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what has the design, timeless in appeal” should, in ’s rarefied—and increasingly these dicey economic times, be considered Fashion Moment conceptualized—world a smart investment. Among the names of art jewelry to do with she cited were the Belfast-born Binns, but The influence of the trend-driven parallel also American Daniel Brush, whose rarely universe of fashion? While glimpsed Bakelite sell for five art jewelry on it may come as a surprise, figures; the French jeweler Frederic Zaavy, fashion jewelry there are indeed relation- renowned for exquisite pavé floral jewels; ships, if not intersections, V. Bruce Hoeksema, under the brand VBH, has never between the two realms. a handbag designer who has added fine While the fashion world jewelry to his high-style offerings; and been stronger necessarily operates by the Victoire de Castellane, Dior’s quirky house by andrea dinoto merciless rules of seasonal accessory designer, whose colorful cocktail merchandising, producing rings feature semi-precious megastones in fairly predictable, con- whimsically detailed settings. As this short servative styles overall, the fashion press list indicates, fashion jewelry has become has always championed the creativity of a diverse that embraces everything individual jewelry designers—and never from a maverick artist-designed esthetic so enthusiastically as now. The December (Binns has been known to spray “jewels” 2007 issue of Vogue showcased the stunning with neon paint) to the classic designs ’50s-era sculptural pieces of Art of the great houses, Cartier, , etc. (whose work is reviewed in Every category responds to the tyranny of this issue), and the maga- design trends; even and gem-set zine regularly accessorizes jewelry, an industry staple, now embraces sittings with the jewelry of uncut as the latest must-have. contemporary designers, (Art jeweler Todd Reed actually started this such as Taher Chemirik, “trend” 15 years ago, acquiring free cast- Herve van der Straeten, and offs from the diamond industry to create Philip Crangi. At the same a wildly successful collection of “natural” time, the gallery world is stones hand-set in .) Major diamond discovering how powerful houses like Diamond in the Rough and De marketing—via the very Beers today mine new riches in stones that successful SOFA shows would once have been rejected out of hand. and promotional events— Even at this high level, perceived value benefits artists, garnering holds sway in the marketplace. the attention of a larger For a unique overview of the current audience of fashion- and fashion jewelry field, consider the JA (Jewel- design-oriented consumers. ers of America) New York trade shows, an What’s abundantly clear important buying venue for jewelry retail- is that the influence of art ers (independents, chains, galleries), which jewelry on fashion jewelry draw hundreds of exhibitors from all over A Tom Binns worn by has never been stronger; witness First Lady the world, and are open to the public. The Michelle Obama in 2008 Michelle Obama at a 2008 Democratic fund- JA New York Summer Show, held last July at photo: marcel thomas/ getty images raiser resplendent in a Tom Binns necklace, the Javits Center, featured, as usual, special a cascading of vintage rhinestones sections devoted to trend-watching, notably in brilliant “diamond” and the self-explanatory New Designers Gallery, colors. The edgy Binns is fashion’s current, the Couture Pavilion, and the International if unlikely, darling. His high-low jewelry is Pavilions, where Italy commands attention everywhere, paired with couture in fashion for its gold traditions and designs. Antique magazines, available on the Internet, and and Estate Jewelry was also represented, widely emulated. Even a couture house like and at the very rear of the vast exhibition Lanvin is producing a “state- hall the AGTA Colored Stone Pavilion lured ment necklace” of costume and precious show goers with seeming acres of candy- jewels. In the 2008 issue of Vogue, colored loose gems and beads, all there for contributing editor Plum Sykes suggested the choosing, as if from an exotic bazaar. that “contemporary jewelry, modern in It’s easy to get lost in the maze of aisles

20 | vol29 | no1 Denise Betesh’s hand wrought “Chain Series” from 2007, featuring 22k fused/ granulated chains, with diamond accents and sage .

and booths at a JA show, but certain young donned an ever-present Mikimoto strand in designers and established names always the recent movie version of Sex and the City.) manage to assert themselves. Worth noting: Reporting on the show in National Carolina Bucci’s extraordinarily fine silk- Jeweler Network, an online magazine, and-gold mesh pieces, woven in Florence Catherine Dayrit described a “tale of two on a modernized textile loom; Emanuela styles,” in which the bolder Duca’s sand-textured and gold ribbon and cuffs that were being promoted by rings that wrap the finger in a dramatic style makers actually drew less interest ; and the hand-wrought 22k gold link among consumers than smaller, delicate chains of Denise Betesh, a jewelry that can be stacked and layered for artist, who describes her work as “a fusion impact. Also, “enlightenment jewelry” with Hibiscus by Frédéric Zaavy was featured in his 2007 solo technique out of granulation,” and who does religious, spiritual or zodiacal themes was exhibition at Phillips de Pury the show to increase her gallery representa- strong, as were nature-inspired motifs and auction house in New York City. tion. Among the couture jewelers, Oscar textured metals. Jewelers also report that Heyman, the venerable firm founded in the Internet has created a new generation 1912, displayed their dazzling colored-stone of informed consumers who ask questions jewelry, which they have produced over the not only about the ethical aspects of years for major firms (the famed Taylor-Bur- jewelry on offer, the sources of diamonds ton diamond necklace purchased at Cartier and gold, for example, but also regarding was theirs). A hazel cat’s eye and fashion—what’s in, what’s out, presumably, diamond appeared to blink and beckon how to wear the style of the moment. with seductive beauty and mystery, as if to The current big-bold style—dictating sum up the timeless allure of jewelry itself. the massive necklace, the mega cuff, the If you had to pick just one jewel for all time, huge hoops, and the three-mojito cocktail , such as the luminous Tahitian and ring—was predicted for fall 2008. Which South Sea variety of Assael International, will be old news by the time this issue so seductive in their gray-black-yellow-pink- reaches the newsstand. So what, then, white iridescence, would serve well. (Even is the function of a jewelry trend, beyond the fictional fashionista Carrie Bradshaw marketing? Most usefully, and however outlandishly it may manifest itself, a trend While the fashion world reminds us that fashion, like art, is es- necessarily operates by the sentially the visual expression of an ethos, merciless rules of seasonal reflecting the prevalent, ever shifting, merchandising … the fashion spirit of the day. press has always championed the creativity of individual Andrea DiNoto, a New-York based writer on the jewelry designers. arts and design, aspires to be fashionable.

