in fashion
Art Jewelry’s Fashion Moment The influence of art jewelry on fashion jewelry has never been stronger
w h at h a s t h e rarefied—and increasingly conceptualized—world of art jewelry to do with the trend-driven parallel universe of fashion? While it may come as a surprise, there are indeed relationships, if not intersections, between the two realms. While the fashion world necessarily operates by the by andrea dinoto merciless rules of seasonal merchandising, producing fairly predictable, conservative styles overall, the fashion press has always championed the creativity of individual jewelry designers—and never so enthusiastically as now. The December 2007 issue of Vogue showcased the stunning ’50s-era sculptural pieces of Art Smith (whose work is reviewed in this issue), and the magazine regularly accessorizes sittings with the jewelry of contemporary designers, such as Taher Chemirik, Herve van der Straeten, and Philip Crangi. At the same time, the gallery world is discovering how powerful marketing—via the very successful SOFA shows and promotional events— benefits artists, garnering the attention of a larger audience of fashion- and design-oriented consumers. What’s abundantly clear is that the influence of art jewelry on fashion jewelry A Tom Binns necklace worn by has never been stronger; witness First Lady Michelle Obama in June 2008 Michelle Obama at a 2008 Democratic fundp h o t o: m a r c e l t h o m a s / get t y im ages raiser resplendent in a Tom Binns necklace, a cascading collage of vintage rhinestones in brilliant “diamond” and gemstone colors. The edgy Binns is fashion’s current, if unlikely, darling. His high-low jewelry is everywhere, paired with couture in fashion magazines, available on the Internet, and widely emulated. Even a couture house like Lanvin is producing a patchwork “statement necklace” of costume and precious jewels. In the March 2008 issue of Vogue, contributing editor Plum Sykes suggested that “contemporary jewelry, modern in
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design, timeless in appeal” should, in these dicey economic times, be considered a smart investment. Among the names she cited were the Belfast-born Binns, but also American Daniel Brush, whose rarely glimpsed Bakelite brooches sell for five figures; the French jeweler Frederic Zaavy, renowned for exquisite pavé floral jewels; V. Bruce Hoeksema, under the brand VBH, a handbag designer who has added fine jewelry to his high-style offerings; and Victoire de Castellane, Dior’s quirky house accessory designer, whose colorful cocktail rings feature semi-precious megastones in whimsically detailed settings. As this short list indicates, fashion jewelry has become a diverse field that embraces everything from a maverick artist-designed esthetic (Binns has been known to spray “jewels” with neon paint) to the classic designs of the great houses, Cartier, Bulgari, etc. Every category responds to the tyranny of design trends; even diamond and gem-set jewelry, an industry staple, now embraces uncut diamonds as the latest must-have. (Art jeweler Todd Reed actually started this “trend” 15 years ago, acquiring free castoffs from the diamond industry to create a wildly successful collection of “natural” stones hand-set in gold.) Major diamond houses like Diamond in the Rough and De Beers today mine new riches in stones that would once have been rejected out of hand. Even at this high level, perceived value holds sway in the marketplace. For a unique overview of the current fashion jewelry field, consider the JA (Jewelers of America) New York trade shows, an important buying venue for jewelry retailers (independents, chains, galleries), which draw hundreds of exhibitors from all over the world, and are open to the public. The JA New York Summer Show, held last July at the Javits Center, featured, as usual, special sections devoted to trend-watching, notably the self-explanatory New Designers Gallery, the Couture Pavilion, and the International Pavilions, where Italy commands attention for its gold traditions and designs. Antique and Estate Jewelry was also represented, and at the very rear of the vast exhibition hall the AGTA Colored Stone Pavilion lured show goers with seeming acres of candycolored loose gems and beads, all there for the choosing, as if from an exotic bazaar. It’s easy to get lost in the maze of aisles
Denise Betesh’s hand wrought “Chain Series” from 2007, featuring 22k fused/ granulated chains, with diamond accents and sage moonstone pendant.
and booths at a JA show, but certain young designers and established names always manage to assert themselves. Worth noting: Carolina Bucci’s extraordinarily fine silkand-gold mesh pieces, woven in Florence on a modernized textile loom; Emanuela Duca’s sand-textured silver and gold ribbon rings that wrap the finger in a dramatic spiral; and the hand-wrought 22k gold link chains of Denise Betesh, a New Mexico artist, who describes her work as “a fusion technique out of granulation,” and who does the show to increase her gallery representation. Among the couture jewelers, Oscar Heyman, the venerable firm founded in 1912, displayed their dazzling colored-stone jewelry, which they have produced over the years for major firms (the famed Taylor-Burton diamond necklace purchased at Cartier was theirs). A hazel cat’s eye cabochon and diamond ring appeared to blink and beckon with seductive beauty and mystery, as if to sum up the timeless allure of jewelry itself. If you had to pick just one jewel for all time, pearls, such as the luminous Tahitian and South Sea variety of Assael International, so seductive in their gray-black-yellow-pinkwhite iridescence, would serve well. (Even the fictional fashionista Carrie Bradshaw
While the fashion world necessarily operates by the merciless rules of seasonal merchandising … the fashion press has always championed the creativity of individual jewelry designers.
donned an ever-present Mikimoto strand in the recent movie version of Sex and the City.) Reporting on the show in National Jeweler Network, an online magazine, Catherine Dayrit described a “tale of two styles,” in which the bolder necklaces and cuffs that were being promoted by style makers actually drew less interest among consumers than smaller, delicate jewelry that can be stacked and layered for impact. Also, “enlightenment jewelry” with religious, spiritual or zodiacal themes was strong, as were nature-inspired motifs and textured metals. Jewelers also report that the Internet has created a new generation of informed consumers who ask questions not only about the ethical aspects of jewelry on offer, the sources of diamonds and gold, for example, but also regarding fashion—what’s in, what’s out, presumably, how to wear the style of the moment. The current big-bold style—dictating the massive necklace, the mega cuff, the huge hoops, and the three-mojito cocktail ring—was predicted for fall 2008. Which will be old news by the time this issue reaches the newsstand. So what, then, is the function of a jewelry trend, beyond marketing? Most usefully, and however outlandishly it may manifest itself, a trend reminds us that fashion, like art, is essentially the visual expression of an ethos, reflecting the prevalent, ever shifting, spirit of the day.
Hibiscus Bracelet by Frédéric Zaavy was featured in his 2007 solo exhibition at Phillips de Pury auction house in New York City.
Andrea DiNoto, a New-York based writer on the arts and design, aspires to be fashionable.
