Jessie, you should do one,” and I said, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve never done a podcast in my life. I have no idea what to do.” She said, “Well, I’ll help you. I’ll be your producer.” The tea ended and the wine came out, and we began a project.
The idea for the format is just to ask our guests questions. The guests are drawn from across the jewelry world. They’re people who have good stories to tell, obviously, but are exceptional in their own field. When you start to look at the world of jewelry, it’s huge. There are not only designers, but there are scholars; there are dealers; there are minerologists; there are curators. The list is so huge. That’s how it all came about.
The idea was to ask these people to come up with six gems. They could be ones they’ve worked with. They could be ones they’ve owned themselves or handled, or maybe handled once and then lost. They could just be pieces they lust after. It’s like the jewelry equivalent of Desert Island Discs, which is a very popular BBC radio show.
Sharon: What is it called?
Jessica: It’s called Desert Island Discs. It’s one of the staple BBC radio shows in the U.K.
So, we just got started, and it was a wonderful excuse for me to speak to some of my heroes. We’ve uncovered all sorts of ancient gold and royal gems and fabulously valuable diamonds and goodness knows what else. Lizzie’s job is to turn all of those recordings I enjoy doing into produced and intelligent podcasts that follow a good line. That’s what we’ve been doing.
Sharon: The name is such an unusual idea, Inside the Jewel Vault. Did you come up with it over wine, or did you have to really think about it? Tell us how you did it.
Jessica: After a glass of wine, certainly. Good ideas seem very compelling then, don’t they? It just came about while we were chatting about it. As I said, it sort of follows the format of Desert Island Discs, where you speak to a guest. In that radio show, they select eight tracks or pieces of music that mean something to them, whereas we are selecting six gems or jewels that really turn them on.
Sharon: How often do you have a new episode—I call it an episode—or a new person?
Jessica: I don’t do this full time. It’s not a well-oiled machine like yours, Sharon, I’m afraid. You’ve done nearly 200, I think, over the last four years, haven’t you? Whereas I’ve only done about 40. There are a couple more in the can waiting for approval and final edits, but we’re a bit slower off the mark than you are, Sharon.
Sharon: How do you choose a guest, first of all? You must know so many people. How do you choose the guest?
Jessica: I have to admit that I don’t know the guests. Quite often it’s a cold call or a cold email, I suppose. They’re somebody who is lighting up their own corner of the world of jewelry. I’ve yet to ask an auctioneer; I’ve yet to ask a foreign collector; I’ve yet to ask all sorts of people on my dream list. 2023 will be the year I start sending out these cold emails again.
Sharon: What’s the reaction you get when you ask a guest to be on Inside the Jewel Vault? How much time do you give them? It can take a while.
Jessica: It’s entirely down to the guest. Most people are so busy, especially the people that I’ve been speaking to. They tend to fly around the world as it has opened up. When I first started, it was rather easy because people were sitting at home. They were able to sit by their laptop and start typing, and everyone got so good at Zoom. It’s a bit harder to track people down and to twist their arm enough for them to tell me what six pieces they would put into their fantasy jewel vault, but it is great fun. I love doing it.
Sharon: It sounds wonderful. I’ve listened to it and it’s very interesting. The guests you choose, is it because they do something original or they’re well-known? You could always choose a diamond dealer. You don’t, but how do you choose a guest?
Jessica: That’s a really good idea, Sharon. I must speak to a diamond dealer. That’s one I haven’t spoken to yet. I have a set of running lists that I keep adding to. It’s just finding the opportunity to approach people. It’s very much a passion project, but I must admit it: I do need to give it a bit more time and attention. I think we only manage about one a month at the moment, and it’s quite a slow process. I need to work a bit harder on it, but there’s always so much to do. That’s my excuse. I’m always so busy looking after my clients, making their pieces. Also, I’m about to launch my own brand, which is taking up an awful lot of time. It’s very exciting, but also very hard work.
Sharon: So, you have your own jewelry brand in addition to retail stores. Tell us how you work right now.
Jessica: At the moment, I’m a personal jeweler, which means I take care of people’s pieces. I can repair or upgrade their existing pieces or entirely start again from scratch. I make engagement rings. I make new pieces out of old pieces. It’s really down to the customer. Quite often, people come to me with their jewelry box and say, “I hardly wear any of these pieces, but so-and-so gave me this and my mother-in-law gave me that. I can’t get rid of them, but I don’t wear them. What do we do with them?” I’ll transform them into pieces they can wear and absolutely love wearing, pieces that are adaptable and suit their lifestyle. I help people with all sorts of things, from signet rings from their 18th birthday to their first diamond pieces in their 20s through to push presents and all the rest of it. Everything a person would do, I do, and I love that.
Sharon: How do people learn about your services?
Jessica: It’s word of mouth and the fabulous Google. I don’t do any advertising. It just seems to be luck that people find me through searching or asking.
Sharon: Your website is very nice and clean and easy to read. Your LinkedIn is also. I think it’s great what you’re saying. If I were looking for an original jeweler, if I were looking for an engagement ring, I might go to you and say, “I have no idea, and I have no stone or anything.” What would you do?
Jessica: If it was for you, then it makes it a whole lot easier. Sometimes I have to work with the groom or friends of the bride to be. We have to work out what she loves. Sometimes it’s crystal clear because she’s seen a ring that is her dream ring. Actually, a lot of brides do get involved in designing their dream rings. Occasionally I’ve done some complete, total surprise dream rings, and they’ve been wonderful to do. For others I’ve worked very closely with the couple, and we produce something together that encapsulates their unique love for each other and their story and all their hopes and dreams. It’s the most wonderful process.
Sharon: That’s a lot to have in one ring, a lot to communicate in one piece of jewelry. Tell us what’s been the most surprising with Inside the Jewel Vault when people come to you. What are the surprises you’ve had, things that have been different?
Jessica: Oh, gosh! I’ve had such a broad array of different guests. I think any of the pieces Darren Hildrow chose are quite extraordinary. He chose a piece you wouldn’t normally consider a piece of jewelry. It was more like a piece of body art, to be honest.
Sharon: What’s his name? I haven’t heard of this person.
Jessica: He’s a jewelry entrepreneur called Darren Hildrow, and he chose one piece that was extraordinary. It’s called Rocket Man by Walter van Beirendonck, which is more like a piece of body art. That was pretty surprising.
Some of the guests have chosen stunning pieces that everyone would know of, but other guests have chosen pieces that are by smaller designers. That’s always fascinating to hear. We did a lovely broadcast with the GIA’s field gemologist in Bangkok, Wim Vertriest, and he chose some amazing gems that he had stories of throughout his career. The wonderful thing about gems and jewels is that there are stories attached to almost everything. It’s the human connection that makes jewelry so special. I think the Rocket Man was the most unusual case, but everything else is particularly special because it does have a story.
Sharon: I’m curious if people ask you if you look at it differently because of your background. You’re Scottish from Edinburgh, and then you went to Italy. You must speak Italian. Do people ask if you have a different perspective than somebody like me who just grew up and went to school and that’s it?
Jessica: I’m sure that’s not the case, Sharon. You’ve spoken to hundreds of people in your career now. It’s the joy of hearing somebody else’s point of view, somebody else’s story, somebody else’s jokes. There’s always an opportunity to learn from people, don’t you think?
Sharon: Yes, that’s why I’m asking. If you’re at a party, how do you describe what you do? If somebody says, “What do you do,” what do you say?
Jessica: At the moment, I say I’m a personal jeweler and I can make your jewelry wearable or make it new or make the jewels of your dreams. That’s what I say if I’m asked what I do.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 01 Nov 2021 | Episode 135: Part 1 - Why Jewelers of the 60s and 70s Were Part of the Counterculture—Even if they Didn’t Realize It with Jewelry Experts Susan Cummins and Cindi Strauss | 00:26:30 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Susan Cummins Susan Cummins has been involved in numerous ways in the visual arts world over the last 35 years, from working in a pottery studio, doing street fairs, running a retail shop called the Firework in Mill Valley and developing the Susan Cummins Gallery into a nationally recognized venue for regional art and contemporary art jewelry. Now she spends most of her time working with a private family foundation called Rotasa and as a board member of both Art Jewelry Forum and California College of the Arts. About Cindi Strauss Cindi Strauss is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She received her BA with honors in art history from Hamilton College and her MA in the history of decorative arts from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. At the MFAH, Cindi is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft. Jewelry is a mainstay of Cindi’s curatorial practice. In addition to regularly curating permanent collection installations that include contemporary jewelry from the museum’s collection, she has organized several exhibitions that are either devoted solely to jewelry or include jewelry in them. These include: Beyond Ornament: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2003–2004); Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007); Liquid Lines: Exploring the Language of Contemporary Metal (2011); and Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection (2014). Cindi has authored or contributed to catalogs and journals on jewelry, craft, and design topics, and has been a frequent lecturer at museums nationwide. She also serves on the editorial advisory committee for Metalsmith magazine. Additional Resources: Photos:
Police State Badge 1969/ 2007 sterling silver, 14k gold 2 7/8 x 2 15/16 x 3 15/16 inches Museum of Arts and Design, New York City, 2012.20 Diane Kuhn, 2012 PHOTO: John Bigelow Taylor, 2008
Portrait of William Clark in a bubble_2 1971 photographer: Unknown
Necklace for the American Taxpayer 1971 Brass with silver chain 17 " long (for the chain) and 6.25 x 1.25 " wide for the hanging brass pendant. Collection unknown
Dad’s Payday 1968 sterling, photograph, fabric, found object 4 ½ x 4 x ¼ inches Merrily Tompkins Estate, Ellensburg Photo: Lynn Thompson
Title: "Slow Boat" Pendant (Portrait of Ken Cory) Date: 1976 Medium: Enamel, sterling silver, wood, copper, brass, painted stone, pencil, ballpoint pen spring, waxed lacing, Tiger Balm tin, domino Dimensions: 16 3/4 × 4 1/8 × 1 in. (42.5 × 10.4 × 2.5 cm) Helen Williams Drutt Family Collection, USA
Snatch Purse 1975 Copper, Enamel, Leather, Beaver Fur, Ermine Tails, Coin Purse 4 ½ x 4 x 3/8” Merrily Tompkins Estate, Ellensburg
The Good Guys 1966 Walnut, steel, copper, plastic, sterling silver, found objects 101.6 mm diameter Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, 1977.2.102' PHOTO: John Bigelow Taylor, 2008
Fetish Pendant 1966 wood, brass, copper, glass, steel, paper, silver 3 ½ x 3 ½ x 5/8 inches Detroit Institute of Art, Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Modern Decorative Arts Group, Andrew L. and Gayle Shaw Camden Contemporary and Decorative Arts Fund, Jean Sosin, Dr. and Mrs. Roger S. Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Danto, Dorothy and Byron Gerson, and Dr. and Mrs. Robert J. Miller / Bridgeman Images
November 22, 1963 12:30 p.m. 1967 copper, silver, brass, gold leaf, newspaper photo, walnut, velvet, glass 6 ¼ x 5 x 7/8 inches Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Rose Mary Wadman, 1991.57.1
Front and back covers
Pages from the book Transcript: What makes American jewelry American? As Susan Cummins and Cindi Strauss discovered while researching their book, In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture, contemporary American jewelry isn’t defined by style or materials, but by an attitude of independence and rebellion. Susan, who founded Art Jewelry Forum, and Cindi, who is Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what it was like to interview some of the most influential American artists; why they hope their book will inspire additional research in this field; and why narrative jewelry artists were part of the counterculture, even if they didn’t consider themselves to be. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guests are Susan Cummins and Cindi Strauss, who, along with Damian Skinner, are the co-authors of In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture. Susan is the founder of Art Jewelry Forum and for several decades drove the organization. Cindi Strauss is the Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Susan and Cindi, welcome to the program. Susan: Thank you. Cindi: Thank you for having us, Sharon. Sharon: So glad to have you. Can you each give us a brief outline of your jewelry journey? Susan, do you want to start? Susan: Sure. My journey started in the 80s. I had a gallery in Mill Valley, California. I was showing various crafts, ceramics mostly, and a bit of glass, fiber, a whole grouping, and then I decided I should show jewelry. I don’t really know why, because I didn’t wear jewelry, but it sounded like a good idea. I started showing it, and I was very impressed with how smart and incredibly skilled the artists were. I continued to show that, and the gallery became known for showing jewelry. In 1997, I still had the gallery, and I decided along with numerous other craft groups that we should start an organization that represented the collectors of jewelry. I started Art Jewelry Forum with the help of several other people, of course. That has continued onto today, surprisingly enough, and it now includes not only collectors, curators and gallerists, but also artists and everybody who’s interested in contemporary art jewelry. Sharon: It’s an international organization. Susan: Yes, it’s an international organization. It has a website with a lot of articles. We plan all kinds of things like trips to encourage people to get to know more about the field. I also was part of a funding organization, shall we say, a small private fund called Rotasa, and years ago we funded exhibitions and catalogues. That switched into funding specific things that I was working on instead of accepting things from other people. I’ve been very interested in publishing and doing research about this field because I feel that will give it more value and legitimacy. It needs to be researched. So, that’s one of the reasons why this book came into being as well as Flocks’ book. It really talks about the beginnings of American contemporary jewelry in the 60s and 70s. That’s my beginning to current interest in jewelry. Sharon: I just wanted to say that people can find a lot more if they visit the Art Jewelry Forum website. We’ll have links to everything we talk about on the show. Cindi? Cindi: Sure. My jewelry journey was surprising and happened all at once. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, had no contemporary jewelry in its collection until 2000, when we acquired an Art Smith necklace from 1948. That was my first real knowledge of post-Arts and Crafts jewelry and post-Mid-Century, people like Harry Bertoia. That led me to Toni Greenbaum’s Messengers of Modernism catalogue, a fantastic resource for American jewelry from the 30s through the 50s. It opened a whole new field for me, and I started to think about how we should focus on some modern jewelry from that period to expand on the Art Smith necklace, because that Mid-Century design was a specialty of the institution. Truly, I would say my life changed in respect to jewelry for the better in every way I could explain. When the museum acquired, in 2002, Helen Williams Drutt’s private collection of artist-made contemporary jewelry, dating from 1963 to 2002 at the time of the acquisition, in one fell swoop, we acquired 804 pieces of international jewelry as well as sketchbooks and drawings and research materials. We began to build an extensive library. Helen opened her archives and we had recordings of artist interviews. It was just going from zero to sixty in three seconds and it was extraordinary. It was a field I knew really nothing about, so I was on a very steep learning curve. So many people in the field, from the artists to other curators to collectors—this is how I met Susan—were so generous to me in terms of being resources. The story about how the acquisition happened is familiar to probably many of your audience, so I’ll keep it brief, which is to say that there was an exhibition of Gijs Bakker’s jewelry that Helen organized for the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Sharon: Cindi, I’m going to interrupt you for a minute because a lot of people listening will not have heard of Gijs Bakker. Cindi: Sure. Gijs Bakker, one of the most prominent Dutch artists, began his career in the 1960s, along with wife, Emmy van Leersum, and was part of the group of Dutch jewelry artists who revolutionized the concept of contemporary jewelry using alter-native materials. They created a lot of photo-based work challenging the value system of jewelry and also challenging wearability. It was his photo-based work that was shown in a small exhibition at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in March 2002 as part of a citywide festival called Photofest, which is all photography-based work. It was through that exhibition, at the opening weekend—that’s how I met Helen. I said to her, “This is something I don’t know anything about. I’m interested in exploring it. I’m starting to build a collection for the museum. Could we meet and have coffee and talk?” So we met, and I peppered her with a lot of questions and said, “Could I call on you for advice in terms of building a collection?” Of course, at this time she had the gallery, and she said, “Well, you know, I have a collection,” and I said, “Yes, I know, and I understand it’s going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” her hometown museum. She said, “Not necessarily. We haven’t had any formal talks about that.” So, one thing led to another, and six months later, we signed papers to acquire the collection. That set me off on my initial five-year journey, which resulted in the exhibition and catalogue “Ornament as Art: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection” that opened in Houston and traveled to Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, North Carolina, and to Tacoma, Washington. After that point, I felt that I was really steeped in the field. I have, since that point, been adding works to the collection. It was always going to be a long-term commitment and journey for the museum. We have works installed all over the museum in relationship to other contemporary art, whether it’s photography, prints and drawings, sculpture, painting. We also have a robust presentation of jewelry in our departments’ galleries. It is an ongoing journey, just like with Susan. It’s a journey that never ends, happily. There are always new artists to discover and new ideas. Part of that is our meeting of the mind, if you will, and then with Damian, is what resulted in this book. Sharon: How did you come to write the book? Susan, you started to mention it. The research in this is jaw-dropping. How did you decide to write the book? Why this particular period, the two of you? Susan: We decided to write the book because I was wondering what’s American about American jewelry. Europeans have done a lot of research and writing about their beginnings, but I didn’t see a document or a book that really talked about the American origins. As Cindi mentioned, Gijs Bakker started in the 60s. So did American contemporary jewelry, but it’s a very different story than the European one. We wanted to talk to the people who are still alive now, so we did tons of interviews for the book. We specifically concentrated on the pioneers who were responding to the political and social events of the time. In other words, we were investigating those artists who were considered narrative artists, because that was the defining feature of American art to those out of the country. We wanted to discover who was making this work and what were they saying in their narrative, so really answering “What was American about American jewelry?” We did tons of research through old documents of the American Crafts Library. We went all over the country and interviewed, and it was about a five-year-long process to get this point. The book is incredibly condensed. You can feel that there’s a lot there, but it took a lot to condense it down to that. Really, what we hope is that it’s an easy-to-read story about the stories that jewelers were telling at the time, which was the origin of all that’s come down to us now. It was the beginning of the development of university programs in the country. They just were in the process of expanding them, and people were learning how to make things. Nobody had a lot of skills in this country, so everybody had to learn how to make things. There were a lot of alternative ways of passing around information. The counterculture, we regarded that not as hippies per se, although hippies were part of it, but also a lot about the political and social issues of the time and how people responded to them. The ethos of the time, the values that people developed really became part of the craft counterculture itself. The craft field is based on a lot of those ways of working in the world, a sort of hope and trying to create a new society that had more values than the 50s had aspired to for each individual. People were trying to find ways to have valuable lives, and doing something like making something yourself and selling it at a craft fair became a wonderful alternative for many people who had the skill to do that. That was a very different way of having a life, shall we say, and that’s how American jewelry developed: with those values and skills. I still see remnants of it in the current field. That’s my focus. Cindi, do you have some things you want to add to that? Cindi: Yeah, the larger public’s ideas and thoughts about American jewelry from that period were rooted in a history and an aesthetic that emerged largely on the East Coast, but certainly spread, as Susan said, with the development of university programs. That was an aesthetic that was largely rooted in the organic modernism of Scandinavian influence, as well as what had come before in America in terms of modernist studio jewelry. There’s a history there in the narrative, and that narrative played out in early exhibitions. It played out in the first SNAG exhibition in 1970 in St. Paul, which is considered one of those milestones of the early American studio jewelry movement. Now, we knew that there were artists like Fred Woell, Don Tompkins, Ken Cory, Merrily Tompkins, who were on the West Coast and working in a different vein, as Susan said, a narrative vein, and who were often working with assemblage techniques and found materials and were making commentary on issues of the day. Within the accepted history of that period, they were a minority, with the exception of Fred Woell and really Ken Cory. Their work was not as widely known, as widely collected, as widely understood. Damian and Susan and I started after we thought, as Susan said, “What is American about American jewelry?” Fred Woell was an artist who immediately came to mind as embodying a certain type of Americanness. We had an extraordinary trip to visit with Fred’s widow, Pat Wheeler, and to the see the studio and go through some of his papers. When we went, we thought we would be doing a monograph on Fred Woell. It was on that trip that we understood that it was a much larger project, and it was one that would encompass many more artists. As part of our research, there were certain artists who were known to us, and our hope was that we would rediscover artists who were working intently during that period who had been lost to history for whatever reason. There were also artists whose work we were able to reframe for the reasons that Susan mentioned: because of their lifestyle, their belief system, the way they addressed or responded to major issues during the day. So, we started developing these list of artists. I think what readers will find in the book is looking at some of the well-known artists, perhaps more in depth and in a new frame of analysis, but also learning about a plethora of other artists. For us, it was five years of intense work. There’s a tremendous amount of research that has gone into this book, and from what we’ve been hearing, it has enlightened people about a period. It's not an alternative history, but it is an additional history. We hope it will inspire people to pick up the mantle and go forth because, of course, one has constraints in terms of word counts for publishing. At a certain point, you have to get down to the business of writing and stop the research, but there are so many threads that we hope other scholars, curators, students, interested parties will pick up and carry forth. In some ways we were able to go in depth, and in other ways we were able to just scratch the surface of what has been a fascinating topic for all of us. Sharon: I have a lot of questions, but first, I just wanted to mention that SNAG is the Society of North American Goldsmiths, in case people don’t know. Can you explain, Susan or Cindi, what narrative jewelry is? Cindi: There’s no one definition. Everybody would describe it a little bit differently, but I think a basic definition is jewelry that tells a story, that uses pictorial elements to tell a story. Whatever that story is can range from the personal to the public, to, in our case, responding to things like the Vietnam War, politics, etc. Susan, do you want to add to that? Susan: It’s a very difficult thing to do when you think about. Narratives usually have a storyline from this point to that point to the next point. Here’s a jeweler trying to put a storyline into one object, one piece. It is tricky to bring enough imagery that’s accessible to the viewer together into one piece to allow the viewer to make up the story that this is about or the comment it’s trying to make. You have to be very skilled and smart to make really good narrative jewelry. Sharon: It sounds like it would be, yes. When you realized what this book was going to entail—it sounds like you didn’t start out thinking this was going to be such a deep dive—were you excited, or were you more like, “I think I’d probably rather run in the other direction and say, ‘Forget it; I can’t do it’”? Susan: I don’t think at any point did we stop and think, “Oh, this is a gigantic project.” We just thought, “Let’s see. This person’s interesting; O.K., let’s talk to this person. Oh, gosh, they said these about this other person. Let’s talk to them.” You just go step by step. I don’t think, at any point, did any of us realize how vast a project this was until the end, probably. Cindi: Yeah, I would say because it happened incrementally, deep dive led to another and another. We would have regular meetings not only over Skype, but we would get together in person, the three of us, for these intense days in which we would talk about—we each had different areas we were focusing on. We’d bring our research together and that would lead to questions: “Should we explore this avenue?” Then someone would go and explore this avenue and come back, and we would think, “Maybe that wasn’t as interesting as we thought it was going to be,” or maybe it was far more interesting than we thought, so it spun out a number of different avenues of research. At a certain point, we started looking at the most important threads that were coming out and we were able to organize them as umbrellas, and then look at subthemes and think about the artists. It became like a puzzle. We had pockets of deep research, whether it was the in-person artist interviews or whether it was the archival research that was done, whether it was the general research. Damian and I were not alive during this time. Susan was, which was fantastic because I learned a lot about this in history class and school. Damian is a New Zealander, so he was coming at it from an international perspective. There was a lot of reading he did about American history, but Susan was the one gave us all the first-person accounts in addition to the artists. She participated in the American Craft Council Craft Fairs and was able to balance the sometimes emotionless history books with the first-person experiences that made it come alive. I think that’s what you see throughout the book. It was important to us that the book would be readable, but it was also important to us that it would have a flavor of the times. When you do oral history interviews, there are many different kinds of questions that can be asked. We set out to talk not only about the jewelry that artists were making, but their lives, what was important to them, how they felt. The richness of experiences and emotions that came out in those interviews really inflected the book with feeling like you were there and a part of what these artists were thinking. This is a 2 part episode please subscribe so you can get part 2 as soon as its released later this week. | |||
| 05 Dec 2023 | Episode 214 Part 1: How Jewelry Artist Gabi Veit Experiments with a Simple Object: The Spoon | 00:22:12 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Gabi Veit Gabi Veit is an Italian artist and jewelry designer with a passion for spoons. She lives and works in Bozen/Südtirol/Italia and in Aesch/Zürich/Switzerland. Having grown up in South Tyrol, she creates jewelry that celebrates the rough and jagged shapes and outlines of her home country’s rocks and mountains. Her unique spoons surprise the beholder with unusual shapes borrowed from plant life.
Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript: A spoon is one of the most basic objects we have: a line and a circle, designed for everyday use. In this simplicity, jewelry artist Gabi Veit saw a world of possibilities. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she started making spoons; why no two of her spoons are alike, even in a set; and why she is living proof that it’s never too late to study jewelry and design. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Gabi Veit’s work is definitely different than any other you will encounter. She makes jewelry, yes, but for the past few years, she has been very taken with spoons. It’s for a variety of reasons that I will let her tell you about. She grew up in an area which I would call rough, in that the landscape is rough. It is filled with jagged edges, which I think you will see in her jewelry and spoons. Her work also calls on the organic with branches and leaves incorporated in her work. Gabi also has an unusual perspective on the world. She’s the first person to show me a PowerPoint without having a PowerPoint, which is very interesting and creative. Gabi, welcome to the podcast.
Gabi: Thank you very much for having me.
Sharon: I’m so glad you’re here. Gabi is talking to us from Switzerland, right?
Gabi: Yeah.
Sharon: I’m not familiar with the Dolomites. You were born there and you return on a regular basis. Can you tell me about them and how they influenced your jewelry?
Gabi: Yes, I’m sitting in Switzerland now, but my home base—I was born in Italy, in the Dolomites. I grew up in the outskirts of Bolzano, which is a city with 100,000 inhabitants. The mountains surround the city completely. If you wanted to, you could take three different cable cars to go up to the mountains. I saw mountains every day, always, and we went hiking every weekend. Somehow the mountains for me, the Dolomites, are my home. They symbolize vastness and mightiness. They are powerful and dangerous somehow, but they are also cozy for me. I am familiar with these mountains.
Sharon: Did you have to take cable cars most places you went, let’s say to school or the grocery store?
Gabi: No, the city is down at 250 meters. My city is very hot in the summer, so to escape this heat, you take a cable car and go up 1,000 meters in 12 minutes. Then you are in a nice, warm but not hot area with forest and with animals. The city is like a city, but it’s surrounded by mountains, and these mountains are very near. You can’t not see them, so I am used to orienting myself by looking at the mountains. I know one is in the east; the other is in the north. I’m completely lost when I don’t have mountains around.
Sharon: Can you tell us what influenced your development of spoons? It’s so unusual.
Gabi: Not really. The spoon thing started with—I have two stories. One is that I like to eat and I like to cook, so you need a spoon at least. You need more than one spoon to eat and cook. The other story is that I was in South America. After this trip, I showed a friend my treasures that I brought with me, and she said, “Oh, you are collecting spoons now.” I denied it, but she replied, “But look, there are seven spoons, and seven spoons is a collection.” So, I started to be interested in the spoon as an object, and I started to collect the spoons. Now I have more than 800 pieces.
I started as a collector, not as a maker. I was looking everywhere for spoons: at the market, at the flea market. My collection of spoons is out of wood and metal and plastics and glass and bone and horns. It’s so interesting to see how spoons are used. They have holes when you need to take olives out of the salamoia. They are big or small. It depends on the purpose. That was my entrance into the spoon world.
Sharon: You said that it’s very simple. It’s an elementary shape. What makes your spoons so unusual? What’s different about your spoons?
Gabi: I think when I started to do spoons, I was not aware that my spoons were special. I was driven first to understand how I can do spoons. Normally, when I don’t know where or how to start, I start with a restriction. As I like to eat, as I told you, and as I also like to observe people, I noticed that people have different behaviors when they eat. Someone eats very fast; the other looks more at the plate of his neighbor and not at his plate. I was thinking that maybe I should start doing spoons for people that have strange behaviors.
As I grew up in an area where Catholicism was very strong, for me, it was simple to think about the seven deadly sins, because they concentrate all behaviors in seven ways. So, I started to explore these seven sins. I was driven by finding a solution for a spoon which doesn’t help you eat well somehow. I think when someone wants it all and wants it all now, maybe you don’t eat very well; you don’t have the pleasure to eat. I did this research for one year. I did a lot of forms which were not completely perfect for this aim, but they were beautiful. That was the starting point to get a lot of different forms.
For sure, there is a second very important thing for me. That’s nature. So, on the one side is the behavior of people, and on the other side there is nature, which I also observe a lot. As I grew up in a plant nursery, I am very familiar with growing and with how a plant finds its way to get its fruits somehow. Maybe I’ve been observing plants since I was a child.
Sharon: But there are spoons that have leaves; they have twigs; they have all kinds of natural things.
Gabi: Yeah, they have. It’s all looking. I can also explain, as you said before, the spoon is a very simple tool. It’s made of one line and one circle. The circle is the bowl and the line is the handle, but nobody tells me that a circle has to be round or a line has to be straight. When I started to think about this, I was able to make a lot of variation. This is also a way to start from a very simple form. It’s easier to find a lot of variations.
Sharon: Have you made a spoon with a square or a different kind of bowl?
Gabi: Yeah.
Sharon: Did you develop these theories from the beginning of making spoons, or did they come to you as you were developing spoons?
Gabi: Both. Somehow by observing a spoon, observing how I take it in my hand and how I put it in my mouth, every day I do research on the spoon. There are theories I read and there are experiences I made. That’s a long process because I started collecting in 2001 and started making in 2006. So, there is a long experience in dealing with this tool.
Sharon: I read somewhere that you incorporate stones in everything. Is that true?
Gabi: Not really. If you mean a precious stone, I don’t use stones. I don’t use precious stones. When I go for a walk, I always pick up stones. I’m happy to see a nice stone, but maybe in my jewelry, I make my own stones.
Sharon: In your necklaces and your rings, you make your own stones. What do you mean?
Gabi: I normally work with wax. This is my main material. When I work with wax, I can form it in different ways. I can cut; I can carve it. Somehow, I carve my stones. I cut my stones, but afterwards they are cast in metal. There are only two stones I use in my jewelry. One is the garnet from my region, which I incorporate in my jewelry. For two or three years I have used rough diamonds for my jewelry, not for my spoons. My spoons are always without stones, but the jewelry has these two stones sometimes.
Sharon: The garnets from the Dolomite region, are they red? Are they green?
Gabi: They are red.
Sharon: I didn’t see any stones in any of your work that you showed.
Gabi: I did a collection. The name is Rose Garden. In my hometown, you look at the mountain of the Dolomites, the name of which is Rose Garden. When the sun goes down in the evening, it becomes pink. There is an old legend that a king lived there in this rose garden, and that he kidnapped a princess because he was in love with her. He wanted to have her in his palace, but she didn’t want to, so he kidnapped her. Her brother and other knights found her only because they knew he had a rose garden. The rose garden somehow gave them the direction and they were able to liberate her. The king was so mad about his rose garden that he said, “You will never bloom again, neither by day nor by night,” but he forgot the morning and the evening. So, these mountain blooms glow really pinkish in the evening. It’s beautiful. Somehow the garnets I found in my region in South Tyrol, they also have this red shine. So, I called this collection Rose Garden.
Sharon: If you pick up a regular stone, a rock stone, do you come home and throw it in a drawer and say, “Maybe I’ll use it someday”? Or do you have an idea?
Gabi: Not yet. There are some collections based on the form of a stone, maybe. You can see that. But in this moment, I’m not so into these stones, I think. But it’s also true that next year on, I want to do a new collection, and I have no idea where it will go. So, maybe our talk brings me to the stones. I don’t know.
Sharon: Can you make your own stones? Do you ever make a stone out of wax?
Gabi: Yeah. There are different possibilities to make stones.
Sharon: What do people use your spoons for?
Gabi: My spoons are not spoons for the mouth. They are spoons to take sugar from a bowl and to put it in your cappuccino, your tea. My spoons are used for seeds, for pepper, for chili, for all these things you take from one bowl to your plate or to your bowl. I have one client, one collector, who has a different spoon for every use. He doesn’t buy the spoon he likes. When he comes to my exhibition, I notice quickly which spoon he likes most, but only until the moment he knows for which purpose he can use it, he won’t buy it. He always finds a purpose, and that’s very good for him.
Sharon: Do you know because he’s happier or he smiles? How do you know he found the one he likes?
Gabi: It’s very interesting. He’s very silent. He looks and watches for five minutes, 10 minutes, and then he takes one spoon and another. I notice when he finds one or when he falls in love somehow. It’s really nice to observe that.
Sharon: Where do you share your spoons? At your workspace, or do you take them on the road?
Gabi: I take them on the road. Normally, I create exhibitions in museums. There are some museums in Germany, in Leipzig and in Hamburg, where there are fairs in the museum, very nicely created. There I show my work.
Sharon: That’s interesting.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| 11 Mar 2022 | Episode 148 Part 2: The Jewel of New York: NYC Jewelry Week Is Back for 2022 | 00:24:47 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Bella Neyman Bella Neyman is the co-founder of New York City Jewelry Week. She is also an independent curator and journalist specializing in contemporary jewelry. Most recently she was on the Curatorial Advisory Committee for 45 Stories in Jewelry: 1947 to Now at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Since graduating with a Master’s Degree in Decorative Arts and Design History from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum & Parsons, The New School for Design in 2008, she has worked for some of New York City’s leading design galleries. Bella’s articles have been published in The New York Times, American Craft, and the Magazine Antiques. She is also a frequent contributor to Metalsmith magazine. Bella is on the Board of Art Jewelry Forum. She resides with her family in Brooklyn. Additional Resources: Links for two of Bella's upcoming classes: Studio Jewelry: From Mid-century to the Present starting Monday, March 14th!!
For this class, registrants can sign-up with code 'EARLY' to receive a 10% discount. https://events.r20. Transcript: Now in its fifth year, New York City Jewelry Week has changed the American jewelry landscape for good. The annual jewelry show is much more than just shopping—with workshops, educational opportunities, and showcases of every type of jewelry imaginable, there is something for every jewelry lover. NYC Jewelry Week co-founder Bella Neyman joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what she and her partner JB Jones have in store for 2022; why they want the week to feel like opening up a jewelry box; and how you can support NYC Jewelry Week’s programs. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Here at the Jewelry Journey, we’re about all things jewelry. With that in mind, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming jewelry conference, which is “Beyond Boundaries: Jewelry of the Americas.” It’s sponsored by the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, or, as it’s otherwise known, ASJRA. The conference takes place virtually on Saturday and Sunday May 21 and May 22, which is around the corner. For details on the program and the speakers, go to www.jewelryconference.com. Non-members are welcome. I have to say that I attended this conference in person for several years, and it’s one of my favorite conferences. It’s a real treat to be able to sit in your pajamas or in comfies in your living room and listen to some extraordinary speakers. So, check it out. Register at www.jewelryconference.com. See you there.
This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Bella Neyman, a woman who wears many hats in the world of jewelry. The primary one is as a mover and shaker among jewelry professionals. Her other hats include jewelry curator, historian, author, educator and cofounder of New York City Jewelry Week, or NYCJW as it’s known. If you haven’t heard part one, go to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Welcome back. As a curator, I know you curated a glass jewelry exhibit several years ago. Are you thinking about anything else right now? Is there anything on the horizon?
Bella: At some point, I started working at a jewelry gallery—this was prior to Jewelry Week—and I had the opportunity there to curate many shows. That was essentially my role there. Since then, Jewelry Week takes up so much of my time. The lectures are great because I can do them in spurts, but I don’t really have the time that curating an exhibition requires. I was part of the curatorial committee for “45 Stories in Jewelry.”
Sharon: At MAD, the Museum of Art and Design.
Bella: MAD, yeah. I was part of that, and that was incredible. It was an incredible experience and I loved it. I have been asked to curate some exhibitions, some gallery shows outside Jewelry Week. It’s a bit hard because Jewelry Week takes about 10 months to put together, so it becomes too challenging to focus on.
Sharon: Just to make sure everybody knows, it’s November 18 or 14 to 20.
Bella: November 14.
Sharon: Mark your calendars. It’s in November, and that’s around the corner when you think of all the work that has to go into it. Are you partnering with anybody this year? I know you have in the past. Are you doing it yourself? How is that working?
Bella: We are going into our fifth year, and JB Jones is my partner. She’s the other half of New York City Jewelry Week, and we’re really excited about this year. As I said, it’s our fifth year, so it’s a big deal for us. This is the time of year when we start thinking about what the program will look like. We’re already having conversations with some of our previous sponsors and partners who come in on some of the different initiatives we work on throughout the year.
I think what most people don’t recognize or realize, I should say, is that New York City Jewelry Week, while we have this one week in November, we work year-round, not just on planning the week, but on supporting the industry in ways that are meaningful to us. We have two platforms. One is called Here We Are, which is our platform dedicated to equity and inclusivity in the jewelry industry. We have another platform called One for the Future, which focuses on mentorship for emerging creatives in the jewelry industry. We spend a lot of time focused on both of those platforms. Education is also incredibly important to us, so we partner with the 92nd Street Y, for example, on educating youth about opportunities in jewelry post-high school graduation. There are lot of things we work on even before we get to November.
Now is when we are starting to have conversations with jewelers, with artists, with curators. This is really exciting for us because everything is fresh and everybody’s buzzing with ideas. It’s really great to see how important and meaningful Jewelry Week has become, especially to independent jewelers. So many of them plan for it throughout the year. Last year, so many jewelers approached us and said, “O.K., for 2022, this is what I’m doing.” It’s great to start having these conversations with them now because, yes, it’s around the corner, but at the same time, there are so many things that can still happen between now and then. So, it’s really exciting for us.
Sharon: I’m in awe and amazed that it’s your fifth year. I can’t believe you created this and kept it going. It’s amazing. What made you and JB decide to start it?
Bella: We didn’t realize how much work it was going to be. I think if we knew back then what we know now, we might have reconsidered. In all seriousness, the reason we did it is, first, I know this sounds cliche, but we love jewelry. We really love and value the independent voices and creatives that make this industry what it is. It’s not easy. Being a jeweler is not easy, so we wanted to create a platform that would celebrate jewelers, that would make it a little bit easier for them to reach a consumer. There’s a lot of competition. There’s a lot of jewelry out there, so we wanted to make sure we did something that would support them.
There are other examples of jewelry weeks around the world. We’re not the first ones, certainly. My exposure to jewelry weeks came from the European model, going to SCHMUCK, going to HOYA, going to Paris for Cours de Bijoux. I saw their festivals and the energy, and that to me was so wonderful. We wanted to do it in New York, but again, we wanted to do something that included all different types of jewelry, because we really believe in providing something for everyone. That’s important. We all come to jewelry from different places. Jewelry’s a powerful thing. We all adorn our bodies in different, meaningful ways, and we wanted to create something that was for everyone. Our motto is “Jewelry for All,” and we really believe that. That’s why Jewelry Week, as we curated it, is very different from other jewelry weeks, because it’s fine jewelry; it’s costume jewelry; it’s antique. It’s jewelry from non-precious materials.
If you open up a jewelry box, most of the time you have different things in there. You have things you’ve picked up on the street. You have things that were given to you by your partner, something passed down from your grandmother, some things you love, some things you don’t, some things you want to recreate into something you’re going to wear every day. That’s what we wanted. We wanted it to be like a jewelry box. You open it up, and there’s this explosion of different things and a sense of discovery.
The last five years have been incredibly difficult, to be honest with you, because we’re very grassroots. We fundraise. Every year, in the beginning of the year, we start fundraising for the year ahead. JB and I don’t take a salary. I’ve talked about this before, but we don’t take a salary. We have an incredible group of volunteers and consultants we work with. Most people volunteer their time. That has been one of the most beautiful things about this week, and we hope it’s made a difference. I think it has, because, as I said, I have jewelers reaching out to me a year in advance saying, “Next year, I’m doing a solo show during Jewelry Week.” That has been really special for both JB and me.
Sharon: That’s exciting. I don’t have all the experience you have in terms of going to different shows, but the ones I have gone to, the way New York City Jewelry Week is different is like you were saying. You cover equity and diversity and all these things. To me, everything else is a show. It’s like, “How much can I sell? Here’s my table of wares.”
Bella: Yes, absolutely. We believe to reach a consumer, you have to do it through education first and foremost. For us, it’s not about the hard sell. It has never been about how many trunk shows we can pad this one week with. It has always been about beautifully curated moments. It’s been about intimate settings. It’s been about exhibitions. It’s been about access. It’s been about giving people an up-close look into work that maybe they weren’t familiar with. It’s about opening the doors to a museum collection. It’s about having lectures and talks and workshops, and it’s really meant to be a discovery.
Yes, it’s in New York, but it’s more than that. New York is home to so many different voices and different cultures, and that’s what we want to celebrate. Everybody says to us, even if they’re coming from another part of the world, “Oh my god, I want to do this in New York,” because New York has always been the pinnacle. It’s this city. If you’ve made it in New York, then that’s it; you can make it anywhere. As cliche as that sounds, it’s really true. We do have a lot of New York-based designers who participate, but we also have artists coming from all over the world. We help them do pop-up spaces, and they do exhibitions and talks and panels. It’s a great week for discovery.
Sharon: Wow! It sounds like it. I’m thinking about how hard it must be trying to find even one space to put on a panel. How about sponsors? Do you find more sponsors now by saying, “This is real. It’s not just a flash in the pan.” Do you find more are coming to you?
Bella: Yes and no, absolutely. We still have to send a deck, but we do have a lot of returning sponsors, which has been wonderful. We really believe in building relationships, and we’ve been fortunate to have some great sponsors over the years who keep coming back: 1stDibs, eBay. They’ve been wonderful.
It’s also been great to find new partners and sponsors to work with every year. We welcome that, just like every year we want to work with new and different designers and creatives and retailers, but the last two years have been incredibly difficult because of the pandemic. Like other small business, we’ve obviously felt it. Budgets aren’t what they were, marketing budgets and production budgets and event budgets. Events were cut and, essentially, we’re an event. In some cases, it’s been easier; in some cases, it’s been very difficult. We’re optimistic and we’re still here, but the only way we can continue growing and continue existing is if we continue getting sponsorship dollars. So, if you’re listening and you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, please reach out to us. You can always reach out to us on Instagram, or you can email me. We’d be happy to have a conversation.
Sharon: There’s a lot of exposure for your sponsor, so it’s definitely something to consider. You’re doing it virtually and in person.