vol.29 | no.1 | metalsmith 21 Reviews

of stained sidewalks, or rust-marked security doors, or Talya Baharal dirty water swirling down dark- barred drainage grates. So Jewelers’werk Galerie vast is the emotional distance Washington, D.C. between, say, a pristine snow July 11– 1, 2008 drift in the Hudson Valley where Baharal now lives, and a by Kate Dobbs Ariail plowed heap of dirty slush on a dejected street corner, that it Israeli-born metal artist Talya almost obliterates our ability to Baharal went to Pittsburgh, perceive the interesting quali- Pennsylvania, for a winter ties of the latter. Baharal has Residue #2 (), 2008 , , steel, month to work on a approached these urban forms 3 5 ⁄8 x 3 3 ⁄4 x 1 ⁄16" project—and out of the and the natural and manmade photo: gene gnida Rust Belt’s bleak midwinter processes at work on them blossomed strange, consoling rather like a photographer its circular edge jagged with deep knowledge of material flowers. Her artist’s eye found with a close-up lens, studying slivers of applied metal, may behavior, Baharal coaxes the in the rotten ice and grayed the nearly invisible lace of be exploding from its small viewer to a new appreciation snow, in the streaks and tiny plants and crumbling open central eye—or perhaps of the worn, the corroded, blots left by salt’s corrosion, a humus on the forest floor. disappearing into it. Even more the ever-eroding substance of wondrous palette of delicate Magnified by her attention, intriguing are Urban Landscape ever-rejuvenating life. She’s effects, which she incor- the city’s flotsam, grit, and #4, #7, and #12, which, with interested in decay: she courts porated into her extensive corrosion become a vast and their laid-on lines and interior rust. Unlike the , “Urban Landscape” series of worthy subject. pockings and craterings, call who dabbles with shining brooches and neckpieces, Like the great Pittsburgh to mind the runic appearance immortality, Baharal looks exhibited in a memorable photographers Charles of manhole covers dark in a through the haze of oxidation show at Jewelers’werk Galerie. “Teenie” Harris and Eugene snowy street. to see fresh forms. Taken as The place where nature and Smith, Baharal revels in the Two of the more beautiful a body of work, the “Urban culture meet often provides rough textures and dark tones pieces in the show looked as Landscape” series comprises fertile ground for artistic of a city defined by coal, iron, if they might have been cut a sustained meditation on the exploration, and that shifting and steel. But while Harris from weathered asphalt or necessitous beauty of decay borderland has been heavily and Smith were primarily from a foundry floor. Urban and deterioration in both the worked for generations. But interested in the people in the Landscape #41, a brooch, on organic and inorganic realms. it’s quite remarkable for city, and the metamorphoses closer inspection began to look someone to find the beauty of society and art there, like a fragment sliced from a Kate Dobbs Ariail writes on arts within the leaden visuals Baharal looks to the conjunc- map of some dream city, with and culture from her home in tion of material and process glittering road tracks through Durham, . Urban Landscape #41 (brooch), 2006 to consider ideas of stability, rumpled black hills, provoking sterling silver, iron, steel, copper influence, compatibility, and an upsurge of hopefulness. The 1 1 3 x 2 ⁄8 x ⁄16" change. With their mixed met- neckpiece Urban Landscape #34 photo: gene gnida als and heat and patinas, comes from the same territory. Contemporary these small wearable relief Its crumpled, blackened silver Jewelry From Italy express something hills abut a patterned field of the energy released and powdery with oxidized metal Velvet Da Vinci power created when iron is dust. The rough rectangle San Francisco, converted to steel. hangs from a delicate and May 1–June 8, 2008 The round and spiral variable armature of wire. Like brooches are particularly many of the pieces, its several by Jennifer Cross Gans energized. Although fabricated materials are as beautifully of sterling silver, steel, iron, arranged on the back as on the Call me old fashioned, but I and copper and more or less ostensible front. think it’s refreshing to see a permanent in their forms, Buttressing her artistic world-class show devoted al- they seem in the process of instinct for unlikely combina- most entirely to metal jewelry whirling change. Residue #2, tions with the craft worker’s by artists who are becoming

50 metalsmith | vol.29 | no.2 Objects of Remembrance Contemporary Mourning Jewelry by marjorie simon

22 metalsmith | vol.29 | no.5 idiots NR II, 2008 taxidermy bird, , Swarovski / pearls, / beads 13 3 ⁄4 x 2 3 ⁄4"

vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith 23 death, like life, 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 since the . Through the seventeenth kim eric lilot and eighteenth centuries, as women assumed more Self-Portrait Without Skin, 1997 responsibility for the emotional life within bourgeois 14k gold, , rubelite 7⁄8 x 1 1⁄2 x 1" society, jewelry provided a way to express tender and collection smithsonian american art museum, deep emotions which might be otherwise prohibited washington, d.c. photo: kim eric lilot or discouraged.2 Gifts of remembrance, including tiny portraits in or enamel, 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 jonathon wahl and dead animals. Secondly, conscious Victoriana, which Drawing: Totem, 2008 frankly references formal motifs, sentiments, or content charcoal on 48 x 32" from the Victorian era. And last, commemorative narratives photo: bryan helm, of personal bereavement, which may or may not reference courtesy sienna gallery historical precedent. The memento mori object, variously translated as

24 metalsmith | vol.29 | no.5 melanie bilenker kelly mccallum Nap, 2008 Untitled (ring), 2006 gold, ebony, resin, human bone, bird skull, pearls pigment, hair 2 3 ⁄8 x 5 ⁄8 x 1" 2 x 1 1⁄4 x 3 ⁄8" photo: ken yanoviak

“remember, you must die,” or “remember, you are mortal,” Jewelry worn to common among bourgeois appeared somewhere around the sixteenth century and signify mourning women. Hair curled in a has never really disappeared, irregardless of decorative communicates decorative pattern was .3 Not strictly mourning jewelry, the classic memento wordlessly to others given in friendship or mori piece referred not to a specific person, but to a general that the individual worn to signify closeness warning about the transitory nature of life. In the post- has suffered a between women. At Reformation seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an significant loss. the time of death, one’s obsession with death, combined with the emerging love It also symbolizes hair would be taken to of mechanical toys and automata, produced clocks and to the bereaved, a goldsmith, who might timepieces of all sizes, fashioned into skulls and skeletons intimately and have been recommended of gold, rock , diamonds, and enamel. A stunning directly on the by the funeral parlor. In example from 1610 is the Mechanical Screaming Biting Skull body, the presence a mourning brooch the Clock with Animated Snakes for Eyeballs, designed and built by of the deceased. hair may be braided (think Nicolaus Schmidt der Junger of Augsburg, . The Celtic knot) but the cut clock’s jaws open and snap shut every three minutes, and a ends will be visible; the snake shoots out of the eye socket.4 In 1997, San Francisco cut edge “embodied” the moment of transition from the goldsmith Kim Eric Lilot designed and built Self-Portrait natural (living) to the cultural (dead). Like a religious relic, Without Skin, one of a series of gold and gemstone memento including the actual body part concretizes death and acts mori jewelry, including a group of skull wearing as a memento mori. jaunty top hats carved from assorted semiprecious stones. Contemporary artist Melanie Bilenker’s quiet brooches Like drawings by countless adolescent boys, Lilot’s carved from her “womangirl” series most resemble Georgian skulls grin and glower, grasped by tiny bony hands like the “cut work” in which “strands of hair were spread over figure in Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream. glue-covered paper and allowed to dry, whereupon the Mourning jewelry from the eighteenth century hair-covered paper was cut into various shapes and graphically depicts grieving men and women weeping arranged into the mourning scene.”5 The bezel settings are over the loss of loved ones. Greatly influenced by German of a style illustrated in a 1790 goldsmith’s advertisement romanticism, jewelry containing human hair was for mourning jewelry. Frankly female, Bilenker’s work

vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith 25 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 constanze schreiber into her jewelry and objects. Attracted by the conundrum Untitled (bracelet), 2006 of death in life, McCallum uses her goldsmithing skills as fine silver 3 3 ⁄8 x 3 x 1 3 ⁄4" well as the implied meanings of her other materials such photo: tom haartsen as gold and . 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 , 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 anya kivarkis while grieving. As in every age, new technologies were Brooch #3 (back), 2007 used in jewelry making, and Victorian mourning jewelry fine and sterling silver, enamel auto paint, blue was made from available and popular materials such as 4 1⁄4 x 1 3 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄4" , enamel, glass (known as French jet), gutta percha photo: kevin sprague, courtesy sienna gallery (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 Consciously with that of the massive appropriating the losses of the American iconography of Civil War, and Americans European decorative imitated British mourning arts, several artists as they did their other prominently feature customs. The intrinsic actual dead animals. beauty of jet meant it would

26 metalsmith | vol.29 | no.5 rebecca strzelec 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" photo: rebecca strzelec

vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith 27 lola brooks Bleeding Heart (brooch), 2009 vintage rose cut , , 14k gold 4 1⁄2 x 4 1⁄2 x 2" photo courtesy of sienna gallery not be restricted to mourning, and today’s artists enlist it and illusion. Kivarkis locates her work “in a place between for its range of traits and associations. drawing and object, an idea of the piece and the thing itself.” Jonathan Wahl, Anya Kivarkis, and Lola Brooks recall She has taken the formal stasis of the Victorian brooch and and reconfigure the giddy heights of Victorian extremes. whitewashed it, effacing the carved or worked surface and Kivarkis and Wahl have taken similar forms and rendered leaving us with a form nearly everyone will recognize as them in nearly opposite ways: Wahl with immense charcoal “jewel.” Brooks has been parsing the rose in much of her drawings of jewels, and Kivarkis with stark white modest- current work, but she too subverts the sentimentalized heart sized silhouettes of nearly the same form. Both share an with black mourning ribbons and garnets, the latter being affinity with Schreiber for classicV ictorian symmetry. Wahl acceptable gems during half-mourning, as they symbolize grabs the Victorian jewelry object and enlarges it on the drops of blood. Packing another large woven heart with an wall, wresting it from its intimacy on the human body and overabundance of white roses, Brooks appears to deride the confronting it as a two-dimensional form. He transforms the purity implicit in her choice of symbols. One can imagine the hand-carved crafted object into “art” and forces the viewer to perfume to be suffocating, and the thorns piercing. apprehend the representation of form and surface, reflectivity In the , a recent exhibition titled

28 metalsmith | vol.29 | no.5 Quite apart from “Decorative Resurgence,” historical precedent, featured numerous objects most jewelers have of mourning and memory, at some time created mostly by young women. objects that refer to a The early twenty-first significant personal century is indeed witness loss, a loss that for to a decorative resurgence. them cannot be In her essay for the metabolized without exhibition catalogue, making something. 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 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 lorena lazard commemorative object has layers of meaning, some Today We Bury You (sculpture), 2005 pure silver, sterling, 24k bimetal gold, epoxy of which may be coded. Work done mainly for oneself, color, acrylic, soil from artist’s father’s grave often not for public consumption, may be quieter 3 x 1 3 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄4" 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 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 susan mahlstedt revealing, absence and presence, anonymity and naming Winter Tree #1, 2007 operate to sustain acts of memory.”8 Holm is not alone in 18k gold, sterling silver 2 x 1 1 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄8"

vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith 29 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 to our involuntarily 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.

The author would like to thank Elizabeth Wojcik. Museum of Mourning Art, Arlington Cemetery, Drexel Hill, PA, and Anastacia’s b. sharon portelance Antiques, 617 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia. Ever Present (brooch), 2001 (front and back) 1. See Susan Stewart, On Longing (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, sterling silver, 22k gold 1993) and Bill Brown, ed., Things (Chicago: University of Chicago 3 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2 x 1" 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.

30 metalsmith | vol.29 | no.5 in the studio

there’s no problem suny New Paltz while an undergraduate. Shana Kroiz Shana Kroiz can’t solve. Two She completed her mfa a few years later Problem Solver part-time jobs in cities 200 closer to home, at Towson State University in by marjorie simon miles apart? Commuter Maryland. The combination of media makes bus; bring portable repoussé her a natural for “sketching” her volumetric, pitch boards. Renovation sculptural designs in polymer clay before on rambling old Baltimore home? Scrape, carving them in wax, then electroforming spackle, do all tile work by hand. Replace and enameling them. To me the clay fallen portico on same? Rent crane. Studio models look like finished pieces, spirited, in home with small children? Locate animate, and complete with pin stems or between kitchen and family room. First- clasps, but to Kroiz they’re a necessary time booth for Baltimore acc show? Hard first step. Rather than tiring of the design walls, fold into back of family car and once she’s completed the model, she can’t slot together onsite. Tasks others might wait to execute it in wax, and ultimately dread fill Kroiz instead with anticipation in enamel on the electroformed skin. It’s and excitement. Coming from a family of obvious from looking at the array of work artists, architects, and designers, she never in various stages of completion that each doubts that there’s a solution. phase has its own pleasures and problems Kroiz is currently the Special Events to solve, so she’s never tempted to omit the and Workshop Coordinator and founder clay. Working this way allows her to refine of the Maryland Institute College of Art the designs in wax before electroforming, () Jewelry Center, where she is also as well as providing her with a means of an instructor and studio artist. I first met working “clean” in a space her daughter, her when she was the impossibly young now eight, can enter and enjoy. director of the famed 92nd Street Y Jewelry Modest in size, the “clean room” is Center in New York. She had scoped out flooded with light and festooned with the inexpensive, convenient Peter Pan bus, drawings, sketches, models, and personal and was commuting from her hometown memorabilia. A “clothesline exhibit” travels of Baltimore, carrying her portable pitch along two walls, surrounding the artist board on which were always two or with lively images. A seemingly endless three copper forms in various stages of variety of Kroiz’s signature forms cavort refinement. She was the first person I ever on every surface. Behind this, tucked knew to have a Palm Pilot. away in what might have been originally A graduate of Parsons School of Design servants’ quarters, is a small workroom with an honors major in metals and a minor for fabrication and enameling. With two A selection of Shana Kroiz's jewelry in clay, Kroiz also spent a year studying tall windows on adjoining walls and, displayed in her studio. with and Jamie Bennett at 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 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