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Reviews Talya Baharal Jewelers’werk Galerie Washington, D.C. July 11–August 1, 2008 by Kate Dobbs Ariail Israeli-born metal artist Talya Baharal went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a winter month to work on a sculpture project—and out of the Rust Belt’s bleak midwinter blossomed strange, consoling flowers. Her artist’s eye found in the rotten ice and grayed snow, in the streaks and blots left by salt’s corrosion, a wondrous palette of delicate effects, which she incorporated into her extensive “Urban Landscape” series of brooches and neckpieces, exhibited in a memorable show at Jewelers’werk Galerie. The place where nature and culture meet often provides fertile ground for artistic exploration, and that shifting borderland has been heavily worked for generations. But it’s quite remarkable for someone to find the beauty within the leaden visuals Urban Landscape #41 (brooch), 2006 sterling silver, iron, steel, copper 3 x 2 1 ⁄8 x 1 ⁄16" p h o t o: g e n e g n i d a
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of stained sidewalks, or rust-marked security doors, or dirty water swirling down darkbarred drainage grates. So vast is the emotional distance between, say, a pristine snow drift in the Hudson Valley where Baharal now lives, and a plowed heap of dirty slush on a dejected street corner, that it almost obliterates our ability to perceive the interesting qualities of the latter. Baharal has approached these urban forms and the natural and manmade processes at work on them rather like a photographer with a close-up lens, studying the nearly invisible lace of tiny plants and crumbling humus on the forest floor. Magnified by her attention, the city’s flotsam, grit, and corrosion become a vast and worthy subject. Like the great Pittsburgh photographers Charles “Teenie” Harris and Eugene Smith, Baharal revels in the rough textures and dark tones of a city defined by coal, iron, and steel. But while Harris and Smith were primarily interested in the people in the city, and the metamorphoses of society and art there, Baharal looks to the conjunction of material and process to consider ideas of stability, influence, compatibility, and change. With their mixed metals and heat and oxide patinas, these small wearable relief sculptures express something of the energy released and power created when iron is converted to steel. The round and spiral brooches are particularly energized. Although fabricated of sterling silver, steel, iron, and copper and more or less permanent in their forms, they seem in the process of whirling change. Residue #2,
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Residue #2 (brooch), 2008 sterling silver, iron, steel, copper 3 5 ⁄8 x 3 3 ⁄4 x 1 ⁄16" p h o t o: g e n e g n i d a
its circular edge jagged with slivers of applied metal, may be exploding from its small open central eye—or perhaps disappearing into it. Even more intriguing are Urban Landscape #4, #7, and #12, which, with their laid-on lines and interior pockings and craterings, call to mind the runic appearance of manhole covers dark in a snowy street. Two of the more beautiful pieces in the show looked as if they might have been cut from weathered asphalt or from a foundry floor. Urban Landscape #41, a brooch, on closer inspection began to look like a fragment sliced from a map of some dream city, with glittering road tracks through rumpled black hills, provoking an upsurge of hopefulness. The neckpiece Urban Landscape #34 comes from the same territory. Its crumpled, blackened silver hills abut a patterned field powdery with oxidized metal dust. The rough rectangle hangs from a delicate and variable armature of wire. Like many of the pieces, its several materials are as beautifully arranged on the back as on the ostensible front. Buttressing her artistic instinct for unlikely combinations with the craft worker’s
deep knowledge of material behavior, Baharal coaxes the viewer to a new appreciation of the worn, the corroded, the ever-eroding substance of ever-rejuvenating life. She’s interested in decay: she courts rust. Unlike the goldsmith, who dabbles with shining immortality, Baharal looks through the haze of oxidation to see fresh forms. Taken as a body of work, the “Urban Landscape” series comprises a sustained meditation on the necessitous beauty of decay and deterioration in both the organic and inorganic realms. Kate Dobbs Ariail writes on arts and culture from her home in Durham, North Carolina.
Contemporary Jewelry From Italy Velvet Da Vinci San Francisco, California May 1–June 8, 2008 by Jennifer Cross Gans Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s refreshing to see a world-class show devoted almost entirely to metal jewelry by artists who are becoming
Objects of Remembrance Contemporary Mourning Jewelry by m a rjor i e si mon
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i di o t s NR II, 2008 taxidermy bird, felt, Swarovski crystals/ pearls, glass/plastic beads 13 3 ⁄4 x 2 3 ⁄4"
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k im er ic l il ot Self-Portrait Without Skin, 1997 14k gold, platinum, rubelite tourmaline cabochons 7 ⁄ 8 x 1 1 ⁄ 2 x 1" col l ect ion smi t hsoni a n a mer ic a n a rt museum, wa s h i n g t o n, d . c . p h o t o: k i m e r i c l i l o t
jo n a t h o n wa h l Jet Drawing: Totem, 2008 charcoal on paper 48 x 32"
p h o t o: b r y a n h e l m , courtesy sienna ga llery
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de at h, l i k e l i f e , is full of contradictions. To lose a love object, be it virtual or tangible, is to feel in some measure abandoned, adrift, relieved, isolated in pain, united in grief, or guilty for surviving. Mourners crave comfort, and people connect to share the heavy work of mourning. Artists turn to making. Objects can be the vessels for ideas and vectors for feelings, including memory.1 Nearly everyone has cherished objects inhabited by past narratives, and it is no accident that jewelry has historically been a major repository for memories. Jewelry worn to signify mourning communicates wordlessly to others that the individual has suffered a significant loss. It also symbolizes to the bereaved, intimately and directly on the body, the presence of the deceased. Mourning jewelry has existed as a genre in European decorative arts since the Renaissance. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as women assumed more responsibility for the emotional life within bourgeois society, jewelry provided a way to express tender and deep emotions which might be otherwise prohibited or discouraged.2 Gifts of remembrance, including tiny portraits in ivory or enamel, bracelets woven of hair, and lockets containing intimate inscriptions were as much a part of love as of loss. But the popularity of mourning jewelry soared in the nineteenth century during the reign of Queen Victoria, when mourning itself seemed to become an art. The Queen was born into the Industrial Revolution and presided over British colonial dominance (1837–1901) in a time of enthusiasm for science and global exploration. Her beloved husband Prince Albert was only 42 years old when, in 1861, he succumbed during an outbreak of typhoid fever. Victoria remained in deep mourning for the next 40 years, wearing only black clothing and jewelry, which had an enormous impact on custom and fashion for future generations. The Victorian era, comprising nearly the entire nineteenth century, has since become synonymous with extremes of feeling and a virtual cult of death. The wide range of contemporary mourning jewelry could be divided into a few general categories, based loosely on their relationship to the precedents of Western jewelry. First, historically themed work, namely the use of pre-Victorian motifs, including memento mori objects such as skulls, and the use of materials such as human hair and dead animals. Secondly, conscious Victoriana, which frankly references formal motifs, sentiments, or content from the Victorian era. And last, commemorative narratives of personal bereavement, which may or may not reference historical precedent. The memento mori object, variously translated as
mel a nie bilenk er Nap, 2008 gold, ebony, resin, pigment, hair 2 x 1 1 ⁄ 4 x 3 ⁄ 8"
k e l ly m c c a l l u m Untitled (ring), 2006 human bone, bird skull, pearls 2 3 ⁄8 x 5 ⁄8 x 1"
p h o t o: k e n y a n o v i a k
“remember, you must die,” or “remember, you are mortal,” appeared somewhere around the sixteenth century and has never really disappeared, irregardless of decorative fashions.3 Not strictly mourning jewelry, the classic memento mori piece referred not to a specific person, but to a general warning about the transitory nature of life. In the postReformation seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an obsession with death, combined with the emerging love of mechanical toys and automata, produced clocks and timepieces of all sizes, fashioned into skulls and skeletons of gold, rock crystal, diamonds, and enamel. A stunning example from 1610 is the Mechanical Screaming Biting Skull Clock with Animated Snakes for Eyeballs, designed and built by Nicolaus Schmidt der Junger of Augsburg, Germany. The clock’s jaws open and snap shut every three minutes, and a snake shoots out of the eye socket.4 In 1997, San Francisco goldsmith Kim Eric Lilot designed and built Self-Portrait Without Skin, one of a series of gold and gemstone memento mori jewelry, including a group of skull pendants wearing jaunty top hats carved from assorted semiprecious stones. Like drawings by countless adolescent boys, Lilot’s carved skulls grin and glower, grasped by tiny bony hands like the figure in Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream. Mourning jewelry from the eighteenth century graphically depicts grieving men and women weeping over the loss of loved ones. Greatly influenced by German romanticism, jewelry containing human hair was
common among bourgeois women. Hair curled in a decorative pattern was given in friendship or worn to signify closeness between women. At the time of death, one’s hair would be taken to a goldsmith, who might have been recommended by the funeral parlor. In a mourning brooch the hair may be braided (think Celtic knot) but the cut ends will be visible; the cut edge “embodied” the moment of transition from the natural (living) to the cultural (dead). Like a religious relic, including the actual body part concretizes death and acts as a memento mori. Contemporary artist Melanie Bilenker’s quiet brooches from her “womangirl” series most resemble Georgian “cut work” in which “strands of hair were spread over glue-covered paper and allowed to dry, whereupon the hair-covered paper was cut into various shapes and arranged into the mourning scene.” 5 The bezel settings are of a style illustrated in a 1790 goldsmith’s advertisement for mourning jewelry. Frankly female, Bilenker’s work
Jewelry worn to signify mourning communicates wordlessly to others that the individual has suffered a significant loss. It also symbolizes to the bereaved, intimately and directly on the body, the presence of the deceased.