Bella: Yes. Last year we did a hybrid model, and we’re going to be doing it again. It’s a wonderful way to reach a broader audience. It’s also a wonderful way for us to include artists and designers who might not be able to participate otherwise. Some of my favorite moments of the last two years were from the virtual programing. We did this incredible program of jewelers from South Africa two years ago. They recorded a fashion jewelry show for us. Last year we also did a presentation with Wallace Chan. Wallace Chan released a new book last year. There were, I think, five different authors for that book, and they’re all in different parts of the world. What a great way to have Wallace do an intro and be present and to have these authors be present. Again, we reach a much broader audience that way, too.
Sharon: It’s such an entrepreneurial endeavor, Jewelry Week. It’s creating something out of nothing. Is this something that runs in your blood? Is it in your family?
Bella: Not at all, absolutely not at all. I think JB and I were so excited and so passionate about this, and we thought, “Let’s just do it.” But no, no entrepreneurs in my immediate family.
Sharon: I realize it’s a lot of work, but you must be so proud of what you’ve done going into your fifth year. That is amazing and awe-inspiring.
Bella: Yes, I guess. I never think about it until it’s over, until that Sunday in November when I look around and think, “Oh my god, that was magic. We did that.” Until I get to that point, it’s a lot of hard work.
Sharon: Watching your posts on Instagram, it seems like it’s never over. You have a lot of after-marketing, too.
Bella: Yeah, it’s never over. Again, our goal is to support the industry year-round. It’s never over because, for the jewelers who we partner with and are part of Jewelry Week, it doesn’t end for them. Jewelry Week is just one week. They’re making work, they’re selling work, and we want to be there to keep shining a light on them. Our work is never done.
Sharon: Let’s say you go to SCHMUCK or to another gallery and you see a jeweler you’ve never seen before, do you say, “Hey, would you like to be part of Jewelry Week?” Has that happened?
Bella: Absolutely, all the time. That’s actually how year one happened, because nobody knew about us. Now we have people who apply and are participating. We also curate a large portion of it. We invite people, but people can also apply to participate. I think for me, that’s also been one of the most challenging things with the pandemic. I haven’t had the opportunity to travel to see someone’s studio. I haven’t had the chance to be inspired in the way I would be otherwise. But yes, all the time, we see work we love. JB is always searching and researching on social media, discovering new voices, new work. We try to make sure the program is different from year to year. If somebody showed last year, we probably wouldn’t invite them back unless there was a real good reason to. So yes, we’re always looking, always discovering, always inviting.
Sharon: It’s a great calling card in so many ways. I’m imagining how it was the first year. Potential sponsors were probably saying, “Yeah, come back to me when it’s bigger."
Bella: Yeah, absolutely. People always want to see you prove yourself, especially when it comes to giving their time and money. They always want to make sure you’re serious about what you’re doing. To be honest with you, we won part of the jewelry industry. Most people in the jewelry industry didn’t know us unless they were in the contemporary jewelry world, and then they already had a sense of who we were. Otherwise, it was like, “Who are these two women? What is this they’re trying to do? What’s a jewelry week? Why do we need it?” There are some partners who—for example, Bergdorf Goodman has always been this bastion of cool, chic, New York glamor. They’ve been with us from the beginning as a partner. There are some individuals who believed in us and have been with us for five years. Other people were like, “Yeah, let me see how it goes and come back to me,” and that’s fine too. We get it. We understand.
Sharon: Can somebody be a real member of the jewelry industry without being in New York or London or Paris? We’re in Los Angeles. Not that there aren’t great jewelers out here, it’s just not New York. What do you think?
Bella: I think you can find success no matter where you are, especially in this day and age, with everything being done virtually, with business being conducted over Instagram. I know designers living in New York who don’t produce their jewelry in New York; they produce it in L.A. I think you absolutely can if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, if you have a vision, if you have a business you build right. Everything takes time, but I think if you love it, if you believe in what you are doing and if it drives you, then you can be successful no matter where you are.
Sharon: You certainly have been successful. Have we covered everything? You have such a wide variety. Is there something else you want to mention?
Bella: I would say that if you’re interested in what we’re doing, you should follow us on Instagram. It’s @NYCJewelryWeek. That’s also our website. Over the last five years, we’ve grown quite a bit. We have a wonderful blog—it’s really interesting and informative—called Future Heirloom. Even when there isn’t a program up on our website, there’s always great content. I encourage everyone to check out our Instagram and to go to our website.
If you’re interested to know what classes I’m teaching, you can follow me on Instagram. It’s just my name, @BellaNeyman. I’ll always share what I’m up to. And just reach out. We’re not a large corporation. We are two individuals who love what we do, so we hope people feel comfortable being in touch, and I should say most people do. They tell us what they love, what they hate, if they need help, even if they’ve never meet us. Most people feel comfortable chatting with us, so stay in touch.
Sharon: We’ll have links to your social media on the website when we post the podcast. I do have to say that I’ve discovered a lot of your courses and other things you do because I follow you. I’ll say, “Oh, she’s teaching that,” or “She’s doing that.” That’s great.
Bella: Thank you.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being with us today.
Bella: My pleasure.
Sharon: It’s been great. Thank you.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
| |||
| 05 Oct 2023 | Episode 206 Part 2: The Natural Wonder of Nicola Heidemann’s Jewelry | 00:23:53 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Nicola Heidemann Nicola Heidemann is a German art jeweler who seeks, through her work, to express her closeness to nature. Heidemann is interested in the ways the shapes and colors of the natural environment inform our sense of beauty, and she considers herself to be a collector—of allusions, impressions, associations.
Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Like nature itself, Nicola Heidemann’s jewelry can never be completely controlled. Using heat coloring techniques to create jewelry that evokes the beauty of the natural world, Nicola allows the material to tell her when the piece is finished. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the materials she uses the most; why the ability to touch and carry her jewelry is central to her work; and why she hopes her jewelry bonds the wearer to nature. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, my guest is Nicola Heidemann. She’s based in Germany, in Stuttgart, and she founded Nicola Heidemann Jewelry. Welcome back.
I have the earrings and I have the bracelet. It’s a bunch of connections. Do you think about that? Did you sketch out the earrings before you started, or do you sketch out a necklace?
Nicola: Yes, I do. Also, I have a leitmotif to have a memory of how I did it. Most of the time, I also sketch the shapes of the pebbles. For example, the bracelet you have, the pebbles have to match together. I sketch this connection of the pebbles and the shapes of the pebbles so that they are fitting together.
Sharon: Is that how it forms a bond? You say that jewelry forms a bond with nature. How does it form a bond, and what kind of bond does it form?
Nicola: Mainly through my memory or my soul. I feel quite connected with nature. I’m a gardener. A lot of time I spend in my garden and outside in the woods. It’s like a sense or a feeling. It’s my feeling with my bonds to nature. I hope to trigger this. When a person is seeing my jewelry, I hope it’s functioning. I don’t know.
Sharon: Do you think it’s important that somebody understands that before they buy a piece of jewelry? Some artists think it’s important that somebody knows the philosophy. Some do. Some don’t. Do you think it’s important that people know the philosophy behind your jewelry?
Nicola: For me, no, it’s not important. First of all, it’s important that the people have a feeling and they fall in love and they have their own ideas with a piece. Maybe later they can read about my philosophy, but on the first side, I hope the piece is triggering these feelings. So, for me, philosophy is later.
Sharon: I’m curious. How do you sell? Do you sell mostly at popups like Schmuck? Do you sell to galleries, or do you ramp up because Christmas is coming? How do you work?
Nicola: I sell exclusively with galleries. For me, that’s the best way because they know the audience; they know my work. I have wonderful gallerists and gallery owners who are supporting me and I am in connection with them. I always have discussions with them. It’s really supportive. I love this gallery system because I can work at my studio. I send them my pieces and they say, “O.K., people love it,” or sometimes, “Please make it a bit shorter.” I love that.
Sharon: Do they ask you for changes sometimes? Like you said, they want it shorter. Do they say to you, “We need more bracelets,” or “We need a ring,” or “we need necklaces”?
Nicola: Yes, sometimes. One of my really important gallery owners is Gallerie Slavik in Vienna. She’s really supportive, and she makes amazing work at her gallery. For me, the information I get from her about how my pieces are—
Sharon: How they’re seen? If I see them in a case, first of all, they’re distinctive. I know it’s your piece. If I see it, I know automatically who made it. Do you think other people see that?
Nicola: I think yes. I think I’m quite known in the field for now.
Sharon: Known in the field throughout Europe? I don’t see your jewelry in the States. I wonder, are you known here? Are you known in Eastern Europe? Where are you known?
Nicola: In Europe. I used to work with the States, but for the moment, it’s so complicated. I leave it up to the gallery owners to send the pieces. It’s a part of the work I don’t like, this paperwork and customs. I’m really grateful that gallery owners do that for me.
Sharon: Did you always like jewelry or small things? You said you like small things. Did you always like jewelry?
Nicola: Yes. I started quite early with some wire and, as I told you, some wooden pieces or pebbles. I started to learn it in my own studio. I think that was 38 years ago. Yes, I started with my own studio.
Sharon: Wow, that’s a long time!
Nicola: Yeah, and I was really researching and experimenting. I wasn’t a trained jeweler. I was taught by myself.
Sharon: Did you work with other metals besides titanium and copper? Did you experiment with other metals and come back to the titanium?
Nicola: I started with copper and brass and silver. The titanium I think I found maybe 10 years ago; I’m not sure.
Sharon: What did you like about it? It seems like you made a lot.
Nicola: In former times, I used to put color into my jewelry with gemstones. I really love color, and this was a possibility to put silver jewelry with some of my gemstones, but it was too small for me. I wanted to have bigger fields of color. When I explored the titanium, I fell in love with the color possibilities. On the other side, it’s really weightless. You can make really big, bold jewelry pieces, but they are very comfortable to wear because they are so light.
Sharon: Yes, they are.
Nicola: It’s two qualities. It’s really light and it’s this colorful quality.
Sharon: When you’re gardening, what do you find? Does that give you ideas? You mentioned flowers. What do you like to garden?
Nicola: I did learn in my garden as well. I can put some flowers in, but nature will decide if they can stay there, and nature sends me different flowers. Some people call them weeds, but for me, it’s wildflowers. My garden is full of wildflowers and vegetables. It’s a bit of a chaotic mixture, but it’s like in nature. The colors are beautiful. I’m always surprised about how my garden is developing similar to my jewelry. I’m surprised.
Sharon: It seems like it is similar to jewelry in that you wait for the garden to come up. You don’t start and think, “It has to be this way.” That’s interesting.
Are you starting to make a lot of new pieces? Is there a demand for new pieces at Schmuck and for Christmas? Are you busier now than other times of the year?
Nicola: Now, I’m not. For me, Christmas is not so important. The galleries are selling all year, so Christmas is not so important. Sometimes I prepare an exhibition when I try to make a bigger collection, but normally I work as I like and as I feel.
Sharon: Do the gallery owners, the gallerists, ever call you up and say, “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything from you”? Do they bug you? Do they notice if you haven’t sent something?
Nicola: I’ve been in good contact with all my gallery owners. That’s maybe a reason why I like to have gallery owners in Europe. I visit them. I really love to visit my gallery owners. I go to Amsterdam or Vienna or Ravensburg. For me, the contact is really important.
Sharon: Do you they know you’re coming or do you walk in?
Nicola: No, they know. We have an appointment.
Sharon: What do you want people to remember when they wear your jewelry? What kind of feeling do you want them to have?
Nicola: I want them to remember that our planet is beautiful. We are part of nature and we can be very, very lucky to spend some time here and to enjoy nature’s beauty.
Sharon: Do you think it’s important that somebody recognizes that?
Nicola: Yes, definitely. Facing all of our problems with climate change and extinction of fauna and flora, yes, I think it’s really important to remember that nature is our home and we are a part of it. Definitely.
Sharon: Sometimes I wonder when it is art jewelry. There’s a meaning there, but I tend to like the jewelry. Maybe the meaning is important, but I once heard somebody say they wouldn’t buy unless they met the artist. I didn’t understand that, really. Besides the heat treating of the metal, have you tried other techniques?
Nicola: For coloring, sometimes I use pigments and powder coating and some lacquers to get different colors, like a grass green or red. Other techniques, I forge. Some years ago, I was weaving titanium like basket weaving. That was a different technique. It was also blue-colored titanium wires. I was weaving some pieces like baskets.
Sharon: Wow! You mentioned that you use a different technique to get green like grass, but a lot of your titanium pieces seem to have that without anything else.
Nicola: There is a green appearing on titanium with heat, but it’s a bit more bluish. When I want to have a green more yellowish, I add some transparent paint so I can also see the metal surface. It’s not completely covered. The heat coloring is shining through the transparent layer of, in that case, a yellowish green.
Sharon: How often would you say you do this, and how many pieces? Is that an exception, that you paint, or is it something you do often with different techniques? The things I have seen have been titanium. They’re blue or green.
Nicola: It’s just an addition, I think. Sometimes I want to have this yellowish green, and I try to reach this, but most of my colors are only heat colors.
Sharon: You’ve been doing this for 38 years. How did you come to this? You kept experimenting and found different techniques?
Nicola: Yes, experimenting and making mistakes. I think I made a lot of mistakes and failures through the years. Maybe that’s also the reason why my technique is so personal and so special.
Sharon: Do you ever want to revisit some of the other techniques you might have used earlier? Maybe you made a mistake, but you want to change the mistakes and do it again so it’s O.K.
Nicola: I think all of my works are spoken in the same language, but 38 years ago, I wasn’t able to make it really good or advanced. Now I can do things better and be more focused on my ideas, but the path is really important. Like a child is starting to go, it’s important to learn every step. You don’t go back, but it’s always a part of you.
Sharon: That’s interesting. You don’t go back. I have to think about whether that’s true or not. Don’t you think you try things over? Do you say, “I did it this way before. That didn’t work and I want to do it this way. Maybe it will be work”?
Nicola: Sometimes I make an experiment. This piece is in my drawers for years, and then I take it out and say, “Oh, now, I have a solution.” Years later, I know how to deal with it and how to combine it into a piece of jewelry.
Sharon: That’s really interesting. Do you have a drawer full of things like that?
Nicola: Yes, many drawers full of things, full of unfinished pieces.
Sharon: Most of the things you’ve described, and the things you say you like, are small. Have you ever done large pieces, sculpture, public art or anything like that?
Nicola: Actually, I tried to do it once, but I realized that’s not my scale. I really like the small things, the things you can put in one or two hands or hang around your neck. It’s not my scale to make sculptures.
Sharon: How did you find out that it wasn’t your scale? You just felt you couldn’t carry it?
Nicola: I wasn’t content with the outcome of this big piece. It’s not my language.
Sharon: If it had been smaller, would you have been more content? Would you have been content if it had been the same thing but smaller?
Nicola: Yeah, probably, because it was also my language, but it was a big sculpture. It’s not me. I don’t know how to describe it differently.
Sharon: Was it outside for a gallery, for your garden? Where did you put it?
Nicola: I think it ended up in my garden and I forgot it. Probably now, it’s underneath a layer of moss or grass; I don’t know.
Sharon: There is a sculpture near here, a large one that people pass all the time. Unless you know it’s there, you don’t stop. Sometimes people are startled because they happen to notice it. I think I understand a little bit what you’re saying. If the sculpture had been on a chain you could put around your neck, a small thing, would you have liked it more?
Nicola: Yeah, of course.
Sharon: What do you like making most?
Nicola: You mean what kind of jewelry?
Sharon: Yeah, what kind of jewelry.
Nicola: A difficult question. I think I love everything. I love necklaces, long necklaces, bracelets. I love playing with rings. For me, earrings are not for the wearer, but for the person who is seeing the wearer because you don’t see your earrings by yourself. But I think I love everything.
Sharon: And when you make it, you don’t have a preference? If somebody gave you gems, would you incorporate them if somebody gave you a handful of gems and said, “I want these in a necklace,” or “I want these in a bracelet”?
Nicola: I don’t know. I have a lot of drawers with gems. For the moment, I don’t think I want to work with gems. Probably I would hide them inside a piece. But yeah, for the moment, I don’t want to work with gems. It’s too much. I have my colorful jewelry, and I think it would be too much to add colorful gems to my colors.
Sharon: I’m noticing the necklace you have on because it’s a pretty blue. Did you make that? That’s a very bright blue.
Nicola: Yes, I made that recently. The inside is polished and the outside is rough. Also, it’s this contrast between the different faces. It’s just inside that’s shimmering.
Sharon: Is that for the wearer, that it’s shimmering, or for the person who’s looking at you? I’m looking at you, for instance, and it’s rough. Did you do that intentionally because you wanted to remember the roughness?
Nicola: Yeah, the outside is rough. If you touch it with your finger, you can feel this rough surface. I like that haptic sensation, that surface feel.
Sharon: And the shiny side, is that also rough?
Nicola: No, the shiny side is polished. It’s quite smooth, and it’s inside.
Sharon: Oh, I see. It’s a good example of what you make of your philosophy. Thank you for being with us today. We really appreciate it. It’s good to learn a lot more about you and what you do.
Nicola: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, and thank you for your passion and your curiosity for our field. I really appreciate that. Thank you.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 27 Oct 2022 | Episode 173 Part 2: How Beauty and Meaning Combine in Antique Jewelry with Author, Journalist, Historian & Consultant, Beth Bernstein | 00:22:02 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Beth Bernstein Beth Bernstein is a jewelry historian, jewelry expert and collector of period and modern jewels—a purveyor of all things sparkly. She has a romance going on with the legend, language and sentiment behind the pieces. Her love for the story has inspired Beth to pen four books, with a fifth one in the works, and to spend the past twenty years as an editor and writer on the subject of jewels-old and new. She is a die-hard jewelry fan, so much so that she has designed her own collection throughout the 90s and continues to create bespoke jewels and work with private clients to procure antique and vintage jewelry She owns a comprehensive consulting agency Plan B which provides a roster of services in multiple facets of the jewelry industry. These include building, launching and evolving designer brands and retail brick & mortar/online shops and curating designer shows and private collections. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Diving into centuries of antique jewelry can be intimidating for even the biggest jewelry lover, but Beth Bernstein is proof that anyone can find their niche in jewelry history. A collector of sentimental jewelry across several periods, Beth is a jewelry consultant and author of “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how antique jewelry periods are defined; what make a collector a collector; and how to keep antique jewelry in good condition without putting it away forever in a safe. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to heart part one. Today, my guest is jewelry author, journalist, historian and consultant Beth Bernstein. She is the author of several books. Welcome back.
Tell us about “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry,” your most recent book. I was a little put off because I’m not into antique, but it’s very readable and interesting. Tell us about it.
Beth: That was the whole point. I had read so many antique books, because I was given piles of them to read way back when. I have a library full of books on antique jewelry and vintage jewelry. There’s really no difference between antique and vintage, which I write about in the book, but antique jewelry is 100 or more years old. From 2022, if you go back 100 years, it would be 1922, but we went up to 1925 because we wanted to get in some of the Art Deco period.
Anyway, I wanted to write it differently than the books I had read, and I had an aha moment in doing that. I was doing tours through seven centuries of jewelry at the Miami and New York antique shows that were produced by U.S. Antique Shows. They knew I knew a lot about antique jewelry, so it was the company’s idea that I do these tours. It started out with one tour each show, then it went to two tours each show. Before the pandemic, it was going to go to three tours each show because people kept signing up.
I took people through seven centuries of jewelry, from the Georgian era all the way through the 70s, from antique to vintage. I would take them to dealers that specialized in those time periods, and we’d talk about it. Then I’d have a Q&A for an hour, which always turned into a two-hour Q&A. Then we’d go to the next tour. People would ask me to take them back to some places and help them pick out jewelry, because I do have private clients. I love dealing with private clients who ask me to find antique things for them. Sometimes they’re also at the shows.
So, the aha moment came when I was doing these tours. I thought, “Oh, my god! I know all these dealers are very trustworthy. They all have different points of view. They deal in different time periods. Why don’t I do museum-quality jewelry, but what’s on the market today? Not what you can find only in museums, but what’s out there today that’s sold? Why don’t I interview some of these wonderful experts I’ve been taking people to?” And that made it different and more readable because it was more interactive, more conversational.
The beginning of the book is how to define your collecting style, and the last chapters are how to mix modern and antique. I did that chapter with Rebecca Selva from Fred Leighton, who’s a mastermind of mixing modern, vintage and antique. So, that was really fun. Then there’s how to shop an antique show, how to shop at auction. There’s a lot of how-tos and advice given. I also brought the dealers and the stores in to give advice, and I didn’t stick to just the biggest stores. Of course, I interviewed Wartski in London; I interviewed Fred Leighton and Macklowe Gallery in New York, but I also interviewed smaller dealers like Lothar Antiques, who is at Portobello. It’s different companies and it’s global. That was the fun of the book. So, it’s part travelogue because I interviewed people across the United States, the U.K., Paris, Amsterdam and Belgium.
Sharon: Wow! Did you write the proposal and then go to the publisher? Did they come to you? How does that work?
Beth: I’ve always written the proposal and gone to the publisher. For this book, I went to my publisher for “If These Jewels Could Talk” because I thought they did a wonderful job. He kept going back and forth. He wanted it to be not so conversational at first. He wanted it to be more like the old antique books he published, because he published a lot of antique books. It’s called ACC Art Books. It was Antique Collectors Club originally, but now it’s ACC Art Books. Then, all of a sudden, he came around. He was like, “No, we shouldn’t do it like that. We should do it the way you originally suggested.” It took him a year to come to that.
Then I wrote it, and there was an eight-month lag after I wrote it because of the pandemic. I wrote it at the beginning of the pandemic and handed it in on deadline, but it took eight more months for it to be published than it was supposed to. That was kind of interesting. People had to be put on furlough, and then there was a paper shortage, and it wasn’t getting to the ports on time. When it finally came out, I was holding my breath until it finally came in.
What I’m hearing from everyone that has read it and reviewed it—I write for Rapaport and Jewelry Connoisseur, and the editor-in-chief of those magazines, Sonia, read it. She said, “I read it straight through because it was so readable. It was like you wanted to keep going.” That made me feel really good.
Sharon: And you’re working on another book now.
Beth: Yeah, I’m working on another two books right now.
Sharon: Can you tell us anything about those? I said this book was an overview, but it’s very specific. It’s not an overview like some of the other books I’ve read on antiques.
Beth: No, it’s very specific because it has all different time periods. It’s an antique book, so it could only go to the beginnings of Art Deco. Vintage starts after that. So, it was very specific. I did the grand period as a separate chapter because the Victorian chapter was so big. Because, as you know, there are three different periods in the Victorian era.
Sentimental jewelry is my favorite type of antique jewelry. That’s what I collect the most of. That was its own chapter, even though it crosses over Georgian and Victorian. So, I pulled out some things from different periods and made them their own chapters. I also thought alternative materials should be its own chapter. Berlin iron went into alternative materials; rock crystal went into different materials, things that I thought would be interesting on their own and in their own chapters.
Sharon: Did you collect antique jewelry from the beginning, or did you collect all different kinds of jewelry?
Beth: I have collected antique jewelry for the past 25 years. Before that, I wouldn’t call myself a collector; I’d call myself a person who wore jewelry I liked, and most of that was by modern jewelers. When I started collecting antique, like most people, I started with the Victorian era. It’s easier to understand than the Roman period, which is the first period, and the aesthetic period, which is more fun. When Queen Elizabeth goes into mourning, it’s very dark; it’s very black. It’s called the grand period. It’s also where the archaeological revival period comes into play. I think all the things people are redoing today, the crescent moons and swallows and snakes—her engagement ring was a snake ring—I think are pieces with meaning. All those pieces from the Victorian period have meanings that align with flowers. All the different floral motifs have meaning. Those were easy to collect, you could understand them, and they were pretty. So, that’s what I started collecting.
Then I went into the Georgian period, not so much the earrings, but the rings. I love Georgian rings. I have a whole collection of Georgian rings. It sits in a safety deposit box. You can’t wash your hands with Georgian rings because there’s a closed-back setting. During the pandemic, washing your hands so much, you cannot hold them.
I think you asked me if I have different parameters when I collect antique jewelry compared to modern jewelry, and yes, there are parameters for me. I don’t really collect modern jewelry. I buy what I like from modern jewelers, from different designers. Yes, I probably have one, two or three pieces from a collection because I like their design aesthetic. If it’s wearable, if it's versatile, if it’s made well and goes along with my style, I will buy modern jewelry, but I buy antique jewelry mostly for the character and the provenance. I tend to like jewelry that will appreciate with time, which most antique jewelry will, but also for the authenticity, the rarity and the museum quality of it. I also like sentimental jewelry the best. I tend to stick with those or jewelry with symbolism and meaning.
Sharon: You must have dealers who run the other way when they see you coming because you know so much.
Beth: Actually, the dealers love that because they don’t have to explain it to you. You just pick up a piece and you’ll ask some questions, but people that don’t know anything ask way more questions than I will. Quite frankly, antique dealers and people that own antique stores love talking about jewelry. That’s why they’re in antique jewelry. They love talking about the age and what it is, if they’re honest and honorable like the people in my book.
Sharon: I was reading about how there are so many different definitions of collectors. Somebody in the book, I can’t remember who it was, had a longer version explaining who has a collection versus who’s a collector. There are so many different definitions.
Beth: I don’t think it was a definition between who’s a collector and who has a collection. I think there are different types of collectors. One type of collector might collect only for historical reasons and never wear it, like art for art’s sake. Other people will combine and collect some things for historic importance. For example, I have some pieces I know are historical and really representative of the time period. I don’t wear those pieces that much because I want them in perfect condition. That’s kind of for art’s sake, but mostly I don’t believe you should keep your jewelry in a safe or a safety deposit box. Now, those pieces are in a safety deposit box for that reason.
Then there are collectors that only collect a certain period, like only the Georgian period or only the Victorian period. I’m a collector of different periods. I love Art Deco line bracelets with the different cuts of stone. I love the lacey feeling of Edwardian jewelry. I love Georgian rings. I love sentimental jewelry. So, I’m a multi-collector of pieces. Then there are collectors who want to wear their jewelry, so they only collect pieces they can wear every day. I don’t think it’s collection versus collector; I think it’s the type of collector, and there are many types.
Sharon: When you said Georgian, that’s my first thought. I have a couple pieces of Georgian, which are so delicate. I just couldn’t wear them. A Georgian ring, as you’re talking about, you can’t wear it.
Beth: You can wear it once in a while. You have to be very careful. Know how you can wear it and that you cannot get it wet. I’ve gone to shows where I’ve worn my Georgian rings. I put a bolt ring on a necklace and stuck it inside so when I washed my hands, I put the rings on the bolt ring so I didn’t leave it on the sink. That’s what I’ve always been worried about. You have to take it off to wash.
Sharon: That’s a good way to do it. I hadn’t thought about that. When does somebody cross over from being an enthusiast, which I consider myself? You might say I have a lot, but I’ve never discovered what I want to collect. I like bracelets, but I don’t collect them. How do you cross over?
Beth: I don’t know exactly how you cross over. I have two favorite stones, moonstones and rubies, I think because I’m a hopeful romantic. Moonstones are also lucky. They have a lot of meanings, and I love the fact that they change the light. A good moonstone will change the light. It’s just magical. Rubies are all about passion, and I love the two together. They’re beautiful mixed together, and I can enjoy antique jewelry or modern jewelry. Anyway, one of my first pieces was one of those slag moonstone necklaces from the Victorian period because I love moonstones.
The second was a turquoise forget-me-not ring. Forget-me-nots have two different meanings. They mean “remember me” from the giver to the wearer, or in mourning jewelry that’s all black, they mean the remembrance of somebody that’s gone. Mine was a more of a lover’s token. I also have a passion for hearts if they’re designed well. Not like holiday hearts; more like a double heart with a bowtie. That was a ring I bought from a dealer. It was a Burmese ruby and an old mine cut diamond tied together with a bowtie, which means two hearts together tied as one. Finding out the meaning of these things is wonderful.
I worked for a dealer at one of her shows, and she said to me, “You don’t have to own everything you think is pretty. You can just look at it and think it’s pretty. You don’t have to own it just because you think it’s beautiful.” So, I became more selective of what I was going to own, not just because it was pretty. Also having private clients and knowing what they like, I started to buy things to resell, so then I could own them and think they were pretty and then resell them. I didn’t keep them for my own collection.
But I think it’s a very fine line between being a jewelry enthusiast and being a collector and the type of collector you are. Like I said, I collect from different time periods. One time period I didn’t collect from was the Art Nouveau period, except for some pieces that were plique-à-jour enamel that had romantic sayings because it goes along with sentimental jewelry. I thought it wasn’t very wearable until I helped Macklowe Gallery and Peter Schaffer and realized there were different ways to wear them. It was a really good learning experience.
Sharon: I can see why. What do you look for? You say you became more selective. What do you look for?
Beth: Like I mentioned before, authenticity, verity. I don’t see it everywhere. There are Victorian pieces that were made during the Industrial Revolution that you can find. They’re either exactly the same piece or pieces that are like it that were made by the same maker. You can find the same snake ring by the same manufacturer again and again, even if it’s a little bit different. I try and find the snake ring you can’t find everywhere. I have five different snake rings. Two of them you can find in different places, I think, but I love them. I kept them because those are the rings you can wear every day.
Sharon: As your knowledge and your collection, whatever you want to call it, has grown, do you think you curate it more in a sense?
Beth: Yes, I do. I think it’s been curated now to be very sentimental, very meaningful. I also love different styles of chains and charms, so I love creating charm necklaces that have different meanings. One will be the travel charm necklace; one will be the love lock and protection necklace; one will be only the protection necklace. When I collect interesting charms, I’ll make different necklaces out of them. They’ll all be on different chains so I don’t have to keep changing it around.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being here today.
Beth: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Hopefully I answered all your questions.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 17 Aug 2023 | Episode 199 Part 2: How Kim Nunneley Made Jewelry Photography Her Niche | 00:19:46 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kim Nunneley:
Kim Nunneley is a Los Angeles-based IATSE Local 600 photographer specializing in unit photography, gallery, lifestyle and portraiture. She has held various roles, from photographer at a fashion merchandising company to photo assistant, and she has worked at one of the world’s most prestigious photo studios in NYC. She has developed a niche as a jewelry photographer working for major jewelry companies.
Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript:
A simple photo can never quite capture the real-life beauty of a diamond, ruby or sapphire. That’s why photographer Kim Nunneley relies on a variety of tools, software and experience to make jewelry photographs that shine. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the mistakes she made when she first started photographing jewelry; her tips for burgeoning jewelry photographers; and what questions jewelry brands should ask to choose the right photographer. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
My guest today is Kim Nunneley of Kim Alexis Photography. She is a photographer who specializes in jewelry. She’ll tell us some of the tricks we should know to take a nice photo. Welcome back.
Does the stone matter? Is it easier to photograph some stones than others, like a ruby as opposed to a sapphire?
Kim: What’s actually more important is the age and condition the stones are in, more so than the color. It’s more so the cut and condition. I have one client who specializes in antique and vintage jewelry. A lot of the pieces are very old, and they’re not as easy to photograph as the jewelry from my other client who makes her own stuff. It’s all sparkly, brand-new pieces, and they’re so much easier to photograph. The diamonds are easier to photograph. The gold is easier to photograph. With these antique pieces, they’re much more complicated because we have to make these stones that are 100 years old or more look sparkly and shiny and beautiful. A lot of times you’ll see—what is it called, an incision? Is that the word for these stones? Is that what it is, incisions in the stones?
Sharon: I don’t know.
Kim: Like a cut on the inside.
Sharon: Yeah.
Kim: Yeah, some of these old stones have that. I think it’s more crucial in learning how to photograph those older conditions.
Sharon: Because antique jewelry is so popular today, what advice would you give somebody who has been handed a 100-year-old ring?
Kim: I would say practice on newer pieces to learn how light reflects and how it hits. Once you know that, you’ll be able to adjust your lighting for these older pieces. You’ll know what to do with those situations if you have already photographed newer pieces. I would say start off with newer pieces to sharpen your skills.
Sharon: What if somebody hands you a diamond and says, “I want to show that this is a diamond of a certain cut, an old one versus a new piece”? Can you do that with photography?
Kim: Yeah, you absolutely can. Like I said, sometimes we just can’t get it as sparkly as a new diamond. Even with lighting and Photoshopping, it will never look the same, but there are tools you can use. That’s also important; it doesn’t necessarily have to look as sparkly or new because it’s not. It’s not a new one and there’s beauty in that. There’s a perfect example of a rose cut. I love a rose cut diamond, but they are so difficult to photograph, especially the older ones.
Sharon: What do you do if you are feeling frustrated by a rose cut diamond? Do you just go with it?
Kim: These photoshoots are always done with my clients present, so we will change. We’ll modify the lighting. We’ll try different setups. We will incorporate different techniques, like using a fill card or a white bounce card or a little black card, or a piece of silver or gold cardboard to shine light on it. I have all these different tools we will use and attempt. We’ll try to do the best we can, and at the end we say, “That’s the best we’re going to get it.” The clients are happy. We get something that is an accurate representation of the piece.
Sharon: It’s interesting that you have clients present. Usually, a client will look after the photograph is done. They’ll look at the images on a lightbox, but they’re present for the photography.
Kim: I have very hands-on clients. I have a couple of clients who are a little more hands-off. Like you say, I deliver the images. I do my magic and I deliver images afterwards, but I do have some clients that are very hands-on. They want to be present, and it’s important for them to be there while I’m shooting. We’ll adjust things. We’ll make adjustments. This is more so with the higher-end pieces and the antique pieces. They’re very particular and want it to look as accurate as possible.
Sharon: Have you ever had a client reject everything you’ve done, all the images, and say, “Start again”?
Kim: No, that would be a nightmare. Thankfully, no, that’s never happened. I would say by the time you have clients, you want to have enough experience where that doesn’t happen. But yeah, thankfully no. Maybe once in five years, there’s been like two pieces we had to reshoot, but that’s all.
Sharon: Does the size of the piece of jewelry matter, if you’re given a ring with a big stone?
Kim: I prefer bigger jewelry, actually, funny enough. One of my clients makes very dainty, little pieces, very thin pieces. They’re beautiful, but they are so difficult to photograph because they are so tiny. I like photographing bigger pieces. I’m trying to think why it’s easier for me personally. I think it’s because these bigger pieces are typically less—well, it depends; sometimes they can be really reflective. I think what’s more difficult is high-polish pieces, the really glossy, high-polish jewelry because you see everything. They reflect everything, as opposed to the gold in an older piece that’s more matte. I don’t know if that’s the appropriate term, but it’s not as shiny. That’s a lot easier to photograph because we can get clean gold or silver or whatever it is. We can get it really clean looking. But I love photographing big, chunky pieces; that’s my favorite.
Sharon: When you say big and chunky, that’s relative. Do you mean a big piece, or do you mean bigger than the norm? What do you mean by that?
Kim: I guess bigger than the norm. Yeah, you’re right; it is relative. Bigger than the norm. It wouldn’t be your everyday jewelry. It would be for an event or a cocktail ring or a red-carpet piece. I love photographing that kind of stuff; it’s really fun for me. I also like a challenge sometimes.
Sharon: That’s interesting. So, a stylist might give you several pieces and say, “Gwyneth Paltrow is going to be wearing this.”
Kim: Yeah, exactly. I might get something like that to photograph. I think it’s always fun seeing a piece that I photographed published in a magazine. Maybe an actor is wearing it on the red carpet or my photography is published in magazines. It’s nice to see that. At times, it will be published. It’s always nice to see my work and have it be kind of tangible.
Sharon: Because of the difficulty—and it does sound very difficult—do you charge more for jewelry photography?
Kim: Yes, it is very tedious; it is very difficult. It is a learned skillset. So yes, jewelry photography is not cheap. It’s also because you’re paying for their years of experience. They’re not going to waste your time trying to shoot this ruby or diamond. It’s like, “No, I know how to shoot that. We do this,” and it’s done in three to five minutes, onto the next piece. There’s that aspect of it, and it’s so tedious with the focus stacking. You have to have a lot of patience for photographing jewelry. It’s very, very tedious. That’s another reason why it is a little pricier than other types of photography, as opposed to a family portrait or something.
Sharon: It sounds very difficult, so I should expect to pay more. Are people taken aback by the price?
Kim: No, they’re not. The ones that are taken aback are the newer companies that are just starting out, or maybe it’s a passion project for them, a more personal project, and they just want photography. Larger companies know what the pricing is like. There’s a standard rate, roughly, so it’s not too surprising.
Sharon: I’m surprised from leafing through a magazine, they say, “Nails by somebody,” and I’m going, “Who?"
Kim: I know; it’s so funny. There is a specialty for everything. It’s so funny.
Sharon: Is there a specialty for jewelry photography? Is somebody who calls and says, “Oh, you have to have Kim. She knows everything about jewelry”? How do you get your work if you’re not on staff?
Kim: That’s a good question. Word of mouth is a huge part of it. I do a little bit of advertising and email reach-out, just pitching myself. It’s a combination of all that.
Sharon: If I’m trying to decide between jewelry photographer A and B, what should I ask?
Kim: I would ask if they’ve had experience with whatever you specialize in. Maybe it’s antiques or tiny, intricate, precious little pieces. Whatever that specialty is, I would ask if that photographer has experience photographing that. Obviously, I want to see a portfolio. Also, if they’re open to it, I’ll do a test shoot with maybe three pieces, like a trial day. You just give them a free trial. I’ve had clients do that, where we do a trial day to see not only if they’re happy with the images, but if you enjoy working with each other. I think that’s important as well.
Sharon: I don’t know how you are, but I presume I would take tear sheets if there are publications with their jewelry. Is that what you would show to say, “I know how to do antique stuff”?
Kim: Yes, in my portfolio, I do have tear sheets in there as well. I have a mixture of tear sheets and product shots because I think that’s important. Like you mentioned, it provides credibility and shows you’ve accomplished it.
Sharon: How long do you think it took you to feel confident that you could take nice pictures of jewelry?
Kim: Oh gosh, I don’t know. I’m going to say about four years ago. I think that’s when I started to feel that I’m really becoming an expert at this and confident in my skillset.
Sharon: So, it took you about five years to feel confident, and that was four years ago? I’m trying to understand this.
Kim: I’ve been doing jewelry photography for about eight years now. I was doing a good job, but I was acquiring different clients as well during that time. Maybe the first two years I had one client, and it grew from there. As I kept shooting, you keep learning these different techniques. A lot of it is learning on the job. Even today, there are some pieces that surprise me, where I wouldn’t have thought to use a certain lighting technique.
Sharon: What did you do during Covid? Did people stop sending you jewelry?
Kim: Funny enough, during Covid—and thank goodness for technology—a few of my clients decided to do Zoom photoshoots. They would either send me the pieces or I’d go pick them up. I’d set up my whole station, and it’s called shooting tethered. I basically connected my camera to my computer, and as I’m photographing, I have images pop onto the screen. I share my screen and my clients can see the images coming in live. So, they might say, “Hold on, that looks a little crooked,” and I have to tick it. “The diamond’s not shiny.” “Can you get that more blue?” They would do that. We switched to that, which was so helpful. It felt like quite a few photographers and companies started doing that.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I have a friend who’s a makeup artist, and she basically stopped working during Covid. Nobody called her. She couldn’t be blowing into somebody’s face.
Kim: Yeah, that’s difficult. I do portraits as well, and obviously that did stop, but I was so thankful for my jewelry clients. You don’t have to be there. It’s products, so you can do it virtually. I felt very grateful for that.
Sharon: Kim, thank you so much. I learned so much about jewelry photography. First of all, I don’t want to ever try it. Thank you for being here today. We really appreciate it.
Kim: Thank you so much for having me.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 22 Jul 2019 | Episode 32: The World’s Handmade Jewelry at Your Fingertips with Vivianne Leung, Senior Marketing Executive, and Natasha Hosseini, Creative Copywriter, at JewelStreet | 00:14:54 | |
Senior Marketing Executive Vivianne Leung and Creative Copywriter Natasha Hosseini are representatives for JewelStreet, one of the fastest growing online jewelry marketplaces based in the United Kingdom. With a community of over 200 independent jewelry designers from around the world, and by specializing in only the finest handmade and bespoke jewelry, JewelStreet is revolutionizing the retail industry. After hand-picking emerging names, JewelStreet provides an online platform for these talented designers and artisans to thrive and reach new audiences. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources: | |||
| 18 Jan 2023 | Episode 180 Part 1: Finding a Home in the Global Community of Metalsmiths with Goldsmith, Wayne Werner | 00:23:36 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Wayne Werner Jeweler, goldsmith, and educator Wayne Werner is a third-generation metalsmith from Maryland. He has been jewelry maker for over 30 years with clients worldwide.
Wayne Werner has traveled around the world to learn with metal workers from Italy and Egypt to Java and Bali. Specializing in cold forging precious metals, Werner has incorporated the traditional techniques of gold and platinum smithing with his artistic vision of paying homage to the fertility cults of the ancient world.
Werner’s work explores the relationship to metals liquid opus and the opus of mankind, both being a product of the earth cooling down. Through his work Werner attempts to remind people of the miracle of life and the cosmic happening that we all are.
Primarily making a living retailing his work, Werner has participated in over 250 high-end craft shows nationally. He has received many awards for his work including the World Gold Council’s Gold Distinction award and the MJSA Vision award for Mokume Gane. Werner is a former instructor at the Fuji Studio in Florence, Italy, and was adjunct faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore for 17 years. He has also taught over 100 workshops in universities and craft schools around the country. In 2006 he was asked to demonstrate his craft at The Mint Museum of Craft and Design in Charlotte, NC, an event marking his 40th birthday. He is founder and host of THE ALCHEMIST PICNIC, a metalsmithing retreat at Touchstone Center for Craft, now in its 6th year. Werner is also an accomplished musician who has appeared on both television and movies as himself. His clients are some of the most interesting people on earth.
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript Known for his psychedelic designs that reference ancient myths, fertility cults and the splendor of the sun, it’s no wonder that metalsmith Wayne Werner has connected with clients like the Grateful Dead. A self-taught jeweler who learned traditional techniques by visiting metalsmiths around the world, Wayne has found success by selling his pieces at craft shows. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about his tips for building a long-lasting career in the jewelry industry; how he chooses the shows he attends; and why metalsmiths are all part of a global creative community. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today my guest is Wayne Werner. Wayne is a very unusual and accomplished goldsmith. He is self-taught. As well as a goldsmith, he’s an educator, an artist and a world traveler. He has traveled from Italy to Egypt, Java and Bali to learn different metalworking techniques and to be the best possible metalsmith. We’ll hear all about his journey today. Wayne, welcome to the program.