18 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.1 imagined by Niki de Saint Phalle and Electroforming creates a lightweight shell Shana Kroiz in her home studio Jacques Cousteau. Plump, vivacious, structure capable of emerging with a in Baltimore, Maryland. colorful, they float and dance in zero smooth, not knobby, surface. Though many Regal Dancer (pendant), 2008 gravity, some deep brown to bronzey green, are subsequently enameled or plated, some silver, electroformed copper, enamel, mother of , fur others pink and blue and girly. Every part are designed to be used direct from the 5 1⁄4 x 3 1⁄4 x 3 ⁄4" of the construction is well thought out: bath with a rich finish. Wearability photo: ralph gabriner individual elements are threaded and is always a consideration. Though large screwed into attachments that have been and definitely noticeable (a waitress can’t electroformed into the structure. Much help commenting on her necklace), these larger brooches might have fabricated backs interactive set pieces are intended for the or prong settings for sculptural elements. body, and the forms must move with it and Early brooches nestled in constructed boxes sit comfortably there. and were backed with carved wooden Shana Kroiz personifies some of the supports. Though she claims to have best impulses of the field: her dedication streamlined her fabrication techniques, the as a teacher, her love of making, and her new work is anything but slapdash. A new devotion to family compete for her not series of production , exhibited at inconsiderable energies and attention and the Baltimore Craft Show in February 2009, she is generous with all. She cheerfully is electroformed for weightlessness and accepts that she can no longer work through patinaed or plated instead of enameled. the night and that whatever has been A large sculptural cuff studded with a few interrupted for child-centered activities will gemstones snaps satisfyingly in place and is, eventually resume. It’s a dilemma faced by of course, comfortable to wear. most women, especially women who are Her iconic forms haven’t changed artists: pulled, though not always conflicted, much over time, except to become more by strong creative urges that are not always refined, developed, and complex, as she resolvable. Unfailingly positive, Kroiz may has moved from die-, chasing, and be the embodiment of the hopes and goals repousse to electroforming, frequently as a for women in the last 40 years: to enjoy, in basis for covering with painterly enamels. 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” Still young after 20 years in the at her bench. studio, she claims to still have that “giddy-falling-in-love-feeling” Marjorie Simon is a jeweler and writer living at her bench. in Philadelphia.

vol.30 | no.1 | metalsmith 19 Onion Teapot, 1954 silver, ebony, rattan 6 1⁄4 x 10 13 ⁄16 x 7 5 ⁄16" m useu m of fine arts, boston

Restless Dane The Evolving Metalwork of by jeannine falino vol.30 | no.1 | metalsmith 45 This article has been funded by Helen W. Drutt English in support Marian Evelyn Cherry, in 1921. John Axel Prip, his only of research that will expand historical documentation in our field, child, was born in 1922, and the family resided in Yonkers, and in appreciation for the recognition bestowed upon her in New York. The Great Depression prevented Folmer Prip’s receiving the 2000 Honorary Member Award from the Society of jewelry business from prospering, and in 1933, the Prips North American . sailed to Copenhagen, where his father returned to the family flatware firm. In 1937, when John was 15, his parents the career of john prip is pivotal to the story of decided that it was time he learned a trade. According to mid-twentieth century metalsmithing. He was the first family history, his father first attempted to arrange an professor to fully introduce the design and techniques of apprenticeship with Georg Jensen, but was rebuffed because Scandinavian silversmithing to American students, as well of its rivalry with the Prip firm.2 Whatever the reason, Prip as the first to make a radical departure from this aesthetic was sent to the smaller but highly regarded shop of Evard into nonfunctional and sculptural forms. A fourth- Nielsen, which had exhibited its wares at the 1939 New York generation , Prip was a consummate craftsman World’s Fair.3 Due to the smaller size of the Nielsen shop, who served a traditional apprenticeship in Denmark. His Prip received considerably more attention than he would early work reflected this rigorous training, and he set the have at Jensen, and learned a wider variety of skills. Prip standard by which many American craftsmen labored in was also fortunate to work for the head of the Copenhagen the 1950s. Having achieved renown for these achievements, silversmith’s guild, who took an interest in him, and Prip then began a second phase of his career by exploring encouraged him to enter the guild’s design competitions, , copper, and stone from a sculptural perspective. some of which he won.4 In this manner, he led the next generation of Apprenticeships in Denmark at this time took five years. toward new expressions in metal. At first, apprentices spent their time sweeping floors and running errands. After six months, once the master had Apprenticeship had a chance to assess his young charge, a contract was Prip’s father, Folmer Trolle Prip (b. 1892), was the son of signed in which he agreed to teach “the trade, the skills Danish silversmiths whose family operated a souvenir and the art of the silversmith, and not, you might say, not spoon factory in Copenhagen.1 In 1914, at the age of 22, shortchange [the apprentice] in any way,” according to Prip.5 soon after he completed his apprenticeship, Prip arrived At the end of five years, the apprentice submitted a drawing in New York and found work in the silver industry. By of a “journeyman’s piece” or master piece to the guild for 1925, Folmer Prip had his own jewelry establishment in approval, and then produced the work, with guild members Manhattan, and had married an American, the former occasionally visiting to observe progress. If the object was

John Prip (foreground) at the School for American Craftsmen, Ronald Hayes Pearson (left) and Rochester Institute of Technology, ca. 1950-54. John Prip at Shop One, about 1957. photo: glenn a. wagner, courtesy of the archives, courtesy of barbara cowles rochester institute of technology

46 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.1 Bird Pitcher, 1951 silver with ebony handle; 6 x 5 1⁄4" photo: erik gould museum of art, rhode island school of design