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consta nze schr eiber Untitled (bracelet), 2006 fine silver 3 3 ⁄8 x 3 x 1 3 ⁄4" p h o t o: t o m h a a r t s e n
a n y a k i va r k i s Brooch #3 (back), 2007 fine and sterling silver, enamel auto paint, blue spinels 4 1 ⁄4 x 1 3 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄4" p h o t o: k e v i n s p r a g u e , c o u r t e s y sienna ga llery
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embodies the nascent twenty-first century in its willingness to expose formerly private moments such as bathing, but it also embraces the personal. Though not specifically about grief, their narrative subject is often downcast and tentative. Consciously appropriating the iconography of European decorative arts, several artists prominently feature actual dead animals. Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker, the Dutch duo known as Idiots, frequently enlist taxidermy birds as the centerpiece of their jewelry. Kelly McCallum, an American now living in London, subverts sentimentality by incorporating taxidermic specimens and human bone into her jewelry and objects. Attracted by the conundrum of death in life, McCallum uses her goldsmithing skills as well as the implied meanings of her other materials such as gold and gemstones. She brings a jeweler’s sensibility without overt reference to historical forms. Her precedent is the Cabinet of Curiosities or museum collections of the eighteenth century. Constanze Schreiber appears to combine the sensuality of death with iconic Romantic jewelry. As in Marie, her sizeable jeweled silhouettes both attract and repel. The eye is inexorably drawn to the rippling fur, the way animals’ bodies may be scrutinized without shame; placing them on the human body invites an unwelcome intimacy. Schreiber’s bold work stands out by virtue of its transformative treatment of nature and its transgressive appropriation of other species. She draws on antique jewelry for inspiration. A bracelet made of a double circlet of silver skulls is less charming than Lilot’s skeletons. The heads are nearly crushed and fused together, as if crammed in a mass grave; certainly not the genteel weeping under a willow tree. Queen Victoria didn’t give up her jewels; she made them black. Her popularization of gemstone jet—deeply black, fossilized vegetation created by millennia of pressure in stagnant seawater, most notably in Whitby, England—coincided with the invention of cut steel, also a dark color, and emblematic of the industrial north of England. Carvable, extremely lightweight, and capable of being highly polished, jet was the answer to adornment while grieving. As in every age, new technologies were used in jewelry making, and Victorian mourning jewelry was made from available and popular materials such as wood, enamel, glass (known as French jet), gutta percha (a dark brown organic resin, used as a substitute for jet), horn, ivory, hair, shell (dyed and molded), and Vulcanite (also known as Ebonite). The Victorian period coincided with that of the massive Consciously losses of the American appropriating the Civil War, and Americans iconography of imitated British mourning European decorative as they did their other arts, several artists customs. The intrinsic prominently feature beauty of jet meant it would actual dead animals.
r ebecc a str zelec Mourning (cuff bracelet), from “Baseball in Three Parts” series, 2008 ABS plastic, Barry Bonds autographed baseball segment, waxed cotton thread 4 1 ⁄ 2 x 4 1 ⁄ 2 x 4" p h o t o: r e b e c c a s t r z e l e c
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l ol a brook s Bleeding Heart (brooch), 2009 vintage rose cut garnets, stainless steel, 14k gold 4 1 ⁄ 2 x 4 1 ⁄ 2 x 2"
photo court esy of sienna ga llery
not be restricted to mourning, and today’s artists enlist it for its range of traits and associations. Jonathan Wahl, Anya Kivarkis, and Lola Brooks recall and reconfigure the giddy heights of Victorian extremes. Kivarkis and Wahl have taken similar forms and rendered them in nearly opposite ways: Wahl with immense charcoal drawings of jewels, and Kivarkis with stark white modestsized silhouettes of nearly the same form. Both share an affinity with Schreiber for classic Victorian symmetry. Wahl grabs the Victorian jewelry object and enlarges it on the wall, wresting it from its intimacy on the human body and confronting it as a two-dimensional form. He transforms the hand-carved crafted object into “art” and forces the viewer to apprehend the representation of form and surface, reflectivity
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and illusion. Kivarkis locates her work “in a place between drawing and object, an idea of the piece and the thing itself.” She has taken the formal stasis of the Victorian brooch and whitewashed it, effacing the carved or worked surface and leaving us with a form nearly everyone will recognize as “jewel.” Brooks has been parsing the rose in much of her current work, but she too subverts the sentimentalized heart with black mourning ribbons and garnets, the latter being acceptable gems during half-mourning, as they symbolize drops of blood. Packing another large woven heart with an overabundance of white roses, Brooks appears to deride the purity implicit in her choice of symbols. One can imagine the perfume to be suffocating, and the thorns piercing. In the United States, a recent exhibition titled
“Decorative Resurgence,” featured numerous objects of mourning and memory, mostly by young women. The early twenty-first century is indeed witness to a decorative resurgence. In her essay for the exhibition catalogue, Jennifer Zwilling observed that the “Modernist aesthetic so thoroughly expunged ornament from our visual vocabulary in the mid Twentieth Century that the mere suggestion of decorative elements on an object can now evoke a sense of the distant past.”6 The current generation of young jewelers continues to look to Europe for inspiration, but some are beginning to combine European history with American narrative. Rebecca Strzelec’s baseball mourning cuffs connect her father’s passion for the sport with the loss of the American dream, as summer heroes tumble to drug scandals. Quite apart from historical precedent, most jewelers have at some time created objects that refer to a significant personal loss—a child, sibling or parent, a home, a relationship—a loss that for them cannot be metabolized without making something. Life is long; losses accumulate. With time, grief retreats and life goes on. Not the same life, to be sure, but one’s life nonetheless. The personal commemorative object has layers of meaning, some of which may be coded. Work done mainly for oneself, often not for public consumption, may be quieter and contemplative. Lorena Lazard, a Mexican artist, commemorates her father’s death with a contemporary reliquary containing soil from his grave. Susan Mahlstedt uses the form of a classic cameo to allude to the winter landscape that occupied her late husband Bill Ruth’s attention during his illness. Her solitary tree recalls the weeping willows of traditional mourning scenes. Even without the artist’s personal narrative, the wearer could be soothed by its imagery. A rational fear of death also haunts the living. Artist Doug Bucci, diabetic since childhood, has begun to address in his work the implications of living with a life-threatening illness (a “train wreck,” in his words). His brooch Transmet (on cover) invokes issues of body integrity; he wears it as a talisman. Bucci materializes his fear of amputation, the most common consequence of diabetes. The anatomically correct foot becomes the literal embodiment of Bucci’s fear—but he tames it by making the foot a healthy pink; in reality, the gangrenous appendage would be black and disfigured. Historian Christiane Holm believes that mourning jewelry serves the function of “showing and hiding,” 7 and that it is important to understand how “hiding and revealing, absence and presence, anonymity and naming operate to sustain acts of memory.”8 Holm is not alone in
Quite apart from historical precedent, most jewelers have at some time created objects that refer to a significant personal loss, a loss that for them cannot be metabolized without making something.
l or ena l a z a r d Today We Bury You (sculpture), 2005 pure silver, sterling, 24k bimetal gold, epoxy color, acrylic, soil from artist’s father’s grave 3 x 1 3 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄4"
susa n m a hlstedt Winter Tree #1, 2007 18k gold, sterling silver 2 x 1 1 ⁄ 4 x 3 ⁄ 8"
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discussing the function of souvenirs: “Mourning jewels,” she says, “are exhibited secrets.” 9 Sharon Portelance makes use of the hidden, with text juxtaposed, coded, and presented backward, to guard its secret message. Dark yet somehow familiar, Portelance hides the specificity of deceased family members and universalizes the work with oblique references to memory. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that when we concentrate on a material object, “the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object…. Transparent things, through which the past shines.”10 Commemorative objects, jewelry, and mementos stand in for an historical moment and everything associated with it from that time forth. Sometimes it looks as if the entire genre of Victoriana has become shorthand for memory itself. The Victorian age was a time when death and grief were frequent companions. It continues to cast a long shadow over jewelry, especially among the young jewelers, whose narratives have much to do with memory. The desire to mark the loss of a loved one began with the Neanderthals and became part of the human equation. Maybe jewelers are the lucky ones, for surely creating an intimate object offers as much solace as possessing it. Gijs Bakker created his monumental chrysanthemum and gerbera daisy neckpieces while grieving for his wife Emmy van Leersum several years ago. He placed one petal after another in a spiral; literally, painstaking work. Work at which one takes pains can gradually abrade the pain of loss. Marjorie Simon is a jeweler and writer living in Philadelphia.