Wayne: Thank you, Sharon. I’m flattered to be here.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being here. Tell us about your jewelry journey. You came from a family of goldsmiths, you said.
Wayne: Yes. I hope the journey has not already happened. I think it’s still happening as we speak. But, yeah, I came from a family of makers, I would say. My one grandfather worked on the World Trade Center in New York and the George Washington Bridge among other things. He was an ironworker. My grandfather on my dad’s side worked for the government. He worked for Aberdeen Proving Ground. He did metalwork. He made hand grenades and guns that shot around corners and weird things like that.
My mom was a decorator, but it was my uncle Russ Springer who really blew my mind and affected me when I was a child. Russ Springer, a German immigrant on the east side of Baltimore, was a watchmaker, clockmaker and repairman. He made jewelry, but he also did movie projections. He was a projectionist. He did things like help put movies on airplanes back in the 60s. When I went to see uncle Russ, he was working at the Essex Movie Theater on the east side of Baltimore. My mother took me there. She would leave me at the movie theater because he was working in the projection room, and she would go shopping. I was there to watch 101 Dalmatians, but Russ had a work bench in there, and while he was running the projectors in this small projection room, he was working on watches and clocks and carvings. Imagine being six years old, walking into a tiny room with flickering lights and big wheels turning, movies turning, and there’s an old man with a skinny moustache and a German physique hunched over a workbench over little mechanical things that look just like that movie projector. I didn’t want to watch the movie; I wanted to be in this little room with flickering lights and my uncle Russ. For me, that was the most fascinating. It was something out of a carnival, but all on a microscopic level. It really affected me.
The highlight of my six-year-old life was to go to Russ’ house. He had a hundred clocks, and they would all chime or go off or do something. If I could just be at his house to hear all these clocks chime and go off at noon. It was Pink Floyd time. It was bing, bong, boom. It was so exciting, the anticipation and all that. So, Russ Springer was the one to hand me some wax as a child and light a fire of fascination with small things.
One thing led to the other. I started sculpting with Sculpey and things like that. When I was a young kid, I’d go to Bethany Beach and pretend to be a sculptor. I’d hang out under the boardwalk and do sculptures out of clay. Lo and behold, a man came up and talked to me and gave me a commission—I think it was for six dollars—and these little things fuel your fire. So, I was sculpting and doing wax carvings.
When I hit my teenage years, I was really getting into wax carving. The Grateful Dead came to town and my friends took me to a Grateful Dead concert. There were all these crafts in the parking lot and really cool counterculture stuff, so I started doing little wax carvings at 17, 18 years old and selling them in the parking lot of Grateful Dead concerts. I ended up selling work to the Psychedelic Shop in San Francisco and the Psychedelic Solution in New York City. These pieces were $12 to $20 each, but it fueled the fire for the next step.
That next step was to discover the American Craft Council. That was a really enlightening thing for me. I had a teacher at community college who was upset that I wasn’t an art major, and he said, “Go down to the Baltimore American Craft Council’s show. I want you to see the business of art, of jewelers and silversmiths, glassblowers, leatherworkers, all those kinds of people.” So, the American Craft Council in Baltimore was the first place I experienced contemporary craft.
Sharon: Did that make you want to go around the world?
Wayne: It’s funny you should say that, but it did. I found myself, God forbid, growing up and needing to make money and do something, and I felt like I was getting good at metalwork. I was in California. I went to the Revere Academy for a few classes. I wanted to be in San Francisco around the Psychedelic Shop, but I was getting involved with shows. I met some successful craftspeople, and I realized it was something to commit to. Between the ages of about 22 and 29, I began doing ACC shows. I wanted to do crafts at Lincoln Center, which was interesting, but I put the brakes on it. I thought to myself, “I see how this could become you.” Becoming a craftsperson was a commitment. I would do it, but it was a commitment. Before I committed to being in a bunch of galleries and doing a bunch of shows, I wanted to pause and take a trip around the world. At the time, I had just done a commission for the band Blues Traveler. They commissioned me to do platinum rings for the band. I had worked for other rock bands before.
To get back to your question, if it made me want to travel around the world, absolutely. My 30th birthday gift to myself was to take a trip around the world, and I did that. I planned it for close to a year. This was 1995. I wrote letters to some galleries, artists and schools saying I had an intent to travel and visit these places. I literally paused my creative endeavors of trying to have a studio and trying to be a contemporary American craftsman. I paused and said, “Wait, let me take a trip around the world first, because I don’t think I will be able to do it later.” This was pre-millennium and everything else, pre-9/11. I knew in my stomach that in the future, I felt like the world wouldn’t be as easily traveled. Does that make sense?
Sharon: Yes.
Wayne: How did I decide to do that? I just wanted to do it. I wanted to say I did it. I wanted to visit metalsmithing places and villages, everything from King Tut. I wanted to see King Tut. I wanted to walk the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. I wanted to go see the metalsmiths in Java and Bali and get into their world, walk in and out of the door, at least for a day.
Sharon: Did you know they were metalsmiths? Did you know they had something you wanted to learn, something specific? Or did you just want to see what they did?
Wayne: A little bit of everything. One of the first things I did was go to Goldsmiths’ Hall in London and see the show there. I had some friends there, made some friends, interviewed people like Wendy Ramshaw and Gerda Flöckinger. I was meeting people and I would interview them. I ended up in Pforzheim, Germany and Italy, but where it really got interesting was when I went to Egypt. I was in Cairo hanging around with metalsmiths in the market, who had all the time in the world but not the technology.
One of my destinations I had to see was Java, to see the kris-makers of Java. They used to make knives out of meteorite and iron. They’re kind of supernatural and super fascinating. A kris blade is something that every Indonesian man possesses. It was the same thing with the Balinese doing granulation work. I had it loosely mapped out in my head. I had written my letters. I’d gotten some letters back saying, “You’re welcome to come here,” or “You’re welcome to come use the bench for the week.” It was really cool that I found this global family, not just the American craftsman family, but this global family. They’re still there. They’re out there for all of us.
Sharon: When you came back, did you find the travels influenced what you made or how you made it?
Wayne: Yeah, it really did. First of all, I realized there was some kind of metallic cultural heritage in different regions around the world. We talk about how in Toledo, Spain, they do inlaid work. I already mentioned the kris blades, Balinese granulation. That influenced me, knowing that being a metalsmith was being part of a cultural heritage. Being from Baltimore, the American Craft Council show was so important at the time. I realized I was a hammer person. I ended up using a hammer and forging when I did sculpting, and that led to Douglas Legenhausen, who I worked for. He worked for Ron Hayes Pearson. So, I found myself in that little tribe of makers.
The other thing I was developing at the time was not just making craft, but I was trying to bring in ancient techniques or ancient religious ideas. A lot of the travels I did revolved around going to temples like the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Turkey and the Temple of Isis in south Egypt. Those were fertility temples, and a lot of my work was a quest to document how amazing it was to be alive and how mother nature and all these things were such a force. That was the story I was telling. It got influenced by these ancient temples and religious things. The facts that mattered to ancient culture were written in metal or stone. It all started churning up, fermenting, but it all started with my fascination with psychedelic art and the art of Rick Griffin. He was a poster artist, and he did a lot of work that revolved around these fertility cults and temples. So, did it influence my work? How couldn’t it influence my work?
You also have to accept the fact that there are some things that are much larger than any one maker. I realized I was in this mosaic of creative people; they just happened to be metalsmiths. They could have been musicians or poets or whatever, but they were metalsmiths. It was a crazy, life-changing adventure. It was survival. There were a lot of things that went wrong. There were a lot of things that happened that I never would have guessed. I didn’t think I would have ended up in a workshop in Cairo, Egypt, looking over the shoulder of someone who was doing filigree work the way their father and father and father probably five or six generations before him had done.
It was amazing to me to realize that if the workshop had a dirt floor, the people in that workshop were very in tune with their creative process and the material. When you got into a room with a concrete floor and all these fancy machines, I think it really separated them from the earth and the earth, air, fire and water scenario. I found that the primitive metalsmiths were more tuned into their material. It’s when I started to really pay attention to the material and what it could do, what it would do, and especially what I could and couldn’t do with the material. Did that answer your question?
Sharon: Yeah, you did. I’m wondering if what you’re saying is what resonated with the rock musicians you also talk to. Maybe you’re making a different ring, but it’s a different story or a different piece of jewelry, I guess.
Wayne: We’ll back up to Psychedelic Solution. I was in New York. Jacaeber Kastor was his name, and he had a gallery where you could buy rock-and-roll collectable things, not only collectable posters, but original artwork from different artists like Rick Griffin and H. R. Giger. I guess they’re psychedelic artists, outsider artists, pop or visionary artists, whatever you want to call them. I also sold to the Psychedelic Solution in San Francisco. That was more of a head shop, but they had some collectable posters. Through both of them, I met a lot of interesting people. I was just a lucky kid who had a relationship with his creativity, which happened to be metal, and things would happen.
Bill Graham and some of the Grateful Dead would have me do pieces. I met Jerry Garcia’s guitar maker, and then Jerry Garcia said, “I’d like to have some little pins with my logo on them. I’m going to give these away.” It was interesting to be near those people. Blues Traveler, I made some platinum rings from them. Prior to that, they were silver rings. I found myself growing comfortable around certain bands. I remember riding on the road with one of these musicians and I said, “Man, you’ve got the coolest job ever,” and he said, “No, you’ve got the coolest job ever. You’re playing with fire. You’re sitting at home. You’re listening to records, staying in your studio. You don’t have to deal with what I have to deal with.” It’s kind of cool to have a rock musician say, “No, you have the coolest job, not me.”
They were into the same stuff. When I told somebody where I traveled, I said, “Yeah, I saw the pyramids a couple of times and I went to see my cousin, King Tut.” He said, “Wow, man, that’s great. Make me something. Bring these designs forward. Reinterpret them.” Again, I’m just a regular guy who got fascinated with metalsmithing and history and world religions and things like that. Whenever I sat down to write a story, it was in metal. It was all part of the fascination. I was a guy on the hustle, Sharon, like you wouldn’t believe. I was not, in any uncertain terms, going to get a regular job and have a regular life. I thought there was a way to have a surreal job and a surreal life as long as you were willing to work at it. To me, the artists, whether they were musicians or whatever, they were professionally themselves. They were outsiders. They may have been socially inept, but they figured out a way to be professionally themselves. That was the goal. “The harder you work, the more luck you will have,” as someone said to me. I said, “All right. I’m going to go work hard at this surreal thing I have going on.”
Sharon: Is that when you decided to go into jewelry making, because he said it was a neat job? Did you realize, “This my thing. This is the way I am creative the way I work hard and grow”?
Wayne: I think any creative person has a time in their life when they have to make a decision. Do you bet it all on your creativity, and then you have the business aspect of this creativity? Because business, no matter what you do as an artist, is super important. They call it the music business; they call it the art business, because of half of it is art and half of it is business. For me, I got to a point where I realized I was getting some chops. Honestly, I was told by JoAnne Brown, who ran the American Craft Council’s shows, “Wayne, you’re one of the youngest goldsmiths to do these shows as a goldsmith. Not as a silversmith, as a goldsmith. You’re really betting it all here.” I just had to laugh. I said, “I’m totally unemployable. I’ve tried it and I can’t work for people. I have to figure this out.” All I wanted to do was find my niches and find other facets of a creative career to go into.
It’s funny; I don’t know if I made the decision or the decision made me. I swear to God, if this didn’t find me, I would have had a very different path in life. Probably it wouldn’t have worked out so good, but I love it. I love the craft. I love the makers I work with. I love everything about it. Alan Revere said something I thought was asinine at the time. He said, “Wayne, you’re becoming a metalsmith. You could become a lawyer and people would come see you when they’re in trouble. You could be a doctor and people would come see you when they’re sick, but you know what? You’re going to be a metalsmith and a jeweler. People are going to come see you when they’re in love. Whether it’s a wedding band or a gift or whatever, they’re going to come see you when they’re in love. You’re going to be part of their love, their relationship.” I looked at him like he had two heads, of all the things to say.
After years of doing this, every time I make a wedding band, I thank the customer. I say, “You know what? Thank you.” The ultimate compliment I can get is for someone to say, “Make my wedding ring.” This week I’m restoring a wedding band that’s close to a hundred years old. It was someone’s grandma’s, and that’s pretty cool. I have to admit I’m so lucky to have that energy be part of me profiting from a passion I have.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please had to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 30 Jan 2023 | Episode 182 Part 1: The Story of Jade with Expert Eric Hoffman | 00:26:12 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Eric Hoffman
Eric Hoffman is an aficionado of Chinese jades for over 40 years. He is the owner and operator of Far East Gallery, which is dedicated to lovers of Chinese arts, antiques, antiquities, and—most especially—jades and snuff bottles. A member of the worldwide organizations Friends of Jade and the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, jade consultant to the Chinese Cultural Relics Association, and contributing editor to Adornment magazine, Prof. Hoffman has written many articles and reviews on this fascinating subject.
Additional Resources:
Introductory Articles on Jade: http://hoffmanjade.com/Adornment_Jade.pdf https://asianart.com/articles/hoffman/index.html
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript: Jade is a popular gemstone that even the most avid jewelry collectors often know little about. Much of the confusion stems from the fact that two distinct stones share the same name. Enter Eric Hoffman, a jade dealer and author who is an expert on identifying different types of jade. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about jadeite jade vs. nephrite jade; why jade can either be extremely valuable or basically worthless; and how new collectors can find quality pieces. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today my guest is Eric J. Hoffman, who’s extremely knowledgeable about jade. Eric is the owner of Far East Gallery and HoffmanJade.com. He is both a seller and a buyer, and he knows a lot about what makes jade valuable. He’s also an author who has written about jade. I don’t know about you, but I know nothing about jade. So, Eric is going to tell us about his path, tell us about jade, and educate us about collecting the gem. Eric, welcome to the program.
Eric: Thank you for inviting me to talk about my favorite subject.
Sharon: Thanks for being here. Tell us about your journey. I know you didn’t start out in jade. You started out in a different field, but how did you get into jade?
Eric: I definitely did not start out in jade. Around 1970, I was on the bench designing communication circuits for satellites. My technician was an amateur minerologist, a rockhound, and he dragged me off one weekend to a gem show in Pennsylvania. At the show, they had a gem-carving contest. This was pretty much the first time I realized you could carve gemstones.
The winner of the contest was a gorgeous cat sitting on its haunches, about six or seven inches tall, carved out of tiger eye. It was on a platform that was rotating under a spotlight, so you got all the play of color off the tiger eye. It was an incredible thing to see, and it really got me interested in carved gemstones. It didn’t take too long to realize the best stone to carve was jade, and the best carvers at carving jade were the Chinese. They’ve been at it for 8,000 years. That’s how I got started.
Sharon: Tell us about jade. You mentioned you have a gallery and that you’re a dealer. I have a lot to ask you. Tell us a little about jade itself.
Eric: Jade is a very interesting gemstone. There are a lot of gemstones that go by multiple names, but I think jade is the only example where two different stones go by the same name, jade. There’s nephrite jade and there’s jadeite jade. Both of those are carved. The jadeite is more commonly seen in jewelry and the nephrite is more commonly seen in carvings and artifacts.
Sharon: So when I hear or see something about nephrite, it’s jade, no matter what you’re saying.
Eric: That’s right. Both nephrite and jadeite are properly called jade. There are a lot of jade imitators around that are not jade, but those two stones are.
Sharon: What are the differences between nephrite and jadeite? When I read about jadeite, I don’t know the difference. Is that jadeite is or is it jade?
Eric: Nephrite jade is the historically first jade. It’s the jade that has been carved for 8,000 years by the Chinese. It’s a calcium magnesium silicate, and the thing that makes it unique is that it’s the toughest of all the stones. It’s the hardest to break of all the stones.
Jadeite, which has very similar properties, is a sodium aluminum silicate. It’s a different stone. In fact, both of these stones are rocks. Technically they’re mixtures of minerals, but we call them rocks. The thing that makes nephrite so tough is its fibrous structure that’s matted together, like the fibers in the felt in a felt hat, which makes it extremely difficult to break and allows carvers to work it very thin.
Sharon: Is white jade nephrite? What is white jade? Where does jade come from? It’s in the ground, but is it in the same place in the ground? Does somebody do something with it afterward? Do they add a chemical or something?
Eric: They’re found in very different regions. Actually, they’re found all over the world, but most commonly the nephrite that the Chinese were using, at least for the past 1,000 years or so, has come from a region in western China called Hotan. The jade you’re likely to encounter in jewelry is jadeite. It comes from the northern part of Burma, and it was only in the late 1700s that it became commonly seen in China.
Sharon: When you say it’s been carved for thousands of years in China, the nephrite jade that’s in the Hotan region, what was it about this stone that attracted carvers and kept it going for so long?
Eric: The initial thing that attracted the Chinese carvers 8,000 years ago—this was even before metals came into common use in China—was the extreme toughness of jade. It could be used for hammers, axes, adzes, chisels, tools, weapons. It was like the high-tech material of its day 8,000 years ago.
Sharon: When you say that other people are carvers, I think of objects. Was it made into objects also?
Eric: It started out being made into functional objects, tools and then weapons. But it was in such high regard that it soon became kind of a kingly material used in the royal court, and it started to pick up significance other than being a practical material.
Sharon: When people started to want jade jewelry, they moved to the other kind, jadeite.
Eric: The jewelry that was used in the ancient days is not something we would probably wear today. They tend to be more like plaques worn from robes, maybe suspended from a belt. Around the late 1700s China got control of the northern part of Burma, which was a warlike tribal area, and that’s where jadeite is found. Jadeite had brighter, more attractive colors than nephrite, so it immediately caught on for jewelry in China.
Sharon: Tell us about your business with both kinds of jade, I presume. Will people pay more for the nephrite from your gallery? Will you pay more knowing you can resell it for more?
Eric: I didn’t intend to get into business. What happens if you’re a collector is you always want some particular object, so you buy the first one that comes by. Then a better one comes along maybe a year or two later, and now you’re struck with two of them. I’m constantly selling the extras and using any proceeds to acquire new items.
Jade can be a very expensive stone. We normally think of jade lumped in with the semiprecious stones, but in the highest grade, jadeite and red diamonds are the two most expensive, valuable gemstones. An extreme example of that would be the famous Barbara Hutton jade necklace, which is 27 spherical beads of jadeite. It sold a few years ago at auction for $27 million, $1 million per bead.
Sharon: Wow! Which is stronger? Are they both as strong, the jadeite and the nephrite? Can you throw both of them against a wall?
Eric: Nephrite is the tougher stone by a little bit. As I said, it’s the toughest of all the stones. In fact, it may be toughest natural substance in the world. I’m not certain about that, but it’s certainly the toughest of the stones, the hardest to break. Jadeite is a little less tough but a little bit harder, so it makes a better ring stone, for example.
Sharon: How long ago did you decide to start an online gallery, Far East Gallery and HoffmanJade.com? You’ve coauthored books about jade. How long ago did your collecting become more of a business?
Eric: Far East Gallery goes all the way back to the early 70s, which precedes the world wide web and the internet. As soon as the web arrived, I started a web-based business, which is worldwide at this point.
Sharon: You said there was something you had planned for online, another web page or more information.
Eric: Just a few days ago, in fact, I added a page on jade jewelry. This was at the urging of my wife, the jewelry historian.
Sharon: That’s Elyse Karlin, I should say.
Eric: Elyse Karlin, whose computer I’m using right now. Other than that, the website consists of jade objects, some of which can be used for jewelry and snuff bottles, which is another side interest of mine.
Sharon: When I see a piece of jewelry and the person I’m buying it from says it’s jade, should I ask if it’s nephrite or jadeite? Should I assume it’s jadeite or nephrite? I don’t know what I should do.
Eric: It always pays to ask. If it’s a carving, it could be either. If it’s jewelry, it’s probably jadeite, but there is also nephrite jewelry.
Sharon: I think I told you that I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico a few years ago before Covid, and somebody was trying to sell me Mawsitsit earrings. I had never heard of Mawsitsit. They told me it was a very unusual kind of jade and it was going to overtake jade in a sense. Since I knew nothing about it, I didn’t know if they were giving me a line. Tell us about Mawsitsit.
Eric: If it was a good price, you probably should have bought them. Mawsitsit is a very interesting stone. It’s kind of a cousin of jadeite. It has a lot of jadeite in it, but also some other components such as kosmochlor and other minerals. It’s found in only one tiny, little region in Burma. It’s sort of a vivid green with black streaking through it.
Sharon: If I remember—this was years ago— it was sort of black with blue and green. Is Mawsitsit something special? If I talked to a person who really knows jade and I say Mawsitsit, do they know what I’m talking about?
Eric: I would say probably yes. It’s a desirable stone in its own right, although it is technically not jade. It has a lot of jadeite in it.
Sharon: I think it’s the first and only time I have ever encountered this stone. When you say it’s harder than any known natural substance, is it harder than diamonds? You usually think of diamonds as the hardest thing there is.
Eric: Actually, what I said is it’s tougher, which means it’s harder to break, but it’s not especially hard. Hardness is the resistance to scratching, and of course diamond is at the very top of the scale. Nephrite comes in at about a 6.5 on the Mohs scale, which means it’s just barely good enough to make a good ring stone and not get scratched up.
Sharon: You see both kinds, the jadeite and the nephrite, in the ground. Diamonds are cubic. Are they cubic? I can’t remember. Shows you what I know. What form is it? Is it in squares or cubes?
Eric: Jadeite is usually mined out of the ground mostly in northern Burma. The nephrite forms up in the mountains, at least for the past thousand years. If you go back 7,000 or 8,000 years, there were sources of nephrite in China itself. But for the past few thousand years, it forms up in the mountains, tumbles down the mountains in the course of time, and bounces down the rivers and gets rounded off into pebbles or cobbles that are plucked out of the rivers in Hotan one at a time.
Sharon: 8,000 years ago in China, they would go up and mine this nephrite, and today they just pick it up when it comes down the mountain? Is that what you’re saying?
Eric: They were always picking it out of the rivers because river jade, or alluvial jade, is more desirable than mountain jade. But because jade is so tough, the things they have to do to wrench it from the mountain are so destructive to the jade that it puts cracks through it and creates all kinds of problems for the carver.
Sharon: Tell us about your business today. Do people call you and say, “I have this carving or this piece of jade from a thousand years ago. Are you interested?” Tell us what you would do when you encounter that.
Eric: That does happen sometimes. Pretty much all of my customers come via the website, and we have discussions back and forth by email until finally a sale is made. It is very hard to evaluate ancient pieces from pictures or jpgs alone, particularly so since there is quite an active industry in China cranking out fakes.
Sharon: Is there an industrial use for jade?
Eric: Not that I can think of. It seems to me that it would make a good bearing material for things like ship propellers, but as far as I know, it’s never been used in that regard.
Sharon: So, you have the opportunity to touch an object or get your hands on it to see if it’s an antique or not. What do you do when somebody from China contacts you and says, “I like the piece you have on your site”? What do you do?
Eric: Oddly enough, I send a lot of jade back to China. They’re very interested in repatriating old pieces, so when I get them, a lot of it goes back to China where it started out.
Sharon: But you have the opportunity to see if it was actually an older piece as opposed to a fake.
Eric: Unfortunately, there’s no scientific way to date a piece of jade, so it does come down to my experience and opinion and the opinions of others. There are some scientific tests for other kinds of antiques like ceramics, but not for jade.
Sharon: Can you tell us about the articles you’ve authored? You’ve coauthored two articles that are in very well-known books. There’s a book about to come out and one book that has already come out and seems to be very well-regarded. Can you tell us about those?
Eric: One of the things I love to talk about is jade versus pseudo jade. Jade has so many different imitators, and learning to distinguish one from the other is a main interest of mine. The articles in the books go into that. The first three jades I bought when I was starting out in the early 1970s were not jade. I made my mistakes early. I guess as Elyse says, in jewelry, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not buying enough jewelry.
Sharon: So, that means I should go out and buy more then. How did you find out they were pseudo? Did somebody tell you?
Eric: No, that would be too simple. You can run some fairly easy tests, such as hardness testing and specific gravity or density testing. That helps rule out many of the pseudo jades.
Sharon: What is it that attracts you? Why jade? Why not another stone? You saw the tiger eye and fell in love with it. Why didn’t you just keep all the tiger eye?
Eric: There are a lot of wonderful carvings done in tiger eye, which is a chalcedony. It’s a little bit harder than jade. It’s nowhere near as tough as jade, so it cannot be carved as finely and thinly. You can’t do the various things that are done with the jade material because of its extreme toughness.
Sharon: Is it because you thought, “I have to get it back to Los Angeles. It’s easier. It’s not going to break”? Is that why you brought that to Los Angeles? I guess I still don’t have an answer to why jade.
Eric: I guess the answer to that is that I’ve always been interested in the Chinese decorative arts, and when it comes to carving, the Chinese always pick jade. They have carved other stones along the way, but jade is always at the top of the heap.
Sharon: Is that because there’s a lot more jade in China? I guess I think of different things, not so much the stones, when it comes to China.
Eric: No, there are a lot more other kinds of stones in China than jade. Jade is not particularly rare in the average grades, but it’s more uncommon than the jade imitators.
Sharon: But you said it’s not in the lower grades or lower echelons. It’s not as expensive or as valued. It’s the white jade that’s valued by carvers.
Eric: White jade is an interesting subject. In the case of nephrite, white jade is very desirable and very much in fashion right now. A particular kind of white jade called mutton fat jade is highly sought out and very expensive. Now, when you switch to the other jade, jadeite, white jade is almost worthless. In fact, it wasn’t too long ago that white jade in Burma was crushed and used as a road fill. That’s how little was thought about it. Yet that same stone in its very highest grade formed those million-dollar bead necklaces. I don’t think there’s any other stone that has such a wide range of value.
Sharon: It was used to be crushed for roads at the lower end, and at the higher end, it was used in very expensive jewelry. That’s what you’re saying?
Eric: At the highest end, you have the Barbara Hutton necklace at $1 million per bead. At the lowest end, it was crushed and used for driveways and road fill. It’s the same stone, jadeite.
Sharon: But you said there’s a white jade that’s a nephrite, and then there’s another kind of white jade that’s a jadeite, right?
Eric: That’s right. When you’re talking about white jade, it makes a big difference whether it’s nephrite or jadeite.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 07 Mar 2023 | Episode 186 Part 1: Celebrating Canadian Artists: How Noel Guyomarc’h Brought Montreal into the Global Art Jewelry Community | 00:25:44 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Noel Guyomarc’h Noel Guyomarc’h is the founder of Gallerie Noel Guyomarc’h. Established in 1996, the gallery exhibits outstanding collections of contemporary jewelry and objects created by Canadian and international artists. The only gallery in Canada dedicated specifically to contemporary jewelry, it has presented over 100 exhibitions in its space, which is considered to be one of the largest in the world. This internationally acclaimed gallery is a must for collectors, museum curators, and anyone who wants to discover and become acquainted with art jewelry. Additional Resources: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h Website Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h Instagram Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h Facebook Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Although Canada’s art jewelry scene is relatively small, it has a devoted champion in Noel Guyomarc’h. Noel founded Galerie Noel Guyomarc'h in 1996 and has spent nearly 30 years bringing art jewelry to Montreal—and bringing Canadian jewelry to the world. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how he chooses artists and exhibitions for his gallery; how he introduces art jewelry to first timers; and his hopes for the Canadian art jewelry scene. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. Today, we’re talking to Noel Guyomarc’h in Montreal. He is the owner and founder of Galerie Noel Guyomarc'h. He wants people to see that artists create works of art and that these pieces, when they’re worn, it amplifies their significance. A relationship is established between the person who wears the piece itself and the viewer. He encourages visitors to cast a new eye on jewelry, which art jewelry really does. We will hear about all of this as well as how he came to operate a gallery and what he thinks about art jewelry in Canada. Noel, welcome to the program. Noel: Thank you. It’s nice to be here. Sharon: We just had a long talk about how to say his name because there’s an apostrophe before the H. Guyomarc’h. So, tell us about your jewelry journey. Noel: I started about 35 years ago in Montreal. I was working in a jewelry place which showed fashion, some art jewelry and some antiques from Asia. It’s there where I started to be more aware of jewelry, but there was no contemporary jewelry or art jewelry, a very small collection, in fact. That place closed, and I decided to support local artists. I said, “O.K., I should open mine,” and it’s what I did 27 years ago. Sharon: Wow! That’s a long time. You were the only place around. I only know of one other place in Canada that has art jewelry. Noel: Yeah, since the past 25 years, many places have closed. Now I think we have two galleries in Canada which are presenting art jewelry, so it’s not much. The other gallery, Lapine Gallery, presents only Canadian artists, but all different crafts, not only jewelry. My gallery is only dedicated to contemporary jewelry. Sharon: Oh, my gosh! Noel: There is not much in Canada. It’s really sad. Sharon: When you look at a map, it’s a big area. Noel: Oh, yeah. Sharon: We’re a smaller area on the West Coast, but we don’t have as much as the East Coast does. Tell us a little more. Would people be surprised if they found out this is what you’re doing today? Were you artistic? Did you make jewelry? Noel: From the people who knew me a long time ago, yes, they would be surprised because it was not what I was planning to do in my life. I was working in administration. I’m originally from France, and I moved to Canada 25 years ago. My background was more in economy and administration, so nothing to do with art or even jewelry. There were never jewelers in my family. When I moved to Canada, I met people who were making jewelry. In a way, I started to be more introduced to jewelry. Sharon: Tell us about your gallery and how you introduce people to it, because you have very alternative materials in terms of jewelry. How do you introduce people? Noel: I like them to come in. They know already that there’s something different because the front windows always display unusual work. So, when they come in, they are surprised by the diversity. They look at things, and when I see that there is some question in their eyes, I go to them and start to explain the work they’re looking at. That way, they look at all the works in the gallery differently. Sometimes you’re more attracted by one specific thing because of the colors, because of the materials, because of the idea. So, the fact that I explain the work, they understand that all the other works I have at the gallery are in the same group. They all have a specific meaning, a specific way of being done, of being worn, of being realized by artists. It’s interesting, the effect. Sharon: Are people attracted because it’s work by artists or because it’s just different jewelry? Noel: They’re curious because the format, the colors, the treatment of materials are very unusual. They’re just surprised. It’s funny because there are two sides of showing such jewelry. You have people who are curious; they want to learn more. There are others that say it’s not jewelry because it’s too stylized. It’s very interesting to see the two behaviors in front of such work, in fact. Sharon: Do you have people who come in and say, “Oh, this looks interesting,” and they walk out with something they never experienced before? Noel: Exactly, yeah. Very often it’s not the first time they’re going to buy something. They need to get used to looking at them, to get used to eventually wearing it. It’s a process. It’s a work in progress, and a working process as well because they have to get used to such pieces. It’s very interesting. Sharon: Are most of your customers women? Noel: I can say yes, 75% are female and 25% are men. Sharon: 25% is a pretty large amount. Noel: Yeah, I don’t know what’s been happening the past 15 years. It’s like the men started to wear jewelry or they started to buy for their wives, but they want to buy something they like more than their husband or wife will like. It’s very interesting, but it’s not the same. I don’t know. The past 15 years I’ve seen a difference. Before, people wanted to buy something to seduce their wives or husbands, and now they’re acknowledging—because of me, maybe; I don’t know—but they want to be sure that the piece pleases them before it will please their wife or husband. It’s a slightly different way of buying, which I like. Sharon: Were you a jeweler? Did you ever make anything? Noel: I took some jewelry classes before I opened the gallery, but I realized that was not for me. That was very fast. After a few years, I realized that no, it’s not for me to make them. I had ideas, but I didn’t have the patience for the making aspect. I was surrounded by talented people, so why do something I will not be pleased with? But it was a good thing because I learned many techniques that way, so when I look at some work, I know the quality as well. I can see if it’s well-made or not because I took those classes. Sharon: What do you consider art jewelry? What do you say when people come in and say, “What’s art jewelry?” Noel: I try to explain that it’s a result of a vision, of questioning, of reflection by one artist about what jewelry can be. It can be inspired by real jewelry, by the environment, by the field as well. No matter the techniques of the material used, it’s the expression, the idea. The main goal is for them to express themselves. Sharon: Do you always say it’s art jewelry by jewelers, or do you say it’s jewelry by artists? Noel: Most of the time, I say by artists. That’s interesting because now—it’s not new—there are some people that were in different fields and they started to make jewelry, but they don’t have the background of it. Just the fact that they use different kinds of materials, they don’t need to have that goldsmith or metalsmith training. They choose jewelry to express themselves. Sometimes they know silver or precious materials. So, it’s more the artists than jewelers. It can be jewelry artists, which means they’ve had the training, and artists. Sharon: Can you look at a piece and tell if it’s somebody who has classical training, but then started to make jewelry with paper or plastic? Noel: Oh yeah, we can feel it. But when you have many training experiences, it gives you freedom to do what you want. I think it’s nice when you have good training, for sure. Sharon: What was your catalyst for starting the gallery? Why did you decide, after working in these other places, to start a gallery? Noel: I worked in that place for five years, so it’s where I learned a lot of things. Slowly, that place was showing more artistic types of work. Among those jewelry artists there, there were a few that I started to be very close to. Then the place I was working at closed because of the economic situation, and I said to those artists, “I’ve got to open something in a few years to support you and encourage you.” It’s what I did after maybe three years that the place where I was working closed. I opened my gallery to support a few Canadian artists at the beginning, but it has grown very fast. We started to invite artists from everywhere and curate shows. Sharon: How do you curate shows? How do you decide somebody warrants a whole exhibition or if it’s a group showing? Tell us what you have now and what’s upcoming, that sort of thing. Noel: Sometimes it’s curated shows. I did a few with invited artists or asked curators to do shows for the gallery. Sometimes, I’m doing a selection of artists because of their work. Sometimes it’s from countries. I have done a show last year with Japanese artists. I selected seven with different backgrounds and different aesthetics, but I found it interesting to get them all together. Some of them have been trained in Japan and some outside of Japan, so the results were very different. Now, I have a show called “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral,” and that show has been curated by Melanie Egan. She’s the head of the Craft and Design department from the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Sharon: What is her name? Noel: Her name is Melanie Egan. She’s the head of the Craft and Design department at the Harbourfront in Toronto. She curated that show. It was presented last September. I was part of the project in a way because she wanted that show to travel to Montreal. I said yes, but the show was really big, so I did a short selection of work because we don’t have the same space, even if my space is big. It was very interesting to see why she selected specific work. It was about Nordic work. She invited people from Sweden, Norway, Iceland and from Canada, different places from Canada. It was a very interesting show. Sharon: As you were going through to decide what to take from the show, since you couldn’t show everything she had, how did you decide? Noel: It was more simple because sometimes she had similar items. I said, “O.K., instead of six necklaces, I’m going to bring four over because I don’t have space for more.” They were by an artist from Finland. She has done huge, huge, huge pieces. They’re not wearable art pieces. The dimensions are oversize. It’s always more jewelry for the wall than jewelry for the body. So, it was big, big, pieces, and I picked the bracelet because it was three meters by two meters big. It was very big. Can you imagine if the bracelet was that size, what was in that piece? So, I just took the bracelet. Sharon: Did you look at the pieces and how they were made? Noel: Yes, I went to the opening in Toronto to look at all the work, to do the selection, to make the right selection for the gallery. Sharon: What do you consider the right selection? What will sell? Noel: Most of the pieces were not for sale because the Harbourfront Centre is a nonprofit organization. They invited the artists and got a grant to bring everything in. So, I have done that show in Montreal, but I’m not supposed to sell because all the pieces have to be returned because of customs issues. Finally, I sold a few so the artist had to ship them back to me, but at the beginning it was not a project to sell the work. But I had demand, so it was nice. It was great. It was a great turnout. Sharon: What’s your favorite thing to sell? What do you like most about art jewelry? Do you like brooches? Men like brooches—I call them brooches. When I think of a man wearing jewelry who’s not wearing a leather bracelet, I think of the brooches I see men wear, with lapel pins on their lapel. What do you like and what do you sell? Noel: I have a lot of brooches at the gallery because I like the format. It’s very nice for the artist. They like to work in that format because they can express themselves. They know much more challenging things. A necklace can’t be too heavy, earrings not too heavy, well-balanced, rings not too big. There are always questions of sizes as well, so it’s a challenge. The brooches are a very rare form to express themselves. So, I like them, but I don’t sell many brooches. It’s not the best-selling item, but I have a lot because I like them. The best seller is necklaces and earrings and rings. Those three are very good, but brooches, I’m wearing them a lot. Slowly I succeeded to sell a few because I’m wearing them. When people come in, it’s like, “I never thought about wearing brooches,” because they feel that it’s not contemporary enough. The perception is like their grandmothers were wearing brooches, not them. But it’s changing a little bit. Sharon: I guess when I see art jewelry exhibitions, I always think of brooches. You only do one. With earrings, you have to make sure they match and that sort of thing. It seems better for an artist to do a brooch. Noel: Yeah, but it’s a piece that can encapsulate very nice ideas. I think that’s why it’s a favorite that I like to do. But sometimes, like I said, it’s not always the best seller. Sharon: That leads me to the next question. They say that having a gallery, no matter what kind of gallery but especially an art jewelry gallery, is something of a passion. It’s not because you want to make a lot of money; it’s a passion thing. What do you think about that? Noel: It’s absolutely true. I’m pleased because I’ve succeeded to make a living from it, but for sure, it’s not where you’re making a lot of money. Even the six or seven first years of the gallery, I had a job outside the gallery just to get an income. It was very challenging at the beginning. Now, I’m glad because it’s balancing well, but I do it just because I’m very passionate about jewelry and I like to show the artists’ work. I like to present it, but the return is not much. The return comes from the artists or when you meet someone. You like the work and buy it, and that means that you have done a good job. From the beginning, I didn’t want to have debts by running a gallery. For me, it was not the purpose. For me, it has to pay for everything, and as long as I can gain a little income from that, I feel O.K. But it’s true that we have to be passionate about the selection of work as well. I think for the gallery, I’m not doing easy sales pieces. I always try to challenge myself and challenge the artists themselves, so I have to keep motivated to do it. At times, it’s very challenging. Sharon: Do you ever say to an artist, “This would be wonderful if you made it pink or blue or you added this,” or do you just let them do it? Noel: I don’t want to be behind them and say, “You should do this because you’re going to sell them easier.” No, my job is to create wonderful settings. I really trust them. I believe them. I don’t want to influence that. Sharon: Do you see a difference in art jewelry between the U.S. and Canada or the rest of the world? Noel: Yes, there are some differences. It’s the fact that we don’t have a long story here about art jewelry. It’s not that old. And it’s the fact that there are not so many schools as well in Canada, and the fact that we don’t have so many galleries to show those works, I think it’s—what can I say?—it’s very challenging for the artist here. So, they’re not making the same type of work. Sometimes they’re doing a more commercial type of work and one other kind of avant garde of work, but there are not enough galleries to show their work. I think if there were more, it would be more motivating. I’m almost the only one here, and I can’t say yes to everybody. It’s going better for the jewelry fields because there are some platforms, like the one from Toronto. There are also some events like the New York City Jewelry Week. There are a lot of Canadians going there and going to Europe as well. There are some fairs where the artists can go so they can show their work, not always through a gallery, but they can organize by themselves or pop up at events to promote themselves. I think that helps for the creation as well. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| 16 Nov 2020 | Episode 95: The Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant: Making Your Application Stand Out with Bonnie Levine, AJF Board Member | 00:29:07 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Now entering its third round, Art Jewelry Forum’s Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant is an incredible opportunity for mid-career makers, authors, educators, historians, and other art jewelry experts and aficionados. AFJ board member Bonnie Levine has seen every application that has been submitted since 2016, and she’s learned exactly what makes a winning application. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to explain how to apply for the grant, who the award is open to, and her tips for creating a compelling proposal. About Bonnie Levine: Bonnie Levine is the former co-owner of Hedone Gallery, an online gallery focusing on contemporary art jewelry that is one-of-a-kind or of limited production. She loved and bought contemporary studio jewelry for many years, determined to become a gallerist when she left the corporate world. She is also on the board of Art Jewelry Forum, where she is responsible for administering the organization’s grants for artists. | |||
| 21 Dec 2021 | Episode 142 Part 1: The Language of Jewelry: How the Editor in Chief of JCK Finds Inspiration with Editor in Chief JCK, Victoria Gomelsky. | 00:24:30 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Victoria Gomelsky Victoria Gomelsky is editor-in-chief of JCK, a New York City-based jewelry trade publication founded in 1869. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Robb Report, AFAR, WSJ Magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, Escape, The Sun and Waking Up American: Coming of Age Biculturally, an anthology published by Seal Press. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA with a BA in political science in 1995 and earned her MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University in 2002. She specializes in jewelry and watch writing but her greatest love has always been travel — 60 countries and counting. Victoria was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and emigrated to the United States in 1978 with her parents and twin sister, Julia. She divides her time between New York City and Los Angeles. Additional Resources: Photos: Victoria Gomelsky watches:
Transcript: Victoria Gomelsky, editor in chief of esteemed jewelry trade publication JCK, was bitten by the travel bug during her first-ever trip—when she and her family immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. Since then, she’s visited more than 60 countries, often traveling to visit jewelry shows and report on jewelry trends. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her career in jewelry started with a mysterious online job posting; why Gen Z is changing the way we categorize jewelry; and where to find her favorite jewelry destinations. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Keep your eyes open for part two, which we’ll be posting later this week. Today, our guest is Victoria Gomelsky, editor-in-chief of the well-known industry publication JCK. Victoria is an accomplished writer. She’s written about jewelry for the New York Times as well as an extensive list of respected publications. She also covers another of her passions, which is travel. She’s had a quite a jewelry journey, as she was born in Russia and has been to more than 60 countries and counting. We’ll hear all about her jewelry journey today. Victoria, welcome to the program.
Victoria: Hi, Sharon. It’s so great to be here. Thank you so much.
Sharon: I will go into my normal questions, but my first question is—and it seems like a silly one—but you speak Russian, then?
Victoria: I do. It’s actually not that silly. I came here when I was five with a twin sister. We arrived at JFK in December of 1978, pretty much the height of the Cold War. So, my sister and I really did not want to be Russian, as we were five, six years old. We didn’t want to be different from our classmates. So, we started speaking quite quickly in English, and that’s how my language developed.