Pin, ca. 1947–51 silver 1 x 2" m useu m of fine arts, boston

unacceptable to the guild’s board, the master was obliged to name “journeyman”), traveling from town to town and keep his apprentice for a year while the apprentice learned from country to country. This was going “on the waltz,” as more and remade his piece, this time, however, paying a Prip heard it described by men in his shop. By undertaking higher journeyman’s salary. This arrangement was intended such a walkabout, or rite of passage, craftsmen returned to make the master do his best in teaching the full range of home with greater knowledge, self-esteem, and the respect skills and avoid such a penalty.6 of their peers. Prip learned to raise and fabricate hollow forms, and he With his father’s blessing, Prip left for Stockholm, where was taught how to work with all aspects of the silversmith’s he worked for several shops, and when he returned, it was craft, such as out stock, stamping, polishing, and to the relative comfort of Nielsen’s, where he considered his presswork. He also absorbed the modern neoclassical alternatives. The family business did not attract him as it style that then dominated Danish silver, made popular by became clear that he would not be able to pursue his own Jensen. Prip received increasingly complex assignments interests there; at the same time he felt he had outgrown for different forms of holloware, receiving criticism from the Nielsen shop. By 1947, he was also married and growing the shop boss along the way. And when he asked to learn restless at the thought of being financially dependent on a something that was not practiced in the shop, such as trade with few apparent artistic challenges. traymaking, a difficult job that was handled by an outside Soon after he told the shop boss of his plan to leave, to specialist, he was sent to work with this individual for design his own silver and jewelry, his master, Evard Nielsen, several months. The pace was grueling, as he worked six called him into the office. Prip him with “a leather days a week and over many holidays, all the while attending bag [that] he turned upside down. And a couple of big gold evening classes at the Copenhagen Technical College. bars fell out on the table. And then he had some packets Despite the onset of World War II, Prip was kept busy at the of stones. He said, ‘Do you shop, perhaps because his services as an apprentice cost far like these? … Now you less than those of the journeymen. He was paid one dollar He knew that said you wanted to leave per week during his first year and by the fifth year received nothing had really … [but] you can do all this three dollars per week. For his journeyman’s piece, Prip changed, for he work [here] in gold and you designed a coffee service with fluted sides, and made the needed something could work with nice stones coffeepot, which was accepted by the guild. else, something and things like that.’ … he Following a brief military service at the end of his more, even if he put it all on this tray. He five-year apprenticeship, and with his journeyman’s , couldn’t define what said, ‘Here. You go out and Prip was free to go where he liked (as indicated by the it was he sought. you can do whatever you

vol.30 | no.1 | metalsmith 47 want to do here.’” The offer Scandinavian modern designs for the contemporary home was genuine, and proof of in wood, ceramic, glass, and metal. his talent to his master. Formal exhibitions on Danish silver and related Prip gratefully remained decorative arts began to circulate, starting in 1955 with the shop for a time, with “Fifty Years of Danish Silver in the Georg Jensen but he knew that nothing Tradition.” Sponsored by the Danish ambassador Henrik had really changed, for he de Kauffman, the show included furnishings by Finn needed something else, Juhl and was circulated by the Smithsonian Institution something more, even if he Traveling Exhibition Service for two years. Five years later, couldn’t define what it was “The Arts of Denmark – Viking to Modern” opened at the he sought. Metropolitan Museum of Art.9 Not least to emerge from this influence were American firms that traded on Nordic styles Academic Life and names, as evidenced by Dansk Designs, founded in 1954 That very opportunity in Long Island, New York, which employed Jens Quistgaard came in 1948, when Prip of Denmark as its founding designer.10 learned of a teaching Prip was naturally curious to see the United States position at the School for after so many years of absence, and he initially planned to American Craftsmen (sac), work there for two years and return home. However, the part of Alfred University arrangements in Alfred were a refreshing change from in bucolic Alfred, New Copenhagen. He and Frid had arrived in a small college York. Prip immediately town and found their fully operational workshops awaiting applied, was accepted, and them in a carriage house. With few diversions, and plenty soon left for the United of raw materials at their disposal, they found themselves States aboard the Stockholm, completely absorbed in making new work and developing with his childhood friend, as teachers. Prip guessed about 90 percent of his early furnituremaker students were returning gis, and he found them as highly (1916–2004), at his side.7 motivated as he was. Prip recalled that the letter More to the point, the supportive atmosphere at sac was from Aileen Webb included worlds away from the workshop life they knew in Denmark. a postscript request Prip recalled: “It was called a way of life at the time. And for the names of likely they didn’t think of it much as a trade.” Francis Wright woodworkers as teachers Caroë had been sac’s early director. Prip said she referred for the school, and Frid to “craftsmanship as a way of life… In other words, you had successfully applied at would never become rich or wealthy, but you would …have “” pattern fork his suggestion. an interesting, stimulating, satisfying way of life.” This new for Reed & Barton, 1964 The choice of two Danish manner of thinking is what Prip had sought, and although silver, stainless steel 1⁄2 x 1 x 7 1⁄2" craftsmen as teachers for he didn’t know it, he had just paddled out onto the first dallas museum of art the school reflected the wave of the American craft movement, which he would ride American fascination with for his entire career. Scandinavian design and Although Prip was hired as a teacher, he found that he talent that had begun learned as much as he was taught. “You might say it was earlier in the century with sort of an exchange,” he said. “I gave them technical the arrival of Georg Jensen in Manhattan in 1924, as well information in exchange for … ideas and environment, as the appointment of Erik Magnussen as design director which I found rather at Gorham Manufacturing Company, and of Eliel Saarinen challenging and at Cranbrook, both in 1925. Furniture designer Jens Risom Word began to stimulating. And arrived in the United States in 1939, and within a decade circulate about this gave me complete had developed interiors for Jensen and furniture for Knoll this young Danish liberty and freedom to do before starting his own eponymous firm in 1946. Risom silversmith whose pretty much what I wanted was one of about a half-dozen Scandinavians, including Kay sleek forms were to do….and pursue my Fisker, Ole Hagen, Peter Hvidt (Denmark), Bruno Mathsson a clear exponent own inclinations (), and G. Nyman (Finland) represented in the “For of Scandinavian and ideas, without Modern Living” exhibition that was held at the Detroit design, and whose having … to consider the Institute of Art in 1949.8 Meanwhile, New York in the occasional playful financial ramifications.” 1950s boasted numerous galleries like Bonniers, H. Nils, notes hinted at his Prip plunged into George Tanier, and Richards Morgenthau that featured experimental nature. teaching and submitted