b. sh a ron port el a nce Ever Present (brooch), 2001 (front and back) sterling silver, 22k gold 3 1 ⁄ 2 x 3 1 ⁄ 2 x 1"
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The author would like to thank Elizabeth Wojcik. Museum of Mourning Art, Arlington Cemetery, Drexel Hill, PA, and Anastacia’s Antiques, 617 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia. 1. See Susan Stewart, On Longing (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993) and Bill Brown, ed., Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) for current thinking on objects and meaning. 2. Philippe Aries, The Hour of Our Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). 3. “In ancient Rome, the phrase is said to have been used on the occasions when a Roman general was parading through the streets of Rome during the victory celebration known as a triumph. Standing behind the victorious general was a slave, and he had the task of reminding the general that, though he was up on the peak today, tomorrow was another day. The servant did this by telling the general that he should remember that he was mortal: “Memento mori.” It is also possible that the servant said, rather, “Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento!”: “Look behind you! Remember that you are but a man!”, as noted in Tertullian in his Apologeticus.” Email correspondence from Kim Eric Lilot. 4. www.oobject.com/category/memento-mori-timepieces/ 5. Maureen DeLorme, Mourning Art and Jewelry (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2004), p. 66. 6. Jennifer Zwilling in “Decorative Resurgence,” 2009 catalogue for exhibition organized by Jill Baker Gower, pp. 5-6. 7. Christiane Holm. Project Muse. http://muse.jhu.edu “Sentimental Cuts: Eighteenth-Century Mourning Jewelry with Hair.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 38, no.1 (2004), p. 142. 8. Ibid., p. 143. 9. Ibid., p. 140. 10. Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), p. 1.
in the studio
Shana Kroiz Problem Solver
t h e r e’s no p r obl e m Shana Kroiz can’t solve. Two part-time jobs in cities 200 b y m a r j o r i e s i m o n miles apart? Commuter bus; bring portable repoussé pitch boards. Renovation on rambling old Baltimore home? Scrape, spackle, do all tile work by hand. Replace fallen portico on same? Rent crane. Studio in home with small children? Locate between kitchen and family room. Firsttime booth for Baltimore acc show? Hard walls, fold into back of family car and slot together onsite. Tasks others might dread fill Kroiz instead with anticipation and excitement. Coming from a family of artists, architects, and designers, she never doubts that there’s a solution. Kroiz is currently the Special Events and Workshop Coordinator and founder of the Maryland Institute College of Art (mica) Jewelry Center, where she is also an instructor and studio artist. I first met her when she was the impossibly young director of the famed 92nd Street Y Jewelry Center in New York. She had scoped out the inexpensive, convenient Peter Pan bus, and was commuting from her hometown of Baltimore, carrying her portable pitch board on which were always two or three copper forms in various stages of refinement. She was the first person I ever knew to have a Palm Pilot. A graduate of Parsons School of Design with an honors major in metals and a minor in clay, Kroiz also spent a year studying A selection of Shana Kroiz's jewelry with Robert Ebendorf and Jamie Bennett at displayed in her studio.
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suny New Paltz while an undergraduate. She completed her mfa a few years later closer to home, at Towson State University in Maryland. The combination of media makes her a natural for “sketching” her volumetric, sculptural designs in polymer clay before carving them in wax, then electroforming and enameling them. To me the clay models look like finished pieces, spirited, animate, and complete with pin stems or clasps, but to Kroiz they’re a necessary first step. Rather than tiring of the design once she’s completed the model, she can’t wait to execute it in wax, and ultimately in enamel on the electroformed skin. It’s obvious from looking at the array of work in various stages of completion that each phase has its own pleasures and problems to solve, so she’s never tempted to omit the clay. Working this way allows her to refine the designs in wax before electroforming, as well as providing her with a means of working “clean” in a space her daughter, now eight, can enter and enjoy. Modest in size, the “clean room” is flooded with light and festooned with drawings, sketches, models, and personal memorabilia. A “clothesline exhibit” travels along two walls, surrounding the artist with lively images. A seemingly endless variety of Kroiz’s signature forms cavort on every surface. Behind this, tucked away in what might have been originally servants’ quarters, is a small workroom for fabrication and enameling. With two tall windows on adjoining walls and, in summer at least, a verdant view, it is off-limits to the children, since it contains not only (lead bearing) enamels, but also the electroforming tank (on wheels stashed beneath an old utility sink that came with the house), where she can check on plating progress in the middle of the night if need be. In reality she does much of her enameling in the studio at mica, where she can safely spread out while students are on vacation. The small rooms have the advantage of walls for shelving, bulletin boards, and postings of all kinds. From her central spot Kroiz can hear all that goes on in the house, even supervise homework, impossible if she had chosen the larger subterranean basement for her workspace. Kroiz’s forms are based loosely on sea creatures, and in fact they seem to be futuristic denizens of a universe as
imagined by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jacques Cousteau. Plump, vivacious, colorful, they float and dance in zero gravity, some deep brown to bronzey green, others pink and blue and girly. Every part of the construction is well thought out: individual elements are threaded and screwed into attachments that have been electroformed into the structure. Much larger brooches might have fabricated backs or prong settings for sculptural elements. Early brooches nestled in constructed boxes and were backed with carved wooden supports. Though she claims to have streamlined her fabrication techniques, the new work is anything but slapdash. A new series of production earrings, exhibited at the Baltimore Craft Show in February 2009, is electroformed for weightlessness and patinaed or plated instead of enameled. A large sculptural cuff studded with a few gemstones snaps satisfyingly in place and is, of course, comfortable to wear. Her iconic forms haven’t changed much over time, except to become more refined, developed, and complex, as she has moved from die-forming, chasing, and repousse to electroforming, frequently as a basis for covering with painterly enamels.
Still young after 20 years in the studio, she claims to still have that “giddy-falling-in-love-feeling” at her bench.
Electroforming creates a lightweight shell structure capable of emerging with a smooth, not knobby, surface. Though many are subsequently enameled or plated, some are designed to be used direct from the bath with a rich umber finish. Wearability is always a consideration. Though large and definitely noticeable (a waitress can’t help commenting on her necklace), these interactive set pieces are intended for the body, and the forms must move with it and sit comfortably there. Shana Kroiz personifies some of the best impulses of the field: her dedication as a teacher, her love of making, and her devotion to family compete for her not inconsiderable energies and attention and she is generous with all. She cheerfully accepts that she can no longer work through the night and that whatever has been interrupted for child-centered activities will eventually resume. It’s a dilemma faced by most women, especially women who are artists: pulled, though not always conflicted, by strong creative urges that are not always resolvable. Unfailingly positive, Kroiz may be the embodiment of the hopes and goals for women in the last 40 years: to enjoy, in Freud’s words, love and work. Still young after 20 years in the studio, she claims to still have that “giddy-falling-in-love-feeling” at her bench.
Shana Kroiz in her home studio in Baltimore, Maryland. Regal Dancer (pendant), 2008 silver, electroformed copper, enamel, mother of pearl, fur 5 1 ⁄4 x 3 1 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄4" p h o t o: r a l p h g a b r i n e r
Marjorie Simon is a jeweler and writer living in Philadelphia.