I could understand Russian, but in terms of speech, I am not a great speaker. Those are really two different centers in the brain, as I realized. I can be a very good tourist. I can go to St. Petersburg or Moscow, ask for directions, order food at a restaurant, but if you want to have a deep conversation with me about business or anything that requires an extensive vocabulary, it’s not going to be me. But I can understand pretty well.
Sharon: It always fascinates me. Did you speak any English when you came here?
Victoria: No, but having a twin sister and being five, you’re a little bit of a sponge. I’ve read that before age seven, if you pick up another language before that age, that’s more or less the cutoff. You can learn to speak quite fluently very quickly, and we did. We didn’t know any words. We stopped in Vienna on the way out of the Soviet Union, and then we lived outside of Rome for a few months, so I probably picked up some Italian then, too, come to think of it, not that it stuck. But when we got to the States, it all happened very quickly. I really don’t remember learning English. It was almost as if I picked it up by osmosis.
Sharon: Wow! It’s a great way to learn, in terms of thinking about how it is to learn a language. Your English has solidified in a sense.
Victoria: Exactly.
Sharon: Were you artistic then? Were you already artistic? Do you consider yourself an artistic person?
Victoria: It’s a good question. I don’t know. I consider myself creative. My sister—again, I have a twin sister; she’s really the artist of the family. She’s much more visual. She’s a graphic designer, an artist. She creates collages and all kinds of things with her hands. I’m not dexterous at all, so my creativity is on the page, what I write and how I see the world. So, I don’t consider myself an artist, but I do consider myself a creative.
Sharon: Does she call you up sometimes and say, “What were you thinking about that layout on the page?”
Victoria: Oh yeah, she’s super-critical. Trust me, I do not design or do anything around the home that doesn’t get her buy-in, because if I don’t get her buy-in on it, she’ll come over and say, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you put that on the wall.” She’ll never let me hear the end of it. So, I make sure to get her buy-in on any artistic or design-oriented decision I have to make.
Sharon: She must be a great resource for you in terms of what you do. Did you come to jewelry through writing, or did you have a love of jewelry? How did that work?
Victoria: I came through writing. It was all quite random. I’ll share the story because it’s really my story; it’s my original tale, I guess you would say.
Sharon: It’s a journey.
Victoria: My journey. This was the beginning. I was in living in L.A. I was 25. I really wanted to move to New York, and I was too scared to move without a job or without knowing anybody. I really wanted to continue my writing career. I had been a journalist. Even though I majored in poli-sci at UCLA, I had always worked for the Daily Bruin. I had done internships at various news organizations, some of them in the television field; some of them were written publications.
I applied to one MFA program in total, and that was the Columbia University Master of Fine Arts program in their non-fiction writing department, specifically. That’s the only school I applied to, because I wanted to move to New York and I wanted to continue writing, and that felt, to me, like the only possible way for me to do that.
I moved to New York in August of 1998, did two years of this Master of Fine Arts program, and then didn’t want to leave. I was still working on my thesis and finishing my degree when I started applying for jobs that were in the writing field. Mind you, this was 2000, so it was the very first wave of web jobs. It was Web 1.0. I didn’t realize it yet, but it was on the verge of crashing. That crash we had in 2001 was coming, but I didn’t see it then. There were a lot of jobs; a lot more jobs than people to fill them.
I happened to go on Monster.com. I’m not sure if it’s around anymore. It was a job search site. I had a profile on the site, and I happened to come upon a posting that said, “Luxury goods website seeks writer/editor with two to three years’ experience. Click here to forward your profile to this employer.” I had no idea what that meant. It was very vague. At the time, you faxed people your résumé. I guess you could email, but a lot of times it was still faxed. There was just no information at all. It was literally a button. I clicked it and thought, “O.K.” and I forgot about it promptly.
A few days later, I heard from a woman named Lisa at a company called Gemkey.com. I had no idea what that was, but it turns out Gemkey was a startup in the jewelry space. It was meant to be a website where retailers would go on and source their inventory online, which was laughable because 20 years later, that’s still something that most retailers don’t do. It was way, way, way ahead of its time. It was founded by Fred Mouawad, whose father is Robert Mouawad. Robert Mouawad is a Lebanese businessman who donated a ton of money to GIA. His name graces their campus in Carlsbad. GIA being the Gemological Institute of America.
Sharon: That’s why it sounded familiar. I was going, “Where do I know that from?”
Victoria: Yeah. Anyway, Fred was the son. He was an entrepreneur. He was based in Bangkok, and he had this website that had an office in New York. They were looking for some editors to fill out the news section of their site. I was hired as their pearl and watch editor, and I had no idea about either category. I didn’t even know pearls were cultured. I really had no language to describe them. I knew what a watch was, but I knew nothing. I could have named Rolex, Cartier maybe, and maybe Timex.
I had been backpacking around the world in the late 90s prior to going to grad school, so I was living very scrappily and was quite frugal. I was in my early 20s, not really in the jewelry scene. One of my first trips was to a pearl farm in Australia to see the Paspaley farm located off the coast of Northern Australia. On the way there, I stopped in Bangkok to visit Fred Mouawad’s main headquarters and meet some of my colleagues. On the way out, I stopped in Hong Kong to go to the pearl auctions, and I was hooked. It was a wonderful introduction to the world of jewelry, quite literally the world of jewelry. I had loved travel until then, and here was a way to combine my love of it with a way to explore this new category, this new universe. So, I came to jewelry through writing and then through travel.
Sharon: That must have been so exciting, to be writing about something you found you loved as opposed to—I don’t know. I’m trying to think of some of the things I’ve had to market over the years where it’s like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Victoria: Yes, I think that was one of the things I learned quite early. My job with Gemkey didn’t last long because it got bombed not that long after. I think I was employed with them for eight months or so, and then I got laid off because the company was losing money. I ended up getting hired almost right away by National Jeweler, which at the time was close to a hundred-year-old publication. It’s still around, not in print form, but it’s around in digital form. It was founded, I believe, in 1906. It’s really an industry trade like JCK, one of the stalwarts of the business.
I got hired as their gemstone editor. I got to National Jeweler, and I realized the company—National Jeweler at the time was owned by a bigger corporation that owned lots of different publications, everything from the Hollywood Reporter to Billboard Magazine to a publication called Frozen Food News. I realized there are so many different niches in the world, and as a writer, I was grateful I didn’t slip into the frozen food world, but the music world is great. If you enter music via Billboard, what a great way to learn about music.
I happened to enter through the trade of jewelry, and that was a wonderful way to get down into the trenches of an industry that is quite esoteric, quite hard to penetrate, and it still is. All these years later, there’s still so much to learn about jewelry, but starting out through a trade was the key. When you’re a trade reporter, you get to talk to dealers; you go to tradeshows; you learn from a very ground-up level, as opposed to being an editor of Vogue, where you don’t get to see the real world. You spend your time in the limelight. You get to see all kinds of topical designers, but you don’t always get the nitty-gritty details, that insight into the supply chain and insight into how a gemstone might emerge from the ground and the steps it takes to become a beautiful jewel. That all came through the trade, so I was very grateful to have that experience and the years and years I spent going to the Tucson shows to research the world of gems, to Basle to speak to high-end jewelers in Europe. There were all kinds of events. I have had a very unique perspective on this trade and the world at large through the lens of jewelry.
Sharon: Do you find that writing about jewelry has its own language, in a sense? It’s like writing about sports. I couldn’t write about sports.
Victoria: Very much so. The lingo takes a long time to understand. People think of jewelry as a very superficial subject. I think people who don’t know about jewelry will perhaps think, “Well, it’s just a bauble. It’s just something you put on to sparkle, to add a little or to show off your status, whatever it is.” But there are so many layers to jewelry, and the way you talk about it gets ever more complicated the more you know.
There’s a whole language around diamonds and gemstones and the ways you describe color, not to mention all the ways you talk about the fabrication of jewelry. That’s always eluded me a bit. I’ve been to factories, and I’ve been to places where jewelry is made, and that still feels like a topic that’s difficult for me to access because I don’t have a brain to understand mechanics or engineering. When people are sitting there at the bench trying to tell me the steps of the process, I always get a bit lost. It does feel like a very complicated venture, but I have been fortunate enough to see a lot of that.
Sharon: No, I can understand. I was at some design show, and there was a jeweler talking about how much of jewelry is engineering. He was talking about getting the piece to balance, but it’s also when you’re talking about extrusions when a piece of jewelry is being manufactured.
So, you went into nonfiction. Was that something where you said, “I’m not a fiction writer”?
Victoria: Yeah, pretty much. I love fiction and I love poetry, but it never felt like a natural pursuit for me. I was always interested in telling stories, and the stories that really compelled me or held my attention were always nonfiction. I think we all know that truth is stranger than fiction. We’ve all had the epiphany many times throughout lives, I’m sure, where we realized that the stories in front of us are as compelling as anything made up.
My entrée into that world was initially through The Daily Bruin, which was a huge college newspaper at UCLA. I learned the basics of being a reporter and a journalist and hunting down sources and doing interviews, but at the same time I didn’t love the grind of a daily journalism beat. It was good training, but when I applied to Columbia, I specifically did not apply to the journalism school. I applied to the arts program, to the Master of Fine Arts program, and I was drawn to the writings of, say, a Joan Didion or a Tom Wolfe or polemicists or memoirists—a lot of fiction authors who write beautifully in nonfiction or have beautiful examples of nonfiction in their repertoires. I was drawn to the kind of writing that was true, that was honest, but that still held all the same elements of a good fiction tale. It had characters, dialogue, a plot.
I probably don’t do as much of that kind of writing as I hoped I would, or as much as I wish I could, because I’m making a living. I write journalism; I write stories, but in all the stories I write, I really try to spend a lot of time with the people who are my sources and get their stories. I really try to convey a sense of story, even if it’s a short piece that’s running in a newspaper. I do as best as I can in that limited word space with a storyline.
Sharon: Tell us about your job as editor. Are you pulling together all the departments, like you see on TV editorial meetings?
Victoria: It’s a little bittersweet, because JCK—for those of you who aren’t familiar, I’ll tell you a little bit about what that stands for, because it’s a mouthful. JCK goes back to 1869. It wasn’t always JCK, which, by the way, stands for Jewelers’ Circular Keystone. Jewelers’ Circular was a publication in the 30s that merged with another jewelry publication called Keystone. From then on, they were called Jewelers’ Circular Keystone, until the 70s when they shortened it to JCK. So, that’s what those three initials stand for, but initially, it goes back to 1869 in Maiden Lane, New York, where the fledging jewelry district was growing up. There were watchmakers and jewelers who needed a publication to help them source their materials, help them sell. Various publications formed around them, and they eventually merged and aligned. What we know as JCK today really comes out of Maiden Lane in the 1870s. It’s pretty stunning to think about.
I joined the magazine in 2010. I had moved back to Los Angeles after nearly a dozen years in New York because I was ready to move. I moved back in late 2009. I had lost my job with National Jeweler after the financial crisis, and that was fine. I had been there for eight years or so, so it was time to move back to California where I grew up. About six months after I landed back in L.A., I ended up getting asked by a friend of mine who was the publisher of JCK if I’d be willing to take a temporary job with JCK as their editor. They were looking for a new editor. They were looking for somebody in New York, but they needed somebody to get them over the hump of a few issues. I thought, “Great, this is a perfect bridge job as I find my footing back in L.A.”
Well, as it turns out, it was not that hard to manage a publication from L.A. because I knew the industry. I had my contacts. I even knew my colleagues because I had worked with them. They were editors at JCK, but I had met them many years ago, as I was one of their cohorts in the jewelry media space. So, I knew the people I was working with. After six months or so, everybody thought, “Hey, this is actually going pretty well,” so they brought me on full time. Luckily, I had an apartment in Brooklyn Heights that I had sublet out and hadn’t gotten rid of, so I was able to come back to New York once a month for about a week. For about six years, I was truly bicoastal, from 2010 to about 2016.
In that time, JCK continued to be—its tagline is “the industry authority.” It’s been reporting on this business for so long, and it was exciting. At first, we started out with 10 print issues a year. We had contributors; we had staff writers; we had a whole publishing team. Slowly over the years, that print frequency has shrunk. It became seven issues a year. Then it shrunk down to four print issues a year; mind you, with a robust website and a very strong daily news presence online, but print has always continued to shrink in this environment. As of this year, we went down to one print issue a year. That harried newsroom where people are running around and there are photoshoots happening, that did happen and still does happen, but just not to the frequency and level that you might imagine of a busy magazine publishing schedule.
The good thing is that we’re published by a company called Advanced Local that is based at One World Trade Center in New York. Of course, nobody’s been in the office for a good long while now, but when we are in the office, it’s the same parent company, Condé Nast, so we use the same studios to do our photography. We rely on the same talent in terms of photographers and stylists that Vogue and GQ do. So, we have a really good team of people. They’re not directly staffed. They’re not members of the JCK staff, but they are people that are available to us.
We have a wonderful creative director, again, somebody who’s a freelancer, but works with top magazines, a wonderful photo editor. When we do get back to being in the office, I’ll certainly fly out to New York and partake, or at least be a witness to the photoshoots we do for our covers and our jewelry still lifes. But the hectic, frenzied nature of that has certainly calmed down. We do have, like I said, a robust online presence. We have a well-known news director named Rob Bates. He’s covered the world of diamonds and jewelry news for 23 years, coming on 30, I think. We’re staffed by some of the best in the business, but it definitely is a small, very scrappy operation.
Sharon: So, during Covid, you’ve been doing this through Zoom, I take it.
Victoria: Yeah, everything is through Zoom. We managed to get a bunch of photoshoots in right at the very beginning of March of 2020 that luckily saved us in terms of what we could produce through 2020. Then we did a photoshoot in May. There was that lull where things were looking pretty promising before the Delta variant, so we were able to do a photoshoot then. Like I said, now we’re looking to 2022.
We have a big issue coming out. It always comes out on the eve of the JCK Show. The JCK Show is the big Las Vegas tradeshow. It shares our name. I don’t want to get too complicated with this, but the show was founded in 1992 as a spinoff from the magazine. The magazine existed for all these decades, and the team involved thought, “Hey, isn’t it time we use our clout in the industry to form a tradeshow?” And so they began this tradeshow in Las Vegas that then grew to be such a big presence in such an important industry meeting place that the tradeshow ended up being bought by different exhibition companies, and it eventually landed with Reed Exhibitions, which is a big company headquartered in the U.K. with U.S. headquarters in Connecticut. They run a lot of tradeshows and exhibitions, and they ended up buying the magazine and then hiring a different company to publish it. That may be more than your listeners want to hear. It’s kind of complicated, but the point is we are related to JCK, this big tradeshow, but we’re also an independent editorial voice, so we aren’t bound to only write about JCK.
Sharon: That’s interesting. What about Couture, which is part of the JCK Show, isn’t it?
Victoria: It’s a separate company. In fact, National Jeweler, when I worked there, was owned by the company that—it’s gone through many iterations. The company that runs Couture is called Emerald Exhibitions, and they’re headquartered in New York. That was the company that owned National Jeweler at some point. There’s a lot of overlapping relationships in this world. Couture and JCK are separate companies, separate entities, but they happen at the same time in Las Vegas to make it easy for members of the jewelry industry to shop the shows.
There are different points of view. Couture is very much focused on couture-level, high-end designer jewelry. JCK has that, but it also has everything else you might imagine, everything from packing to loose diamonds, loose gemstones, dealers from Hong Kong, Turkey, China when the Chinese are able to visit. JCK is much more a mass marketplace for the entire industry, and Couture is much more focused on high-end design. They’re complementary and I love going to both. | |||
| 23 Aug 2022 | Episode 168 Part 1: What It Like to See Celebrities Wearing Your Jewels | 00:19:25 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Barbara Klar Barbara Klar was born in Akron, OH, with an almost obsessive attention for details. The clasps on her mother's watch, the nuts, bolts and hinges found on her father's workbench, the chrome on her brother's '54 Harley Hog...Barbara's love of hardware and metal and "how things worked" was ignited and continues to burn bright. Coming of age in the Midwest, Barbara was part of the burgeoning glam rock explosion making the scene, discovering Pere Ubu, DEVO, The Runaways, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in out-of-the-way Cleveland nightclubs. Cue Barbara's love of music and pop culture that carries on to this day. New York...late 1970's, early 80's. Barbara began making "stage wear" for friends in seminal punk rock bands including Lydia Lunch, The Voidoids and The Bush Tetras, cementing Barbara's place in alt. rock history as the go-to dresser for those seeking the most stylish, the most cutting edge accessories. She certainly caught the attention of infamous retailer Barneys New York, who purchased Barbara's buffalo skin pouch belts, complete with "bullet loops" for lipstick compartments. Pretty prestigious for a first-time designer! Famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris invited Barbara into a group show at Art Wear and Barbara joyfully began to sell her jewelry for the first time. Barbara opened her first standalone store, Clear Metals, in NYC's East Village during the mid - 80's. In 1991 she moved that store into the fashion and shopping Mecca that is SoHo, where it was located for ten years until Barbara has moved her life and studio upstate to the Hudson Valley. She continues to grow her business, her wholesale line and her special commission work while still focusing on those gorgeous clouds in the country sky. Barbara's work has been recognized on the editorial pages of Vogue, WWD, The New York Times and In-Style Magazine as well as featured on television shows including "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Judging Amy." Film credits have included "Meet The Parents," Wall Street," "High Art" and The Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" video. Barbara has been hailed in New York Magazine as being one of the few jewelry designers who "will lend her eclectic touch to create just about anything her clients request, from unique wedding bands and pearl-drop earrings to chunky ID bracelets and mediaeval-style chains." Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Barbara Klar’s jewelry has been worn by the like of David Bowie, Steve Jordan and Joan Jett, but Barbara’s celebrity fans are just the icing on the cake of her long career. What really inspires her is connecting with clients and finding ways to make their ideas come to fruition. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the crash course in business she got when she opened her store in 1984 in New York City; why making jewelry is often an engineering challenge; and why she considers talent the least important factor in her success. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is Barbara Klar, founder and owner of Clear Metals. Barbara began her work as a jeweler in 1980 in New York and has grown her business from there. She has a roster of celebrity clients. She has also developed a successful line of men’s jewelry. Steve Jordan, who replaced Charlie Watts throughout a recent Rolling Stones tour, sported her jewelry throughout. Most recently, Barbara has become interested in reliquaries. She is also writing a book. We’ll hear more about her jewelry journey today. Barbara, welcome to the program.
Barbara: Thank you, Sharon. I’m so happy to be here talking about my favorite subject, jewelry.
Sharon: So glad to have you. I want to hear about everything going on. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Did you always like it?
Barbara: I was obsessed with my mother’s jewelry box. She wasn’t a huge jewelry collector, but she had some gemstone rings from the time my father and her spent in Brazil in the semiprecious capital, Rio. I just loved her selection and got obsessed.
Sharon: Did you decide you wanted to study jewelry then?
Barbara: No, I really didn’t. My sister was the artist in the family, and I was always trying to play catch-up with her. Eventually I took a class at Akron University in Akron. Well, I made some jewelry in high school out of ceramics. I loved to adorn myself. I loved fashion. I loved pop culture. I was always looking at what people were wearing, and jewelry was so interesting to me because it was so intimate. It was something you could put on you body, like a ring. You could look at it all the time, and it became part of your persona, part of your identity. Sometimes it represented the birth of a child.
I used to go to the museum in Cleveland a lot, and I started seeing these top knuckle rings on women in the Medieval and Renaissance paintings. I ran home and went to my mother’s jewelry box because I remembered she had my sister’s baby ring in there. I put it on my little pinkie finger. She saw me wearing it and she got very upset, but I started scouting flea markets until I could find my own top knuckle ring. I wear a lot of them at this point in life.
Sharon: Wow! We’ll have to have a picture of that. I can see your fingers. You have a ring on every finger, it looks like.
Barbara: Practically.
Sharon: So, you went to the Cleveland Institute of Art. Did you think you’d be an artist or a graphic designer? What did you think you’d do?
Barbara: Like I said, when I went to Akron University, I studied beginning jewelry. My teacher at the time noticed I had an aptitude, and he said, “If you really want to study jewelry making, you should go to the Cleveland Institute of Art.” At that point, I made an application and I got in.
Sharon: Did you study metalsmithing there? When you say jewelry making, what did you study?
Barbara: It was called metalsmithing. It was a metalsmithing program, and at that point in time, Cleveland had a five-year program. You didn’t really hit your major until your third year, so you had a basic foundation of art history and drawing and painting. It was really a great education. I feel like I got a master’s of fine arts rather than a bachelor of fine arts. When we studied, our thesis was to do a holloware project. A lot of people did tea sets. I did a fondue set and it took me two years to complete. It was a great training, but it was also very, very frustrating because it was a very male-dominated profession.
Sharon: Do you still have the fondue set?
Barbara: I do. I entered it into a show, and they dropped it and it got dented. I have yet to repair that. Over the years, the forks have gone missing, but I have incredible photographs of it, thank God.
Sharon: Wow! So, you were the only fondue set among all the tea sets.
Barbara: Yeah, I was. I had to be different.
Sharon: You opened your own place right after you graduated. Is that correct?
Barbara: Pretty much. All my friends were moving to New York City, so I said, “Hey, I’ll go.” I’d been commuting there because my boyfriend at the time was Jim Jarmusch, and he had moved to Columbia to study. I had been going there off and on for a couple of years and when everybody moved to New York City. I was like, “Why not?” So, I went.
Sharon: How far is it from Cleveland or where you were going to school?
Barbara: It’s about 500 miles.
Sharon: So, you would fly?
Barbara: No, I would drive. Those were the days you could find parking in the city.
Sharon: That was a long time ago. I’m impressed that you would open your own place right after you graduated. Some people tell me they knew they could never work for anybody else. Did you have that feeling, or did you just know you wanted your own place?
Barbara: No, I didn’t. It took me a couple of years. I was in New York a couple of years. I moved in ’79 and I opened my store in ’84. One thing I did discover in those five years is that the jobs I did have—thank God my mother insisted that I should have secretarial skills to fall back on in high school. She said, “You’re not going to depend on any man.” So, she got me those skills, and I became a very fast typist. I realized eventually that to save my creativity, I needed to have a job that was completely unrelated to jewelry work. I would work during the day, and I found a jewelry store where I could clean the studio in exchange for bench time. I started doing that. A lot of my friends were in rock-and-roll bands, and I started making them stage ware when I could work in the studio for free. It just evolved into that before I opened my store.
Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry business today. Do you still make it?
Barbara: Oh yes, I still make everything. I have one part-time assistant. I no longer wholesale. I do a little bit of gallery work. I wish there was more, but I consider myself semi-retired. I’m trying to work on my book. Mostly I do commission work, and I do maybe one or two shows a year. I like to say I have a cult following that keep me in business.
Sharon: When you say you have a cult following, do rock-and-rollers call you and say, “I need something for a show”? How does that work?
Barbara: Pretty much. I’m lucky enough to have been in this business since 1984, so a lot of my private clients, now their children are shopping with me and they’re getting married. It’s really nice. I feel very blessed to have that.
Sharon: Yeah, especially if it’s a second generation.
Barbara: That means something to me because they have a different sense of style. The fact that they would find my work appealing moves me, makes my heart sing.
Sharon: Do you find that you go along with their sense of style? If you have one style you were doing for their parents, let’s say, do you find it easy to adapt? Do you understand what they’re saying?
Barbara: I do. I try to understand. First of all, I listen. I’m a good listener, but I’m still old-fashioned. I still like streetwear. I still love pop culture. A lot of times I’ll ask them what they’re looking for, and I can always tell. Even when I had my store, when somebody would walk into the store, I can get a sense of their style. I’m one of these designers who can design very different, very eclectic work, from simple and modern to intricate and whimsical. That used to be a problem for me in my early days because the powers that be—I had a rep. They were like, “Barbara, your work is so different. Why don’t you try to make it coherent?” I couldn’t. I tried to and I came up with beautiful lines, but for me, the joy is the variation and never knowing what I’m going to come up with.
Sharon: Is that what’s kept your attention about jewelry?
Barbara: I think so. And being challenged by commission work and by getting an idea and trying to make it come to fruition. I actually think jewelry designers are as much architects and engineers as anything else, because you get an idea and you’re like, “How am I going to make that happen?” That keeps me inspired and challenged.
Sharon: I remember watching a jeweler making a ring. This was several years ago, but they were talking about how jewelry is engineering because of the balance and all of that.
Barbara: Oh yes, totally. There was time when I really wanted to study CAD. I looked into it a bit, and I realized you also have to be able to draw in order to do CAD. It really helps if you have some knowledge of metalsmithing or jewelry making before you enter into a program like that, because you have to be able to visualize it and see how it’s going to come together, how it’s technically going to work. That interests me a lot.
Sharon: So, that’s not a problem for you. You can do that in terms of visualizing or seeing how it would come together.
Barbara: It’s a challenge. I’ll find myself getting inspired by an idea and spending a couple of days or even a week thinking about how it’s going to be engineered, how it’s going to fit together. I made a tiara for the leader of a local performance group. He’s very flamboyant, and he sings and has a beautiful band. I made him a crown out of a crystal chandelier that I got at a flea market. It was an engineering challenge. It was really fun.
Sharon: It sounds like it. I don’t know if I could even imagine something like that. I wanted to ask you about something you said a little while ago, that you wished there were more galleries who wanted your work. What was it you said?
Barbara: I’ve been making my living doing limited-production items that sell very well. I have a classic piece—I call it the pirate, which is a lockdown mechanism earring that is kind of my bread and butter. But what I’ve been doing in my off time is making, like you mentioned in your opening, reliquaries or pieces that are more art than jewelry specifically. That’s what I’ve been doing during Covid and everything. It's like a secret group of pieces I’ve been working on. It would be nice to have a gallery to show them in, but they’re very unique and different, so I haven’t found that yet.
Sharon: Tell us a little bit about the reliquaries. Tell us what they look like and what they’re supposed to represent.
Barbara: I got obsessed with reliquaries when I was going to the Cleveland Institute of Art because right across the street was the Cleveland Museum of Art. I spent a lot of time there, and they have a fabulous armor hall for armor and a 17th century room that’s filled with religious reliquaries. I was fascinated by how these fragments of bone or hair were incorporated into jewelry and what they represented as objects, how people would pray to these things or display these items with great meaning. It really moved me, and I started making them in college covertly. I continued that living through the AIDS crisis and now Covid.
I did some pieces recently for people who had lost their loved ones, incorporating pieces of hair or fragments of letters from their loved ones. I find that so meaningful because you have something to hold in your hands that gives you a link to this person whom you’ve lost. I made a beautiful reliquary for an ex of mine which was based on the dog they lost. Buddy was its name. I got a piece of the dog’s tail when he died and made a little charm out of it. It was under a little window. Then I had another artist make this beautiful portrait of the dog when it was a baby. I made a little locket-type thing that could be put on your desk, or it could be hung on the wall or you could wear it. That’s what I describe as tabletop jewelry.
Sharon: That’s interesting. When I think of a reliquary, I think of exactly what you’re saying, but without the jewelry—a piece of bone, hair, whatever, that people venerate.
Barbara: Yeah, absolutely.
Sharon: How do you incorporate it? You’re saying for this piece you put it in a locket, but how else have you incorporated it?
Barbara: Pretty much lockets, things that open. I have another piece I made that was based on a monk. I found a little porcelain painter’s image—it was about three inches tall—at a flea market years ago. I could hardly afford it. It was hand-painted porcelain. I kept it in my bench drawer for years, 20 years probably, and one day I pulled it out and thought, “You know, this monk needs to be seen.” So, I made a beautiful locket. It’s probably about four inches long that you too can display it on your desk. It has little doors that open, and you can hang it on your wall or you can wear it. It’s a very large piece, obviously, if you’re going to wear it, but it’s a statement piece and it’s very precious.
I did this piece actually about 10 years ago after living through the AIDS crisis. My friend, one of my clients, looked at this monk and said, “I know who that is.” I did the research. It’s on my blog. It is this monk who was from a very wealthy family that gave his life to treat lepers in Spain. He was the patron saint of healers. It touched me so deeply that I was creating this piece after everything I’d watched and lived through with Covid, with the AIDS crisis.
Sharon: Wow! Do pieces hit you as you’re going through a flea market? Do they hit you and you say, “That would be perfect”? How is that?
Barbara: I’m a collector. I collect things. I’m fascinated. I love to look at things. One time at a flea market when I had my store in Soho, I found this—I didn’t know what it was. It was like a little skeleton paw. It had no fur on it. It was a little skeleton about two inches long, probably a racoon’s hands. I used to make incredible windows to get people to come into the store. It was Halloween. At the same flea market, I had gotten some of the old-fashioned glass milk containers that used to have the paper caps on top. So, I had gotten those, and I thought, “I’m going to do a Lizzie Borden window.” I made Lizzie this incredible watch fob, and hanging from that was this little skeleton paw inside the milk container. It was great. You never know. I sometimes hold onto things until it’s like, “Whoa, O.K. Now’s the time.”
Sharon: I’m imaging it. It’s a drawerful of things, a shoebox full of things that you paw through and say, “Oh, this would be perfect.”
Barbara: Absolutely. That’s the great thing about being an artist. You never know when it’s going to hit. Like I tell people, I would never not have my studio inside my home, because you never know when you’re going to be inspired and have to make something. | |||
| 07 Jan 2019 | Episode 9: Designmuseum Danmark with Anne Cathrine Wolsgaard Iversen, Curator & Museum Keeper at Designmuseum Danmark | 00:22:25 | |
Anne Cathrine Wolsgaard Iversen is the curator and museum keeper at DesignmMuseum Danmark in Copenhagen. She is an expert on art, architecture, and arts and crafts from the period 1880-1920, which includes Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Prior to Designmuseum Danmark, Anne Cathrine was a curator at Danish museums Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and Ordrupgaard. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources:
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| 23 Dec 2021 | Episode 142 Part 2: The Language of Jewelry: How the Editor in Chief of JCK Finds Inspiration with Editor in Chief JCK, Victoria Gomelsky. | 00:31:12 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Victoria Gomelsky Victoria Gomelsky is editor-in-chief of JCK, a New York City-based jewelry trade publication founded in 1869. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Robb Report, AFAR, WSJ Magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, Escape, The Sun and Waking Up American: Coming of Age Biculturally, an anthology published by Seal Press. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA with a BA in political science in 1995 and earned her MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University in 2002. She specializes in jewelry and watch writing but her greatest love has always been travel — 60 countries and counting. Victoria was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and emigrated to the United States in 1978 with her parents and twin sister, Julia. She divides her time between New York City and Los Angeles. Additional Resources: Photos: Victoria Gomelsky watches:
Transcript: Victoria Gomelsky, editor in chief of esteemed jewelry trade publication JCK, was bitten by the travel bug during her first-ever trip—when she and her family immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. Since then, she’s visited more than 60 countries, often traveling to visit jewelry shows and report on jewelry trends. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her career in jewelry started with a mysterious online job posting; why Gen Z is changing the way we categorize jewelry; and where to find her favorite jewelry destinations. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Keep your eyes open for part two, which we’ll be posting later this week. Today, our guest is Victoria Gomelsky, editor-in-chief of the well-known industry publication JCK. Victoria is an accomplished writer. She’s written about jewelry for the New York Times as well as an extensive list of respected publications. She also covers another of her passions, which is travel. She’s had a quite a jewelry journey, as she was born in Russia and has been to more than 60 countries and counting. We’ll hear all about her jewelry journey today. Victoria, welcome back to the program. Sharon: I have to ask you, why Las Vegas in July or in June? It’s hot then.
Victoria: You know it’s hot. It was this year that it was actually pushed back to August, which was so much hotter. It was hard to even fathom. I think the timing is such because it works well for the majors, the majors being the signets and the chain jewelers who really need to plan out their holiday buying much earlier than your average small boutique owner. A lot of it has to do with the schedule that makes sense for the industry. It’s Vegas because it’s hard to imagine another city that is appropriate for a giant tradeshow—
Sharon: That’s true.
Victoria: That’s easy to get, that has ample hotel room space. There are certainly smaller conferences that have been around the country. The American Gem Society has its annual conclave in a different city every year, but it’s much, much smaller. It’s convenience and ease of access, and I’ve gotten used to it. I don’t love Vegas, but it does feel like my year is incomplete without my week at JCK. I’ve been going since 2000, so it’s hard to imagine a year without it.
Sharon: How far in advance are you planning your publications? Are you thinking about the December issue in August?
Victoria: Well, if we had a December issue, yes.
Sharon: If it was an issue online?
Victoria: Online we can pull together pretty quickly. If it’s a big feature, we like to plan it at least a month in advance, but so much of online is responding to what’s happening in the world. Especially with the pandemic, it was really hard to plan because, as did everybody, we hit those walls where we thought, “This may not be relevant in a month.” Things were so changeable and volatile.
Online has a much different pace, but in terms of the print issue, we’ll start planning the issue that heads out the door on the eve of JCK Vegas 2022. It’ll probably go out in late May, and we’ll probably start thinking about that in January in terms of big picture ideas. Just this morning, I was asked to give a sketch of content for a section on colored stones. It’s hard to do that really early. You want to be timely. You want to be thoughtful about what people are thinking and what’s happening the world.
Especially if an issue’s coming out in the spring, I feel like after the holiday makes the most sense, because the holiday in the jewelry industry, as you can imagine or know, is everything. It’s still the bulk of sales. The bulk of news comes out of this fourth quarter. To plan content without knowing how the holidays have gone is going to miss the mark, unless you’re planning something general and vague. So, I like to wait until early January to start thinking about what makes sense and what people are talking about, what the news is.
Sharon: In terms of the holidays, since they’re around the corner right now, you must have some features that are holiday-related that you think about early on, maybe in September or August.
Victoria: We do. If it’s not about the holiday, it’s about what people might start thinking about for the holiday. We do a lot of trend coverage on JCK, a lot of specific trend coverage, whether it be men’s jewelry or something else. I’m actually working on a series of special report newsletters that go out every Monday in November all around the men’s jewelry theme. We’ve covered colored stones, pearls, bridal. We tackle everything with a slight angle towards the holiday, questions like: Is this worth stocking? What are the trends? What kinds of things might retailers keep in mind as they prepare?
JCK is very much a style and trend publication, but it’s also a business publication for people who happen to own jewelry businesses. We do a lot of marketing coverage, technology, social media apps that people need to know that might make them more efficient in their business. You could take jewelry out of a lot of what we cover and put in another field, whether it’s fashion or home good or anything, and it might apply in terms of the strategies people might want to use to target customers, what they need to know. We try to cover it from all facets. It’s always been a publication for businessowners in the jewelry space, so there’s a lot of general business information we try to make sure our readers are aware of.
Sharon: If you’re looking at trends, I’m thinking about the non-jewelry person that would go to Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar or something like that—I’m dating myself, I realize—who can go online. I still think in terms of putting it online, like everybody else. Tell us about men’s jewelry. Are men wearing more jewelry than before?
Victoria: Yes, they really are. It’s funny, because I’ve been 20 years covering jewelry, and every four or five years, I’m either asked to or I initiate a story about the men’s jewelry renaissance. There’s always been something to say over the last 20 years. I do a lot of freelance writing for the New York Times. I did a piece for the Times about seven years ago, and there was a lot to say. There were a lot of jewelers introducing new men’s collections and different takes on the subject, but no time has felt quite as relevant to that topic as now.
I think if you look to some of the most famous pop artists we see today, whether it’s Harry Styles or Justin Bieber, the Jonas Brothers, Lil Nas X, any of these pop culture personalities, they are draped in jewelry, and not just any jewelry. A lot of them are draped in pearls, which for many of us are the most feminine gem around. There is this great, very interesting conversation about genderless or gender agnosticism in jewelry. Should we even define jewelry as a men’s piece versus a woman’s piece? Why not just make jewelry? Maybe it’s a little more masculine/minimalist. Maybe it’s a little more feminine/elaborate or diamond-set, but let it appeal to who it appeals to. Why do you need to tell people who it’s for? It’s a conversation.
I also write about watches quite a bit, and it’s a conversation the watch world is grappling with, more so this year than any other year. Do we need to tell women that this is a “lady’s watch”? Why don’t we just market a watch, whether it, again, has feminine design codes or masculine design codes. Let whoever is interested in it buy it. We don’t need to tell people what categories they are allowed to be interested in. It’s been a very interesting conversation. I think fashion is embroiled in this conversation too, and it’s been exciting to see.
When I talk about men’s jewelry, I think what happens is that much of the industry still needs these categories because at retail, for example, a retailer might get a bunch of jewelry and they need to know how to merchandise or how to display it. For those kinds of problems, you still want to say, “O.K., well, this is my men’s showcase,” but I think slowly things are changing. I don’t know if in five years or 10 years, we’ll even need those topics anymore. I think we’ll just have a showcase of jewels. Again, they might be more minimalist or plainer, and they might appeal to men or women or people who consider themselves nonbinary.
Sharon: That’s interesting, especially with watches, because when women wear men’s watches, that’s a fashion statement today.
Victoria: Very much so. I did a huge piece on female collectors for the Times in early 2020, and all of them wore men’s pieces and felt a little grieved that they were being told what a woman’s watch is. A woman’s watch is a watch worn by a woman; that’s it. I think the same might be true for jewelry. A men’s jewel is a jewel worn by a man and so on. It’s been an interesting thing to see evolve, and certainly there’s a lot of momentum behind it. I think we’ll slowly see these categories dissolve.
Sharon: There’s a lot. I haven’t seen men wearing brooches. Some of what you’re talking about, to me, still has a way to go.
Victoria: A lot of it is being driven by Gen Z, Millennials, younger generations who look to their style icons like Harry Styles, as I mentioned. They’re draped in a feather boa and necklaces. As that generation comes up they’re going to age, and they’re eventually going to be 30 or 40 and they’ll be quite comfortable with jewelry because, 20 years later, they’ve been wearing it all these decades. But yeah, today, if you ask your average guy if he’s going to wear a pearl necklace, I’m sure the answer’s no, but I think these things do change. They change quicker than we expect them to. It’s so much of what we see and what seems O.K. A lot of men might want to do that or might think they would look good in a pearl necklace.
I keep coming back to it because pearls are, again, the most feminine of gems, at least in terms of the lore we talk about, how we talk about them. Yet you see them on people like the Jonas Brothers or, for that matter, big, beautiful, iced-out Cuban chains. You see those on rappers or on hip hop stars. There is this communication out in the world where if you’re just a regular guy and you’re cruising through your Instagram and seeing these images, it all says to you, “This is O.K. This is right. Go for it if you’re feeling it.” I think there is a lot more leeway in today’s society to express yourself the way you want to. I think it’s wonderful. It’s quite exciting to see those barriers break down and have these conversations. It’s been cool to write about.
Sharon: It would be interesting to have this conversation in 20 years. You reminded me of a conversation I had recently with an antique jewelry dealer about cufflinks. I said to her, “Cufflinks? Who wears cufflinks? I’m in Los Angeles.” Well, you’re in Los Angeles too. Even the most staid businessperson, you don’t see him with a cufflink, ever. I don’t know.
Victoria: Maybe about a month ago, my boyfriend and I were invited to the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which just opened in September in the heart of Miracle, right next to LACMA. It was a big gala affair sponsored by Rolex, which is a huge supporter of the Academy and the Oscars and now the museum. It was wonderful; it was like a little Oscars event, except it wasn’t televised. It was black-tie glamor. Hollywood glamor was the theme, so my boyfriend rented a tux; he doesn’t own one, of course, because we’re in L.A. and it’s a pandemic. Who needs a tux? But he got a tux, and I was gutted that I didn’t have cufflinks for him or that he didn’t have his own. He rented some, I think; he had a few shirt studs he was able to get from the rental place, but it was the first time. I thought, “Oh my God, cufflinks!” and we had a wonderful time. It was really exciting to be back in the world in such a fabulous way. It really felt special.
Sharon: I didn’t realize it had opened. I was at LACMA, the L.A. County Museum of Art, this weekend and there was a big crowd around the Academy Museum, but I didn’t realize it had opened. My antique jewelry dealer friend was also saying that she has collectors who collect antique cufflinks. I thought, “That’s interesting.” I didn’t know that was a collector’s item in some circles, I guess.
Victoria: Yeah, when I think about it, there are a lot of great ones in London. If you ever go through Mayfair or Old Bond Street and you find those antique dealers there—there’s Deakin & Francis, an old U.K. firm that specializes in cufflinks. I’ve never owned any, but now that we’re talking about it, I feel I need to buy my partner some.
Sharon: I stopped buying my husband them 20 years ago when they just sat on his dresser not worn. I said, “O.K., I tried.” You’re a traveler. You’ve been to how many countries?
Victoria: I lose track. It depends a little on how you count countries. I think I’ve counted Macao separately from China, even though it’s a special administrative region of Hong Kong. Somewhere around 60. It might be about 61 or 62. A lot of countries I’ve been to—I mean, I’ve been to Switzerland at least 20 times, Brazil five times, Russia four times. I keep going back to places even though it’s always very exciting to take another country off my list. As I mentioned earlier, I was a backpacker after college. My first trip was to Central America with some girlfriends with backpacks on. We took off for three months. We went to Costa Rica and Panama and Venezuela, and I ended up in the Caribbean for a couple of weeks.
I had already started a little bit of traveling. Initially, we came from Russia as a kid. I think when we left Russia in late 1978 as part of the exodus of Soviet Jews from the Soviet Union, we were allowed to seek asylum in the States. We took this journey via Vienna and then Rome and ended up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, of all places, because that’s where we had an invitation. We had to have a formal invitation because we were political refugees.
I think very early on, even though it was never articulated to me—it was something I felt in my bones—I thought that travel was a way to lead a better life. It was a road to a better life, as it was for us. Early on that knowledge imprinted on me, on my soul. In high school, I started saving money to go to an exchange program in Spain. That was my first real trip outside—I’d gone to Mexico with my family, but I had never traveled outside of that. So, I had the bug. After college, I was always interested in slightly more offbeat places.
One of my favorite places in the whole world—and I dream about going back all time—is India. I love places that still feel like they’re not discovered. Clearly, India’s very discovered, but it’s not as easy to travel there as it might be to go to Europe. I love Europe and Paris and London as much as the next person, but there’s always something that feels a little easy in those spots. I love Southeast Asia. I went to Vietnam in the 90s a couple of times. I loved it. I love Malaysia. I love the food there. I love the smells and the culture. I love things that feel different. India couldn’t be more different than our lives. A lot of the same people go between the two, between L.A. and India, for example, and you’ll find a lot of creature comforts in places like Mumbai. The culture and the heritage and the history, the way of life and the way people look at life is so, so different, and I’m really drawn to that. I like going places that test me a little bit.