48 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.1 his silver to the craft exhibitions then beginning to sprout would enable him to make a living. This instruction served around the country. He won first prize in 1949 at the Pearson well, as it led to a long and remarkable career as an Wichita National, the first annual, all-media exhibition in independent craftsman.13 the country, and participated in the landmark “Designer- Craftsman USA” exhibit held at the Brooklyn Museum in Craftsman-Designer 1953.11 Word began to circulate about this young Danish From the start, Pearson’s ambitious business efforts and silversmith whose sleek forms were a clear exponent of his intuitive adaption of forms for limited production Scandinavian design, and whose occasional playful notes made him a valuable early collaborator for John Prip. They hinted at his experimental nature. proved useful at Shop One, one of the first crafts shops, When Prip arrived at Alfred, there were two and certainly one of the most influential of the early craft already in place. Charlie Reese and movement.14 Established in Rochester in 1953 following Laurits Christian Eichner were talented craftsmen who the move of sac from Alfred to the Rochester Institute of had mastered a number of skills: Eichner in pewter, Technology, its founders were sac faculty members Prip, clockmaking, and astronomy, and Reese in violinmaking, Frid, and ceramics professor and Bauhaus graduate Frans among other things. Eichner actively exhibited silver in Wildenhain, with Pearson serving as shop manager. The the 1930s, but he was mostly interested in reproductions. shop was unique in its time for being founded and operated Neither of these men proved as influential as jewelry by artists, and it served as an outlet for their prodigious professor Philip Morton (1911–2001) and one of the school’s output, supplemented their modest salaries, and attracted most illustrious students who never graduated, Ronald more attention to the Rochester area, which had become an Hayes Pearson (1924–1996). important center for the growing crafts movement. Morton was entirely self-taught and had been working in Shop One assumed more importance for Prip when he Berkeley, California, selling jewelry to Bay Area shops when grew tired of teaching younger, less motivated students, he was hired to teach at sac. According to Prip, Morton and he decided in 1954 to leave the school. For the next was skilled and inventive; his jewelry received early and several years he and Pearson worked together designing important international attention. Due to his independent and making multiples of jewelry for sale, and sold with spirit, however, he clashed with the administration and a joint “prip-pearson” touchmark. They also designed left Alfred about a year after his arrival in 1947.12 Morton’s giftware items that were produced by the Metal Arts most important student was Pearson, in whom he may have Company in Rochester, and that found wide distribution found a kindred spirit. For a month in 1947, Morton invited through Richards Morganthau, Inc. For a time, they Pearson to work in his own studio to learn the essentials also served as designers for the local Hickock Company, of jewelrymaking, impressing upon him that these skills 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 Artist- John and Karen Prip with his sculptures in Shield with Horns, 1963 Craftsman-in-Residence at Reed & Barton front of his Rehoboth Studio, Massachusetts, bronze, ca. 1960s 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

vol.30 | no.1 | metalsmith 49 requirements and modern sensibility. By 1964, when he The drive to evolve steel, which due to its designed Tapestry, a densely rich design for flatware, it and grow, to change, hardness was a “tough, and reflected the artist’s growing interest in surface textures, to stimulate and not very grateful material,” and a giant step away from the smoothly planished forms be stimulated out of pewter and plate that typefied his work to date. are a hallmark of them in —without Prip’s career, and anyone knowing the Sculpture he took pride in difference. Prip began to Tapestry was an important signifier of changes taking his ability to go use pewter for shape in his studio. In 1960 Prip had resigned his full outside his comfort some of the serendipitous time position at Reed & Barton; he continued in a part- zone in order to items that crossed his path time capacity, but used most of his energy to develop his discover and create as he considered ways to own work in new directions. By 1963 he began to tackle something new. combine them with other sculpture, starting with Shield with Horns taking the hollow dissimilar objects. He also form, most familiar to him, as a point of departure. In that played with , same year, he joined the Rhode Island School of Design and hundreds of other techniques that were in his arsenal where he found the remains of a once-great department and of skills, but now put to a new purpose. began rebuilding it into a nationally acclaimed program. Prip’s workshop became a kind of grab bag of found One of Prip’s favorite teaching tricks was to visit student items and parts to objects that were either in process, or benches at late hours and play with elements of projects discarded; in this manner he used them as a vocabulary currently underway. He would rearrange them in unusual of shapes that he would employ as needed. Prip recalled and illogical arrangements just to shake up their habits of that he always “enjoyed just putting things together, thought, and to suggest new kinds of constructions. This stacking things. And very often unlikely [things.] … I have marked his own approach to composition in the early ’60s, no theories that guide me. I just would take this one and as he decisively moved away from the modern style into put that one on top of it.… I had a fondness…for trying unknown sculptural territory. At his home in Duxbury and to get unlikely things to go together.” This method of later in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, he began to amass rocks experimentation yielded some of his most interesting work. and wood from beaches and elsewhere to give expression to Prip had been profoundly impressed by the artistic these new interests. environment that he had entered upon his arrival at Pewter, often considered an inferior material to silver sac in 1948. His training had not been in the arts, but for its softness and dull surface, had fresh appeal at this in a trade, and he remained true to his roots, fashioning time due to its ease of casting. Prip had rediscovered an vessels and flatware for functional purposes through the attraction for pewter while at Reed & Barton, because he 1950s, confident of his ability as a designer and skilled learned that he could make flatware samples for stainless 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. Container with Wings, 1972 Perhaps the artistic environment at risd helped to inspire electroformed and fabricated silver, ivory, , glass him, or perhaps it was just his restless nature once again 4 5 ⁄8 x 4 5 ⁄8 x 1 1⁄2" smithsonian american art museum 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. , 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

50 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.1 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.