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Onion Teapot, 1954 silver, ebony, rattan 6 1 ⁄ 4 x 10 13 ⁄16 x 7 5 ⁄16" museum of fine a rts, boston
Restless Dane The Evolving Metalwork of John Prip by j e a n n i n e fa l i no vol .30 | no.1 | m e ta l sm i t h
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Apprenticeship Prip’s father, Folmer Trolle Prip (b. 1892), was the son of Danish silversmiths whose family operated a souvenir spoon factory in Copenhagen.1 In 1914, at the age of 22, soon after he completed his apprenticeship, Prip arrived in New York and found work in the silver industry. By 1925, Folmer Prip had his own jewelry establishment in Manhattan, and had married an American, the former
Marian Evelyn Cherry, in 1921. John Axel Prip, his only child, was born in 1922, and the family resided in Yonkers, New York. The Great Depression prevented Folmer Prip’s jewelry business from prospering, and in 1933, the Prips sailed to Copenhagen, where his father returned to the family flatware firm. In 1937, when John was 15, his parents decided that it was time he learned a trade. According to family history, his father first attempted to arrange an apprenticeship with Georg Jensen, but was rebuffed because of its rivalry with the Prip firm.2 Whatever the reason, Prip was sent to the smaller but highly regarded shop of Evard Nielsen, which had exhibited its wares at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.3 Due to the smaller size of the Nielsen shop, Prip received considerably more attention than he would have at Jensen, and learned a wider variety of skills. Prip was also fortunate to work for the head of the Copenhagen silversmith’s guild, who took an interest in him, and encouraged him to enter the guild’s design competitions, some of which he won.4 Apprenticeships in Denmark at this time took five years. At first, apprentices spent their time sweeping floors and running errands. After six months, once the master had had a chance to assess his young charge, a contract was signed in which he agreed to teach “the trade, the skills and the art of the silversmith, and not, you might say, not shortchange [the apprentice] in any way,” according to Prip.5 At the end of five years, the apprentice submitted a drawing of a “journeyman’s piece” or master piece to the guild for approval, and then produced the work, with guild members occasionally visiting to observe progress. If the object was
John Prip (foreground) at the School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, ca. 1950-54.
Ronald Hayes Pearson (left) and John Prip at Shop One, about 1957.
This article has been funded by Helen W. Drutt English in support of research that will expand historical documentation in our field, and in appreciation for the recognition bestowed upon her in receiving the 2000 Honorary Member Award from the Society of North American Goldsmiths. t h e c a r e e r of joh n p r i p is pivotal to the story of mid-twentieth century metalsmithing. He was the first professor to fully introduce the design and techniques of Scandinavian silversmithing to American students, as well as the first to make a radical departure from this aesthetic into nonfunctional and sculptural forms. A fourthgeneration silversmith, Prip was a consummate craftsman who served a traditional apprenticeship in Denmark. His early work reflected this rigorous training, and he set the standard by which many American craftsmen labored in the 1950s. Having achieved renown for these achievements, Prip then began a second phase of his career by exploring pewter, copper, and stone from a sculptural perspective. In this manner, he led the next generation of silversmiths toward new expressions in metal.
p h o t o: g l e n n a . wa g n e r , c o u r t e s y o f t h e a r c h i v e s , rochest er inst i t u t e of t echnol ogy
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court esy of ba r ba r a cow les
Bird Pitcher, 1951 silver with ebony handle; 6 x 5 1 ⁄4" p h o t o: e r i k g o u l d m u s e u m o f a r t, r h o d e isl a nd school of design
Pin, ca. 1947–51 silver 1 x 2"
museum of fine a rts, boston
unacceptable to the guild’s board, the master was obliged to keep his apprentice for a year while the apprentice learned more and remade his piece, this time, however, paying a higher journeyman’s salary. This arrangement was intended to make the master do his best in teaching the full range of skills and avoid such a penalty.6 Prip learned to raise and fabricate hollow forms, and he was taught how to work with all aspects of the silversmith’s craft, such as rolling out stock, stamping, polishing, and presswork. He also absorbed the modern neoclassical style that then dominated Danish silver, made popular by Jensen. Prip received increasingly complex assignments for different forms of holloware, receiving criticism from the shop boss along the way. And when he asked to learn something that was not practiced in the shop, such as traymaking, a difficult job that was handled by an outside specialist, he was sent to work with this individual for several months. The pace was grueling, as he worked six days a week and over many holidays, all the while attending evening classes at the Copenhagen Technical College. Despite the onset of World War II, Prip was kept busy at the shop, perhaps because his services as an apprentice cost far less than those of the journeymen. He was paid one dollar per week during his first year and by the fifth year received three dollars per week. For his journeyman’s piece, Prip designed a coffee service with fluted sides, and made the coffeepot, which was accepted by the guild. Following a brief military service at the end of his five-year apprenticeship, and with his journeyman’s papers, Prip was free to go where he liked (as indicated by the
name “journeyman”), traveling from town to town and from country to country. This was going “on the waltz,” as Prip heard it described by men in his shop. By undertaking such a walkabout, or rite of passage, craftsmen returned home with greater knowledge, self-esteem, and the respect of their peers. With his father’s blessing, Prip left for Stockholm, where he worked for several shops, and when he returned, it was to the relative comfort of Nielsen’s, where he considered his alternatives. The family business did not attract him as it became clear that he would not be able to pursue his own interests there; at the same time he felt he had outgrown the Nielsen shop. By 1947, he was also married and growing restless at the thought of being financially dependent on a trade with few apparent artistic challenges. Soon after he told the shop boss of his plan to leave, to design his own silver and jewelry, his master, Evard Nielsen, called him into the office. Prip saw him with “a leather bag [that] he turned upside down. And a couple of big gold bars fell out on the table. And then he had some packets of stones. He said, ‘Do you like these? … Now you said you wanted to leave He knew that … [but] you can do all this nothing had really work [here] in gold and you changed, for he could work with nice stones needed something and things like that.’ … he else, something put it all on this tray. He more, even if he said, ‘Here. You go out and couldn’t define what you can do whatever you it was he sought.
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want to do here.’” The offer was genuine, and proof of his talent to his master. Prip gratefully remained with the shop for a time, but he knew that nothing had really changed, for he needed something else, something more, even if he couldn’t define what it was he sought. Academic Life That very opportunity came in 1948, when Prip learned of a teaching position at the School for American Craftsmen (sac), part of Alfred University in bucolic Alfred, New York. Prip immediately applied, was accepted, and soon left for the United States aboard the Stockholm, with his childhood friend, furnituremaker Tage Frid (1916–2004), at his side.7 Prip recalled that the letter from Aileen Webb included a postscript request for the names of likely woodworkers as teachers for the school, and Frid had successfully applied at “Tapestry” pattern fork his suggestion. for Reed & Barton, 1964 The choice of two Danish silver, stainless steel craftsmen as teachers for 1 ⁄ 2 x 1 x 7 1 ⁄ 2" da l l a s m useu m of a rt the school reflected the American fascination with Scandinavian design and talent that had begun earlier in the century with the arrival of Georg Jensen in Manhattan in 1924, as well as the appointment of Erik Magnussen as design director at Gorham Manufacturing Company, and of Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook, both in 1925. Furniture designer Jens Risom arrived in the United States in 1939, and within a decade had developed interiors for Jensen and furniture for Knoll before starting his own eponymous firm in 1946. Risom was one of about a half-dozen Scandinavians, including Kay Fisker, Ole Hagen, Peter Hvidt (Denmark), Bruno Mathsson (Sweden), and G. Nyman (Finland) represented in the “For Modern Living” exhibition that was held at the Detroit Institute of Art in 1949.8 Meanwhile, New York in the 1950s boasted numerous galleries like Bonniers, H. Nils, George Tanier, and Richards Morgenthau that featured
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Scandinavian modern designs for the contemporary home in wood, ceramic, glass, and metal. Formal exhibitions on Danish silver and related decorative arts began to circulate, starting in 1955 with “Fifty Years of Danish Silver in the Georg Jensen Tradition.” Sponsored by the Danish ambassador Henrik de Kauffman, the show included furnishings by Finn Juhl and was circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service for two years. Five years later, “The Arts of Denmark – Viking to Modern” opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.9 Not least to emerge from this influence were American firms that traded on Nordic styles and names, as evidenced by Dansk Designs, founded in 1954 in Long Island, New York, which employed Jens Quistgaard of Denmark as its founding designer.10 Prip was naturally curious to see the United States after so many years of absence, and he initially planned to work there for two years and return home. However, the arrangements in Alfred were a refreshing change from Copenhagen. He and Frid had arrived in a small college town and found their fully operational workshops awaiting them in a carriage house. With few diversions, and plenty of raw materials at their disposal, they found themselves completely absorbed in making new work and developing as teachers. Prip guessed about 90 percent of his early students were returning gis, and he found them as highly motivated as he was. More to the point, the supportive atmosphere at sac was worlds away from the workshop life they knew in Denmark. Prip recalled: “It was called a way of life at the time. And they didn’t think of it much as a trade.” Francis Wright Caroë had been sac’s early director. Prip said she referred to “craftsmanship as a way of life… In other words, you would never become rich or wealthy, but you would …have an interesting, stimulating, satisfying way of life.” This new manner of thinking is what Prip had sought, and although he didn’t know it, he had just paddled out onto the first wave of the American craft movement, which he would ride for his entire career. Although Prip was hired as a teacher, he found that he learned as much as he was taught. “You might say it was sort of an exchange,” he said. “I gave them technical information in exchange for … ideas and environment, which I found rather challenging and stimulating. And Word began to this gave me complete circulate about liberty and freedom to do this young Danish pretty much what I wanted silversmith whose to do….and pursue my sleek forms were own inclinations a clear exponent and ideas, without of Scandinavian having … to consider the design, and whose financial ramifications.” occasional playful Prip plunged into notes hinted at his experimental nature. teaching and submitted