Sharon: How do your jewelry and travel intersect? I’m sure you’re traveling to the shows like Basle. India must be a great place for jewels. I don’t know about the shows there.
Victoria: My first trip to India was for a show. There’s a famous show—famous, I guess, depending on the circles you move in—in Mumbai called the India International Jewelry Show. That was my first reason to get to India in 2004. I ended up going back to do some reports on the diamond trade there. Mumbai is a real hub of diamonds, so I was going back to do research and then Jaipur in the north. Rajasthan is famous for its colored-stone industry. There are tons of colored-stone dealers and cutters and jewelers there, including the very famous Gem Palace, which I visited a couple of times.
My most recent trip to India was in 2017 to Jaipur to attend a conference on colored stones. It happened to intersect with a fair I had always wanted to go to called the Pushkar Camel Fair. Nothing to do with jewelry, although of course you see lots of jewelry in India. Jewelry’s a ubiquitous thing there. When I went to this conference in Jaipur, my partner ended up meeting me. We spent a few days in Jaipur together, went down to Udaipur, which is a wonderful town in the south of Rajasthan, just stunning in terms of its history and heritage and hotels and palaces. Then we finished off in Pushkar, also in Rajasthan, at this camel fair. My entrée was for jewelry, but I try to explore as much as I can around it.
India’s just remarkable. I’m very pleased that jewelry has such a natural and obvious connection to India because anytime I can have a work trip, take me there. Then if I can add on to it, I do. My son is only three—he’s not even three; he’s three in November, but I’m thinking, “How old does he have to be to go to India? What is too young to take a young, little guy to India?” Maybe when he’s seven, hopefully.
Sharon: That’s an interesting question. It could be three. There are people who are 33 who won’t go because they’re too afraid. It’s on my list, but you’re so adventurous.
Victoria: I wouldn’t have pegged myself as the adventurous sort, at least not in high school. I was very type A. I was student body president. I was a cheerleader. I was very on track at least to go to college and who knows what after that, but I never really thought of myself as a risktaker and an adventure seeker. After spending time in Southeast Asia—I went to backpack there in the 90s, through Vietnam and Cambodia and Malaysia and Singapore—it just settled in my bones. I wanted more and more and more. Those places feel adventurous, but once you get there, they’re not as challenging—well, they are challenging in that there’s a lot of poverty; the heat is oppressive; it’s hard sometimes to figure out your way around if the signage isn’t clear and you don’t speak the language, but I genuinely feel like the world is full of very good people. Maybe a few bad apples in there, but most people are very kind. So, it’s easier than it seems.
Sharon: Do you think if somebody is a jewelry designer or looking at the field or profession, that travel would inform what they do?
Victoria: Oh, 100 percent yes. There are some jewelers who very much look to other cultures or travel. I think of Lydia Courteille, who’s a Parisian jeweler who does insanely elaborate, beautiful gem-set pieces usually after a trip somewhere. She’s done pieces based on the Mayan heritage. I believe she traveled to Guatemala. She’s done pieces based on myths from Russia and India, and a lot of her collections really are inspired by travel she’s taken.
There’s another jeweler who’s part Mexican, part French, named Colette. She has incredible jewels, a lot of them takes on various places she’s visited. I think if I were a jeweler, I would certainly use travel as a jumping-off point to create a collection. I can’t think of anything more evocative than a jewel that reminds you of a place you’ve been or the color of the ocean. A lot of people go to Greece and create a beautiful blue jewel that reminds them of the Aegean. Why not?
Sharon: I’m thinking of Thierry Vendome, where he goes and finds rusted pieces on his travels and then he’ll come back and incorporate them. One piece had a grenade—
Victoria: An exploded grenade.
Sharon: An exploded grenade, yeah. Tell us who we should keep our eyes on, the top three you think of we should keep our eyes on.
Victoria: I just wrote about a jeweler that I only saw in person recently in Las Vegas at the Couture show, but I had Zoomed with them. They are Mumbai-based. It’s a company called Studio Renn. It’s a husband and wife named Rahul and Roshni Jhaveri, and they create jewelry for art lovers that really does live at the intersection between art and jewelry, philosophy, design. Sometimes you have to talk to them to hear the inspiration, but for example, one of them—they had stumbled across an object on a walk around Lake Tansa, which is a lake on the outskirts of Mumbai. There was this conversation they had about what it means to give something attention. Does that put value on the piece? And for them, it was this exploration of the meaning of value. They took this piece that was an organic object. They didn’t tell me what it was. They cast it. They 3D scanned the whole thing and then encased it in precious metal, put rubies inside it in a way that you could only see them if you shone a light on the piece. There was this written source of very layered, complicated but also beautiful jewelry. They’re just very interesting. They’re really thoughtful.
Sharon: How do you spell Renn?
Victoria: R-e-n-n.
Sharon: I have to say it’s the second time this week that somebody has mentioned them as somebody to keep your eye on.
Victoria: Yeah, I was thrilled to speak to them, and I ended up doing a piece for the New York Times on them. An Up Next Profile is what the column is called, because even though they’ve been around for a few years and they’re not brand new, they’re obviously new to people in the States. They are exploring this market. They worked a tour for the first time. They’re really lovely and interesting and do beautiful work.
Another jeweler that’s gotten a ton of attention—I know her pretty well personally. She is a client of a very good friend of mine. Her name is Lauren Harwell Godfrey, and her collection is called Harwell Godfrey. She’s gotten a ton of attention over the last year. In fact, I just saw that she was nominated for a GEM Award, which is like the Oscars of the jewelry industry. The ceremony takes place in January in New York. She was nominated in the design category. Really fantastic use of color, lots of interesting motifs that feel very signature to her, lots of geometric work. We ended up commissioning a piece for my mom for her 75th birthday that my dad gifted to her this last summer. it wasn’t a super bespoke piece, but there were bespoke elements to it. It was by Harwell Godfrey. She’s a really lovely woman, super-talented designer based in Marin in Northern California.
I’ll name one more. He’s a really interesting guy. He does a ton of work with AI, artificial intelligence, in a way that scares a lot of people that are used to jewelry as this handmade, soulful object. His point is that there’s no less soul in it, even though a computer helped to generate an algorithm that created a pattern that he inputs into this machine. His name is Nick Koss. His company is called Volund Jewelry. He’s based in Canada and has a very interesting background that I cannot even attempt to encapsulate because it’s rich and complicated, but he does really interesting jewelry. A lot of it is using 3D modelling software, AI, but in a thoughtful way. Again, there is lots of meaning baked into the way he sees things. He could talk about it very intelligently. He does custom work. You can go down a real rabbit hole with him. Check him out on Instagram. It’s V-o-l-u-n-d.
I have a soft spot for one jeweler because I wrote a whole book on them that was published by Assouline probably six or seven years ago. It’s a company called Lotus Arts de Vivre. They’re based in Bangkok. They’ve been around since the early 80s, I want to say. It’s a real family business. The patriarch is originally from Germany. He moved to Bangkok in the 60s and fell in love with a woman who had been born in Thailand but was the product of many years of intermarriage. Her grandfather was a Scottish captain who fell in love with a tribeswoman from north Thailand. Her other grandfather was an Englishman who married a woman from Malaysia. So, she was the distillation of generations of inner marriage between European and Asian backgrounds. They have this huge compound in Bangkok, and they have two sons that now help run the business.
They do extraordinary objects in jewelry. They started out as jewelers, but they do everything from home goods to accessories for people’s cars. They use a lot of natural materials in addition to the finest gemstones. They use Golconda diamonds or emeralds from the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan combined with snakeskin and buffalo horn and different woods. They’re huge on different exotic woods from across southeast Asia. They find the finest craftspeople across Asia, whether it’s lacquer artists from China or Japan to carvers from Indonesia. They will employ those crafts in their work, and it’s just stunning.
They used to be with Bergdorf Goodman for many, many years. They are still available in the States. In fact, they won at the recent Couture show for some of their work. So, they’re still here and they’re everywhere. They have boutiques in different hotels, especially in Asia, like the Peninsula in Hong Kong or Raffles in Singapore. They have a presence, but they’re not as well known, I would say, in the States.
Sharon: I’ll check them out, especially if you wrote a whole book about them.
Victoria: The family is beyond interesting. It’s the von Bueren family. He’s a raconteur, somebody who you could listen to for hours. He’s very, very interesting and has seen a lot, and their clients are very interesting. They appeal to a lot of high-society people across Asia, so they have these events. They have a space, a showroom, at their factory in Bangkok right on the river, and they host these soirées that are just magnificent.
Sharon: Wow! I’m sure you know all the ins and outs. You can go down a long list of jewelers and manufacturers. You could tell me about all of them. Victoria, thank you so much for being here today. This is so interesting. I’m sure our audience will enjoy hearing what you have to say about JCK since it is such a stalwart. Thank you very much.
Victoria: Thank you, Sharon. This is lovely. Thank you for giving me such an opportunity to talk about myself.
Sharon: So glad to have you.
We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 19 Jul 2022 | Episode 163 Part 1: Unusual Path, Unusual Materials: How 2Roses’ Unique Art Jewelry Came About | 00:27:19 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Rose and Corliss Rose 2Roses is a collaboration of t Corliss Rose and John Lemieux Rose. The studio, located in Southern California, is focused on producing one-of-a-kind and limited-edition adornment and objects d’art, and is well known for its use of a wide range of highly unorthodox materials. The studio output is eclectic by design and often blended with an irreverent sense of humor. 2Roses designs are sold in 42 countries worldwide and are exhibited in major art institutions in the US, Europe, and China. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: For John and Corliss Rose, business and artistic expression don’t have to be in conflict. Entering the art world through apprenticeships, they learned early on that with a little business sense, they didn’t need to be starving artists. Now as the collaborators behind the design studio 2Roses (one of several creative businesses they share), John and Corliss produce one-of-a-kind art jewelry made of polymer clay, computer chips, and other odd material. They joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about their efforts to get business classes included in art school curriculum; why polymer clay jewelry has grown in popularity; and how they balance business with their artistic vision. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today my guests are designers John and Corliss Rose of the eclectic design firm 2Roses, located in Southern California. They sell worldwide. 2Roses is an award-winning design firm recognized for their use of unusual materials. Today we’ll hear more about their jewelry journey. Corliss and John, welcome to the program.
John: Thank you. It’s a delight to be here. Thank you very much.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you designers first? How did that work?
John: Actually, we both started rather early in life. Corliss started as an apprentice in her father’s floral store when she was 10, and I was apprenticed into design and graphic arts at age 12. We both came up in the old-school apprentice system and were working professionally by our early teen. It wasn’t until later, in our late teens, that we both started professional or, I should say, a traditional academic trend. So, we’ve always been in the arts, both of us, very early.
Sharon: Were you both attracted to jewelry early as part of this? Where did that come in?
Corliss: We met at art school, and our backgrounds and our career focus on developing a creative career were almost identical, so we hit it off right from the get-go. For the first 10 years of our relationship, we focused on our own individual creative paths, but we kept intersecting with each other. Eventually we made the decision to work together full time collaboratively for a creative endeavor. Jewelry, at that moment in time, was the highlight of where we wanted to focus our energies.
Sharon: Is that when you met, when you were both part of the apprenticeship, or when you were in college? Where did you meet?
Corliss: We met in art school in Chicago.
John: Prior to that, we had quite a bit of time to develop different practices and careers. So, we met midway, I suppose, in our journey.
Sharon: When you say you were apprenticed, was the idea that you would learn how to be a designer, how to be a florist, and that’s what you were going to do?
Corliss: At that time, I was being groomed to take over my father’s business. I learned not only the design aspect, but at a very early age, I learned cost accounting. I was learning the business aspect of it. I was pretty much indoctrinated from the very beginning that you’re going to be an artist, but you’re not going to be a starving artist. You need to make a profit out of this so you can flourish. Later on in my career, I had one gallery owner tell me that the work was wonderful, but price it this way because it’s one thing to make your bread; it’s another thing to put butter on it. So, it was something that I had gotten all along.
Sharon: Wow! Most people don’t get that so early, so that’s great.
John: All of the apprenticeships I did, it was all about how this is a business first, and we do creative things like manufacturing a product. So by the time we hit formal arts school, when we first met, we very quickly realized that we had a mutual experience of understanding of the art world and our career path. That’s what was a very strong attraction; that we both looked at this as a business career. This isn’t about abstract ideas of, “Let’s be creative,” and all the mythologies that artists are inculcated with. We didn’t seem to have that kind of thinking.
Sharon: Were you ahead of your peers in that respect? Were you ahead of your peers because you recognized the business aspect?
John: Oh my god, yes. Yeah, it was really like that. By the time we hit college, most of our peers were just starting out. They were just starting to learn their career paths and trying to figure out what they were doing. We already had several businesses going. For us, the academic training was more of a cherry on the cake and polishing skills. By that time, we were working professionals and had been for quite some time.
Sharon: Wow! Tell us about the jewelry you make. We’ll have pictures when we post the podcast, but it’s so unusual.
Corliss: We’ve always been driven by exploration and experimentation with what we call odd media. This is what drew us to art jewelry in the early days. It was like the wild west. Anything went, and we just threw out all the rules of traditional jewelry. Fashion and adornment were being challenged at that time. It was almost like a golden age, where there was a lot of free-flowing ideas, a lot of collaboration with John and me, and a lot of fluid dialogue creatively between the both of us.
John: You asked about jewelry, and one of the things is we didn’t start out as jewelers. Both of us came to it through a lot of other mediums. Myself, I started out as a painter, illustrator, furniture maker, gem cutter, sign maker, designer of one thing or another, machinery. Corliss went through all sorts of other endeavors herself.
Corliss: It was basically when we had been together for 10 years, plus doing all of these interesting things, that we made the decision, “Jewelry would be a great direction to go into.” And just to pull the curtain back a little bit and give a peak, I think one of the nicest things that happened to me at that time was that as an anniversary gift, I received lessons for metalsmithing. I learned how to solder, and that was the beginning of it. What I learned, I taught John. We experimented with a lot of different processes and a lot of different materials, and it just started to take off from there.
Sharon: When you say metalsmithing, I would think you would go in the traditional direction, whereas you took the metalsmithing and combined it with polymer clay, it seems, which people don’t do. I’m looking at what your website has, and that’s unusual. How did you reverse course in a sense?
Corliss: We were very much interested in color. At that time, we were following the traditional path of experimenting with color and its relationship to metals: patinas,P Prismacolor pencils, enamels and things like that. Polymer clay was such a versatile material. It could mimic just about anything. At the time, the product was being developed in Europe, where it was originally manufactured, and there was a small group of people using the product and doing some pretty innovative things with it. I latched onto that train very, very quickly and took myself through the learning curve of how to work with it, and I got involved with that particular community for quite a while to absorb everything I could, like a big, old sponge. To this day, it plays a very vital role in a lot of work we do. Because we have been metalsmiths and I teach, I have been able to actually teach the incorporation of some of the simpler metalsmithing techniques with polymer to people who have only worked with polymer and opened up that door to them. It’s been very rewarding in that respect.
John: You made a good observation about that crossover because as Corliss mentions, it’s really a two-way street. What we recognized after a while is that introducing polymer clay to the metal world was one side of the sword, and then it was basically introducing metals into the polymer world. Corliss has developed a whole range of courses, workshops, if you will, going in both directions, and that’s become a business unto itself.
Sharon: You seem very entrepreneurial. You seem to go on and on.
Corliss: As John would say, there are many paths to the artist’s income.
John: Yeah, entrepreneurialism is really baked into the DNA. I have to go back to the apprenticeships that we both did that gave us a foundation in—I always express it as art as a business and business as an art.
Corliss: It was a work ethic, too.
John: Yeah. So, we tend to always look at what the business opportunities are, how to make money doing this. That’s always an issue for anybody in the arts, and that’s also part of what we have advocated for for the last 40 years. I have worked with the California University system for decades trying to introduce a business curriculum into the arts, and it’s taken 40 years to actually get that message across. It’s only been in the last 10 years that we’ve started getting any kind of acceptance. We’ve developed many programs for various universities to teach the business side of art, and it’s been an obstacle course to get that through. It runs counter—or at least it used to run much more counter to the academic approach to teaching arts, which focuses more on technique than actually earning a living.
Corliss: I’ve had quite a few experiences with individuals who were poised for graduation in the next six months or so. We would have conversations about, “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I’m going to graduate, but I don’t know how to start a business. I was never taught how to make this a practice.” That’s where everything started. It started by recognizing that there is a need for it within the education system. It led to developing more and more sophisticated ways of instructing people and getting them a little more prepared for what comes after graduation.
John: The thing we found, though, is that this is a uniquely American perspective. We’ve developed programs for Canada, for Mexico, South America, and they embraced them. To them it’s a no-brainer. It’s only America where we’ve encountered any resistance to it.
Sharon: Interesting. Why do you think that is?
John: I think a lot of it is the mythology of art. I want to be specific about this. We are focusing on metals programs and jewelry design programs for this kind of thing. When I was involved in SNAG, we got into this quite in-depth. One of the biggest impediments is that the instructor basically had never operated a business himself, so to them, they were being asked to teach something they had no experience in. Basically, they got their master’s degree, and they went from being students to teachers. That’s it. The idea that there was another world out there, they would say, “Yeah, that’s great. That would be wonderful, but that’s not something I have any experience with.”
Sharon: That’s interesting, the idea that art should be pure and sell itself.
John: That’s one of the mythologies, so Puritan. It’s your labor, I guess. One of the things that occurs to me: many people in the arts define themselves by what they do with their hands, and we have never done that. We conceive the opportunities of who we are by what we do with our minds and how we harness our creativity and create opportunities for ourselves to express that creativity. Jewelry is just one of those things. We have a long history in developing businesses, which goes back to the apprenticeships. From our perspective, it’s all creative endeavor.
Corliss: I was a pastry chef.
Sharon: Wow!
John: A television pastry chef, no less
Corliss: Yes.
John: And she basically made formulations for a lot of very famous restaurants and product lines that you would know of.
Corliss: Making the croissants for Marie Callender’s. Looked up the recipe for that.
Sharon: Wow!
John: That’s Marie right there.
Sharon: How did all this meld into jewelry? I know you through Art Jewelry Forum. I know you do art jewelry, but how did everything you’re talking about meld, at one point, into art jewelry? I know you do a lot of other different things, but in terms of the product, let’s say.
John: We were both active artists in various spheres. One of the things we were doing a lot was running mining and prospecting operations. We were accumulating massive amounts of gem material, and it came to the point where we had to make a decision of what the hell we were going to do with all this stuff. That’s when we came upon jewelry. We could either sell the material wholesale, which we were doing, but really the profitability in jewelry is that we had to finish the faceted stone and polish the rough material. You get the material by the pound, but you sell it by the carat.
Corliss: It was lapidary skills that was the predecessor to this. We were making cabochons. John was faceting and we were also carving. We were carving a lot of natural materials, like bone and wood. The jewelry morphed from that, and it started selling. I was actually schlepping things in a big case, and we found that our work was being very well received. It grew and built from that. Soon enough, we were incorporating precious metal into our pieces.
John: We started doing more of what I would call conventional jewelry, and we had quite a success doing that. Early on, we got contracts with Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom and some larger chains, and very quickly we found out that doing that kind of work is not what we wanted to do.
Corliss: Yes, multiples.
John: Like doing 5,000 of something. You can make money, but the toll that takes on your body—I know a lot of people that do that, and all of them have wrist problems. It leads to health problems. So, that kind of jewelry was when we were getting started and taking off.
When we discovered art jewelry, we lost our minds. It was the wild west. It was all of our art training, all of the things we thought of ourselves as, what we wanted to do in terms of unfettered creativity and experimentation, pushing the boundaries and the edge. That’s what was happening in art jewelry. So, we said, “Yeah, that’s where we want to go. If we’re going to do jewelry, that’s the kind of stuff we’re going to do.” That’s basically how we backed into this world.
Corliss: That’s how it opened us up to a lot of different materials. We were in the frame of mind of purposely going out and looking for materials in a lot of different places, everything from upcycling to computer boards and things of that sort, a whole variety of things. We had friends who would tease us and bring us little offerings we could use in the studio and comment, “You two can make something out of anything.” We took that as a wonderful compliment and put ourselves in a position to receive a lot of very interesting material we could use.
John: Well, we had good circumstances and still do because of all these other businesses we were involved with. We had connections within the military, NASA, foreign governments, lights and heavy manufacturing, the medical industry. We were getting access to this insane array of stuff and materials. I’ve got stuff from someone’s space capsule, a jet fighter, fossils of every kind, medical devices you wouldn’t normally get your hands on. All of this became fodder for “Let’s make jewelry out of it.” One example: I have what we call the world’s most expensive pair of earrings. One of my contacts ran a medical manufacturing business, and they spent something like $35 million developing these little—
Corliss: Chips.
John: Yeah, for CAT scanners, and they failed. They didn’t work as intended. So we stocked six of these prototypes, which literally cost $35 million, and they were like, “Well, we can’t use them. Here, make some jewelry out of them,” which we did. We made earrings out of them, and I love that particular piece. It has a story because they went from being extravagantly expensive to being completely worthless, and now they’re a pair of earrings. Somebody put some sort of value on it, I guess.
Sharon: It sounds like people who know you just ship you boxes and bones and screws and whatever they have.
John: We receive regular offerings from friends, which is a delight; it really is. Over the years, we’ve developed a solid foundation of collectors. We get a steady stream of commissions, and it’s very typical to hear, “I have this thing. Can it be—” I mean, we’ve gotten everything from antiquities—
Corliss: We have Roman coins and special pottery shards.
John: And crazy stuff that people say. “Here, use this as the starting point and make me something.” We actually got a guy’s pacemaker one time. “I’ve had this inside of me for the last six years, and now I’m going to wear it on the outside.”
Sharon: That’s an interesting idea.
John: It was quite an interesting piece. | |||
| 19 Mar 2019 | Episode 19: Elevating Emerging Jewelry Artists with Heidi Lowe, Founder & Owner of Heidi Lowe Gallery | 00:17:04 | |
Heidi Lowe is the founder and owner of Heidi Lowe Gallery, a contemporary art jewelry gallery that hosts six exhibitions each year by internationally recognized artists and also serves as a teaching space. Heidi creates jewelry drawing from nature and the history of metalsmithing. She displays her work within her gallery as well as at other galleries across the United States. Heidi’s next show, “Amend,” is set to open June 14, 2019 at Rehoboth Art League. Prior to opening her own gallery, Heidi was the assistant director at Leo Koenig Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Chelsea, New York. She received her BFA in Metals and Jewelry from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine and her MFA at State University of New York at New Paltz. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources:
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| 08 Apr 2022 | Episode 152 Part 2: Why More Is More for Jewelry Designer Jessica Kagan Cushman | 00:24:57 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jessica Kagan Cushman
Jessica Kagan Cushman is an independent jewelry and accessories designer who launched her career in 2004 with a line of hand-engraved ivory bracelets. Her line later expanded to necklaces, rings, earrings, and other accessories that were sold at Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and other high-end retailers. Today, Jessica is known as the creator of #neckmess, a jewelry trend combining multiple necklaces, charms, and chains to tell a story. Jessica’s latest endeavor is a line of antique-inspired padlocks and connectors that serve as the building blocks of #neckmess. Additional Resources:
Transcript: Jessica Kagan Cushman is a jewelry and accessories designer who struck gold not once, but twice: first with her hand-engraved ivory bracelets decorated with sassy slogans, and then with #neckmess, a style of jewelry wearing that layers multiple necklaces, charms and chains. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what it was like growing up in her exceptionally creative household; how Instagram and Etsy have helped her business thrive; and how to build the perfect #neckmess. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Jessica Kagan Cushman. She’s a well-known jewelry and accessories designer who today may be most well-known for her development of “neckmess.” If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Welcome back.
Is it all through Instagram? How did you sell before Instagram, or were you doing this stuff?
Jessica: Before Instagram, I had a salesforce and showrooms. I had people selling my stuff all over the place. I had my things placed in showrooms. I had a sales manager and people who worked with him. I never really had to do my own sales, except when I was at Bergdorf’s, all the designers would go and do personal appearances and I was behind the counter. In terms of doing wholesale sales, I had a team who did that. We did a lot of tradeshows. We did 20, 25 tradeshows a year all over the world.
Sharon: Was it Covid? You were online before Covid, right?
Jessica: No, it wasn’t Covid. It was before that. It was long before that when I decided I wasn’t interested in having that type of business, where I was spending most of my time managing employees.
Sharon: Yes, that happens.
Jessica: Exactly. That stopped being fun.
Sharon: Managing people takes time and patience.
Jessica: It does. It’s fine if that’s what you’re doing, but I wanted to be making things and be creative. That’s why I switched. I had a website for my bracelets and bags and things like that, with stuff in a warehouse. I had a fulfillment center that would manage all of that, but again, I was still dealing with stuff I didn’t want to be doing. So, I closed that down and streamlined it. Then I just started selling through Instagram, which became a fantastic tool.
Sharon: What are your secrets for being successful on Instagram?
Jessica: That’s something that evolves all the time. The new algorithms have really put a damper on sales for small businesses. It’s hard. It used to be much, much easier—I would say six to eight months ago—to have people see your posts. Now there’s a different algorithm and they have different criteria for what they use to push your stuff out there. I think they’re really pressing for people to do Instagram Shopping, where people shop through the site. I haven’t investigated it, but I believe there are some fairly onerous rules and they make a percentage. To me, the Instagram/Etsy interface does work. There’s a lot more stuff I should be doing, and I could do relatively easily, but I’ve been sort of lazy about it, like making posts shoppable. You can make the posts shoppable without having to do Instagram Shopping, but it’s work I don’t want to do.
Sharon: Based on the way things are now, you first have to scroll past all these shops to get to individual people. I liked it the way it was before.
Jessica: Yeah, me too. It was better, at least from a small business perspective. I know a lot of jewelry dealers have had similar complaints about it.
Sharon: Why do you think people are attracted to your bracelets and charms and all of that? Why do you think that is?
Jessica: They’re all part of the same thing, and I think it’s self-expression. The bracelets are language and words, so they are your wrists literally speaking for you when you’re wearing one. The charms and neckmesses are basically the same thing. It’s a way to tell your own story and express yourself in an individual way.
Sharon: Tell us about the custom orders people ask you for, if they don’t see what they want.
Jessica: Well, I will say now they do. They’ll see it. I just made an amazing, engraved bracelet for a customer because she saw mine, reached out to me and asked me to make one with a saying of her choice on it. It’s all triggered by something I post. People don’t come to me and say, “Oh, I need an engagement ring,” or “I’m looking for a sapphire bracelet. Can you make it for me?” That’s not the sort of stuff I do.
Sharon: Do you see neckmess growing, or are you onto the next thing?
Jessica: I’ll always be wearing a neckmess. I feel like it’s here to stay, because it doesn’t have to be an enormous wad of things. You can wear two little charms and call it a neckmess. So, it’s not going anywhere.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I was making some notes to myself before we started. I think of the neckmess as something that skews younger.
Jessica: No, I don’t think so, actually.
Sharon: You know better than I do.
Jessica: Based on my clients, it runs the entire spectrum. Even starting with my bracelets, I had customers in every age group. It also depends on what you’re putting on there. If you’re doing a neckmess with seven antique diamond charms, that’s limited to how much you can splurge.
Sharon: I know you mostly through Instagram, but it seems like you’re showing more individual charms as opposed to the neckmesses or a grouping.
Jessica: It depends on what kind of ratty sweater I’m wearing on a particular day and whether I’m feeling too lazy to go change and put together a presentable-looking top to put them on. It also depends on the charm. If there’s something really special, I think it’s nice to show it on its own, but I try and do carousel postings. You can post up to 10 pictures in one post, but I’m never sure how much people actually scroll through, and I’m not sure that’s a metric you can see in Instagram. I don’t know if they tell you that.
Sharon: I’m so used to it now that when there isn’t something to scroll through, I’m going, “Well, I want to see different views.”
Jessica: That’s great, but I don’t know to what extent that’s true for everyone. Some of my customers have messaged me and said, “Can I see this from a different angle?” and it will be something that’s in the post; you just have to scroll through. As I said, it would be an interesting metric to see if people do scroll through. For all I know, you can see it, but I just haven’t looked.
Sharon: I’m curious about the mechanics. If you don’t have your shop, are people direct messaging you and saying, “I want that charm”?
Jessica: They direct message me. It depends on where they are and what payment methods they have, but I invoice them. More and more, I’m trying to get stuff loaded into my Etsy shop because that way it’s there. People don’t have to message me; they can just go and look at it, see how much it is, see the description, and I don’t have to be online for them to get details about it. It’s a process loading stuff into it. It’s very easy. Etsy is very user friendly. You can do everything from your phone. There really is no excuse; it’s just time-consuming.
Sharon: It is time-consuming. Like you say, it’s filling out all the descriptions and putting it online.
Jessica: Lining up the descriptions and measurements, filling out all the different fields, taking all the pictures and a video and getting it loaded. For some reason, you can’t load a video from the Etsy app; you have to do that from a desktop. It’s not perfect, but it’s really easy. I just need to do it.
Sharon: It sounds like it’s working for you, but you’re making me tired listening to you.
Jessica: Yes, I know. It’s exhausting.
Sharon: You talked about managing people. Managing customers and clients can be a pain, too. Did you make a decision to say, “O.K., I’ll do that. I’ll manage the ones and twos as opposed to 10 people”?
Jessica: Yes, it’s much easier to work with my customers than it is to be working in an office with a whole bunch of people who require attention and managing.
Sharon: Do you wake up jumping out of bed full of ideas? How is your creative process?
Jessica: I do get ideas at night. I keep a pad next to my bed, and I’ve gotten very good at drawing on my iPhone. In the Notes app, you can actually draw with your finger, which is a very cool thing. I do that a fair amount, or I’ll try and make lists so I don’t forget it by the time I wake up. Then I go into my studio, and I usually get about a third of the way down the list.
Sharon: It seems like each thing would be generating 20 more things in terms of ideas.
Jessica: Absolutely, that’s true.
Sharon: Do you see being a jewelry professional as what you’ll be doing for the next 20 years?
Jessica: Yeah, I think I’ll always be doing it, but I’ll probably be doing it in different ways. We’re about to go away for essentially all of February and part of March. I’m taking stuff with me so I can be creating while I’m away, but I’m hoping I can do a lot less so it’s not my daily focus while I’m on vacation.
Sharon: Do you preload things online so a few things are coming up while you’re gone?
Jessica: No. I’ll take stuff with me, and I probably will put my Etsy shop into vacation mode, but I’ll keep posting and letting people know I can’t ship for a while if there’s something they’re interested in.
Sharon: I’m sure you have regular clients, but do you have collectors? Would you say you have collectors?
Jessica: Oh yeah, definitely. I have lots of clients who collect all the different padlocks and the new ones when they come out. They’ll string them together as a bracelet or use them in different ways. I definitely have collectors who collect my work.
Sharon: In general, I’m always interested in what people think and what their interpretation of a collector is. What do you consider a jewelry collector? Not just of your jewelry, but what makes a jewelry collector?
Jessica: Passion, I think. They’re passionate about jewelry and they love it. I think anybody can collect it, obviously. I don’t know that you can necessarily define what makes a collector, but for me, it’s the fascination with the design, the uniqueness of the design or the way something is put together, the engineering behind it.
Sharon: Does it have to item-specific?
Jessica: No, it can be anything.
Sharon: Do you think a collector has to say they collect bracelets or lockets? I have a lot of jewelry, and somebody said to me once, “You’re not a collector. You’re a shepherd of the stuff,” and I thought, “Well, I’m all right with that.” Somebody called me a collector once and I was like, “I didn’t know that I’m a collector. I’m an enthusiast.”
Jessica: I think some people say they are guardians of jewelry. You can’t take it with you, so you’re gathering it up and eventually it will get disbursed, unless it all goes to one place as group. But I think anybody can be a collector.
Sharon: What do you think is next for your business? What would you say is your next step? Is it day by day?
Jessica: It’s day by day. For me, my goal is to get things online more, get things into my store so I can be a little more hands-off in terms of Instagram and having to communicate. That’s a time-consuming thing. It’s one of the cool things about Instagram because you can reach out directly to people, and I think people feel very connected to the creators.
Sharon: That’s true.
Jessica: It’s very cool, but by the same token, from my perspective, it takes up a lot of time answering DMs. It is time well spent because I love connecting with my customers and talking to them and finding out what they like, but it’s time taken away from doing creative stuff.
Sharon: The DMs on Etsy, are people asking for a different variation?
Jessica: No, they’ll just ask questions about the piece, like how much it is, how big it is, what it can go with, what kind of stones they are. Any number of questions.
Sharon: I noticed recently you posted some of your things from your personal collection. You said you were trying to reduce it.
Jessica: Right.
Sharon: Is there a touch of angst, like, “Oh, I’m sad”?
Jessica: When I sell things?
Sharon: When you sell your own things, things you’ve collected personally.
Jessica: All of it is personal. I only buy things and collect things that I like and would wear myself. I don’t collect things that fall outside my areas of interest. I will buy certain things specifically to sell, but for the most part I buy something I would want to wear myself. Usually I am fine when I’m selling stuff I have collected. There are maybe five or 10 pieces over the years that I regret having sold, but normally not. I’m fine. I’m happy to see them fly out into the world to make other people happy.
Sharon: Tell us about one of those pieces you regret having sold.
Jessica: The most recent thing I sold that I’m like, “Why did I sell that? That was so stupid,” was a very simple, rose-cut diamond Victorian bracelet, but it was a great stacking piece, and it looks good with other pieces in my collection. I’m seeing other ones, but they’re ridiculously expensive now because it’s a hot item, and I’m wishing I’d held onto it. That’s the sort of thing.
Sharon: It sounds like a beautiful thing. Somebody got very lucky.
Jessica: It went to a very good home. I know it’s well appreciated where it is.
Sharon: That makes it easier then.
Jessica: It does make it better.
Sharon: When you’re traveling or on vacation, is your mind filled with, “I should do something with that”?
Jessica: Yes, usually it’s whatever I happen to be looking at. When I’m on vacation, I’m collecting stuff I can use.
Sharon: Is your family saying, “O.K., mom, enough”?
Jessica: Yeah, always. Now my daughter is grown and married and has her own family, so it’s just my husband and me. I’ve got him relatively well trained. He’s much better about letting me go off and toddle around and look for something. He’s like, “Fine, go ahead. I’ll read a book in the car and wait for you while you go shopping.”
Sharon: He’s probably joining my husband there in the car. How did you come up with idea for the lockets?
Jessica: It was really based on wanting to wear the charms in an organized way. They allow you to wear things so they don’t bunch up. They kind of spread them out, and you can connect pieces of chain. I would buy old watchchains or small pieces of chain and put them together. You would have to do it using modern findings or antique ones, but there was never just the right thing that would put them together and also be a decorative piece and part of the story. I bought a couple of antique padlocks, a Victorian jewelry padlock, and I was able to study that to see how it was put together and made. I also bought, when I was passing the flea market, this very cool double-ended padlock. I was like, “Oh my God, that’s brilliant! That would work. I’m going to miniaturize that.”
Sharon: Double-ended meaning you could open it on either side?
Jessica: On either side. That’s what most of the padlocks I’m making now have, either two or three attachment points so you can attach two pieces of chain and charms and keep everything neat and tidy.
Sharon: It sounds fabulous. I’m thinking your head must be spinning when you wake up because you’re so creative, and you follow those ideas and energy. I really appreciate your taking the time to share them with us. Jessica, thank you so much. It’s been so great to talk with you.
Jessica: It was my pleasure, thank you so much.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 05 May 2022 | Episode 71: From a String of Pearls to a Global Brand: Israel’s Yvel Jewelry House with Isaac Levy, Co-Founder of Yvel | 00:29:48 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Isaac Levy: Isaac Levy and his wife Orna are the founders of the Israeli luxury jewelry brand Yvel, best known worldwide for their distinctive creations featuring pearls. Isaac was enchanted by the natural beauty of pearls and the creativity involved in jewelry craftsmanship. He began to train with his mother-in-law who recognized his raw talent for innovative design and worked to mentor him, sharing her knowledge of gemstones, gold, pearls and jewelry craftsmanship. Isaac and Orna now create a powerful design team, stimulating innovation in pearl and gemstone jewelry design with award-winning results. Additional resources:
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| 20 Apr 2020 | Episode 73: Jewelry in America: Discover Jewelry Past and Present at the 2020 ASJRA Conference. NOTE: Since recording this episode, ASJRA has rescheduled its 15th annual conference “Jewelry in America” in New York City to September 11 – 12, 2020. U | 00:12:58 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Elyse Karlin: Elyse Zorn Karlin is the co-director of the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts (ASJRA) and publisher of Adornment, a magazine of jewelry and related arts. She also runs the Annual Conference on Jewelry and Related Arts in various locations throughout the U.S. and spearheads the annual Jewelry History Series in Miami, FL, which runs concurrently with The Original Miami Beach Antique Show. Elyse has authored several books on Arts and Crafts jewelry and antique jewelry, including “Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts and Crafts Tradition.” Her most recent curatorial efforts include “Maker & Muse: Women and 20th Century Art Jewelry” at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago, now traveling to a number of venues; an upcoming exhibition “Out of this World! Jewelry in the Space Age” which opens at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, GA in November 2020.