1. The firm, known as A. Prip, took place from September 11 was primarily a souvenir to November 20, 1949. spoon and flatware company. 9. For contemporary reviews of 2. The rationale seems unlikely, these exhibitions, see “Silver as the family business, Art Work Shown in Capital,” according to John Prip, was New York Times, March 27, 1955, not of the same caliber as p. 83, and Stuart Preston, “Art: Jensen. A Danish Survey,” New York 3. “Silverware is Exhibited. Times October 15, 1960, p. 15. Danish Patterns Shown here 10. “Margalit Fox, “Theodore with Swedish Glass,” New York Nierenberg, Founder of Dansk, Times, September 15, 1948, Dies at 86,” New York Times, p. 36. The Nielsen silver was August 4, 2009, p. A21. exhibited at the fair, but the 11. Mounted by the Wichita Art war prevented shipments Association, the formal title of of their goods to American the Wichita National was “The consumers. Decorative Art and Ceramics 4. Prip won the Hertz Award, a Exhibition.” silver medal, in 1942, the year 12. Marbeth Schon, Modernist in which he completed his Jewelry 1930–1960, The Wearable journeyman’s piece. Art Movement, (Atglen, PA.: 5. This quotation and others that Schiffer Publishing, LItd., follow, and most biographical 2004), 105–06. It is not Geometric Vessel (Triangular Top), 1988 details, are taken from an entirely clear whether Prip pewter; fabricated, abraded interview with John Axel met Morton, or was aware of 16 7⁄8 x 6 3 ⁄8 x 2 1⁄2" Prip conducted on October his work through Pearson. museum of arts and design, new york. gift of the 20, 1980, and November 21, Morton’s chief contribution artist 1981, by Robert Brown for the to the field is Contemporary Archives of American Art, Jewelry, A Studio Handbook Smithsonian Institution. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 6. John Prip, aaa interview. and Winston, 1970, reprinted 1976). 7. Tage Frid was an influential forms that were tall and broad. Boxlike in shape, they teacher who published 13. W. Scott Braznell, “The Early Career of Ronald were, however, merely referring to the container that in widely on furniture designs and techniques and like Hayes Pearson and the turn, referred to the vessel that remained at the heart Prip, was a key figure in Post-World War II Revival of of his work. With no decoration, but merely surface the mid-twentieth-century American Silversmithing and craft movement. The Prip Jewelrymaking,” Winterthur interest, they seem like mute sentinels, or like a worn and Frid families had known Portfolio, Vol. 34 (Winter 1999): stele of ancient Greece. They have a sober grandeur that one another in Copenhagen 4:192. marks a new approach, and departs, once again, from the for many years. Frid’s father 14. Conrad Brown, “Shop One,” had apprenticed with Prip’s Craft Horizons, Vol. 16 (March- traditional associations with metal. grandfather, and Prip’s father April 1956) 2:19–23. The drive to evolve and grow, to change, to stimulate had worked under Frid’s 15. Braznell 1999, 200–02. grandfather; as a young boy, and be stimulated are a hallmark of Prip’s career, and 16. Arthur J. Pulos, “John Prip’s John Prip would sometimes Odyssey in Metal,” American he took pride in his ability to go outside his comfort stay with Frid’s family when Craft, Vol. 48 (August- his own parents traveled. Prip zone in order to discover and create something new. Of September 1988), 48–55; interview, aaa. a marketplace that does not always reward artists for John Prip, Master Metalsmith 8. An Exhibition for Modern Living choosing new methods of expression, he said: “People in (Providence, RI: Museum of (Detroit: The Detroit Institute Art, Rhode Island School of galleries and museums, for instance, say, ‘Oh no, we don’t of Arts, 1949). The exhibition Design, 1987).

vol.30 | no.1 | metalsmith 51 look

i’ve chosen artists and pieces that transcend what art jewelry Todd Reed or conceptual jewelry or commercial jewelry is and should be. It was The Thrill of it All 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.

nicholas varney Sunflower Brooch, 2005 , tourmaline, , freshwater pearls, moonstone, white diamonds, 18k yellow gold diameter 3"

22 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 manya and roumen Dove on a Walnut Branch (ring). 2009 sterling silver, , , gold-plating

tim mclelland Idea in Eden (brooch), 2005 18k yellow gold, tourmaline, Shakudo enamel 1 5 ⁄8 x 1"

vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith 23 look

sevan Angel Ring, 2009 24k gold, sterling silver, black diamonds, white diamonds, aquamarines, hand painted micro- tiles, carved of an angel

at el ier zobel , peter schmid Bracelet, 2006 sterling silver, 22k and 24k gold, , , diamonds width 2"

john iverson Cutting Free (bracelet), 2009 18k yellow gold, sterling silver 7 1⁄4 x 2 1⁄2" photo: robert hensleigh

24 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 eclat jewels 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

vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith 25 Ron Arad and the Elegance of Mutation

Exhibition installation view, “Ron Arad: No Discipline,” The , New York August 2–October 19, 2009 26 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 Ron Arad and the Elegance of Mutation by akiko busch

vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith 27 Looming Lloyd, 1989 stainless steel, and patinated steel 36 1⁄4 x 41 5 ⁄16 x 25 9 ⁄16" manufacturer: one off ltd. and ron arad associates

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.

the eminent psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Ron Arad Associates. Since 1997 Arad has also headed the has spent more than two decades researching the science Department of Design Products at London’s Royal College of flow, a concept defined in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Art. Throughout, he’s been an advocate of mutant of Optimal Experience, as “the state in which people are so design, of the a-hat-is-a-wave-is-a-chair school. Forms are involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; liquid, fluid, extreme. Anything and everything is capable the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it of morphing: ideas, objects, function, and materials, even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” The idea among them stainless steel, inflated aluminum, resins, has proved useful to other psychologists, sociologists, Corian, acrylic, Fiberglas, carbon fiber, plywood, injection- and anthropologists in their efforts to explain individual molded polypropylene, polyethylene, old car seats, and and group behavior. “Some have extended the implications antennas. Digital technology intersects with handwork. of flow to attempts to understand the evolution of And if furniture design is where the work begins, it also mankind,” writes Csikszentmihalyi, “others to illuminate intersects with art, sculpture, industrial design, craft, and religious experience.” architecture. Honestly, who’s keeping track and who cares? And then there’s the flow theory of furniture design, This is flow in the material world. which the Israeli architect, designer, and sculptor Ron A recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Arad has pretty much covered since he established his New York City (“Ron Arad: No Discipline”) was occasion to studio, One Off, in London in 1981, and later, in 1989, review his work, and it was clear from the outset that Arad