his silver to the craft exhibitions then beginning to sprout around the country. He won first prize in 1949 at the Wichita National, the first annual, all-media exhibition in the country, and participated in the landmark “DesignerCraftsman USA” exhibit held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1953.11 Word began to circulate about this young Danish silversmith whose sleek forms were a clear exponent of Scandinavian design, and whose occasional playful notes hinted at his experimental nature. When Prip arrived at Alfred, there were two metalsmiths already in place. Charlie Reese and Laurits Christian Eichner were talented craftsmen who had mastered a number of skills: Eichner in pewter, clockmaking, and astronomy, and Reese in violinmaking, among other things. Eichner actively exhibited silver in the 1930s, but he was mostly interested in reproductions. Neither of these men proved as influential as jewelry professor Philip Morton (1911–2001) and one of the school’s most illustrious students who never graduated, Ronald Hayes Pearson (1924–1996). Morton was entirely self-taught and had been working in Berkeley, California, selling jewelry to Bay Area shops when he was hired to teach at sac. According to Prip, Morton was skilled and inventive; his jewelry received early and important international attention. Due to his independent spirit, however, he clashed with the administration and left Alfred about a year after his arrival in 1947.12 Morton’s most important student was Pearson, in whom he may have found a kindred spirit. For a month in 1947, Morton invited Pearson to work in his own studio to learn the essentials of jewelrymaking, impressing upon him that these skills
John and Karen Prip with his sculptures in front of his Rehoboth Studio, Massachusetts, ca. 1960s
Shield with Horns, 1963 bronze, granite
would enable him to make a living. This instruction served Pearson well, as it led to a long and remarkable career as an independent craftsman.13 Craftsman-Designer From the start, Pearson’s ambitious business efforts and his intuitive adaption of forms for limited production made him a valuable early collaborator for John Prip. They proved useful at Shop One, one of the first crafts shops, and certainly one of the most influential of the early craft movement.14 Established in Rochester in 1953 following the move of sac from Alfred to the Rochester Institute of Technology, its founders were sac faculty members Prip, Frid, and ceramics professor and Bauhaus graduate Frans Wildenhain, with Pearson serving as shop manager. The shop was unique in its time for being founded and operated by artists, and it served as an outlet for their prodigious output, supplemented their modest salaries, and attracted more attention to the Rochester area, which had become an important center for the growing crafts movement. Shop One assumed more importance for Prip when he grew tired of teaching younger, less motivated students, and he decided in 1954 to leave the school. For the next several years he and Pearson worked together designing and making multiples of jewelry for sale, and sold with a joint “prip-pearson” touchmark. They also designed bronze giftware items that were produced by the Metal Arts Company in Rochester, and that found wide distribution through Richards Morganthau, Inc. For a time, they also served as designers for the local Hickock Company, a manufacturer of men’s jewelry and accessories, and supporter of jewelry exhibitions in Rochester.15 Their association ended in 1957, when Prip accepted a position as ArtistCraftsman-in-Residence at Reed & Barton Silversmiths in Taunton, Massachusetts. There Prip was able to combine his extensive knowledge of the silversmithing industry with the hollowware he had been creating in Alfred and Rochester to create new, modern lines of flatware and hollowware for the firm. It was a successful arrangement that brought fresh designs to American dining tables around the country. He introduced prototypes to Reed & Barton that he had created in Rochester, such as the Dimension teapot, which he nicknamed the “onion” for its graceful bulb-shaped body and attenuated finial. The Diamond service, designed to be sold with the Gio Ponti flatware by the same name, was an ingenious solution for production, as each vessel could be spun on a separate chuck and then assembled, a tribute to Prip’s close understanding of production
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requirements and modern sensibility. By 1964, when he designed Tapestry, a densely rich design for flatware, it reflected the artist’s growing interest in surface textures, and a giant step away from the smoothly planished forms that typefied his work to date. Sculpture Tapestry was an important signifier of changes taking shape in his studio. In 1960 Prip had resigned his full time position at Reed & Barton; he continued in a parttime capacity, but used most of his energy to develop his own work in new directions. By 1963 he began to tackle sculpture, starting with Shield with Horns taking the hollow form, most familiar to him, as a point of departure. In that same year, he joined the Rhode Island School of Design where he found the remains of a once-great department and began rebuilding it into a nationally acclaimed program. One of Prip’s favorite teaching tricks was to visit student benches at late hours and play with elements of projects currently underway. He would rearrange them in unusual and illogical arrangements just to shake up their habits of thought, and to suggest new kinds of constructions. This marked his own approach to composition in the early ’60s, as he decisively moved away from the modern style into unknown sculptural territory. At his home in Duxbury and later in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, he began to amass rocks and wood from beaches and elsewhere to give expression to these new interests. Pewter, often considered an inferior material to silver for its softness and dull surface, had fresh appeal at this time due to its ease of casting. Prip had rediscovered an attraction for pewter while at Reed & Barton, because he learned that he could make flatware samples for stainless
Container with Wings, 1972 electroformed and fabricated silver, ivory, amber, glass 4 5 ⁄8 x 4 5 ⁄8 x 1 1 ⁄ 2" smi t hsoni a n a mer ic a n a rt museum
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The drive to evolve and grow, to change, to stimulate and be stimulated are a hallmark of Prip’s career, and he took pride in his ability to go outside his comfort zone in order to discover and create something new.
steel, which due to its hardness was a “tough, and not very grateful material,” out of pewter and plate them in nickel—without anyone knowing the difference. Prip began to use pewter for casting some of the serendipitous items that crossed his path as he considered ways to combine them with other dissimilar objects. He also played with electroplating, and hundreds of other techniques that were in his arsenal of skills, but now put to a new purpose. Prip’s workshop became a kind of grab bag of found items and parts to objects that were either in process, or discarded; in this manner he used them as a vocabulary of shapes that he would employ as needed. Prip recalled that he always “enjoyed just putting things together, stacking things. And very often unlikely [things.] … I have no theories that guide me. I just would take this one and put that one on top of it.… I had a fondness…for trying to get unlikely things to go together.” This method of experimentation yielded some of his most interesting work. Prip had been profoundly impressed by the artistic environment that he had entered upon his arrival at sac in 1948. His training had not been in the arts, but in a trade, and he remained true to his roots, fashioning vessels and flatware for functional purposes through the 1950s, confident of his ability as a designer and skilled craftsman. However, from the time he learned of Philip Morton at Alfred, Prip became acutely aware of a wider artistic world that was accessible to him as a metalsmith. It was a world that he also wanted to conquer for himself. Perhaps the artistic environment at risd helped to inspire him, or perhaps it was just his restless nature once again compelling him to reach out for some new challenge. This phase of Prip’s career is marked by a playful quality, as he created anthropomorphic forms out of pewter with disk-like breasts or the trompe-l’oeil effect of “leaking” boxes. In other cases he experimented with flying boxes, or vaguely erotic shapes that he obtained from electroformed vegetation. Surrealism, pop art, Peter Max, and perhaps a bit of Mad magazine seem to have played a role in one or another of the works from this series, although none in a focused manner. Rather, everything went into the mix with eclectic and entertaining results. Serendipity captured, as it were, in balanced compositions that were as finely made as any teapot. As his vision began to fail him in the 1970s, Prip turned to paper, creating a gigantic body of material that he cut, twisted, and shaped into functional and nonfunctional shapes. But he also returned to pewter, and in the late 1980s he created several severe and enigmatic
want to show that person... He has no recognizable style.’… And I thought that was the greatest compliment, in a way, that anyone could pay.” John Prip could have remained faithful to the Scandinavian modern style of his youth, and made a comfortable living in Denmark or in the United States. Instead, he abandoned the elegantly planished shapes for which he was celebrated, and embarked upon an artistic odyssey that has added even greater luster to a distinguished career.16 Jeannine Falino is a curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. The author wishes to thank the Prip family for their helpfulness with this article.