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| 21 Jul 2021 | Episode 123: Rob Koudijs Gallery: Moving Our Jewelry From Niched to Noticed with Founder & Owner, Rob Koudijs | 00:32:41 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Rob Koudijs Rob Koudijs is the founder and owner of Galerie Rob Koudijs, a 100-square-meter exhibition space located in the gallery district in the center of Amsterdam. The gallery specializes in contemporary art jewelry which communicates ideas, has sculptural qualities, and uses materials in innovative ways. The gallery represents a group of jewelry artists who produce work challenging the borders of the applied and the fine arts. As these artists come from all corners of the globe, the latest international developments are on display in regular solo shows and in the gallery’s collection. As well as showing jewelry, Galerie Rob Koudijs stocks a range of books and catalogues by the represented artists. Additional Resources: Photos:
EVERT NIJLAND necklace ‘Red’; silver, glass photo: Eddo Hartmann
NHAT-VU DANG earrings ‘Dominique’; silver photo: Ceyhan Altuntas
TERHI TOLVANEN necklace ‘Lunatic’; silver, wood, windowpane oyster photo: Terhi Tolvanen
ESTHER BRINKMANN ring ‘20ba-4’; fine gold, iron, jade photo: Esther Brinkmann
HELEN BRITTON brooch ‘19B022’; silver, tiger eye, lapis lazuli, jasper photo: Helen Britton
PAUL ADIE ring ’Talk to Me’; silver, aluminium photo: Paul Adie Transcript: Rob Koudijs knew he was taking a risk by leaving his original career path and opening an art jewelry gallery in Amsterdam. That risk paid off, because Rob Koudijs Gallery is still going strong nearly 15 years later, despite jewelry still being a niche art form. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how he discovered his interest in contemporary jewelry, where he thinks the industry is headed, and why the Netherlands has a robust culture of art jewelry. Read the episode transcript below. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Rob Koudijs—I’m going to let him pronounce his name—founder of a leading art and jewelry gallery in Amsterdam. He’s also a leading figure in championing art jewelry. We will hear about his jewelry journey today. Rob, welcome to the program. Rob: Thank you very much, Sharon. Sharon: I’m so glad to talk with you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. How did you get involved in jewelry and art jewelry in particular? Rob: Do you want to have the long story or the short one? Sharon: We want the full story. Rob: Then I will start where it all began. That was about 40 years ago. I met the man who is now my husband. He was starting architecture in Delft, and when I was in Delft, we went to an art gallery. They had jewelry and he thought, “O.K., I’m an architect. This jewelry is very conceptual, very architectural, and I can wear it.” He bought a piece from Joke van Ommen I don’t know if you know her, but Joke van Ommen was a Dutch artist. A few years later, she went to the United States and founded Jewelerswerk in Washington. I think that must be interesting for you as well. That’s how it started. It was not me; it was he who bought a piece, and then he got interested. We both were interested in art and design, but we didn’t know anything about contemporary jewelry. We thought about finding books about it. Well, there was nothing in the world, not at that time. We are talking about 1979. There was one book shop in Amsterdam and they had books—I don’t where they found them—about contemporary jewelry. I’m telling you about that art book shop because we were invited to a birthday party there. There we met Ruudt Peters —you probably know him—and he— Sharon: Ruudt Peters? Rob: Ruudt Peters, that’s how you pronounce it. It is a funny journey, because he invited us to his birthday party, and I’m talking about 40 years ago. There was a friend of his called Marie-José, and she had just started a gallery. She also started going to an art fair, and she invited us to come to that art fair. We went there, and I think within five minutes I started selling. I always say she discovered my talents in contemporary jewelry. She told me later on that she saw my enthusiasm about the work, so she asked me if I’d help her with the art fair. I did that for 10 years, only at my holidays, of course, because I had a totally different job; I was working in healthcare, psychiatry. I took vacations every year to help her with the art fair and to help her open the gallery. That’s what I did for 10 years; that’s how it started, and of course, I got a lot of inspiration from that. We started buying jewelry—well, you know how it works. Before, there was not that much in the Netherlands. Marie-José just started. When you are getting interested in contemporary jewelry, you think, “This is fantastic, but where can I find it?” So, we went looking for galleries. We found one gallery and we started buying things, and we went to Gallery Marzee and started buying pieces. At one moment, we discovered there was another gallery that opened. That was in 1985, I think, and that was Louise Smit Gallery. So, there were some galleries. There was one in Delft as well, Louis Martin. I became involved in the jewelry world, but it was not my job. Shall I go on? Sharon: Please. Rob: After 10 years helping Marie-José she went to the big building where she is now. You probably have been there. Then we stopped working together. Later, we visited the Louise Smit Gallery and she said, “O.K., sit down. I’m here now for 10 years. I don’t see what’s going on in the jewelry world anymore, and I need a business partner.” It’s a long story, but I became business partner in the Louise Smit Gallery. Sharon: Is that still going? I don’t know. Rob: No, it’s not there anymore. It existed for 10 years and then I did it for 10 years. The 20-year celebration, I was still there. The idea was that she should focus on the big names, the big artists she was already working with, and it was my task to find new talents. That’s what I did, and I’m still working with them. I have to tell you—I wrote it down—we are talking about 25 years ago, and we started with lots of students, and most of them came from the Netherlands. They had all their education at Rietveld Academie, but we also went to Munich and then we found students there. I brought them into that gallery. I was a business partner, so I got the young talent over there, and that’s how it worked. We did it for 10, years and then very abruptly—is that how you say that? Sharon: Yes. Rob: It didn’t work out very nicely. She stopped our companionship, and that was that, my 20 years in contemporary jewelry. So I thought, “O.K., this was so nice.” I liked it so much. I did it next to my other job, and I thought, “O.K., I have to try it myself because if I don’t, I will regret it the rest of my life.” It was 2006, and a few months later—I don’t know, half a year later—in April 2007, I opened my own gallery. The idea was, O.K., there were two galleries in Amsterdam. There was one gallery in Delfts. I thought, “It’s crazy. We are a very small country. Contemporary jewelry is a niche in the art world, so will there a public for it?” But, I thought, “If I don’t do it— let’s give it a try, and if after a year I see it doesn’t work out, I will stop with it.” Well, that’s now 14 years ago and I’m still here. That’s more or less the story over 40 years and how it all started. Sharon: Wow! I love the fact that you’re saying you realized you would regret it for your whole life if you didn’t do it. I think of things myself where I thought, “If I don’t this, I’ll just—” It didn’t work out, but at least I can try. Rob: Exactly, that’s what I thought, and that’s how it all started. Of course, I was very dedicated to contemporary jewelry. Some artists stayed in the older galleries, but there were a lot of artists that needed a gallery. That’s what’s still going on now. There are not that many galleries in the world. So, I thought, “O.K., I’ll just give it a try,” and I didn’t regret it at all. Sharon: There’s a handful of galleries in the world, and there are really not that many that were doing. There’s a handful. The majority seem to be in the Netherlands. There are not that many in the world. I don’t think there are a dozen. Rob: It’s funny, because it’s not like that anymore, but at a certain moment, I think we had five galleries for contemporary jewelry in the Netherlands. At the moment, there are only two—well, the galleries with big names. It’s Marie-José and it’s me in Amsterdam. That’s because the other galleries closed, so there are only two galleries. It’s still a lot for such a small country. Sharon: Why do you think that is? What is it that the Netherlands has, where you have two galleries or in the past had five, when the rest of the world has so few? It’s so unusual. Rob: No, you’re right. I’ve thought it over a lot, and I’ve gotten that question many times as well. Probably it has something to do with—not now, but in the past. In the past, in the Netherlands, artists got very good grants. Museums bought contemporary jewelry, and there was a lot of publicity about contemporary jewelry. I think the focus was on contemporary jewelry. I don’t know why. We always say it has something to do with the 60s, when Dutch jewelers started. I don’t know why it happened that way, but I think the government was important. The grants, that’s what it’s all about, because otherwise most of the jewelry artists cannot live from what they are doing. When you get a grant, you can develop yourself, and that’s what happened. That’s why all these artists, the names I told you before, all these artists are still working. After 25, 30 years, they are still there and they are still successful. It has something to do with that. What you see now is that there are no grants anymore, not for jewelry artists. There is no publicity. Museums don’t buy that much. There’s only one wonderful museum in the Netherlands. You probably have heard of it; maybe you’ve been there. It’s the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, and they have the biggest collection of contemporary jewelry at the moment. Through the years, Stedelijk Museum didn’t buy any more. Rijksmuseum, they have a nice collection, but they don’t buy. You can be successful, or a field in the art world can be successful if there’s publicity, if there are grants, and if the museums are interested. There were a lot of exhibitions, like I said, but it’s all in the past. The jewelry is still there and the collections are there. The Stedelijk Museum has a big collection, and they started early. I don’t know how it is in the states, but they all started after the war, in the 50s, 60s buying contemporary jewelry. I don’t know if that’s the reason, but that’s what we think. It has something to do with it. Sharon: It makes a lot of sense. I’m interested in the fact that you use the term contemporary, because if you were going to Google contemporary jewelry, you wouldn’t see a lot of these names come up. You’d see more—I don’t mean to knock it, but run-of-the-mill or production jewelry as opposed to art jewelry. But you use contemporary jewelry. Do people know what you’re talking about when you use it? Suppose you are at an art fair. I’m just interested in the fact that you use the term contemporary jewelry as opposed to art jewelry. Rob: When I use my hashtags on Instagram, I use art jewelry, studio jewelry, contemporary jewelry; I use them all, because I think in the world, not only in the Netherlands, we use all those names. There is no specific name for it, as far as I know. Sharon: There isn’t. It’s such a nebulous name. There’s not one name that says what it is. Rob: Yeah, you can call it art jewelry or art you can wear, sculpture to wear. I think the problem is when you are talking about a painting or a sculpture, well, that’s what it is. You have contemporary sculpture and you have antique sculpture, but it is very difficult. Like I said, it is probably because it is a niche in the art world, and you want to be different from the big jewelry shops, somewhere where they sell the gold and the diamonds. That’s not what we are doing and what our artists are doing, but there’s not a specific name for it, no. Sharon: What was it that attracted you initially? Was it the art aspect of it? You could have been attracted to gold and diamonds. What was it that attracted to art and jewelry? Rob: No, it’s more the integration of the artistic concepts. It’s art and it’s design and it has craft. Craft, for me, is very important, all the crafts that are used and the combination of that. Like I said before, my husband and I were interested in art and design and architecture, but this integrates it all. We could wear it, because especially 40 years ago, it was very common for men to wear jewelry. That’s why we started with geometrical jewelry. I think it has something to do with that. It integrates a lot of things. It’s small sculpture. I talk to a lot of collectors, and if you are collecting sculpture, for instance, or paintings or photos, all your walls are full. When you are collecting contemporary jewelry, you have the most wonderful pieces of art, and you can put them in a drawer and go on till you die. Sharon: This is a question I have; I’ve thought about it a lot. What is a collector? When do you cross the line from being someone who is just an enthusiast into being a collector? When do you become a collector? Rob: Some people are opposed very much to the word collector. For a long time, we didn’t like to be collectors. We just bought things we liked and we could wear. At a certain moment, you have over a hundred pieces, and then other people are calling you a collector. I know the same thing happens with clients in the gallery, for instance. They also don’t like to be called a collector, but at a certain moment, they have so many good and strong pieces. Then other people start calling you a collector, and then you are a collector whether you want to be or not. Sharon: Another question, perhaps not so easy to answer: When you say good and strong pieces, what’s a good and strong piece? Is a good and strong piece one that I love? Maybe it’s by a certain artist. Rob: When someone asks me that, I always give the same answer: It is very personal. Our personal is that we like architectural, sculptural jewelry. We like brooches because we are men and we don’t wear necklaces. So, our focus is on that. When we say it is strong, it has to do with that. It has to be sculptural, and of course it also has something to do with the artist. You follow the artist and think, “O.K., this is new. This is interesting,” because it’s also important that there is somewhat of a development in what an artist is doing. I think that makes it a strong work, but it is very personal. What you think is good or strong or special, I cannot say it for the whole world. It’s only for me. Sharon: As a gallerist, you must be inundated with artists saying, “Are you interested in carrying my work?” or who come to you and say, “Let me be in your gallery.” How do you sift through all of this? Rob: That is a very difficult part of being a gallerist, because you have to disappoint people, especially disappoint artists. There are not that many galleries and there a lot of artists. Most of the time when people reach out to me by email or they come to the gallery, I always say, “Send me some images and don’t expect me to react.” That doesn’t sound very kind, but if I can’t do that, I should hire someone to do that for me, because we got a lot of questions about it, “I want to show my work in your gallery.” We are always looking if it is an adjustment to the artists we have in the gallery, for instance. I think that’s very important. And is it new? Is it something special I haven’t seen before? With the adjustment to the other artists, I don’t want three or four artists there that look the same. I’m not interested in that. That’s what’s happening, and most of the time, to be honest, we find the artists ourselves. Sharon: At shows? Rob: Yeah, it doesn’t happen often that people reach us and send us emails or show us work and we say, “Oh yeah, that’s fantastic for the gallery.” It doesn’t happen that often, no. Sharon: Do you find them at shows like Schmuck, or what’s the one in the Netherlands? Rob: No, there is not that much in the Netherlands. Schmuck is very important, but there is something else. We’ve known all the artists so along already, 25, 30, 35 years, and they know other artists. Sometimes they say, “I know a guy, I know a girl. Have a look at it.” That helps us as well. We don’t go to all the graduation shows. For us, it’s important to go to Schmuck in Munich. Sharon: We should tell people what Schmuck is. I’m sorry; go ahead. Schmuck being the art jewelry week in Munich. Rob: In Munich, yes. Schmuck is actually the German word for jewelry, but everybody calls it Shumuck now. Things are changing. We went to all the graduation shows, and of course we follow the artists who are graduating and want to give them a platform in the gallery. We want to show young artists, but that has changed. It’s not that strong in school anymore, not for contemporary jewelry. There are not many artists from the Rietveld Academie anymore, so we have to find them all over the world, and that’s what we do. We have artists from all over the world, from New Zealand, from Austria, from the United States. Most of them come from Europe, but we are a very international gallery. Sharon: Do you have clients from all over the world? People buying from the gallery all over the world? Rob: Yes, that has a changed as well. When we started, it was mostly from the Netherlands or from Europe, when people could travel, of course, but that has changed as well. The world is smaller. We have Facebook. We have Instagram. We make online catalogues. You probably have seen a few from us. We reach out to our clients in the world, and there are some very good collectors in the world, especially in the United States. So, we have clients from all over the world, from all countries in Europe, from the United States, and from Australia. These are the countries from where we get clients. Sharon: In terms of dealing, I don’t know how it’s been in the Netherlands with Covid. Have you been doing more online with Covid, or even before that? Rob: We did a lot. Like I said, I’m very active on Facebook and especially Instagram, because I think it’s an important medium at the moment. During lockdown, I think we did something by email every week, by Facebook, by Instagram; we sent out to the world. We had the idea while we were in lockdown in the beginning of last year. We were closed for over four months, and then we were closed for 3.5 months. I just opened up a few weeks ago. So, we had to reach out to our clients by email and make it interesting. That’s why we started to make those online catalogues to seduce our clients. Something else was very important first—that’s how it actually started. We had to let them know we are closed, but we are there and we still have those wonderful artists who we work with, and they’re making new work. We asked them to make new work. They did, and we want to show it to you, and it worked. It kept us through. You have seen my place; it’s not for nothing that you rent a place like that. We needed to pay the rent and so on. It was tough, but it worked because we worked very much online in the last year. I don’t think we’ll stop, even though we’re open again. We discovered what we could do to find a bigger audience. Sharon: What do you see as the trends, or where do you see the global market in art jewelry going? Do you think it’s an increasing interest? Some people think no, it really hasn’t changed. I like to think it’s growing, but that’s just my American optimism. Where do you see art jewelry? Do you see it expanding the market? Do you see more galleries opening, more interest, more people understanding it? I can’t claim to understand it, but I’m just asking what you think. Rob: Let’s just say it this way, Sharon: I hope so. I don’t know. What happened in the art world with photography—that’s already quite some time ago—it started to explode and was seen as real art. I hope that would happen to contemporary jewelry as well, but not at this moment. There are fewer galleries. All the galleries are old, more or less; there are a few younger, but most of them are old, so it will stop. I don’t know. I think the biggest problem is that it’s wonderful to do it. It’s the best thing I have done in my life, but if you are young and you have a family and you have to live from it, I don’t think it will work out. It will be very difficult; otherwise, you have to commercialize, and that’s what I don’t want. If I should do it that way, then I stop immediately. Sharon: When you start selling the T-shirts with the gallery name. Rob: Yes, for instance. That can be a problem. You probably follow the jewelry world as much as we do, and you know when you go to auctions, we always hope the jewelry will get a higher price. Sometimes it works, but it has to be gold. You see at auctions that good pieces from good artists from the last 50 years, they go up in price, but it has to be from precious materials. Well, not all our artists’ work is made of precious materials. They work with wood and glass and textile. They also work with gold and silver and pearls and diamonds, but they use it not for the sake of gold or diamonds. They use it as their material to express themselves. So, I hope it will get better, especially for all those artists who are working so hard, but it still is a niche in the art world. Sharon: Yes, very much so. Thank you so much for talking with us today. I’m glad things have opened and that you are expanding in the online world so more people can see what you’re doing and what you have. Thank you so much for talking with us today. Rob: Thank you, Sharon. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 14 Dec 2023 | Episode 215 Part 2: The Freedom of Art Jewelry with Gallerist Ilona Schwippel | 00:26:18 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Ilona Schwippel Ilona Schwippel has run the gallery Viceversa, in Lausanne, Switzerland, with her husband Christian Balmer for 20 years. She holds a bachelor in product design, jewelry and accessories from the High School of Arts and Design (HEAD) in Geneva and a diploma in luxury creations and artistic crafts from the University of Geneva. Since 2017, Ilona has lectured at the University of Applied Science, in Lucerne, in the XS Schmuck department.
Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript Gallerists have a unique position in the jewelry world as the connectors between artist and wearer—and Ilona Schwippel holds sacred this responsibility. As co-owner of jewelry gallery Viceversa in Lausanne, Switzerland, she is always looking for the pieces that resonate with her and her clients. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why jewelry carries the memories of its previous owners; why jewelry gives artists more freedom than any other medium; and how giving context to a piece can change a customer’s perception of it—for better or worse. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
I went on Art Jewelry Forum’s trip to Switzerland to find Swiss jewelers that I didn’t know about. Art Jewelry Forum has an international trip every year, and they’re usually very interesting and very good. There I met Ilona Schwippel and her partner, Christian, who are owners of the gallery Viceversa. Welcome back.
If you see somebody who is interested and keeps looking at the piece, they keep coming back and looking at it, let’s say, do you then explain what the artist was trying to do?
Ilona: If I have the chance, which I think is great and I really appreciate, I tell him the first time, or I tell that person my idea and the context of the piece at the very beginning. It depends on the person sometimes, how open they are at the moment to see what kind of discussion, what kind of dialogue we can have, whether the person wants to hear it or not. This is always very unpredictable.
Sharon: Do you think art jewelry tells a deeper story than other kinds of jewelry?
Ilona: I think so. Yes, absolutely. I also think that a piece of contemporary jewelry tells a very different story to the observer once its worn. It’s a different kind of communication.
Sharon: It’s interesting. It’s probably true that once it’s worn, it tells a different story. Do you concentrate on certain artists? Do they have to be known? Are they up-and-comers? Any particular kind of artist?
Ilona: We have both. Next spring, for example, we will prepare an exhibition with Karl Fritsch. We’ve been working with him for many, many years. Maybe it’s the third or fourth solo exhibition that we’ve done with him. It’s always incredible how he continues to surprise us by only making rings. This is really incredible.
Sharon: Karl Fritsch?
Ilona: Karl Fritsch. For instance, sometimes he works with already existing jewelry, and he interferes; he changes the piece in my eyes. He doesn’t only change the aspect of the piece by enhancing it or by improving the design in a humoristic way, the way they improve the design of very classical pieces with fantastic design. Some of them have just been turning the piece into something else, and they said it was like improving the piece.
With Karl Fritsch, I think he is somewhere else. What I think is really interesting and very touching is that he changes it. For example, he takes an existing ring—each ring has a story. Each ring has its pedigree in terms of ownership. Sometimes you know; sometimes you don’t. Some people want to know; some people absolutely don’t want to know. What I think is interesting in his work is he takes this ancient piece, for example, and he changes the path of this ring. It doesn’t continue its way of living from owner to owner in a straight way. He takes a very sharp, radical turn. All of a sudden, it’s not only the piece that changes; it’s many things. The definition of the owner changes. I think that’s a very interesting part of his work.
Sharon: I’m surprised to hear people don’t want to hear what it was originally and what it means today. Why wouldn’t people want to know? Do you have any idea?
Ilona: Maybe they’re just more comfortable with something unknown than to know the stories. They would like to wear the piece, but they don’t want to carry the story of the piece or the story of the ancient owner with them. I think there is a very strong relationship between the owner and jewelry. Some pieces are really marked by the story of the ancient owner. It’s something personal.
There’s this German-Vietnamese philosopher who is talking about objects. They are a souvenir of people, of situations. That’s where he says it’s a dramatic difference between data and tangible objects. I think objects really have the capacity to carry on memories, and I can understand that not everybody is comfortable with that. I think this is an incredible quality of jewelry.
Sharon: If somebody comes to you and they want to exhibit or have their pieces in the gallery, does it matter to you if nobody has ever heard of them if you like the piece?
Ilona: If you like the work, yes. The distinction between pieces of work—as a gallery, we like to build up a long-term relationship with the artists. We love following the work, seeing the evolution of the artist and seeing the new work in relation to the pieces that were there before. If you see only one piece, it’s difficult to read, and it’s difficult to talk about the universe. I think it’s always exciting and important to see the universe, to have a body of work. Not just single pieces, but a body of work that tells a story. Then, if the person is known or unknown, it doesn’t matter. It’s about the quality and the content of this body of work.
Sharon: So, if they want to exhibit in your gallery but they only bring one work or one piece, you tell them to come back and show four or five so you get the connection.
Ilona: Yeah, and it’s also to know about the artist’s aim, about the content of the pieces, to feel the intention of the artist, why he or she did these pieces. Why do these pieces exist? Why was it important to create them? Why do they have to exist?
Sharon: Has it changed your mind when they bring one piece and you think, “Oh, well, that’s not so great,” but then they bring four or five and it’s the connection you see?
Ilona: Yes, absolutely. You can really see a story and also see it more in depth. With one piece, it’s more difficult to see the depth of the intention. If it’s only one piece, it’s less evident, maybe.
Sharon: You operate the gallery with your husband. Do you have a division of labor? Do you look at the pieces and he writes the catalogue?
Ilona: A lot of things we do together. This gallery is something really personal. It’s also incredible that each gallery you visit is so different from the other. It reflects the passion of each gallerist. I think it’s important that Christian and I work together. There are many questions we have to discuss, to talk about the artist, about the pieces and the exhibitions we would like to build up. Inside, we do some tasks separately for sure, but a lot of decisions we have to make together. It’s very enriching to have discussions about artists’ work that we don’t agree on. This is very interesting.
Sharon: Can you walk into different galleries and feel a different—I don’t know what to call it—an air, a different feeling when you go into different galleries? Some of them are passionate and some are more utilitarian, let’s say. Can you tell?
Ilona: I think so, yes. I think it really reflects the gallerist who made this choice. I think it’s important that you see that. It’s not important that you see the difference, but it is important that the choice of the pieces and the works of the artists is something authentic with the gallerist.
Sharon: I guess I skipped a question. I wanted to ask why you like art jewelry.
Ilona: Good question. I think I’m fascinated with the power that pieces have, the power of this non-personal communication. I think there are two aspects. On the one hand, I am aware as a wearer, so I want to make these pieces on my body communicate to the person in front of me. It’s like being a team with this piece of art. We have the same bond; we have the same message to give.
On the other hand, as a gallerist, you have a different view of the piece. There, I see more of a connection to the artist, and I leave it open as to whom it will talk to, who is going to fall in love with it. Sometimes it’s myself. I think it is the content, and it’s something essential in communication.
Sharon: Have you seen a piece that you might want to put in your gallery, but you don’t wear it yourself?
Ilona: Yes and no.
Sharon: It just doesn’t communicate what you want it to communicate.
Ilona: Yes. There are pieces I really love, but I don’t feel this connection when I wear it. I guess this just happens. I think this is healthy.
Sharon: But some other people might still see a connection.
Ilona: Absolutely.
Sharon: Have you ever worked in another gallery?
Ilona: I did work at one when I was in Lisbon. I worked in the gallery at Artefacto3. At the time, it was Tereza Seabra that ran the gallery.
Sharon: Was there a difference in the air or in the feeling of the gallery compared to your gallery?
Ilona: It’s hard to say because at the time, I didn’t have any other experience with galleries, with contemporary jewelry galleries especially. But it was different, and I think that’s important. I think that’s something very important, these differences.
Sharon: When you say contemporary jewelry galleries, it makes me think that in Europe or Switzerland, there are more contemporary jewelry galleries. There are very few in the States. They exist, but there are very few. I wonder if there are more in Europe. I don’t know. Would you say that in the time you studied art jewelry, the market has grown in Europe?
Ilona: I think so. I think it’s also due to the schools. They are very active in communicating. The students are studying the works at the museums that collect, that show the connections, that have exhibitions or design exhibitions where they mix objects and jewelry. I see this as a precious education to make contemporary jewelry become more known by a larger public.
Sharon: Are they doing that on purpose?
Ilona: I think they choose the pieces because they have to be in the exhibition with the content they want to communicate and the pertinence of the piece. Maybe the side effect is that it is an education, that there is educational value in it, but I don’t think this is the first purpose. If we talk about education, it might be a principal purpose when they organize workshops, lectures, guided tours, meeting artists at roundtable discussions, something like that. This is actively finetuned. It keeps the discussion lively and brings people together to talk about these subjects and about this not-very-much-known field.
Sharon: When you talk about it, it sounds very exciting. What is it that’s kept your attention on art jewelry over the years?
Ilona: I think it captures the questions that come from society. If it seems that society is worried about something, they can communicate with the pieces. It’s a very lively art. I think it’s also something exceptional and precious, the freedom that jewelry artists have. They can really do the piece. Most of them can make the piece from the very first moment to the very last moment. So many are capable of finishing the piece all by themselves, which means during the thinking and creation process, they continue to evaluate. I think this is an enormous freedom, and this freedom also gives them a place for really absurd and surrealist things that you would never dream about in the field of jewelry. Jewelry is performance. It is linked so much to the body; it’s linked so much to the lively body, to the vivid communication that is part of the daily performance we do.
Sharon: That is very interesting. Ilona, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us and to let us know about art jewelry in Switzerland.
Ilona: I’m very happy that we had the chance to talk and that you were curious about our gallery. We were really happy to talk to you in Switzerland. It was great to feel your enthusiasm and this energy you have. Thank you very much.
Sharon: Thank you. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 11 Jan 2021 | Episode 102: How America’s First Jewelry Curator Changed the Industry with Yvonne Markowitz, Curator & Author | 00:29:22 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Yvonne Markowitz Yvonne J. Markowitz is the Rita J. Kaplan and Susan B. Kaplan Curator Emerita of Jewelry, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA. Serving in the first curatorship of its kind in America, Markowitz oversaw the museum's exceptional collection of jewelry. She is also the past editor of the Journal of the American Society of Jewelry Historians, an editor of Adornment, the Magazine of Jewelry and Related Arts, co-director of the annual Association for the Study of Jewelry & Related Arts Conference. (ASJRA), and the author of numerous jewelry-related books and articles. Her books include Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Jewels of Trabert & Hoeffer-Mauboussin: A History of American Style and Innovation; and Jewels of Ancient Nubia (with Denise Doxey). Additional Resources:
Photos:
Book: "Looking at Jewelry: A Guide to Terms, Styles and Techniques" By Susanne Gänsicke & Yvonne Markowitz
Yvonne J. Markowitz
A British Arts & Crafts brooch by John Paul Cooper -a leading figure in the Art& Crafts movement. Gold, ruby, moonstone, pearl, amethyst and chrysoprase, 1908 | |||
| 09 Nov 2020 | Episode 94: How the Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant Is Helping Push the Boundaries of Art Jewelry with Enthusiastic Art Jewelry Collector, Susan Beech | 00:24:09 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Susan Beech Susan Beech is an avid jewelry collector and longtime member of Art Jewelry Forum. Her extensive collection of art jewelry has been featured in several museum shows, and she was awarded the 2008 McColl Award for her work in expanding the permanent collection of the Mint Museum. She created the Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant in 2016 to provide mid-career artists with the resources to push the boundaries of their work and expand the field of art jewelry. After seeing her children reach middle age and struggle to balance their dreams with work and family life, jewelry collector Susan Beech realized that many jewelry artists face the same challenge. Although there are numerous grants for young, emerging artists, the is a gap in resources for mid-career artists who want to continue their work. This was the inspiration behind Art Jewelry Forum’s Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant, a $20,000 award given to one mid-career artist every other year. Susan joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about her hopes for grant recipients, why the award isn’t just limited to makers, and how the two past winners have already made an impact. Additional resources Photos: Judges, Susan Beech, Daniel Kruger, and Emily Stoehrer
First winner of the Susan Beech Mid-Career Grant: Christina Filipe (middle) with Susan Beech (left) and Rebekah Frank (right)
Second annual winner of the Susan Beech Mid-Career Grant: Tiff Massey
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| 17 Jun 2019 | Episode 28: Antique Jewelry & Art Conference: A Preview of Jewelry Camp 2019 with Edward Lewand, Independent Appraiser & Co-Director of Jewelry Camp | 00:18:52 | |
Edward A. Lewand, GG, ASA, AAA, is a professional, independent appraiser of fine and antique jewelry. He works with attorneys on estates, trusts, insurance matters and copyright issues; appraisal theories and concepts; and matrimonial appraising. Edward also works with international accounting firms such as KPMG and PWC with banks for inventory review, as well as appraisals for the sale of major companies. Additionally, he is retained as a business consultant by jewelry companies. Edward earned a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America and is a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America as well as a Senior Accredited Member in Gems and Jewelry from the American Society of Appraisers. Edward is the Co-Director of the Antique Jewelry & Art Conference (Jewelry Camp™), an international educational conference for the beginner to the advanced in antique, estate and modern jewelry, which is now in its 41st year. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Ways to contact Edward Lewand: | |||
| 20 Jan 2020 | Episode 57: Expressing Love and Grief: Mourning and Sentimental Jewelry with Sarah Nehama, Studio Jeweler & Collector | 00:22:26 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Sarah Nehama: Sarah Nehama has been creating one-of-a-kind, fine jewelry for the past 25 years and has a studio in the Providence, Rhode Island, area. She also collects antique mourning and sentimental jewelry, co-curated an exhibit on mourning jewelry and art with Massachusetts Historical Society and authored a book on the subject. Sarah has lectured at numerous museums and historical societies both in the United States and abroad and has presented to American Society of Appraisers on mourning and sentimental jewelry. Additional resources: | |||
| 31 May 2024 | Episode 223 Part 2: How Gabriela Sierra Made the Jump from Packaging Design to Jewelry Design | 00:22:52 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Gabriela Sierra Gaby, designer and creator of Gabriela Sierra jewelry, is anything but a minimalist. Unafraid of color, she plays with bold shapes, textures and asymmetry. Her meticulously crafted pieces are meant to be conversation starters. With a background in Industrial Design followed by a variety of courses at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School, Gabriela Sierra merges design and fashion to create unique sculptural jewelry. The brand seeks to reflect the spirit of the slowmade process (quality over quantity). Founded in 2021, Gabriela Sierra is committed to good design by focusing on quality materials and the revaluation of craftsmanship. Her work has been shown at different worldwide exhibitions:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Expertly combining bold colors and shapes in her jewelry, it’s clear that Gabriela Sierra has an eye for design. Beginning her career in furniture and packaging design, Gabriela made her lifelong dream of becoming a jewelry maker come true in 2021, when she opened Gabriela Sierra Jewelry. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how her upbringing in Mexico and her current home in Montreal influence her work; why her business follows “slow made” principles; and how she became more confident about calling herself a jewelry designer. Read the episode transcript here.
Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, I'm talking with Gabriela Sierra of Gabriela Sierra Jewelry. Welcome back. So, everything might not be handcrafted, but you have chosen those individual stones to go together or the kind of stone to work with. For instance, will you choose a faceted stone to work with? Could you have a combination of a faceted stone with a cabochon with a smooth curve? Gabriela: Yes. I already have some designs before combining these different types of cuts. Yes, for sure. I'm not like, “I'm just going to work with cabochon and that's it.” No. I think t I'm open to work with different kinds of cuts. I like to work with cuts that are not the traditional ones. I just create new cuts and new cuts, and then as I mentioned, I make an order with my suppliers to have a sample to see if it really works, because in my mind everything works perfectly. I need to see the real thing physically, here with me in my hands, to see if everything is okay. Sharon: Do you go to the Tucson Show in Arizona to choose stones? Gabriela: No, I haven’t had a chance to go. I see the videos and I see that all the jewelers I follow go there. I do wish to go there, but I just recently received my American visa. That was one of the reasons why I didn't go to the Tucson Show. But I would love to have the opportunity to go. Maybe next year. For sure, I want to go. Next year it's easier. Here in Montreal there's also a gem show, a smaller version. It was last year. I think it's here every year. I went there last year, and it was very good. Of course, to a new person it's just huge. There are a lot of suppliers from everywhere, from every part of the world, so I really wanted to go. Sharon: How do you decide if it's a good quality stone versus one that's not as good? Is it just by eye, or do you look through a loupe? Gabriela: I don't have a lot of knowledge. I’m not trained to really recognize if a stone is a very good quality stone. I think I just need to love the stone and see that it’s without any breakage, it's not with a hole or some kind of damage. I need to love the stone, and it needs to be a good cut in my opinion. I'm not an expert gemologist, so I cannot tell if it's perfectly cut. I just need to see the stone and if it's love at first sight. If I love the stone, it's perfect. Sharon: Does it have to fit a certain bezel or do you make the bezel to fit the stone? Most of your gems seem to be bezel set. Gabriela: At the beginning, when I first chose the stones and then designed, yes, I based my design on the gemstone. I created the bezel around it. But after that, when I had a clear concept, I designed first and then chose the stone. When I order the stones, they need to be the size that I need because I cannot change the design. But yes, basically all my gemstones are with a bezel. Sharon: Do you have a studio outside your home, or a place inside your apartment or home where you design your jewelry? Gabriela: In Mexico, my studio is in my house in Querétaro. Querétaro is the city where I live. It's in my house. The first floor is all my studio. Now Samantha is working there. But now here in Montréal, last year, last October, I found a place that rents a space for jewelers. I'm a resident there and I work from there. I have all the necessary things because it's an atelier. The atelier is called Artéfact. A lot of jewelers from Montreal rent their space and work there to create their pieces. Sharon: Can you go any time, or do you have to sign up for certain times? Gabriela: No, because I'm a resident, I can go if I want to go. During the night I can go. Any time I want. They give classes there also, but it doesn't matter if they are giving classes. I can go whenever I want. In Montreal it’s a little bit different. It's difficult to have a studio in your house or apartment. You need a permit because you’re working with gas, with fire, with chemicals. It’s different. In Mexico we don't need permits to have a gas tank in our house. Here it’s a little bit different. Sharon: Do you ever get nervous working with fire and chemicals? Does that make you nervous? Gabriela: At the beginning, yes. Yes, of course. Because you’re working with gas, if you're not careful enough, there could be an accident. Also, because my studio is in my house, I was worried at the beginning that I needed to be very careful because this is my house. My husband lives here. My stuff is here. So, yeah, I need to be careful. I was nervous at the beginning because I was working with fire. But you just need to follow the steps. That's it. If you work carefully and follow the precautions, you are good. Sharon: And you have a pet. Do they keep you company in the studio? Where do they keep you company? Gabriela: Yes, I have a dog. Her name is Jude Right now, she is in Mexico, but I will bring her here very soon because I miss her so much. She was the one reminding me every day, “Hey, Gabi, it's time to go home. I'm hungry. Let's go home.” Home for her was the second floor of our house. I miss her so much. It's more than love for me and for my husband. Sharon: Does she comfort you? If you're having a bad day with the stones, do you get comfort from her? Gabriela: Yes. I don't know what dogs have, but they know if you are feeling bad or you are sad or you are happy. They just know. She approaches every time I feel bad or sad, or I break a bezel or I break a gemstone. She knows. Also because I scream a lot and I'm saying bad words. Sharon: I want to talk to you a little bit about starting the business, deciding to start the business and keeping it going. You're newer in your making journey than some of the people I've talked to on the podcast. What made you decide that it was time to leave? Gabriela: Well, COVID hit, and I think for many people, it was a time to reflect, and I reflected and reevaluated my path. That was the moment that I decided to quit my job as a packaging specialist. It was hard. A lot of people called me crazy because it was a very difficult time, but I was so sure. I don't know what COVID had at that particular time but it gave me a signal or something that I wasn't in the right place. That particular time was hard, but it gave me the strength to start my jewelry business and start to set up my studio. During COVID, I took some classes to refresh the techniques that I had learned years before at Alchimia to start making jewelry. I learned a lot of techniques, but the years passed, and I needed a refresh. But it was hard. I’m not going to lie; it was really hard. Because I was new, I was scared. I was afraid of failure. In my mind, I was thinking, “Who is going to buy my jewelry? Who is going to like my jewelry? How will I pay all my bills.?” All those questions started to appear in my mind. You asked me a question about how I introduce myself, and I told you that I felt comfortable to say I was a jewelry maker a year ago. I had a lot of insecurity. I wasn't sure that I was a jewelry maker because I wasn't prepared in a jewelry school. I didn't have the proper school, I didn't have a proper education for being a jeweler. It was tough at the beginning, but then my work started to get noticed, to get exposed, and I had the opportunity to be in different exhibitions. I think the trust grew from there, and I feel more and more comfortable calling myself a jewelry maker now. Sharon: What is your distribution? How do people hear about you? Do people place orders at shows, or do you exhibit all over the world? Gabriela: Mainly my clients buy the pieces from my webpage. I also have my pieces in some stores in Mexico City. Right now, I have some of my pieces in Vancouver in a gallery. For exhibitions, they could have been bought during the exhibitions, but the exhibition is just for a couple of days, and those exhibitions were one or two years ago. The other one was two years ago. The last one is actually right now. It's Earrings Galore. The last place this exhibition was in was Mexico City, actually. Before that, Earrings Galore was in New York City at New York City Jewelry Week. Sharon: You exhibited there. Do you have to go into galleries? Are you a salesperson? Are you the salesperson, or do you put the jewelry out and people can decide what they're doing? Gabriela: Well, I'm the one who gets all the customers’ messages and everything, but in the exhibitions, I cannot go to every single one of them, so I just send the pieces and there’s a person there in charge of showing the pieces and selling the pieces. Sharon: Do you ever have to go to galleries and sell your stuff? You mentioned these stores in Mexico City that have your things. Did you have to show it yourself? Did they see your pieces and like them beforehand without knowing you? How did it work? Gabriela: For example, that one in Mexico City, I couldn't be there because I was here in Montreal. So, they could go to the exhibition and see my pieces there and try them on, see if they like them or not, but I couldn't be there. I wish I could have, but I couldn't. I want to go and attend different expositions or craft fairs. I want to start doing those, probably next year or at the end of this year. Sharon: Who buys your jewelry? Who buys your earrings? Do men buy them for women? Do women buy them for themselves? Gabriela: My main customers are from the U.S., actually. And most of my customers, the majority are women. A few of them are men. Actually, they are the ones who message me first through my Instagram account and ask me, “My wife really likes these earrings. She's showing me these earrings, but I don't know if she is going to wear them. Can you tell me if they are too big or too heavy? Can you show me pictures or a video wearing them?” Sometimes I can do that because if you message me through my Instagram account, I'm the one who answers every single message. Maybe I can take a little bit long to answer back, but for sure you will get an answer. Sharon: You mentioned COVID. Did that affect taking classes? Were you doing it through Zoom? Did it affect your business? How did you do it? Gabriela: During COVID, yeah. Mexico had a lot of restrictions, but during COVID, I went to my friend's studio. She is an amazing jeweler also. She was giving classes to a small group of people. We were three people per class, with distance between each other. So, yes, we had the classes in person. I basically didn't sell during the first year of COVID because in that year I was still working in packaging. The second year of COVID, I was almost ready. My studio was almost ready. I just started to show my work on my Instagram account, but I had just 20 followers or something. It was just the beginning. I really can’t tell you if COVID affected me as a brand because I was just beginning. Sharon: What kind of brand were you after? Give us some buzzwords about your brand. Are you high end? Are you for everyone? Tell us a little bit about your jewelry. Gabriela: Yes, of course. As I mentioned, I really like bold colors and shapes. I love to work with asymmetry and statement pieces. I love when my clients tell me that someone stopped and asked her, “I love your earrings! Where did you buy them?” I love them to be conversation starters. The main focus or the reason that I wake up every morning to make these pieces is to make people smile just looking at my pieces. I love to play with color. Bold colors, bold shapes, big earrings. Sharon: You consider your jewelry a conversation starter. Is the way that people hear about your earrings, let’s say, by word of mouth? Tell us a little bit about that. Gabriela: At the beginning when I started, my first customers were people from my city in Querétaro because I started to pay for some announcements, just in my city or in Mexico City. I started first with friends and family, as a normal startup or business that just starts. Then the word spread a little bit. Then it was like, “My friend Blanca told me about you and I love her earrings. Can you show me your earrings?” At that particular time, I didn't have a web page. I just had my Instagram account. So, with WhatsApp, I would send them some pictures of the pieces that I had at that particular moment, some videos of me wearing them. Also, if they wanted, because it was COVID still, I’d invite them to my studio to see the earrings in person. Right now, because my journey started on Instagram, boutiques got in touch with me to ask for my pieces. Then the clients grew because I had pieces in Mexico City or in Guadalajara. Then I started to learn about a little bit of marketing, making advertisements on Instagram or Facebook to show my pieces to markets out there in the United States and Europe and Japan. It was amazing for me to see how Instagram helped me grow my business, to show my pieces in Japan or New Zealand or Europe. For me, it was amazing because I didn't think my pieces would go there and people from there were going to like my pieces. Sharon: I could see how that would be exciting. Well, we wish you the best and that your business keeps going. Thank you very much. Gabriela: Thank you so much, Sharon. Thank you so much for this opportunity and for your invitation. I really appreciate it. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 21 Apr 2023 | Episode 191 Part 2: Pearls, Remixed: How Melanie Georgacopoulos Is Changing How We Think About the Classic Gem | 00:24:52 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Melanie Georgacopoulos
With a background in sculpture, jewellery designer Melanie Georgacopoulos works with materials in new ways to release their potential and stimulate new interpretations. She began her exploration of the pearl during her Master’s degree at the RCA in 2007, after which she worked as a freelance designer under Antoine Sandoz for major international brands, before establishing her eponymous label in 2010.
In Melanie’s work the paradoxical, intriguing nature of pearls and mother of pearl is at the core of every piece, whilst the aesthetic remains simple, structured and timeless. She continually strives to challenge the existing preconceptions of these organic materials and that of traditional jewellery design itself. It is this unique approach which has given her the opportunity to showcase her pieces regularly at fairs, exhibitions and galleries worldwide.
Melanie became well known internationally for her work with pearls, leading to her collaboration with TASAKI, which began in 2013. Directional line M/G TASAKI was born, marring Melanie’s flair to cross design boundaries with the Japanese jewellery company’s world renowned craftsmanship. Following the huge success of the seasonal collections Melanie was appointed Head Designer for M/G TASAKI in 2015. She has been a visiting lecturer at Central Saint Martins for the last four years whilst she continues to create her own collections and one-off pieces for special projects.
Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, we’re talking with Melanie Georgacopoulos. Melanie occupies some unusual niches. She’s a specialist in designing with pearls, which is very unusual. For those of you who are listening who think that pearls are too old-fashioned or too formal, she has really changed the way pearls are viewed. She lives in Hamburg but has her office in London. She’s also the Chief Designer for a collaboration with a Japanese company, Tasaki. Welcome back.
Do you work with pearls in all colors?
Melanie: Absolutely. This journey over the last few years has also been a journey for myself. I also started with this idea that there are only white, round pearls out there, and that’s not true. There are Tahitian pearls, South Sea pearls, Akoya pearls. There’s a whole world of natural pearls. There are different shapes, different sizes. Some are extremely rare, like conch pearls or melo pearls. Some are very common, like freshwater pearls.
During this journey of discovery for myself, I’ve tried to launch some collections which focus on a certain kind of pearl to highlight it. For one of the collections I did, the Nacre Collection, I paired a pink pearl with a pink mother of pearl in way that’s like the return of the pearl to its oyster, or a golden South Sea to the golden sea mother of pearl shell. Sometimes I’m sent messages through Instagram by suppliers or pearl farmers who say, “Hey, have you seen this? Do you want to work with what I make?” I’m like “Wow! This is new to me.” I’ve been working with pearls for 10 years and it keeps on giving. I find that fantastic.
Sharon: Do you have a favorite pearl? Do you think one is better than another? Is a South Sea pearl better or easier to work with than an Akoya?
Melanie: I don’t think there’s a better one. In terms of value, of course the more expensive the pearl, probably the better it is for investment. Another common thing I’ve heard said is that at the end of the day, you just have to like what it is you’re buying. You want to wear it. You don’t want to necessarily buy it and put it in the safe because you’re too scared to wear it or use it because it’s something too valuable.
I really enjoy working with South Seas because they are so large. I’ve almost finished a bracelet which has a mix of Tahitians and Akoyas, and it’s black and white. So, I’m mixing different kinds. The challenge with pearls is that they don’t all come in all the sizes and the colors you want. So, depending on the size or the color you want for a design, you have to get it from a specific place. A lot of times, people don’t mix a Tahitian pearl with a freshwater pearl because it’s not considered to be right. You just have to use Tahitians or you just have to use freshwater. Because I’m very design-led, I will say, “No, if I want to have a pearl graduation from a two-millimeter pearl to a three-millimeter pearl, then I’m going to mix the pearls.” But color-wise, they’re going to look exactly the same and they’re going to match together. So right now, it’s definitely South Seas, but ask me next year. I might have a different answer.
Sharon: I want to know where you find a three-millimeter pearl. That’s a big pearl.
Melanie: You wonder if it’s hiding something inside.
Sharon: Do people come to you and say, “Here are my grandmother’s pearls or my mother’s pearls. I want something different made out of them”?
Melanie: I have that too. They’re probably the most challenging pearls to work with because first of all, they’re very sentimental to their owners. It’s the one thing you can’t throw away, but you also don’t want to wear it and you don’t know what to do with it. A lot of those poor pearl necklaces stay in boxes, and it’s challenging to say to someone, “Can I drill that necklace? Can I change it quite a bit? Are you sure, or do you want to keep it original the way you inherited it?”
But I have some great clients that text me photos and are like, “Oh, I have this necklace and I don’t know what to do with it. Maybe you have an idea.” Then I say, “O.K., but then you have to tell me who you are,” because it’s designed for them. It's not even a piece they chose to buy themselves. It’s something they inherited. They never decided, “This is the pearl size I like or that suits me.” A lot of times, I need to add or change it quite dramatically so they can incorporate it into their daily life and feel that it’s part of them. But I love those challenges, I have to say. I invite those challenges. I learn a lot from them.