28 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 Well Tempered Chair (prototype), 1986 sprung stainless steel and wing nuts 31 1⁄2 x 39 3 ⁄8 x 31 1⁄2" manufacturer: vitra gmbh

is the Dr. Seuss of metal arts. Or maybe it’s more like the sense of forward movement and momentum. Furniture, it Cat in the Hat’s brother who went to design school. There suggests, can unfold just as fluidly and precisely as can an is the same unexpected logic, rhythms, rhymes, perverse idea or relationship or life. and unpredictable associations, all of which make for a Then there is the Bookworm Shelf (1993) for Kartell, lavish romp. There is the same kind of improvisational glee, undoubtedly one of the few pieces in the history of some hybrid of curiosity and ruthlessness, an irrepressible furniture design whose sales can be measured in chaos that all works out in the end. And the idea that kilometers. While the piece brings new meaning to the there is no discipline is utter nonsense, not that it matters idea of bouncing off the walls, it also has an undeniable in the slightest; creative people always have a good time grace, not to mention logic. The flexible, plastic shelf contradicting themselves. (conceived in sprung steel but manufactured in injection- While the biomorphic forms of the furniture may drip molded PVC) can be shaped to snake across your wall in and run and ripple and flow, the odd thing is that for all pretty much any way you want, making for a swoopy the pools and puddles, there is an attendant elegance. The configuration that speaks to the way one book can lead you Narrow Papardelle Chair (1992), constructed of a kind of steel to another, or to things, one idea, up, down or across to the mesh, rolls itself out like a conveyor belt, making the case next. If your books are poorly organized or if you believe a that a chair is not a place to sit still, but some kind of weird library can be a moving, swerving, animated collection of delivery system; not static but kinetic, seating with its own ideas, then this is for you. Which brings us back to

vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith 29 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" manufacturer: one off ltd. 30 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 Lolita, 2004 PizzaKobra, 2007 Crystals and LEDs chromed steel, 59 x 43 1⁄4" aluminum, and LEDs manufacturer: swarovski and extended 28 7⁄8 x 10 1⁄4" ron arad manufacturer: iguzzini illuminazione s.p.a.

vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith 31 Blown Out Of Proportion (B.O.O.P.) Vase, 1998 superplastic aluminum 92 x 59 1⁄2 x 15" manufacturer: the gallery mourmans

Large Bookworm, 1993 Tempered sprung steel and patinated steel length approx 50 feet manufacturer: one off ltd.

Dr. Seuss: “It is fun to have fun/but you have to know how/I to accommodate the physical world, whether it is a wall, can hold up the cup/and the milk and the cake!/I can hold a floor, a table, a CD, a bottle, a room, or a human being. up the books!/And the fish and a rake!” The Soundtrack CD Holder (1998), the Infinity Bottle Rack (1999), For all the weirdness here, there is also a kind of the PizzaKobra Light (2007)—if all of these pieces morph universally engaging quality not all that different from and mutate, spin and spiral, it is usually because they are that of the noodle art my kids did in preschool, when trying to accommodate something. The rippling form of a they sprayed gold paint on pasta bow ties, wagon wheels, chair is what allows it to stack so neatly. A different sense tortellini, and rotini, then strung them all together. They of fit is conveyed by Thumbprint (2007), a chair crafted from were great. Curvy pieces of pasta with a shiny, metallic polished stainless steel rods that suggests it was formed finish have a kind of universal appeal that lie beyond my by the impression of some giant supernatural and oddly powers of explanation. Maybe it has to do with giving benevolent digit. an unexpected industrial finish to fluid, organic shapes, The sense of accommodation can be more psychic as but you just kind of go with it. And the association with well. The Lolita chandelier (2004), a ribbon of light made preschool pasta art isn’t as condescending as it sounds; it’s with 2,100 crystals and 1,050 LEDs, is a glittering corkscrew clear that Arad has a perfectly healthy and serious respect capable of displaying text messages; as the messages are for the process of play. displayed down the ribbon of light, the chandelier appears That engaging quality may also have to do with the sense to gently spin, the glitter and gleam of a word or sentence of fit so implicit in much of the work. Things are designed read, an idea communicated.

32 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 Southern Hemisphere, 2007 patinated superplastic aluminum 51 x 52 x 52" manufacturer: the gallery mourmans

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 table with different configurations that can climb the walls. extravagance; a colleague I ran into at the exhibition went But it was made for an installation that included 69 such so far as to call it “bombastic design. It has no filter,” he tables, and once you know these tables were designed not said. But that’s always the case with exaggeration; if the as a puddle but as a lake, well, you want the whole lake. At statement has meaning, then exaggeration can make a times, too, it looks dated. I state this complaint to a friend. point. It’s a perfectly legitimate mode of narrative; even “So what,” she mutters. “Sottsass looks dated too sometimes. the most extreme hyperbole is capable of telling the truth, He looks fresh, then he doesn’t, then he does again. He goes highlighting or underlining or going over the top or in some in and out of fashion. That’s all part of it.” She’s right. It’s all way or other contributing to meaning in some loud, overt, just another part of the mutation, which is to say, it’s just excessive way. Fine. But if the meaning is thin to begin part of the flow. with, then the exaggeration just comes off as hollow, a little The Shadow of Time clock announces the hour by light, tinny. Looming Lloyd (1989) simply attaches metal “clogs” to the elusive clock face cast on the wall. Maybe the idea of any four-legged chair, repositioning it as airborne, which the shadows of time is obvious, but it still speaks genuinely isn’t much of a description but still makes it sound more and clearly to the human experience of time and the interesting than it is. constant acceleration and compression of time that most The strength of Arad’s work sometimes depends on the of us occupants of the early twenty-first century have installation. Paved with Good Intentions (2005) is a mirror- some passing familiarity with. But then again, there is polished, laser-cut stainless steel, crystal-clear pool of a something about the plunging, veering shapes in all of

vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith 33 Low Table 34, Table 48, and Table 57, 2005 from “Paved with Good Intentions” Series mirror-polished, laser-cut stainless steel dimensions variable manufacturer: ron arad 34 metalsmith | vol.30 | no.2 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 constantly being turned around, upended, utterly revised forms that speaks to the pulse and rhythm of contemporary without any notice. experience at large. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the state of flow is And I wonder if, more than anything else, this is the the ability “to find meaning in the ongoing stream of quality that gives Arad’s work its relevance and resonance. experience,” which isn’t all that different from what Arad’s Evergreen!, designed for a development in Tokyo, is street work tries to reflect. That we live in a world in which furniture reconsidered as a Mobius strip of bronze piping nothing stays the same for very long can often be cause for and ivy, a wave of metal work and plant life, a bench disconnect and distress, but seen through Arad’s eyes and that veers through the organic and synthetic with a kind experienced through his work, we see how it can be cause of loopy rhythm of its own. Mutation, it gaily reminds for pleasure and comfort as well. us, is a central metaphor for contemporary life in this century. Erasing the boundaries between disciplines, Akiko Busch writes about design, culture, and nature for a variety hybrid materials, high and low, hand work embedded with of publications, and her most recent book is Nine Ways to Cross a new technologies—all of these figure into the work of River (Bloomsbury/USA). many contemporary artists and designers, but what Arad Furthermore manages to convey most of all is this sense of motion and www.moma.org/ronarad instantaneity, of things forever changing, of the situation www.ronarad.com

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