Geometric Vessel (Triangular Top), 1988 pewter; fabricated, abraded 16 7 ⁄8 x 6 3 ⁄8 x 2 1 ⁄ 2"
m u s e u m o f a r t s a n d d e s i g n, n e w y o r k . g i f t o f t h e artist
forms that were tall and broad. Boxlike in shape, they were, however, merely referring to the container that in turn, referred to the vessel that remained at the heart of his work. With no decoration, but merely surface interest, they seem like mute sentinels, or like a worn stele of ancient Greece. They have a sober grandeur that marks a new approach, and departs, once again, from the traditional associations with metal. The drive to evolve and grow, to change, to stimulate and be stimulated are a hallmark of Prip’s career, and he took pride in his ability to go outside his comfort zone in order to discover and create something new. Of a marketplace that does not always reward artists for choosing new methods of expression, he said: “People in galleries and museums, for instance, say, ‘Oh no, we don’t
1. The firm, known as A. Prip, was primarily a souvenir spoon and flatware company. 2. The rationale seems unlikely, as the family business, according to John Prip, was not of the same caliber as Jensen. 3. “Silverware is Exhibited. Danish Patterns Shown here with Swedish Glass,” New York Times, September 15, 1948, p. 36. The Nielsen silver was exhibited at the fair, but the war prevented shipments of their goods to American consumers. 4. Prip won the Hertz Award, a silver medal, in 1942, the year in which he completed his journeyman’s piece. 5. This quotation and others that follow, and most biographical details, are taken from an interview with John Axel Prip conducted on October 20, 1980, and November 21, 1981, by Robert Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 6. John Prip, a a a interview. 7. Tage Frid was an influential teacher who published widely on furniture designs and techniques and like Prip, was a key figure in the mid-twentieth-century craft movement. The Prip and Frid families had known one another in Copenhagen for many years. Frid’s father had apprenticed with Prip’s grandfather, and Prip’s father had worked under Frid’s grandfather; as a young boy, John Prip would sometimes stay with Frid’s family when his own parents traveled. Prip interview, a a a. 8. An Exhibition for Modern Living (Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1949). The exhibition
took place from September 11 to November 20, 1949. 9. For contemporary reviews of these exhibitions, see “Silver Art Work Shown in Capital,” New York Times, March 27, 1955, p. 83, and Stuart Preston, “Art: A Danish Survey,” New York Times October 15, 1960, p. 15. 10. “Margalit Fox, “Theodore Nierenberg, Founder of Dansk, Dies at 86,” New York Times, August 4, 2009, p. A21. 11. Mounted by the Wichita Art Association, the formal title of the Wichita National was “The Decorative Art and Ceramics Exhibition.” 12. Marbeth Schon, Modernist Jewelry 1930–1960, The Wearable Art Movement, (Atglen, PA.: Schiffer Publishing, LItd., 2004), 105–06. It is not entirely clear whether Prip met Morton, or was aware of his work through Pearson. Morton’s chief contribution to the field is Contemporary Jewelry, A Studio Handbook (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970, reprinted 1976). 13. W. Scott Braznell, “The Early Career of Ronald Hayes Pearson and the Post-World War II Revival of American Silversmithing and Jewelrymaking,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 34 (Winter 1999): 4:192. 14. Conrad Brown, “Shop One,” Craft Horizons, Vol. 16 (MarchApril 1956) 2:19–23. 15. Braznell 1999, 200–02. 16. A rthur J. Pulos, “John Prip’s Odyssey in Metal,” American Craft, Vol. 48 (AugustSeptember 1988), 48–55; John Prip, Master Metalsmith (Providence, RI: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987).
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look
Todd Reed The Thrill of it All
n i c h o l a s va r n e y Sunflower Brooch, 2005 peridot, tourmaline, beryl, freshwater pearls, moonstone, white diamonds, 18k yellow gold diameter 3"
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i’ v e c ho se n a r t i s t s and pieces that transcend what art jewelry or conceptual jewelry or commercial jewelry is and should be. It was important to me that these works be commercially available, and also unique in their design, style, craftsmanship, and sensitivity to materials. These pieces would grace the collection of any museum. I also really wanted to highlight some amazing artists who are lesser known. The working styles of these designers range from one person doing everything (in the case of Judith Kaufman), to more than 100 jewelers working together (as with Sevan), and lots of interesting and fabulous efforts in between. These works thrill me with their potential to transcend the “normal,” or expected. Truth is, I love design, I love jewelry, I love it all! And this is just a small sampling of the wonderful and cool artists who are making exciting work today.
m a n ya a nd roumen Dove on a Walnut Branch (ring). 2009 sterling silver, emeralds, rubies, gold-plating
t im mcl el l a nd Idea in Eden (brooch), 2005 18k yellow gold, tourmaline, Shakudo enamel 1 5 ⁄8 x 1"
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look s e va n Angel Ring, 2009 24k gold, sterling silver, black diamonds, white diamonds, aquamarines, hand painted micro-mosaic tiles, carved quartz intaglio of an angel
at el ier zobel , peter schmid Bracelet, 2006 sterling silver, 22k and 24k gold, turquoise, lapis lazuli, diamonds width 2"
jo h n i v e r s o n Cutting Free (bracelet), 2009 18k yellow gold, sterling silver 7 1 ⁄4 x 2 1 ⁄ 2" p h o t o: r o b e r t h e n s l e i g h
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ecl at jew els Icy Diamond Necklace, 2007–8 18k white gold, with icy, rose-cut, and pave diamonds Furthermore www.toddreed.com www.mc2jewels.com www.manyaandroumen.com www.sevanbicakci.com www.atelierzobel.com www.nicholasvarneyjewels.com www.eclatjewels.com www.judithkaufman.com
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Ron Arad and the Elegance
Exhibition installation view, “Ron Arad: No Discipline,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York August 19, 2009 26 m2–October etalsmith | vol.30 |
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Looming Lloyd, 1989 stainless steel, and patinated steel 36 1 ⁄4 x 41 5 ⁄16 x 25 9 ⁄16"
m a n u fa c t u r e r : o n e o f f l t d . a nd ron a r a d a ssoci at es
If furniture design is where the work begins, it also intersects with art, sculpture, industrial design, craft, and architecture.… This is flow in the material world.