Sharon: Do you look at a necklace and see what it could be?
Melanie: I have to get the measurements. This is the age of digital now, which means photos. I ask them to take a photo of the necklace next to a ruler so I understand how big it is, how long the necklace is or how big the pearls are, because you’re not going to ask a person you’ve never met to send you their pearl necklace. We have a lot of conversations before anything actually happens. I need to understand what their budget is—that’s also important—and what their expectation is. Sometimes they want a bracelet; sometimes they want earrings. So, we need to discuss that. Then see what I can actually do with the piece they have, because sometimes they have unrealistic expectations. I have to rein them in a little bit.
Sharon: When you say unrealistic expectations, do they expect you to make the pearl larger when it’s really small?
Melanie: Yeah, I think sometimes they have an idea of a pearl necklace or a piece of jewelry, a bracelet, and that’s not possible with the pearls from the necklace they have. So, we either need to add pearls, or we need to start fresh and use the existing pearl necklace for something else.
Sharon: You also mix gold and other things with your pearls. You had a couple of necklaces with gold woven in.
Melanie: Yeah, I use gold, 18 carats. I also use diamonds. I’ve worked with sapphires before, anything really. I used silver chains at the beginning. A few years ago, I was doing larger pieces, so it made more sense to use silver. I used palladium at some point.
You can’t do everything with everything. The best thing is to figure out what you want to make and then the best way to make it. Sometimes it’s a question of cost. Sometimes it’s a question of what the client wants. Sometimes it’s what I want the design to be and how much I’m willing to compromise, but at the end of the day, it needs to be a piece of jewelry that can be worn and enjoyed. That’s when the piece of jewelry really becomes alive.
Sharon: So, you have your own brand and your Tasaki collection. That’s a lot of designing.
Melanie: Yeah, I love it. I’m really lucky. It’s exactly what I wanted.
Sharon: Have you ever been approached by other places who see what you do with the pearls? Do they say, “Hey, that’s really different. Why don’t you come do it for us?”
Melanie: Yes, but so far, my relationship with Tasaki is working so well that I don’t need to look anywhere else. I’m also not greedy. I’m very loyal. I want this to run its course, until whenever it’s meant to go, and see what happens. Obviously, there are elements I can control, and that is how much I love to work for them and how good the designs are. There are a lot of cultural, social, political elements I can’t control. There’s no way to know when this is going to end or slow down, but for now I haven’t found another partnership that has offered me the degree of freedom I have and the satisfaction I get from seeing the M/G Tasaki pieces on demanding Japanese clients.
Sharon: Has anybody ever brought you a whole bunch of conch pearls or melo pearls or natural pearls and not realized what they had?
Melanie: Not yet. I think that’s part of my wish list, that someone comes with a suitcase full of conch or melo pearls and says, “How much are these strange-looking pearls?” I would send them straight to the bank or to an auction house. I think it’s the age where more people know what they have because they’re able to find a lot of information on the internet. I think more and more it’s the sentimental aspect of what you have. Of course, if you are a millionaire, then it’s different, but I’m not. I think a lot of times, we cherish things that have no monetary value, but they’re highly, highly sentimental. So, we’ll see. Maybe someone does have one.
Sharon: Do they bring natural pearls to you?
Melanie: Some do, yes. They have natural pearl strands, but the pearls tend to be quite small. They were made at a different time. A hundred years ago, you didn’t have access to cultured pearls. That trend had just started. So, there are still people who have inherited a small, thin strand of natural pearls.
Sharon: You won a prize for the Diamond Fishbone Bangle, which I thought was gorgeous. Tell us about the prize and how you heard about it. Can you wear this bracelet with the mother of pearl? It looks very fragile. That’s what it looks like.
Melanie: It’s not as fragile as it looks. No one really goes around banging their hands when they’re wearing jewelry. I think you’re a bit conscious when you wear something. Even when you’re wearing a nice pullover, you’re not going run your arm on the wall. You’re a bit more self-conscious. The prize was great because it’s a wonderful group, the Cultured Pearl Association of America, if I’m not mistaken, and Jennifer Heebner is the executive director. We’ve been in touch with her. It’s a great recognition. It’s always nice when your peers recognize something good you’ve done.
Recently I got another award in London from the Goldsmiths, which is a very old institution. They awarded my lapidary work. I submitted a bangle made of mother of pearl which was carved. I had two old mine-cut diamonds inserted and set with gold prongs. I think they recognized the audacity and the search to present something new. This is how I took the award, and it gives me energy to carry on what I do. But I get the award and then the next day, I still wake up and take my kids to school. Life goes on very quickly after the awards, but it’s still a nice recognition.
Sharon: Why did you name it the Diamond Fishbone?
Melanie: Because I’m not very good with names of jewelry. I always try to stay quite close to reality. Because the sheets of mother of pearl are layered in a fishbone pattern, I thought I would name it the Fishbone.
Sharon: I see, O.K. Originally, I thought, “Why is it a fishbone?” Did the prize make any difference in what you do?
Melanie: If it had been accompanied with a check of $500,000 U.S. dollars, it could have made a big difference. I could have bought some conch or some melos. No, it doesn’t really, but it’s a nice recognition. Unfortunately, they don’t come with monetary prizes, which would be nice, to be honest, because it’s nice to get that kind of support. But it’s already a really nice accolade. That’s why I entered last year also, and that’s why I try and present work to these awards. I think it is important that other people become aware of the work I do. I think it’s quite inspiring to students to see that these pieces are possible to make and that someone is doing them.
Sharon: Some people feel like they entered and didn’t win, so why are they going to all this trouble? Do you feel that way at all?
Melanie: No. I entered the Susan Beech Award recently over Christmas. I spent a big chunk of my Christmas writing that proposal. I didn’t get shortlisted, and that’s O.K., but that was quite a difficult entry for a competition. You have to write down the budget, and it was a lot of work. It wasn’t just, “Oh, I’m submitting a photo and the dimensions of the piece.”
Sometimes someone comes a few years later and says, “Hey, I was part of the award panel, the judging panel. You didn’t get it, but I still remember that piece you did. Maybe you want to do something now.” So, even if the result is not immediate in that I might have expected to win the award, other things are happening in the background that I’m not necessarily aware of and which might surface a few months or a few years later. So, it’s a process. It's not really about winning. It’s more about making steps, connecting to people, being active and not expecting things to come to me. I really see it like this.
Sharon: I have questions about several things you said. I read this on your website or Tasaki’s website; I don’t remember where. Actually, I remember a couple of things. You talked about a statement piece. I happen to like statement pieces, but every time I look at statement, they’re not my kind of statement. But you had really different statement pieces, so I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.” You described pearls as gems. Do you consider them a gem of sorts?
Melanie: They are officially gemstones.
Sharon: Are they?
Melanie: Yeah, they are classified as gemstones. There are other organic gemstones such as coral, but there was a time when pearls were considered the only organic gemstones. That’s why I also call them gems. I think the way they’re made is fascinating, because even if they’re cultured—most pearls are cultured these days—you still need a little oyster to do the work for a couple of years to get one. Of course, the oyster is inseminated, but you still need that little animal to do this. For me, this is magical. It feels like a gem anyway because it is precious, but I think officially we call them gemstones.
Sharon: I don’t think of them as gemstones, but that’s interesting. What I was surprised at was that you developed cufflinks for men. Not many people design jewelry for men. What does that do for you?
Melanie: I think this is a sector which is going to grow. I think more and more men are interested in their appearance. You see the cosmetic industry growing. Fashion, of course, is growing. If you look at red carpets, the Oscars, you see more and more men wearing not only jewelry, but pearl necklaces. That has happened in the last year, year-and-a-half. It’s always the classic white pearl necklace, because I think this is the contrast they’re looking for in terms of cultural significance. I don’t know if it’s going to progress into different kinds of pearl jewelry, but there is a lot of interest from men now to extend their style into jewelry, and cufflinks are quite a big part of how they dress formally, although not in their everyday lives necessarily.
Sharon: I have been told that men collect cufflinks. My husband doesn’t wear them, but I have been told that men do collect cufflinks. You’re very international. Is it that your dad is Greek and your mom is Greek and French?
Melanie: My dad is Greek. My mother is French. Now I am married to a German, hence living in Hamburg, and my brother lives in Switzerland. We’re still European, so I guess not that international, but it’s interesting to grow up with two languages. It’s the same as my kids now, growing up with two languages and just being open to the world.
Sharon: So, you learned French before, and then you learned English just by going to school and learning?
Melanie: Yeah, English is the first international language taught in Greece. From the age of seven, I learned Greek at school. Then when I was able to study in Edinburgh, that’s where I really learned English in the sense of everyday life. Now I’ve learned German, so I speak my fourth language.
Sharon: Wow! How does it happen that you have a London office? You live in Hamburg, but you have a London office. How did that come about?
Melanie: That is because after I finished my studies at the Royal College of Art, I stayed there. I had my office and my business, and when we moved to Hamburg seven years ago, I decided to keep that. Moving to Hamburg was for personal reasons, and it made sense to keep all my contacts and my clients and my business where it started. Of course, there was Covid in between, but now what I’m trying to do is grow the German part. The business in London is still there. I have someone working for me there.
I’m able to fly quite often now after Covid, and now I’m in the process of looking at what kind of fairs I can do here in Hamburg. Of course, in Munich, there is a very big jewelry scene. I was at Munich Jewelry Week last week. I think there’s a lot to do in Germany because there’s a lot of jewelry manufacturing, and there are a lot of jewelry artists and practitioners. I haven’t had the opportunity to connect with this part of my life here in Hamburg yet, but I’m in the process of doing that now. It’s exciting.
Sharon: Were you unusual in that you opened your business right after school, right after the Royal College of Art?
Melanie: I don’t think so. That’s a positive and a negative, but if you finish a college like Central Saint Martins or the Royal College of Art, you are expected to be a designer or to start your own practice. I say it’s a negative because a lot of times you’re not encouraged or not given the possibility to work for other people so you really learn more about how a business is run with all the steps. You’re supposed to start everything from scratch by yourself. Obviously, this has its own challenges, but I think lots of us started our own brands straight after. Of course, over time, some people do end up working for others, and some people continue to do their own practice like I have.
Sharon: That’s very hard. Did you have business classes in school?
Melanie: No.
Sharon: No, nothing.
Melanie: After all the possible mistakes—and I’m going to make more—I’ve come to a conclusion that I’ve learned a lot from all the mistakes, and I’ve figured out how to do things my way. If I could go back, I think I would work longer for someone else, simply because it’s an invaluable experience. Once you’ve started your own company, it’s hard to then work for someone else, but it is what it is. I feel like I can stand on my own two feet now.
Sharon: Well, 10 years is a long time. It’s a short time and it’s a long time.
Melanie: Hopefully it’s a short time for me.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate it.
Melanie: It’s been a pleasure talking with you Sharon. Thank you.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
| |||
| 14 Jun 2022 | Episode 159 Part 1: Gold in America: A New Exhibit Will Make You Question Your Beliefs About Gold | 00:24:37 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Stuart Gordon
John Stuart Gordon is the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. He grew up among the redwoods of Northern California before venturing East and receiving a B.A. from Vassar College, an M.A. from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, and a PH.D. from Boston University. He works on all aspects of American design and has written on glass, American modernism, studio ceramics, and postmodernism. His exhibition projects have explored postwar American architecture, turned wood, and industrial design. In addition, he supervises the Furniture Study, the Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript:
Perhaps more than any other metal or gem, gold brings out strong reactions in people (and has for all of recorded history). That’s what curator John Stuart Gordon wanted to explore with “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power,” a featured exhibition now on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why people have always been enchanted by gold; what he discovered while creating the exhibit; and why curation is more that just selecting a group of objects. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. The Yale University Museum and Gallery is the oldest art museum in the western hemisphere associated with the university. John is going to be telling us today about one of the gallery’s current feature exhibitions, “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power.” We’ll hear all about the exhibit and John’s journey today. John, welcome to the program.
John: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I apologize; my endowed title is a total mouthful.
Sharon: No, no. Who is Benjamin Attmore Hewitt?
John: Benjamin Attmore Hewitt was a clinical psychologist who helped bring the idea of statistical study to psychology, and he was also a collector. He was an avid collector of federal furniture, and he was associated with the art gallery. He, in the early 80s, was a guest curator on an exhibit on card tables that we did called “The Work of Many Hands.” In the incredibly small world department, I’m joining you from my living room, where if I turn and look out my window, I’m looking at the house that he used to live in across the street from me.
Sharon: Wow! Was that an old house that was built on federal plans or is it a modern house, the one he built or that that he has?
John: It is a beautiful, Georgian-style house. It’s quite gorgeous, and you can imagine it was perfect for his federal period collection.
Sharon: It sounds gorgeous.
John: It’s just one of those small-world things, right? I ended up moving across the street from person who endowed my job.
Sharon: Sounds gorgeous. So, tell us about your career path. Tell us how you ended up at the Yale University Art Gallery.
John: Yes, it was a dream job for me. I grew up in San Francisco. I grew up in a household that loved art, so I’m one of those lucky people that grew up from childhood thinking art isn’t scary; art isn’t strange; art is something to be enjoyed. I always knew I wanted to be in the art world somehow. I went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie for the history of art program. When I graduated, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but my first job was at Christie’s auction house, and that was an amazing experience. You see everything when you work in an auction house. It’s the fabulous things that get the headlines in the paper, but it’s everything else that gives you an education. That was an incredible training for my eye.
I’m a slow thinker. I like taking my time. I like spending time with objects. The constant hustle and bustle of the auction world was a little too much for me, so I went to grad school. I went to the Bard Graduate Center in New York and got my master’s. Then I had an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my colleagues there, the curator Amelia Peck, once said that if you would like a job at one of the great collections, you need a Ph.D. So, I said, “O.K.,” and I went to Boston University for a Ph.D. in American Studies.
The whole time I was thinking, “I want to get a Ph.D. so I can get a job at a place like the Yale University Art Gallery,” because its collection is legendary. It was the collection that so many of my professors used when they were teaching their survey courses. It was a collection I knew, and it was my aspirational job. One day while I was studying for my orals, my college professor called me and said, “A job has opened up at the Yale University Art Gallery. You need to apply for it.” Being a grad student, I was like, “Oh, I’m a little busy right now. Maybe next week,” and she was like, “John, don’t be stupid. These jobs don’t come up very often. You really need to apply.” I was very lucky. I got the job. That was 15 years ago, and I have been there ever since.
The collection is extraordinary. The museum was founded in 1832. It was one of the oldest museums in the country. Its American decorative arts collection formed very early on but really got going in 1930, so it’s also a very old collection. In the 1970s, one of the former curators, Charles Montgomery, felt it needed to go clear up to the present. So, our collection really spans centuries, and with that kind of span, you never get tired.
Sharon: It does. I was looking at your exhibit of gold online and I’m going, “Oh my god, this is going back.” I was looking at the gold collar you have and I thought, “This is really old.” What was that? The 3rd or 5th century or something like that? I can’t even remember.
John: The museum’s collections are encyclopedic. It goes from ancient Babylon up to the present day. Luckily, my slice of it is just the American, which is enough of a handful. There are two of us in our department, Patricia Kane and myself, and between the two of us, we need to cover pre-contact to the present in every medium. So, it’s enough to make your head spin some days.
Sharon: What is it about the decorative arts that attracted you as opposed to another area of history that you could also go into museums for?
John: That’s a great question. I loved the idea that decorative arts are like a lens into our world. Everything we make and own is a lens, but decorative arts have a way of telling you stories about the way we used the technology that went into making them, what a particular culture or a time period found important, as you make objects to fulfill needs and to fulfill aspirations. I loved the idea that you could take anything from a necklace or a teapot or a chair, and if you look at it enough ways, you could know a lot about the goals and dreams and technologies and resources of a given time period. I loved that idea, reverse-engineering culture through objects.
Sharon: That’s interesting, yes. How did the gold exhibit come about? Was that something you and Patricia had been thinking about, or was that a directive from on high? How did that come about?
John: The gold exhibition came about because of the pandemic, to be completely honest. Two years ago, the museum closed down, like many museums did at the beginning of the pandemic, and our exhibition calendar went out the window. Loans were cancelled, exhibitions were cancelled, and the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, Stephanie Wiles, put out a call for in-house exhibitions, exhibitions we could work on in our spare time. We didn’t know how long this was going to last. We thought we were going be home for a few weeks, and she wanted exhibitions that would be easy to slot into the calendar when the museum reopened and that would really shine a light on our collections, because those would be easier for the curators to research.
When I arrived at Yale in 2006, sitting on the shelf above my desk was a slim, little catalogue to an exhibition called “American Gold” that was done in 1963. I loved that little catalogue. I read it many times. I loved the material. Much of the material was drawn from Yale’s collections because Yale has one of the strongest collections of early American gold. I thought, “Someday, maybe I’ll revisit this.” It seemed amazing that no one had revisited this idea of gold since the 1960s because so much had changed about we think about the world, how we think about objects, what kind of theoretical models we use, and I thought I would do that exhibition at some point in the distant future. Then when our director said, “Are there are any ideas out there?” I said, “O.K., maybe I could do this now.” I suggested it, and it was a real treat. So, it was something that grew out of a spontaneous need but became a wonderful, wonderful research project.
Sharon: So, the objects for the most part are taken from your collection as opposed to loans, O.K. Tell us about the exhibit “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power.” Tell us more about the whole exhibit. What do you want people to learn from it?
John: I was fascinated by the idea that gold is so compelling and so entrancing. There is something about this material that has been fascinating to humans for millennia. You think about the Egyptian pharaohs with their coffins covered in gold. Gold is the reason for so many wars and invasions, and all this is a sign of status. What is it about this material that has so much weight? I started talking to many of my colleagues, asking about the gold in their department, and we realized we could do a global show. It could be gigantic. It started getting away from me, and I realized, “O.K., let’s just focus on one very narrow portion of this global story. We’ll just focus on colonial American experience.”
As I started looking at those objects, I was struck by something rather uncanny. In the history of decorative arts, most objects are anonymous. We don’t know who made them. We don’t know who owned them. We don’t know how they traveled through time. With metalwork, we do tend to know a bit more because there are makers’ marks. There’s a whole history of guild systems that are looking at the purity of metals, and with gold we know even more information. I think probably more than almost any other material, we know who made gold objects and who owned them, and it’s because they often are inscribed or engraved somehow, or family histories come down with them. I found that so fascinating. That became the structure for the show, really thinking about these objects that have histories and why they were owned, why they were made, why they were cherished, thinking about this important material and how it intersects with human life over the span of a few centuries. That’s what I want visitors to take away.
Most people think—well, we can actually do this right now. Sharon and everyone listening, just to yourself, think of three words that come to mind immediately when I say gold. Free associate. What are those words that come to mind? Sharon, I’m going to put you on the spot. What three words come to mind?
Sharon: It’s like a blue elephant. What do I think? Shiny, valuable and decorative. In terms of jewelry, I think decorative. Those are the words that come to mind.
John: Shiny, valuable, decorative. I asked this question of a lot of people. Everyone I met for a while got that question, and value came up a lot. Then there were a lot of judgment terms, things like beauty or tacky. They were either positive or negative terms. People have an emotional, visceral reaction to gold. What I want people who visit the show to do is to move beyond those initial associations. We’re drawn to it because it’s valuable and we think it’s beautiful, or we’re skeptical of it because we think it might be gaudy. But I want them to really look at the objects and learn why someone might own something or why someone might want an object made out of this material. It’s to move beyond those initial words into words about legacy and heritage or patriotism or pride, to get to that second layer. It’s to let people know O.K., I’m going to think twice about what a gold ring might symbolize because I’ve looked at a gold ring that was all about mourning and commemorating the dead, or I’ve looked at something like a gold spoon that seemed a little flashy, but we know it was made by a Huguenot craftsman escaping religious persecution in New York, yet it was owned by someone who made their money selling slaves. Ideas of freedom and persecution are wrapped up in this material. There are so many stories that, once you start asking the objects, the stories come back to you in a way that I hope makes people pause when they leave the museum and see something else in their life. “Oh, that’s an interesting idea.”
Sharon: I think what strikes me is the fact that when you’re talking about gold, artistry, memory and power over the years, the wars that have been fought, I think of the Aztecs and Incas, where it was so cherished. We talked a little about this. Material culture, material studies. You’ll have to explain the difference. That sounds like something I didn’t grow up hearing. Maybe because you’re in that world, it’s something you’ve heard about for a long time. But what is material culture and material studies, and how does it relate to this?
John: That is such a big question. I’ll try to do some honor to it. The idea of material culture as an academic field—and I’m sorry; I have to put on my dorky academic for a second—but the idea of material culture really came out in the 1960s and 1970s with this larger idea of a new history, a way of looking at the reinterpretation of historical sources, historical stories, questioning who has the right to tell history. It was a way to get away from just looking at the histories of wars and rulers, documenting dead white men written by more dead white men. Material culture is a way of looking holistically at the objects that are produced by a civilization and thinking about the everyday person or the person not on the throne. What can be learned from the things that are not just the dates of rules and wars? That field really transformed art history, history, American studies, anthropology, archaeology. It opened up various fields of study so that you could write an entire book about the development of the Coke bottle and have a valid historical discussion about everyday objects.
What’s been fascinating—I grew up in this world. To me, material culture is my language. I grew up being taught by people who were on the front wave of this, so I’m totally indoctrinated. In recent years, I’ve seen a subfield emerge just called material studies. It makes chuckle a bit because it’s like material culture with the culture taken out, which is probably not true, but it’s really just going into the actual “thinginess” of objects: thinking about the marble that a statue was carved from, or thinking about the wood used to make a chair and diving deep into this elemental level of what the material of our world is, where it comes from and what stories it tells.
In terms of gold, your mentioning the Incas is, I think, a rather important reference, because where was the gold coming from? If we take an Inca material studies approach to this, we think about how, for many years, the Mediterranean in Europe, they weren’t reusing and melting down and recycling the gold that was coming out of a very limited number of mines. Then suddenly, the Spanish discover or stumble across the New World, and they see these cities with temples filled with gold and palaces filled with gold, and they start looting them. As the conquistadors are conquering Central and South America, they’re stripping the gold out, and then that gold is being melted down and being sent back to Europe. What does it mean to have this material that’s so inherently fraught with conflict?
What does it mean for a silversmith in Boston in the 18th century? He’s sitting on the edge of an empire working a small amount of gold that’s incredibly valuable because he has to get it from London. He’s aware that the Spanish have all this access to gold through the New World, and it’s circulating around him. Then how does all of this change when gold is discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California in 1849, and suddenly there’s a whole new and incredibly large source of gold? It’s augmented by further strikes in Colorado, and the West begins creating more gold. Think about this material, how its rarity is tied to conquest and imperial control.
There are some scientists who have been thinking, “Can we do tests on material to find out if there are little isotopes in the metal that can tell you whether the ring you’re wearing today is gold that was from Northern California or from Afghanistan? Can we begin to map out the world and map out trade routes all based on scientific inquiry and matching scientific testing with archival research?” Your very quick dive into material culture versus material studies, it’s endlessly fascinating.
Sharon: I know people get their doctorates in material studies around things like that. I should have asked you this at the beginning. Did you consider yourself an artist when you grew up with all this art? Before art history, were you creative? Were your parents in the creative end of the arts or were they teaching?
John: Being an artist was option number one, and I pursued that. Making art was a really important part of my childhood and developing a sense of identity. Then I learned about art history. I just loved art history, and I had to make that decision: would I go to art school or would I go to a liberal arts college? For me, art history won. I loved being able to parse out these stories and to look at objects and paintings and sculptures and think about all the different references. But having that history of making, I think, is very important. I have a lot of empathy for the skill and the creativity that goes into making. | |||
| 11 Feb 2022 | Episode 145 Part 2: Experiencing Jewelry as Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston | 00:20:50 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Cindi Strauss Cindi Strauss is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She received her BA with honors in art history from Hamilton College and her MA in the history of decorative arts from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. At the MFAH, Cindi is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft. Jewelry is a mainstay of Cindi’s curatorial practice. In addition to regularly curating permanent collection installations that include contemporary jewelry from the museum’s collection, she has organized several exhibitions that are either devoted solely to jewelry or include jewelry in them. These include: Beyond Ornament: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2003–2004); Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007); Liquid Lines: Exploring the Language of Contemporary Metal (2011); and Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection (2014). Cindi has authored or contributed to catalogs and journals on jewelry, craft, and design topics, and has been a frequent lecturer at museums nationwide. She also serves on the editorial advisory committee for Metalsmith magazine. Additional Resources: Transcript: For the uninitiated, jewelry, art and craft may seem like three distinct (and perhaps, unfortunately, hierarchical) entities. But Cindi Strauss, Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, wants us to break down these barriers and appreciate the value of jewelry as an art in its own right. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she helped MFA Houston establish one of the largest art jewelry collections at an American museum; why jewelry artists should be proud of their studio craft roots; and why wearability shouldn’t be the first consideration when looking at art jewelry. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, our guest is Cindi Strauss, the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Welcome back.
I remember having a conversation where I did not know what you meant—I know now, but an encyclopedic museum. What does that mean?
Cindi: It means a museum that collects and displays art from antiquities to the present and covers—I’m not going to say all, because one could never say all as in completely—but covers very thoroughly all world cultures. We collect across the board in terms of types of art making, so the MFA in Houston is the only encyclopedic institution in our region. We’re in the south-central region, if you will, so we were founded on the idea of the big institutions that were founded in the late 19th century in the Northeast and Midwest. That was the ambition.
Sharon: Well, it’s Houston. I presume it’s the biggest. You only go for big, I presume. You’re big into crafts in terms of studying. Where do they fit into all of this? Where do you cross the line from jewelry to craft? Is jewelry is a craft? How do you see it?
Cindi: I separate design from craft—these are generalizations, but you can separate the handmade from the machine-made or the industrial-made. There are certainly design objects that have the hand as part of them. I think art jewelry is absolutely part of the studio craft movement. It comes out of that history. It’s a vital history and has to do with material usage and development, handcraft skills, making things on a one-off basis, making one-of-a-kind pieces. Today, of course, we have this wonderful hybridization, which allows for a type of creativity that is unbridled. So, you will have things that have industrially based materials, or people making works in limited editions, but at its heart, it comes out of a studio practice and a studio history.
All of it, as far as we consider it at the MFAH, is art. It’s art in the same way that photography is, that painting is. It’s exhibited on an equal plane, and you see that throughout our new building. There are departments, specific galleries on the second floor. I have both craft and design galleries, but the third floor is completely interdisciplinary, so you get to make those connections and see the dialogue between jewelry and anything else, for that matter. At our institution, it’s a wonderful way to have your cake and eat it too, because the possibilities are endless.
One of the things I have been fortunate with, both with art jewelry and our ceramics collection—because they have both been a part of the institution now for almost 20 years—is that I’m not on a steep learning curve. My colleagues aren’t on a steep learning curve of understanding the tenets of the field and how jewelry connects and crosses over; it just is. That is an amazing place to be.
Sharon: As you were saying that, I was thinking about how you cover this in your mind, let alone physically. There are so many areas you’re talking about.
Cindi: Yeah, and it’s only one part of what I do, because I am responsible, basically, for 20th and 21st-century decorative arts, craft and design. Now, I’m really lucky that we have an endowed position for a craft curator, who was formerly Anna Walker. Joining us at the end of this month is Elizabeth Essner, who may be familiar to some of your audience because she has written on art jewelry and worked on art jewelry exhibitions. That’s terrific, because she is completely dedicated to that material.
There’s another curator in my department; we split the late 19th century and early 20th century material based on our own interests and expertise. She otherwise does the historical material, but she does Art Nouveau; I do Art Deco. She does Arts and Crafts; I do Reform. That 20 or 30-year period when there are so many styles of movements happening, we share that. We have a terrific curatorial assistant who helps, but I love the fact that I don’t work on only one media group or timeframe or one geographic area. It allows me to see more broadly. It allows me to make a lot of connections that I wouldn’t be able to make if I my job description were more solid. Frankly, you never get bored.
Sharon: It sounds very exciting.
Cindi: There’s always more to learn and see.
Sharon: It sounds thrilling to cover all that. I’m wondering; it seems that some art jewelers or any kind of jeweler, like studios jewelers, they might think “craftsperson” or “that’s craft” is a little pejorative.
Cindi: I don’t think so anymore. That was something that—from my perspective and my personal opinion—throughout the birth and few decades of the studio craft movement, it was held in high esteem. There were galleries that showed important painters and sculptors next to ceramists and jewelers and such. In the 80s, when the art world changed dramatically, the go-go 80s, a lot of these divisions started happening. That was when the big “Is craft art?” question came. It did such damage to the field because artists were demoralized; collectors started getting defensive. Looking back on it, it’s clear those questions and divisions did damage to the field.
By the time I was in graduate school in the early 90s, there was a pause on that silo-ing and splitting. So, I did not, from a graduate school perspective, learn any of those divisions. It was all decorative arts. Craft and design was all one field, but I think, certainly in the past 10 years, if not longer than that, that division, that question has been put to rest. I think from an academic perspective, from an artistic perspective, I hope from a collecting perspective, that that has all been pushed behind. It is just art.
If you look at what’s happening with major galleries, they’re showing ceramics; they’re showing art jewelry along with their contemporary art program. In a way, that harkens back to the 70s and 60s. The market prices haven’t quite caught up to where they should be based on the artistic quality of a craft artist. That will, I think, take a little more time. But every other metric, looking at reviews, art magazines, exhibitions, the big galleries that get a lot of press, they’re showing fiber; they’re showing ceramics. They’re even starting to show jewelry. So, I hope everything has moved so far that that question gets put to bed.
I’ve always felt that, in this case, art jewelry should be incredibly proud of its history and its field individually and not spend all of its time worrying about what the larger art world thinks. The larger art world is interested and that’s terrific, but that should not be its only goal. I think it is important and worthy as an artistic movement, statement, something to collect, etc. on its own. A lot of the encyclopedic museums that have been showing and acquiring major collections of art jewelry are validating that, beyond the more specific museums like the Museum of Arts and Designs, formerly the American Craft Museum, or Racine or the Fuller Craft Museum, or a number of different institutions around the country that collect a lot of craft, or museums like the Metal Museum that focuses just on jewelry. That’s an important step forward, also.
Sharon: You’re certainly an articulate champion of art jewelry being not just jewelry, but a medium. So, the Fuller and the Racine are where?
Cindi: The Fuller is in Massachusetts outside of Boston. I can’t remember its exact town. The Racine is in Racine, Wisconsin. The Metal Museum is in Memphis, Tennessee. Then there are a variety of other museums that have shown art jewelry through individual artists’ exhibitions. I’m thinking about San Francisco Craft and Design. It used to be Craft and Design, but now I think it’s called the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum. We, of course, have the MFA Boston. You have Minneapolis, LACMA, Dallas Museum of Art, all with significant jewelry collections in terms of encyclopedic institutions, and there are other institutions that have core holdings.
Sharon: You touched on this, but the question always is: is art jewelry art? It’s always a debate when you’re trying to educate or explain it to somebody.
Cindi: I think that’s the case because art jewelry is wearable, and people aren’t used to thinking that something that is wearable is also art in the way you would display it, whether that’s hanging on a wall or displaying it in glass. That is a personal divide; it’s something people individually have to work through.
There’s no question that it’s art, but I have noticed, in my experience, when people see art jewelry in the museum context, especially women, one of the first things they’re thinking about is, “Would I wear this?” Once you can get people to remove that question from a first, second or third consideration, they can look and experience the work as a piece of art. It’s great for them to think about whether they could wear it, because if you remove the taste question, they’re really looking to see how this piece of jewelry would interact with their body, which is so central to a lot of work in art jewelry. You want that to happen.
What you want to get away from, in terms of experiencing it as a work of art, is taste. Is this my taste? Would I wear this? When we have docent tours or any kind of educational program that centers around art jewelry, this is one of the things we stress. You can, of course, like something or not like that. That’s with everything in a museum and everything in the world, but try to look at a piece of art jewelry without that consideration being foremost. Then work through it as a piece of art being displayed and then, yes, think about how it will work on your body.
Sharon: That’s interesting. My first thing is to look. It’s jewelry. I’ll go for big pieces or big statement pieces. Some of it is too much, but if you do back off, you can look at it as art. Do you think the art world looks at art jewelry as art or thinks about it becoming art, or do you think it’s not going to happen?
Cindi: I think when people encounter it, every collector out there can talk about experiences when they’ve been at an art fair or an opening or a party where they’re wearing a piece of art jewelry and it gets attention. People have questions and they want to know about it. That is an introduction to this field, and it inspires a lot of people to learn about it and collect it. Whether it’s a gallery setting, or a museum, or a booth at an art fair, or an exhibition in space of any type, the key is that people are going to react to it. Whether they like it or not, whether their interest lasts beyond that initial visit, they are being presented with the fact that this is an art form. That does a lot.
I think that’s, in part, why as a field we are always striving to have more opportunities for people to see art jewelry and connect with it, because that will inspire that interest. Everything has its ups and downs in terms of viewing possibilities, the market, etc., but my personal experience, again, is that people are really intrigued by it when they see it. Even if they don’t explore anything further after that initial encounter, it’s still lodged in their memory. You never know when that comes back and becomes a touchstone.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I’d like to ask you a lot more questions. You gave me a lot of food for thought. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us, Cindi. It’s been educational and illuminating, and I’ll have to mull it over.
Cindi: Thank you, Sharon, I appreciate the opportunity. It’s been great fun.