t h e e m i n e n t p s yc hol o gi s t Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent more than two decades researching the science of flow, a concept defined in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” The idea has proved useful to other psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists in their efforts to explain individual and group behavior. “Some have extended the implications of flow to attempts to understand the evolution of mankind,” writes Csikszentmihalyi, “others to illuminate religious experience.” And then there’s the flow theory of furniture design, which the Israeli architect, designer, and sculptor Ron Arad has pretty much covered since he established his studio, One Off, in London in 1981, and later, in 1989,
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Ron Arad Associates. Since 1997 Arad has also headed the Department of Design Products at London’s Royal College of Art. Throughout, he’s been an advocate of mutant design, of the a-hat-is-a-wave-is-a-chair school. Forms are liquid, fluid, extreme. Anything and everything is capable of morphing: ideas, objects, function, and materials, among them stainless steel, inflated aluminum, resins, Corian, acrylic, Fiberglas, carbon fiber, plywood, injectionmolded polypropylene, polyethylene, old car seats, and antennas. Digital technology intersects with handwork. And if furniture design is where the work begins, it also intersects with art, sculpture, industrial design, craft, and architecture. Honestly, who’s keeping track and who cares? This is flow in the material world. A recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (“Ron Arad: No Discipline”) was occasion to review his work, and it was clear from the outset that Arad
Well Tempered Chair (prototype), 1986 sprung stainless steel and wing nuts 31 1 ⁄ 2 x 39 3 ⁄8 x 31 1 ⁄ 2" m a n u fa c t u r e r : v itr a gmbh
is the Dr. Seuss of metal arts. Or maybe it’s more like the Cat in the Hat’s brother who went to design school. There is the same unexpected logic, rhythms, rhymes, perverse and unpredictable associations, all of which make for a lavish romp. There is the same kind of improvisational glee, some hybrid of curiosity and ruthlessness, an irrepressible chaos that all works out in the end. And the idea that there is no discipline is utter nonsense, not that it matters in the slightest; creative people always have a good time contradicting themselves. While the biomorphic forms of the furniture may drip and run and ripple and flow, the odd thing is that for all the pools and puddles, there is an attendant elegance. The Narrow Papardelle Chair (1992), constructed of a kind of steel mesh, rolls itself out like a conveyor belt, making the case that a chair is not a place to sit still, but some kind of weird delivery system; not static but kinetic, seating with its own
sense of forward movement and momentum. Furniture, it suggests, can unfold just as fluidly and precisely as can an idea or relationship or life. Then there is the Bookworm Shelf (1993) for Kartell, undoubtedly one of the few pieces in the history of furniture design whose sales can be measured in kilometers. While the piece brings new meaning to the idea of bouncing off the walls, it also has an undeniable grace, not to mention logic. The flexible, plastic shelf (conceived in sprung steel but manufactured in injectionmolded PVC) can be shaped to snake across your wall in pretty much any way you want, making for a swoopy configuration that speaks to the way one book can lead you to another, or to things, one idea, up, down or across to the next. If your books are poorly organized or if you believe a library can be a moving, swerving, animated collection of ideas, then this is for you. Which brings us back to
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There is the same unexpected logic, rhythms, rhymes, perverse and unpredictable associations, all of which make for a lavish romp.
Narrow Papardelle, 1992 woven stainless steel mesh and steel 42 x 16 x 118 1 ⁄8"
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Lolita, 2004 Crystals and LEDs 59 x 43 1 ⁄4"
m a n u fa c t u r e r : s wa r o v s k i a n d ron a r a d
PizzaKobra, 2007 chromed steel, aluminum, and LEDs extended 28 7 ⁄8 x 10 1 ⁄4"
m a n u fa c t u r e r : i g u z z i n i i l l u m i n a z i o n e s . p. a .
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Blown Out Of Proportion (B.O.O.P.) Vase, 1998 superplastic aluminum 92 x 59 1 ⁄ 2 x 15" m a n u fa c t u r e r : t he ga llery mour m a ns
Large Bookworm, 1993 Tempered sprung steel and patinated steel length approx 50 feet
m a n u fa c t u r e r : o n e o f f l t d .
Dr. Seuss: “It is fun to have fun/but you have to know how/I can hold up the cup/and the milk and the cake!/I can hold up the books!/And the fish and a rake!” For all the weirdness here, there is also a kind of universally engaging quality not all that different from that of the noodle art my kids did in preschool, when they sprayed gold paint on pasta bow ties, wagon wheels, tortellini, and rotini, then strung them all together. They were great. Curvy pieces of pasta with a shiny, metallic finish have a kind of universal appeal that lie beyond my powers of explanation. Maybe it has to do with giving an unexpected industrial finish to fluid, organic shapes, but you just kind of go with it. And the association with preschool pasta art isn’t as condescending as it sounds; it’s clear that Arad has a perfectly healthy and serious respect for the process of play. That engaging quality may also have to do with the sense of fit so implicit in much of the work. Things are designed
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to accommodate the physical world, whether it is a wall, a floor, a table, a CD, a bottle, a room, or a human being. The Soundtrack CD Holder (1998), the Infinity Bottle Rack (1999), the PizzaKobra Light (2007)—if all of these pieces morph and mutate, spin and spiral, it is usually because they are trying to accommodate something. The rippling form of a chair is what allows it to stack so neatly. A different sense of fit is conveyed by Thumbprint (2007), a chair crafted from polished stainless steel rods that suggests it was formed by the impression of some giant supernatural and oddly benevolent digit. The sense of accommodation can be more psychic as well. The Lolita chandelier (2004), a ribbon of light made with 2,100 crystals and 1,050 LEDs, is a glittering corkscrew capable of displaying text messages; as the messages are displayed down the ribbon of light, the chandelier appears to gently spin, the glitter and gleam of a word or sentence read, an idea communicated.
Southern Hemisphere, 2007 patinated superplastic aluminum 51 x 52 x 52" m a n u fa c t u r e r : t he ga llery mour m a ns
Things are designed to accommodate the physical world, whether it is a wall, a floor, a table, a CD, a bottle, a room, or a human being.
Arad’s work requires a certain sympathy for extravagance; a colleague I ran into at the exhibition went so far as to call it “bombastic design. It has no filter,” he said. But that’s always the case with exaggeration; if the statement has meaning, then exaggeration can make a point. It’s a perfectly legitimate mode of narrative; even the most extreme hyperbole is capable of telling the truth, highlighting or underlining or going over the top or in some way or other contributing to meaning in some loud, overt, excessive way. Fine. But if the meaning is thin to begin with, then the exaggeration just comes off as hollow, a little tinny. Looming Lloyd (1989) simply attaches metal “clogs” to any four-legged chair, repositioning it as airborne, which isn’t much of a description but still makes it sound more interesting than it is. The strength of Arad’s work sometimes depends on the installation. Paved with Good Intentions (2005) is a mirrorpolished, laser-cut stainless steel, crystal-clear pool of a
table with different configurations that can climb the walls. But it was made for an installation that included 69 such tables, and once you know these tables were designed not as a puddle but as a lake, well, you want the whole lake. At times, too, it looks dated. I state this complaint to a friend. “So what,” she mutters. “Sottsass looks dated too sometimes. He looks fresh, then he doesn’t, then he does again. He goes in and out of fashion. That’s all part of it.” She’s right. It’s all just another part of the mutation, which is to say, it’s just part of the flow. The Shadow of Time clock announces the hour by light, the elusive clock face cast on the wall. Maybe the idea of the shadows of time is obvious, but it still speaks genuinely and clearly to the human experience of time and the constant acceleration and compression of time that most of us occupants of the early twenty-first century have some passing familiarity with. But then again, there is something about the plunging, veering shapes in all of
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Low Table 34, Table 48, and Table 57, 2005 from “Paved with Good Intentions” Series mirror-polished, laser-cut stainless steel dimensions variable
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Installation view with Bio-Void 1 chair (2006), and I.P.C.O. (Inverted Pinhole Camera Obscura) (2001), The Museum of Modern Art, New York
There is something about the plunging, veering shapes in all of this work, something in the swooping, twirling, looping forms that speaks to the pulse and rhythm of contemporary experience at large.
this work, something in the swooping, twirling, looping forms that speaks to the pulse and rhythm of contemporary experience at large. And I wonder if, more than anything else, this is the quality that gives Arad’s work its relevance and resonance. Evergreen!, designed for a development in Tokyo, is street furniture reconsidered as a Mobius strip of bronze piping and ivy, a wave of metal work and plant life, a bench that veers through the organic and synthetic with a kind of loopy rhythm of its own. Mutation, it gaily reminds us, is a central metaphor for contemporary life in this century. Erasing the boundaries between disciplines, hybrid materials, high and low, hand work embedded with new technologies—all of these figure into the work of many contemporary artists and designers, but what Arad manages to convey most of all is this sense of motion and instantaneity, of things forever changing, of the situation
constantly being turned around, upended, utterly revised without any notice. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the state of flow is the ability “to find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience,” which isn’t all that different from what Arad’s work tries to reflect. That we live in a world in which nothing stays the same for very long can often be cause for disconnect and distress, but seen through Arad’s eyes and experienced through his work, we see how it can be cause for pleasure and comfort as well. Akiko Busch writes about design, culture, and nature for a variety of publications, and her most recent book is Nine Ways to Cross a River (Bloomsbury/USA). Furthermore www.moma.org/ronarad www.ronarad.com
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