Sharon: Thank you.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| 30 May 2022 | Episode 158 Part 1: Choosing the Best Pieces for Your Jewelry Wardrobe | 00:30:31 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Nan Summerfield Nan Summerfield joined Doyle New York as Director of the California office in Beverly Hills in 2014. Ms. Summerfield, a GIA Graduate Gemologist, has been in the appraisal and auction business for forty-two years. Nan began her career at the Gemological Institute of America in New York as a Staff Gemologist in the GIA Laboratory and later as an Instructor in the Education Division, before spending thirteen years as a Vice President in the Jewelry Department at Sotheby’s, first in New York, then in Los Angeles. Nan continued to develop and direct Sotheby’s jewelry auctions in Beverly Hills for eight years. For twenty years before joining Doyle, she owned Summerfield’s, a successful firm in Beverly Hills that specialized in buying and selling estate jewelry. Additional Resources: Transcript: After more than four decades working in estate jewelry as a dealer and at auction houses, Nan Summerfield knows a thing or two about how to select the best jewelry. Now Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle, Nan joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the pros and cons of purchasing jewels from the major houses versus lesser-known jewelers; why the auction industry began to court private buyers in the 80s; and when it makes sense to take a risk on an unsigned piece. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Nan Summerfield, Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle. Nan has extensive jewelry experience, having worked with several major auction houses. In addition, for 20 years she had her business as a jewelry dealer specializing in estate jewelry. We’ll hear all about her own jewelry journey today. Nan, welcome to the program. Nan: Thank you, Sharon. It’s great to be here. Sharon: So glad to connect with you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. You’ve covered a lot of ground. Were you a child when you started liking it? How did you get into the jewelry profession? Nan: I think I came out of the womb loving jewelry. When I was little girl, my favorite thing was to go through my grandmother’s jewelry and try things on and look at them. I was that child that when I would be out with my parents at a mall, I’d see a jewelry store and I’d put my fingerprints and nose print on the windows to look at all the jewelry. I think I was just born loving jewelry from the day I came out of the womb. Sharon: Did you know you were going to go into jewelry? Did you think about making it? Did you want to sell it? Did you just want to be around it? To have it? Nan: It’s so funny. I knew I always loved it, but I came back from a six-month backpack trip in Europe, and I had been invited to a Fourth of July party up at Lake Tahoe, where I was from. At that party, I was playing with a necklace my brother had given me with a small gold coin on it. This man that was at the party looked at me, and he said, “I sell jewelry like that. How would you like to work for me?” I thought, “Oh, my god, I love jewelry. I could actually work in it?” That’s how it all started. He turned out to be kind of flaky, but I credit him with giving me the introduction into the business. Sharon: Flakey is a word. It’s serendipitous. Nan: It certainly is. He veered off in other directions shortly after I got my introduction into the business, but I credit him with opening that door for me. Sharon: From there, how did you segue into auction houses? Nan: First, I had my own business for about a year. Through some people I met, I found out about the GIA. I applied and went to the GIA. When I finished, they offered me a job working for them in New York or Los Angeles. I thought, “Gosh, I’ve never been to New York. I’ve read all these books, like ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘The Great Gatsby.’” It sounded so romantic to me. I thought if I didn’t have a job, I wouldn’t move to New York, but if I had a job, why not? So, I moved back to New York, and I worked in the lab doing certificates on diamonds for a year. Then they asked me to be a permanent instructor in the education department. I switched over to education and taught the residence program, the one-week classes. I feel very lucky because these strange coincidences happened that have led me to where I am. I had a colleague I was working with. He was a friend of mine, and he had taught the new head of the jewelry department all of these things. He had taken a one-week course with him at the GIA. He really liked my friend, and he offered him a job to work for Sotheby’s. But my friend had fallen in love with this girl in California, so he was moving out there. He said to this gentleman, “I can’t, but I’ve got the girl for you,” and he gave him my name and number. Then it all started. I went for an interview, they hired me, and I ended up spending eight years in New York with Sotheby’s. Then I wanted to move back to California, so things finally worked out well. Part of what was happening at Sotheby’s at that time was that Al Taubman had hired Bain & Company, the consulting firm, to look at the jewelry department worldwide and see how they could develop it and bring in more private clients. That was very interesting point in auction, too, the shift from dealers to embracing private clients. One of the recommendations Bain had come back with was that we start doing jewelry auctions in California again. We had them before, in 1981. In the crash of 1981, they closed down the big gallery we had. Anyway, I spent eight years with Sotheby’s in California. It was a wonderful opportunity, and I had very generous people that I worked with. One of the things I found was that when I worked at the GIA, I had a number of friends that went out and worked for estate jewelry dealers in the business, but they were very close to the vest about the information they had. They didn’t share why something was special, what made it important, what to look for. I was extremely fortunate because the other specialists that I worked with in New York were very generous with their knowledge. This is when the first reproductions of Deco and Edwardian were coming out, and they taught me so much. I’ll be forever grateful for them being so generous with their knowledge. That’s a long answer to your question. Sharon: It’s an interesting answer. I’m still on the fact that you had your own business for a year before you started doing anything else. What were you doing? Were you buying and selling jewelry? Nan: Yeah, exactly. The gentleman that first brought me into the business, he took me to a sort of buying center of jewelry, a building that had multiple levels and booths of people selling. I would go down and choose the things I liked and then bring them back to Tahoe, and then I would sell them to my friends. Sharon: Wow! When you were talking about the auction houses, I never thought about the fact that some are selling to dealers, and some are more about developing private clients. Can you talk a little bit about that? Nan: Yes, absolutely. Initially, when I first started there, it was almost entirely dealers that bought at auction. Another thing I look back on now is that when we would have viewings and dealers would be looking at the jewelry, it didn’t matter to them if something was Cartier or Van Cleef or Bulgari or any of the big names. It was, “Oh, that’s nice,” but they never paid a premium or saw it in a substantially more valuable way. That’s something that has dramatically changed from when I started to where I am today. As you know, anything that’s signed by the big houses is going to bring a big premium today. During that period we had some private buyers, if I remember, but it was almost entirely dealers that were the buyers, and as I said, that started shifting. I think Al Taubman purchased Sotheby’s in the mid-80s, and that’s when he implemented these changes to make jewelry in the auction world more accessible to private clients and to demystify it. It was an interesting period. It was very transitional and very much a growth period in the auction world. Sharon: Was Al Taubman a catalyst in terms of moving everybody to look at signed pieces? Did he care? What happened there? Nan: No, that really wasn’t his thing. He was all about getting the auction world out to private clients worldwide, which is where we are today. It’s an enormous part of the auction market and the competition that we get. He was not focused on signed jewelry per se. I think that’s something that happened—really, I started seeing that more in the 90s and going into the 2000s. It’s been an upward trajectory since then with the really good names and the values they’re bringing. Sharon: What do you think changed? What propelled that? What are your thoughts about why names are more important today? Nan: I think it’s a combination of things. The really fine ones, Cartier, Van Cleef, Bulgari, Buccellati, David Webb, all of those have a level of quality you don’t always see in other jewelry companies. I will know, for example, if I get a pair of earrings that are Van Cleef, they will always sit beautifully on the ear. A lot of jewelry that’s not signed may look good, but it won’t lay as well on a woman when she wears it, whether it’s earrings or a necklace. It's that thoughtful design in the jewelry. What I really think happened was that over the last couple of decades, we’ve had a real push toward brand recognition. I even think back to Calvin Klein and “Back to the Future.” There was that scene where she said, “Oh, your name’s Calvin,” because he had underpants that had a Calvin logo on them. I think that’s when it really started, and it’s not just in jewelry that name brands have become important. It’s also in purses. You look at what Chanel purses sell for, or Birkin bags and how desirable they are. I think we’re much more focused on that these days, and that’s happened over the last couple of decades. With jewelry, there’s also the estate jewelry. When I first got into the business, it was kind of up-and-coming. I think there are two jewelers that are credited with making estate jewelry desirable, and that would be Fred Leighton in New York and Frances Klein in Beverly Hills. Both of those people have died, but they were really the early ones that brought estate jewelry into the realm of being desirable and not old-fashioned or your grandmother’s jewelry that you had to remake before you could wear it. You didn’t want to be dated in our parents’ day and age. Both of them also, I think, have a lot of signed jewelry. It’s part of educating the clients. As more people learned about jewelry and learned about how fine a piece of Cartier jewelry is when compared with one that’s not signed or made by an inferior jeweler, the appreciation for it and the desire for the signed pieces have grown exponentially. Sharon: That’s interesting. I think I’ll pay more attention to how a piece lays. There are lot of times when I’m on Instagram and a post will say, “I think it’s a Mauboussin. It’s not signed, but I can tell by the way it’s done.” Do you think there’s an amount of unsigned stuff out there that’s quality? Nan: What I will say is that over the years, I’ve had pieces of jewelry come through my hands from clients that were not signed but had been purchased from the house, whether it was a Cartier or Tiffany or Van Cleef. With almost every jeweler, at some point in time, there have been pieces that went through that were not signed. But I always encourage my clients, especially when they purchased it from that house, to go back and ask them to sign it. In general, most pieces are signed, but one of the things we have to be careful of these days is that as the value has gone up on the signed pieces, so have the fake signatures. For example, I remember this beautiful Art Deco bracelet that passed through my hands when I had my own business. It came back a year or two later signed Cartier, and I 100% know that bracelet was not signed Cartier when I saw it the first time. That’s one of the things we have to be very, very careful about. A lot of the big jewelry houses will do certificates of authentication that you have to pay for. That’s become something that is more desirable as well, because nobody wants to buy a fake or something that’s signed that’s not correct. Sharon: That’s upsetting, yes. In my early days I bought a beautiful tennis bracelet. I still love it. The cut of the stones is a little different; some were different shapes. I was told it was Art Deco, and I know that’s what they thought I wanted to hear. When I brought it in later to an appraiser, he said they never cut the stones this way until the 80s. So, I thought, “O.K.” Nan: I know. What I will say, to insert this on the signed pieces conversation, is that there are certain jewelers that don’t always have their pieces signed. One of them is Paul Flato, who was a wonderful designer who was big with the Hollywood crowd. Verdura actually worked with Paul Flato before he went off on his own. There are a lot of really wonderful Flato pieces out there that are not signed. In those situations, we try to check. For example, I’ll check with the woman who wrote the book on Paul Flato. I’ll send her a picture and say, “Do you think this is Flato?” They have references to the original drawings that Flato made on the pieces. So, there are times that happens. You can have a piece that’s by an important jeweler that is not signed. Sharon: Are there things in the jewelry you recognize that make you think it’s a Flato, even though it’s not signed? Nan: Yeah, Flato was a wonderful designer; he made fabulous things. He had certain types of things you’ll see a lot. He did things that were made with leaves that have wonderful curling edges, or very whimsical things he would do. He made a lot of custom things for people that had a great sense of humor to them. Probably the best place to get a sense of what his designs look like is the Paul Flato book that Elizabeth Irvine Bray wrote, so I would suggest that. He has a very distinctive style. His things were beautifully made and really dramatic. Years ago, I owned a big brooch and earrings that belonged to Ginger Rogers that were so wonderful. He was a creative genius. Sharon: That’s interesting, because the first thing I thought of when you said Flato was the leaf and very large, over-the-top things. Just gorgeous, but it was the leaf that came to mind first, as when you said Calvin Klein, the first thing that came to mind was Brooke Shields. Nan: Exactly, the beginning of the brand. I want my brand. Sharon: Exactly, yeah. I’m dating myself, but O.K. I’m impressed that you left the auction house when you had been there a long time, seven or eight years, and that you went out on your own. To me, it’s such a huge step. What was the catalyst for that? Nan: I actually ended up spending 13 years with Sotheby’s, five with them in New York and eight in Beverly Hills. I really felt like if I was going to go out and open my own business, I needed to do it when I was still young enough and had the energy to do it. I was very fortunate when I went on my own that I had so many clients that came and brought me jewelry they wanted to sell. They came to me for help buying things or finding things they wanted to build in their personal jewelry wardrobe. It was a really wonderful time. Also timing-wise, it was a fantastic time to enter as a dealer into the business. The big shows, the Las Vegas Show, which is typically in the beginning of June, end of May, and then the big Original Miami Beach Antique Jewelry and Watch Show, which is normally held in late January or early February every year, those two shows were fantastic in the day. They changed a lot, but I can remember when I first started doing the shows, there would be two days of setup at the Miami Show, and we would go and walk the show. We wouldn’t even set up our jewelry because on the setup days, a lot of the dealers would go and buy from each other. They would find out what new things had come in, and they would scoop them up before the private clients came in for the show. We would do that, canvas the whole show and buy these wonderful things. There were things where people didn’t understand how great they were, how important they were. They didn’t price them at their value. We would buy and sell so much on the setup days. Before setup even ended, we would make our expenses, our airfare, our hotel, our booth rent, the showcases, the safe. Everything would be paid for, and then we’d start the show, and we’d be selling more and meeting more clients. It was a really wonderful time to go off on my own. It was fantastic. Sharon: Is it because of the brands, whether it’s Cartier or whatever, that the dealers weren’t educated, that they just didn’t know? They didn’t have your background, so they didn’t recognize things? How did you get these things? How could you identify them when they didn’t know? Nan: I think part of it is that I was so fortunate to have seen so much jewelry over those 13 years at Sotheby’s and to have worked with people that were very generous with their knowledge. I can remember going to a show up in Hillsboro, which is south of San Francisco. They used to do that show three times a year. I remember I was up there with a colleague at the time, and I looked down into this tiny, little case at their booth. They had a lot of other things, but there was a Buccellati bracelet in there. I remember asking, “How much do you want for the bracelet?” They didn’t even know it was Buccellati. They wanted such a low price for it. I think that’s the thing; a lot of people did not know, and it was before the internet had really come into play. Unless people tracked auction catalogues, there wasn’t an easy way to know what prices were for things on the secondary market. I think we benefitted from the exposure I’d had in understanding what was good and how to look for signatures. Certain jewelers, when they sign things, their signatures are more obscure. Some are easily found and read, but others are like Van Cleef. A lot of their old things are so hard to see. Once you find them, you go, “Oh, it is Van Cleef. I knew it.” Sharon: I know when I’ve gone to some of the shows and expressed interest in a piece, the dealer would say, “Oh, I just bought that two days ago.” I was like, “Everybody’s supposed to come to the show and be able to look at things.” Nan: That’s exactly what happened. They probably bought it during setup day. They just bought it two days ago, and you were the next person to come along and find it. Sharon: Do you think knowledge had increased? I know dealers don’t have any interest in doing research, and then there are dealers that research every little thing. Do you think knowledge in general has increased, or just interest? Some like to research and some don’t. Nan: I would say in general that knowledge of jewelers has increased with the internet. I will say that probably the most helpful thing I’ve had, next to working with very knowledgeable people that shared their knowledge, was the library. I started buying books when I was working at the GIA and never stopped, and I used my library. I have library books, all jewelry-related, about all the different makers and periods. That in itself is a huge source of information, but a lot of information in the books in my library is not accessible online. So, it’s a combination of things. You can find fascinating articles that people have written on jewelers or periods or movements. The other way to develop your knowledge is by accessing the various books that have been written on whatever given topic you’re interested in. I think that knowledge is more readily accessible, and I think that that’s helped a lot as well. The more people know and understand, the more comfortable they are buying that piece of jewelry or being drawn to a certain period or knowing what to look for or why a piece is special. Sharon: What about European makers that aren’t as known here? Are there some that come to mind or that you recognize? Who would they be? Nan: There are a lot of wonderful makers that are not as known. The brands that everybody knows are the Cartier, Van Cleef, Tiffany, Bulgari, David Webb, Buccellati, those kinds of names. But there are a lot of fantastic, wonderfully talented makers that came out of Europe, and many of them were French. One of the things I was taught early on is that the French make—how would I put this? They put detail and time and thought into the pieces they make. For example, something in the United States might be made so you see all the beauty on the part that faces forward. With the French, they’ll think about the back side of it, too, or the edges. It’ll be as beautiful on the back as it is on the front, and it’s a more thoughtfully made piece. The French are wonderful workmen and artisans. That’s one of the things that’s a big plus. When I’m going over a piece of jewelry and doing all the work on it, I’m always happy to see a French mark. An interesting thing to know about France is that they will not allow anything that’s less than 18 karat to be sold. When you have marks on it—it’s the eagle’s head mark, which is a gold French mark—it guarantees it’s at least 18 karat or higher. Then they have the platinum marks. If somebody wants to import their jewelry from out of the country into France and sell it, they also have to be 18 karat. In those cases, they get the stamp we call the hibou, which is like an owl that says it was sold in France but it was imported into France. The French have always had a higher level of expectation with jewelers, and their pieces in general tend to be really wonderful. Anything that’s French is a plus in the jewelry world. Sharon: Today it seems like, when I’m looking Instagram, there are so many one-off jewelers. They’re not just one-off pieces, but they’re Danish or German or people you’ve never heard of. They can be American. Not to knock anybody, but is it the design that’s more known as opposed to whether the earrings sit on the ear? Nan: It’s a combination of those things. At that end of the day, we as women are the ones that are going to be wearing the jewelry, and if it doesn’t look good on them, that’s not going to carry it forward in a positive way. I would say the French designs are excellent. Generally, they’re designed to sit well, but honestly, quite often you’ll find that with the good but less-known jewelers, the ones that are not signed or the no-name jewelers, you still need to check. One thing I have noticed over the years is in the Art Deco period, for example in the United States, the jewelry was so beautiful, and there was so much money in the roaring twenties that no expense was spared in the workmanship and the quality of the stones that were used. But quite often over the years, I’ve seen these Art Deco and 1930s bracelets out of France that are set with very imperfect diamonds, old cuts, low-quality stones, often off-color, and it’s interesting. I think Europe must have been in a different economic place than the United States when these were manufactured. Sharon: That’s interesting. I was interested in Catalan Art Deco, and the dealers would emphasize to me that the stones weren’t of the highest quality. They were used in the piece, but they weren’t the highest quality. Nan: Yeah, there you go. Sharon: I’m interested in the overall piece. If the stone isn’t the highest caliber, all right, as long as it makes the piece. Nan: Exactly. If it speaks to you and you love it, that’s the most important thing. Sharon: Do you agree with the dealers or the people in the jewelry business who say, “It doesn’t matter if it’s signed if you love it”? What are your thoughts about that? Nan: I think good jewelry is good jewelry. I don’t think it has to be signed to be a fabulous piece. The signature certainly helps in the overall value, and people are more aware of that these days than they used to be, but there’s a lot of beautiful, beautifully made, beautifully designed pieces out there that are not signed. I’m a big believer in buying what you love. Don’t buy what you’re lukewarm about. Buy what you really love, and try everything on to make sure it sits the way you want and that you like it. If you really love it, I believe in paying more than you think it’s worth. In my opinion, the pieces I love the most I paid so much for, more than I wanted to. I’ve forgotten about many, but to this day I still love and cherish those pieces. | |||
| 20 Jul 2023 | Episode 195 Part 2: Why Charon Kransen Hopes More People See the Joy of Wearing Art Jewelry | 00:23:19 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Charon Kransen Charon Kransen established Charon Kransen Arts in New York City in 1993, in order to promote exciting jewelry from around the world in North America. The work is presented annually at various American art fairs, such as SOFA New York, SOFA Chicago, SOFA Santa Fe and Art Palm Beach and the Int. Art and Design Fair in New York and at select galleries specializing in contemporary crafts and design. As a private dealer, Charon Kransen Arts welcomes individuals, collectors and museums to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The collection consists of jewelry, hollowware and accessories by both renowned and emerging artists, whose work may be found in museum and private collections around the world. The focus is on the artists' personal vision and on an innovative approach, characterized by the use of a wide spectrum of materials from paper to precious. The educational branch of Charon Kransen Arts includes lectures and seminars throughout the USA, Europe, Australia and South America and the distribution of books and exhibition catalogs on all aspects of jewelry, metal and design Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript: It takes a certain type of person to appreciate art jewelry, and it’s even rarer for someone to wear it unabashedly. Charon Kransen proudly considers himself the latter. As the founder of Charon Kransen Arts, he is a gallerist and educator who hopes that more people embrace and express their differences through jewelry. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the challenges that galleries are facing today; why people wrongly assume that traditional jewelry is a better investment; and how education can help people find the confidence to wear art jewelry. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to The JewelryJourney.com.
My guest today is Charon Kransen, and he’s truly a man of the art jewelry world. He studied in several countries and speaks several languages, and he teaches and lectures about art jewelry globally. Welcome back.
I was rereading the transcript from last time, and you had described this market as being somewhat elitist. I was surprised to reread that. I think of it as more of a mass market thing because it’s more affordable and you can change it more.
Charon: What I mean by elitist is, in general, you have to have a certain sophistication. You have to have educated yourself. You have to have a certain courage. You have to have a certain emotional intelligence to be able to appreciate this work and look at it not like—what do people say?—“This is different.” That’s what I mean by elitist. Most people couldn’t care less. In general, they want to wear something really small; you barely see it. I don’t mean elitist in a pretentious way, but yes, you have to have a level of sophistication in order to appreciate it, right?
Sharon: Yes, if you want to think of elitism being that. There is only a certain segment of a population that’s going to understand it or even stop to think about it for a minute.
Charon: For many years, I’ve done the art fairs in Florida in Palm Beach, and I was the only contemporary jewelry dealer in that fair. There was a lot of high-end jewelry and estate jewelry, and so many times I heard people walking into my booth saying, “Oh, this is so inspiring. This is so refreshing,” and then I saw them across the aisle buying something high end and very expensive because that is, in the end, where their decision lies. “Oh, this is too much fun. I’d better put my money in something that is made of precious metal,” or whatever. I’ve seen that happen so many times. That is what gives people the kind of certainty that they’re not throwing their money away by buying something very out of the ordinary. This is generalizing, of course, but I’ve seen that for so many years. That’s just the reality of this field.
Sharon: Do you think that it is trending toward the lighter, the more fun, the jewelry that’s interchangeable, or that you can afford to have some choices?
Charon: I think it brings up the issue of listening more closely to who you are, what your mood is. If you want to use the word fun, it’s how to embrace fun in your life and not try to be somebody who, from the outside, is all together and all blah, blah, whatever. Yeah, it brings a certain lightness and a certain freshness and a certain leaving your comfort zone energy.
Sharon: Has the way you’ve sold this jewelry, your jewelry, changed over the years? Have you emphasized the lightness of it or the affordability or anything because something changed?
Charon: There are definitely people—and I’m not just talking about since the pandemic, but even before that—who’d say, “Charon, you need to sell more traditional jewelry, more commercial jewelry, more low end,” meaning very low end. I thought about it many times, but that is not something that has my passion. That’s just not the kind of work I want to present. In the end, I have to live with me; I have to be surrounded by work that I find inspiring and energetic. You’ve known me long enough that I have always shown work that, for a large part, is very colorful. The format of certain jewelry might be a bit traditional sometimes, but in terms of color and material and content, this is the kind of work I want to represent. It’s pretty obvious.
Sharon: Can something that’s made out of a material you’ve seen before and thought was innovative, and now you see it in a different format, can that be considered innovative, or is it only the first time?
Charon: Essentially what I think makes a work innovative has a lot to do with a certain uniqueness. When I lecture or do seminars, I talk a lot about what it is that makes a piece of jewelry so special and unique. I think that is something that has a lot to do with how you as a maker infuse your uniqueness into this piece. It could be how you infuse it by manipulating a certain material, but in a way only you can do. I really believe deep down that everybody has a uniqueness. It might be totally underdeveloped, but I do believe people have that. That, to me, is what makes a work unique and even innovative. It’s a combination.
Maybe the best way to describe it is this. I get packages for artists, several every week, and you open a package and think, “O.K., Charon, in all the years you’ve seen it all. You’re probably a bit jaded.” Then I open it and I jump, like, “Wow! I thought I had seen all of it.” In many ways, my opinion is often the thing that needs to be developed more than anything. You can call it the voice of an artist. That makes me jump, like, “I thought I’d seen it all. Wow!” It’s seeing something I’ve never seen before, and I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s not about analyzing how it’s made, but more of the energy that it expresses. It’s interesting that after all these years, I can still have that sensation. It just is what it is.
Sharon: I’m surprised. Is there anything left that would surprise you? That’s my thought.
Charon: Absolutely, yeah.
Sharon: Yes?
Charon: The mind is endless. There is no limit to the mind, and people come up with things. That’s why I’m still doing what I’m doing. I’m far from retiring.
Sharon: How did you make it through Covid? Did that affect your business?
Charon: It was basically dead the first half-year, and then—you’re talking to somebody who in many ways is kind of old-fashioned. I’ve never done social media. I’ve developed clientele on a very personal level. But this time, it was just horrendous. I kept thinking, “Well, no art fairs. Galleries are closed. No exhibitions, no nothing. How are these artists going to survive?” I’m part of the system that pays them money so they can live and work. So, I forced myself to start with Instagram, which was a big stretch for me because I don’t really like it.
Then I approached a lot of people describing the situation, how it really is for artists. I wasn’t that concerned about my own survival, but I thought about all these artists who do not have any income. How can I expect them to be motivated to sit in their studios and make work and say, “O.K., this is difficult and challenging situation. We just have to sit it out”? I felt a lot of their financial pressure, their stress. I approached so many people for help understanding the situation, and of course offering them a bigger discount so I would be able to send checks to artists. Many wonderful, loyal people responded.
I would say it’s still kind of problematic because to develop new clients, you have to do the art fairs, but the art fairs are extremely expensive. You end up paying so much for the whole thing. Financially, I really question whether that is still the way to go, especially in jewelry. When you do these fairs and see artwork, sculptures and paintings that sell for $100,000, yeah, O.K. We’re talking jewelry here. What is the price range? You have to sell a shitload of work in order to break even. So, I’m rethinking that whole art fair model. Everybody also says the market has changed big time. The 90s and the early 2000s, they were golden years. It’s amazing what people would spend. That has changed big time. I hear it from other colleagues also, not even in our field, but in other fields, too.
Sharon: There have been a lot of changes, yes. I can see that in what people buy and how much they’re willing to spend.
Charon: We’re talking here about work that is worn on the body. When you just look at images, you miss the three dimensionality. You can’t imagine it, really. You miss the tactile aspect, the sound aspect. We’re constantly looking at two-dimensional images, and not everybody is able to translate that. I’m trained as an artist so I can do that, but most people can’t. It’s different than looking at an object. How is this going to be on my body? That is a big issue. If you look at commercial jewelry that’s sold over the internet, it’s simple; it’s accessible; it’s understandable; you can totally figure it out, but this kind of work is a completely different story.
Sharon: That’s true.
Charon: That is where we are. We’re looking at images. I send things on approval because I want people to see them and try them on. With this kind of jewelry, I think it’s very difficult to sell on the internet. I really do.
Sharon: I think you’re right. When I think of the images I see when I’m scrolling through Instagram, most of them are things you don’t have to imagine. You know how it’s going to look.
Charon: Right.
Sharon: In your mind, do you have some art fairs you think you’ll still go to that are reasonably priced?
Charon: None of them are reasonably priced. I had several meetings with the director of SOFA Chicago. SOFA Chicago is not happening again this year, and they’re rethinking the whole idea. We’ve been talking about a much smaller fair with exquisite objects. When I think of SOFA Chicago as it was at Navy Pier—
Sharon: SOFA being Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art and Design?
Charon: Yeah, it’s huge. People go there to be entertained without any intention of buying anything. I think there is definitely a market for people who are interested in exquisite objects in glass, in wood, in ceramic jewelry and textiles that would attract them. I might be talking to them about developing something in that different format. I think that would totally work. Right now, I’m focusing on New York Jewelry Week. I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never did, and I’m very excited about it.
Sharon: I hope to be there. I think that’s the place if you want to experiment.
Charon: I’ve now had two years to focus on the Far East with five or six countries, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand—what am I missing? That was great because this is the aesthetic we mostly don’t see.
Sharon: We don’t.
Charon: It was great, but it was a lot of work for us. I showed the work of like 45 artists. Anyway, I have a theme in mind, and I think it could be great.
Sharon: I’ll keep my eyes open. I’ll wait for round three until after New York Jewelry Week, and I’ll ask you what you’ve done next year post-Covid. I think everybody is changing the way they operate with Covid.
Charon: Quite frankly, I think we’re all in survival mode and reinventing ourselves, and we’re understanding also that somehow it has to make sense. Many years ago, I heard this term which was new to me, “I need to spend money in order to make it.” But the past three years have been horrendous, and not just for me but for so many people, I think. But I’m still here; I’m still getting excited about it.
I am involved in something that unfortunately I cannot quite talk about. Well, I can say this much: I was invited to be a judge of a major international competition. It’s interesting to go through all these submissions and see where we are as a field. This is not just jewelry. There are so many artists. I remember in one of your questions you sent me, you wrote something about education, like “Who needs to be educated most?” I might get a lot of reaction to this, but I think artists need to be educated mostly.
Sharon: On what will sell?
Charon: No, most artists are incredible. They’re talented in what they make, but once the work leaves the studio, there’s a whole world out there that is foreign to them. I think especially during the pandemic, artists started to sell themselves individually, whether they had a relationship with a gallery or not. It is a problem. It’s an issue, but what do you do as an artist when you’re desperate financially and you can barely survive? It brings up a lot of new issues. I won’t bore you with examples, but there are lots of examples where I feel like, “Well, maybe galleries are obsolete. Maybe the relationship between artist and gallery is changing because everybody has been going through a very difficult time.” It’s going to be interesting to see how that continues, but it does bring up a lot of issues and a lot of problems.
Sharon: When that’s developed more, that’s something I’d like to talk with you about. It sounds very interesting. Thank you for being with us today. I look forward to the next time.
Charon: When we meet.
Sharon: It was great. Thank you for being here.
Charon: Thank you for the invitation, and like I said, to be continued. Thank you for having me.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 16 May 2022 | Episode 157: How an Antique Jewelry Dealer Chooses His Pieces | 00:30:41 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Ron Kawitzky Ronald Kawitzky, with his late wife, Sherry Kawitzky, is the founder of estate jewelry firm DK Bressler. The young husband and wife team began their treasure hunts searching for the very finest jewels and rare collectible objects at markets and fairs across the country, and later expanded their travels around the world — throughout Europe and the far edges of the globe, including Ronald's native South Africa. The two developed a defining style and built a collection of brilliant jewelry spanning a broad array of stylistic periods from antiquity to the 21st century. This collection evolved into the DK Bressler brand, named after Ronald's mother, Doreen Kawitzky, and Sherry's mother, Selma Bressler. Together the couple set up shop in New York City's Diamond District in 1990, while continuing to scour the globe for unique treasures to bring back home. While Sherry passed away in 2001, Ronald continues their legacy, finding the very best jewels and gemstones that fit their shared style. Additional Resources: DK Bressler’s Website DK Bressler’s Instagram Photos:
Ron Kawitzky didn’t set out to become a jewelry dealer, but like many collectors, once he started buying antique and estate jewelry, he couldn’t stop. His passion for jewelry (and the history behind it) led him to found the estate jewelry firm DK Bressler with his wife, Sherry. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what qualities collectors should look for when purchasing antique jewelry; how to choose a reputable dealer; and why you should always buy jewelry that excites you. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Here at the Jewelry Journey, we’re about all things jewelry. With that in mind, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming jewelry conference, which is “Beyond Boundaries: Jewelry of the Americas.” It’s sponsored by the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, or, as it’s otherwise known, ASJRA. The conference takes place virtually on Saturday and Sunday May 21 and May 22, which is around the corner. For details on the program and the speakers, go to www.jewelryconference.com. Non-members are welcome. I have to say that I attended this conference in person for several years, and it’s one of my favorite conferences. It’s a real treat to be able to sit in your pajamas or in comfies in your living room and listen to some extraordinary speakers. So, check it out. Register at www.jewelryconference.com. See you there. Today, my guest is Ron Kawitzky, owner and founder of the estate jewelry firm DK Bressler, which is based in New York. Ron’s choices for his wares are fueled by his knowledge and his passion for history. That’s pretty evident when you look at his exhibits at tradeshows and elsewhere. Today, we’ll learn about Ron’s own jewelry journey as well as the estate jewelry market yesterday and today. Ron, welcome to the program. Ron: Good morning, Sharon. Nice to speak to you. Sharon: It’s so great to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you creative as a child? How did you get into jewelry? Ron: I was actually creative as a child. I was an arts major at school. I dumped mathematics for artwork, which I much preferred. I won all kinds of awards for that, but I was a history buff too. Between the two, knowing about jewelry periods just seemed natural and normal to me. Sharon: How did you segue? What did your family say when you said, “I want to be a jeweler” or “I want to go into the arts”? Ron: My father said, “You can’t make a living on that.” For birthdays and holidays, you got a piece of jewelry, but you couldn’t make a living out of buying one or two pieces of jewelry a year. He wasn’t aware of London and New York as centers for the jewelry trade and profession. He was not ecstatic about it at all, but I’ve been collecting and buying and trading since I was young, so it seemed quite normal and natural to me. Sharon: So, you were involved even though your bent was towards art. At the same time, you were collecting jewelry and enjoying it. Ron: Yes, very much so. I always liked collecting things. I was kind of a nerdy kid. I bought everything from paintings to silver to small jewelry when I could find them. There was no appreciation back in those days, which was diamonds or nothing. Sharon: You went into accounting, though, right? Ron: Yes, isn’t that awful? It’s public now, but I would normally deny that entirely. Sharon: Well, you can make a living in accounting, at least here in the States. It seems a little bit of a dichotomy to me, jewelry and accounting. Tell us, your firm is called DK Bressler. Obviously, that’s not your name. How did that name come about? Ron: My last name is Kawitzky, which people can’t spell. It’s K-a-w-i-t-z-k-y. In order to try to avoid terminal problems and whatever else, we picked my late wife’s name. My late wife’s mother’s name was Bressler, and my mother’s name was DK. It worked out that way. Sharon: When did you establish your business? Ron: I established the business in 1990, 1989, or something like that. It’s been fantastic ever since, frankly. Sharon: Along the way did you study jewelry? Did you continue to deal in jewelry when you were in the corporate world? Ron: No, I bought jewelry as gifts and presents for my wife. I always loved dealing with it and playing with it. From the age of 13 I went to London with my parents, and I remember my mother had a friend in the jewelry trade. I would sit in their apartment and open a bag, and all these colors and stones would come flying out of the bag. I was always intrigued, and I was 13 at the time. This seemed great. So the idea that I could make a living out of it when I got older was very exciting for me. Sharon: Was it always in the back of your mind as a second career if you stopped doing accounting? For me, it would be if I couldn’t take it anymore. Ron: I really quit the day I graduated from accounting school. It was a seven-year master’s program. I couldn’t tell you one thing. The next day, I was so unmoored. I think I have a left brain, not a right brain. It went more towards style and beauty and stuff like that. Sharon: Seven years, wow! Ron: Columns of figures didn’t do it for me. Sharon: So, tell us how you opened your business. Did you open the door and say, “I’m here”? Did you have inventory? How did you do that? Ron: That is one of those critical moments that your life changes. It turns on a little occurrence you don’t give full credit to, but life is not a straight, linear thing. It evolves in twists and turns. At some point in my existence, in the 80s, I found myself unemployed, probably unemployable as well. It was a very difficult time, and my wife said to me, “You’ve talked about the jewelry business for your whole life. Maybe it’s time to finally get your hands dirty and take a chance and commit.” So, we did, with a lot of help from her, of course, and it worked. Sharon: That’s a good point you made, several good points, about the fact that life is not linear. I guess to some people it might be. Ron: But wouldn’t that be boring? You don’t know what’s around the corner. Sharon: I was thinking of the description somebody once told me about their brother who had made a lot of money. He just kept rising up the corporate ranks, and they said he led an "enchanted" life. So, he had a straight line, in a sense. Ron: Yes. Sharon: Did you open your business here or in South Africa? Ron: No, I grew up in South Africa but I’d left South Africa a long time ago by then. I opened it over here. I had a rucksack. I put three or four things in a bag and paid calls on Madison Avenue and 47th Street, at the infamous 10 West 47th Street. It was the center of the whole antique estate trade. Sharon: Who are your clients today? Who do you sell to? Who buys from you? Ron: Social media is one of them. Thank God, we have a great reputation and a history that goes back since 1990, which is already a long time ago. People call us when they want things, certain styles they need to source. We put it together, or we do shows and meet new people. We do travel a lot. I travel to Europe, to England, in America as well. Sharon: During the lockdown- maybe you did travel- but how did you manage? Ron: People were very willing to buy. They were happy to buy. I kept them in contact and in touch. Collectors are collectors. There were even more collecting types because they wanted to amuse themselves when Covid was in full flow. Sharon: Ron, what do you consider a collector? There’s no real answer, but I’m always curious. What do you consider a collector? Ron: It’s quite amazing. If you’re buying something like Louis Comfort Tiffany, in many cases, it’s men who collect things. They have no intention of their wives ever wearing it, but they love the object. They love the history. They like everything about it, and they’ll buy it for their collections. He has since passed on, but I had one collector who would frame the pieces I sold him and hang them up in his bedroom. He would have a wall full of the most glorious jewelry by Tiffany, by Castellani, by Giuliano, necklaces and bracelets and things, and no one would know what they were worth. It was quite amazing. He had no expectation of wearing anything; he just loved the piece and appreciated it. Sharon: How about the women who buy from you? Do you have any women collectors? Ron: Yes, very much so. Women want to wear the pieces or fantasize about wearing the pieces, so that adds another dimension to it, which is nice. Sharon: How does history influence what you choose when you’re looking at another dealer’s pieces, or whoever you’re buying from? How does history influence what you choose? Ron: Because I was a history buff, it was so exciting to find a piece of jewelry with certain motifs or illusions to, I don’t know, Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1901 or something. it’s interesting to see how people relate to these pieces. They feel part of the whole, storied past. People want to be part of a historical event. It sets you in time. It sets you in romance. It sets you in all kinds of things. Sharon: When it comes to history and historic jewels, do you have a particular time period, like ancient gems? Is there a particular time period where you start or stop? Ron: Yes. Roman cameos are wonderful, interesting to collect, but not always fully appreciated, not always fully understood. It’s a very esoteric, arcane business, and it’s subject to fraud and other things since you’re carving with a natural stone. But if you make a study of it and you know a little bit about Greek or Roman mythology, it makes sense. Suddenly you’re a part of something going back 1,000 to 1,500 years, and that’s very exciting. It places you in history. Sharon: When you say that some people don’t appreciate it, are you talking about people who say, “It’s just another cameo,” or “I don’t get it”? Ron: It’s the equivalent of—and forgive me for saying this—putting the painting over the couch in the living room. It matches the color. It’s there because it’s beautiful, not because the green of the drapes matches the green of the carpet. Do you know what I mean? The jewelry is more important than anything else. Sharon: If someone is looking at two pieces but one has a history behind it, are you saying people will go for that? Will they say, “Oh, this one fits me better”? How does that work? Ron: How typical it is for the period? That’s what you want. If you would like a piece of 1960s jewelry, it should be the quintessential piece. It should be by someone like Andrew Grima. You want somebody who understands context; otherwise, it might not mean all that much. You can just buy something for its beauty, too, but context is nice. If you understand anything about art and history, and you look at a piece of Andrew Grima’s work, you understand it. There’s a synergy. There’s a joint thing there with Jackson Pollock, who also dripped oil onto canvas. I’ve seen gold dripped onto a piece of jewelry effectively. You know what I mean? It’s not a very elegant way to put it, but you need the best for its time. Everything is classical in the right sense. Sharon: What do you think people should look for when they want to buy a piece of estate jewelry? Just, “Oh, this is interesting,” or should they be looking at value? Ron: It should be, “This is interesting.” You have to love it. It’s like buying a share. You have to have faith in the company you’re buying a share in. It’s not just a question of buying something I don’t believe in, because if things change, tastes change, you might not fully realize it, but it might take years to be worth its value again. Sharon: The dealers, or the people who are selling their own jewelry or buying from dealers, do they understand and appreciate the history? Ron: That’s where we come in. We try and explain where it came from, what was happening in the world at the time. Is it a piece of industrial Deco jewelry? Do we know that it’s 1930s, 1940s? The world was at war. It has a context. You want something to collect from the time. You wouldn’t want to buy a flower brooch in 1942. It wouldn’t really much sense, would it? Sharon: It’s always interesting to know what the history is or to have a part of history when you’re choosing a piece of jewelry as opposed to just—not even an interesting piece of jewelry, but— Ron: You need to educate yourself, and you need to pass it onto the client who wants to be told. He has every right to be told, “This is what makes this a fine piece, and that’s not.” You do have to love the piece. You want to wear it; you want to enjoy it. That goes without saying. It is the prime mover of the whole thing, but once you pass that, you need to know details; you need to study. Sharon: And what do you think about today when people are looking at jewelry? What do you think is the most popular when people are looking at your jewelry? Are they looking at brooches? Are they looking at rings? Ron: Rings are probably the first seller. Rings and earrings are always the first, followed by bracelets, I would think, and ending up with brooches. Other dealers always say brooches never sell. I find that we sell brooches all the time. They’re beautiful objects, even if they’re not worn that much. I used to have a client who put the brooches on her lampshade next to her bed. She had a whole lampshade full of them. She just loved looking at them. When the light came through, she was so excited. It was a pleasure. Sharon: There are fabulous brooches around, yes. Do you find a difference between the coasts in what people are interested in? Ron: Yes. It’s a little bit low on brooches on the coasts because you’re wearing thinner dresses. In Palm Beach, you wouldn’t wear giant, heavy brooches because it would drag down the silk that you’re wearing. Even having said that, the ladies that wear brooches are probably also wearing Chanel and heavy fabric to go out for lunch and elsewhere. Sharon: You do need some substance behind it in order to have a brooch. Ron: Yes. Sharon: There are tricks to get that substance, even on a T-shirt. So, why is there more interest in estate jewelry today? Do you think there is, and if so, why? Ron: Very much so, as evidenced by the fact that there’s not too much stuff around. We’ve really been battling to find fresh inventory. Part of it is because a lot of it is sold these days through the auction houses instead of being sold through dealers. It seems to be a push towards the auction houses. Sharon: Are you finding it more of a challenge today to find pieces? Ron: Yeah, very much so. Either people don’t need to sell, or these are prosperous times. Sharon: Do you buy through auction houses? Ron: Very, very little. I have a few things that I need that I’ll track down. The auction house can be very helpful, but mainly you want pieces that haven’t passed through those storied doors. People want privacy to a large extent as well. Some people want privacy. They want to buy; they don’t want the whole world to see what they paid for things. Sharon: That’s a good point. During the lockdown—it seems you were online a lot more through Covid. Ron: Yeah, we had to get more into that because I’m a little bit lost that way. I can’t fully understand the internet and what you can do with it, but luckily, I have good helpers that help me do that stuff. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m still stuck in the past history-wise. Sharon: I think it doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, including people like boomers on the tail end of the baby boom. It’s overwhelming in terms of what there is to learn and how fast it changes. Ron: It’s amazing, isn’t it? Anyway, we found ourselves sitting in front of the computer monitor. People called up for things, and we were shipping out stuff from all over the place, which was wonderful. Sharon: Somebody would call you up for something, and you could look on Instagram or different sites to find it? Ron: Our own site would bring people in. Sharon: I was looking at your site last night. Is there a lot more you have? Ron: Yes, we have ten million things, it seems like. What you see online is probably half of a half of a percent. We have things in every category, every range. Buying is the treat, as everyone knows, and collecting and organizing things and curating is exciting to me, too. I have different collections of different things. I guess it shows if somebody’s looking for something. We have copies and duplicates; not copies of jewelry, but similar pieces in duplicate because we loved it. If a piece is in great condition and exciting, it’s worth buying. Sharon: Do you find more pieces that are worthwhile from a historic perspective over in Europe? Do you find them in people’s safe deposit boxes around the country? Where do you find those? Ron: You never know where the next piece is coming from, Sharon. It’s amazing. Overseas is one thing, because there’s a much greater appreciation for estate and antique jewelry in Europe, I believe, than even in America, but you’re going to beat the bushes a little bit and try to get things from your suppliers. There’s always something coming out. Sharon: Do you think there’s more appreciation of estate jewelry abroad because people here like shiny new things? Ron: That, to an extent. They’ve been spoiled. They treat jewelry as an accessory. I find that the Germans, the English, buy things more as an heirloom piece. They want to pass it onto a grandchild or something. They look at it differently, whereas we look at it as more decorative, completely decorative. You buy it and you get bored with it, and the wedding is over and you can’t deal with this piece again. You move, and there are people who’ll sell a piece of jewelry. Whereas the Europeans have considered it very carefully and look at the long term, thank goodness; otherwise, there would be nothing left altogether to buy. Sharon: That’s interesting and makes sense. Not to denigrate anything or anyone, but jewelry has to be pretty. Whether it’s historic or not, it has to be something you like, whether you’re going to pass it on or whether you think it’s going to be sold to another dealer. It has to be pretty. Ron: That’s the first thing I said. You’ve got to love it. You have to enjoy it. You must think of it as a piece of pleasure that you’re wearing on your chest, which is lovely. Sharon: I’m always interested in this question, Ron. What is the catalyst that got you to switch? You said you were unemployed, but switching from accounting to opening your own estate jewelry business is a huge step in my book. Was there something? Did your boss come in and say, “I want this by tomorrow”? Ron: Now, you asked me a long question. I need to lie down on the couch, probably, to answer this question. I was in a public company we founded that was very successful. Then came the stock market in the late 80s. If you recall, everyone lost their money. We lost our second go-around for money. It was a long story, but effectively, that was really it. In the food business, we came up with an idea that was very lucrative, and it worked very well, but no one was buying anything in the late 80s in the stock market. So, I found myself available, as I said. Sharon: Some people have a business, but they’re on Ruby Lane, or you see them at the shows on weekends buying and selling jewelry. Were you doing that? Was that in the background? Ron: We always bought things. We always knew some dealers, and we’d go and tour these antique shows on the weekends. There used to be many more of them in New York. You’d meet people and find things and dabble a little bit, but it was always just buying. We never did any selling because whatever we bought, we liked. I still have those early pieces I bought when I wasn’t even that familiar with them. It really made a big difference. I never stopped enjoying that, and it came in very handy. When I found myself unemployed, I started selling the things I’d collected. That got me in the business that way, through the back door. Sharon: I think you said an important point about the fact that there are not as many antique fairs right now. It’s partly Covid, but are they just waning? Was this something that was going on before Covid, that there are fewer antique fairs? Ron: There were so many. There were two or three every weekend in Westchester and Long Island. We would travel all over the place in those days. When the kids were young, we’d bundle them up and go spend money. I guess we chose well, because you’d sit in a little auction house storefront in Queens somewhere, and you’d buy a little pair of earrings for $120 and it seemed magical. By the time we got home, we’d be so nervous. “Oh my god, is this the right way? Is it the wrong thing to buy?” Then Monday morning you’d rush off to 47th Street and sell and make 30 percent of your money, and you’d say, “That was easy. I could do this again.” Confidence just gets built on confidence, and it worked, thank goodness. Sharon: Wow! I give you a lot of credit. Some of the things I look for when I’m buying a piece of estate jewelry are, besides the fact that I should love it, that it has to be in good condition. Do you need to be somebody who’s worked with jewelry to know that? Ron: Condition is important because that could impact the future of the piece after a year or two. It should be correct for the time, correct for the period. It’s really important, and you should get pleasure out of it. The prime thing is to enjoy it, wear it with excitement, and you’ll get many years of pleasure out of it. Sharon: I think it’s really important to wear it with excitement, like, “Oh, my gosh, this is so fabulous! Look at this!” I’m thinking of dealers who have sold to me, and I felt like they were selling as opposed to somebody who—I know when I’ve looked at some of your pieces, you explain where they came from or why they’re important. Is that what we should be looking for? Ron: Yes, very much so. It’s a good question that you asked, Sharon. I think it’s important for a dealer to be reputable. They should be steeped in knowledge about what they’re buying or selling. You find out more about your car before you buy it; you should find out about the wonderful piece of jewelry. It’s of equal value in many cases. Sharon: I’m thinking about some of the pieces I’ve seen which you’ve shown, a fabulous pair of cameo earrings. Ron: Yes. Sharon: It sounds like you’re saying the dealer has to be the first line in terms of educating somebody. Ron: That’s so well put. It’s exactly right, but you’ve got to do your own work. You should ask them for a write-up on an invoice, and probably in most cases, these things should be appraised for insurance purposes. It’s important to understand what you’re buying. It’s an arcane, esoteric world, and people should be careful. Sharon: How do I know if I’m buying from somebody reputable, let’s say I go to the Miami Show in January or February, which is huge in that there are so many dealers. What should I look for? How do I know that somebody’s reputable? Ron: Look at the other pieces the dealer has in his showcase. You’ll see the kind of pieces he gets. Most people are just buying gold for gold and not of an age and not of a period. It might not mean anything to them, and it might not mean anything for the customer, but I’m saying to enjoy the piece more profoundly, steep yourself in knowledge of the piece and the age and the epoch. I think that’s really important, and condition is everything. Sharon: That’s a good point, having brought several pieces that I purchased from other dealers that I took to the repair shop several times. The condition is very important. Ron: Welcome me back, and we’ll talk about it for as long as you want. I can’t think of anything more fun than discussing a piece. I love it. It’s exciting to me, and I like transmitting the excitement to the next person. Sharon: You have several pieces you’ve shown me in the past. I could feel your excitement. They weren’t pieces that called to me so much, but I could feel your excitement in it. Ron: I still enjoy it. I still get excited every time somebody brings a piece. You could look at it again and study again and discover something new about it, and that’s the thrill. It connects us to our whole history, to the whole background, to literature. It makes sense. If you understand it, you’ll get more pleasure out of it, like anything else. Sharon: That’s a very good point. Ron: Thank you so much, Sharon, it’s very nice of you to include me in your podcast. Sharon: Thank you very much, Ron. Ron: You are so welcome, and thank you. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| 16 Sep 2019 | Episode 39: An Appraiser’s Insights on Valuing and Collecting Gems with Jo Ellen Cole, Gemologist & Owner of Cole Appraisal Services | 00:22:03 | |
Jo Ellen Cole has been involved in the jewelry business for more than four decades. She earned her Graduate Gemologist Diploma (In Residence) at the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica and successfully passed the prestigious Gemological Association of Great Britain’s F.G.A. examinations. After working for several years in both retail and wholesale jewelry venues, Jo Ellen accepted a job at a jewelry appraisal laboratory, which in turn led to a management position with the respected firm of Guild Laboratories, Inc. in Los Angeles. She also held a position as research librarian at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and was later appointed Curator of the Permanent Stone Collection at GIA. In March 2002, Cole Appraisal Services was born and began offering a variety of appraisal reports identification reports, and museum and display consultation services. After working as the Jewelry Department head at a regional auction gallery in Oakland, CA, she was recruited for a position with Heritage Auctions to serve as jewelry specialist and cataloger, gathering jewelry for auctions held in Beverly Hills, Dallas and New York City. At this time, Jo Ellen is offering independent gem and jewelry appraisals and consultation in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. What you’ll learn in this episode:
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