Art Jewelry`s Fashion Moment - Society of North American Goldsmiths

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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metalsmith | vol29 | no1
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.
vol .29 | no.1 | m e ta l sm i t h
21
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
50
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,
metalsmith | vol .29 | no.2
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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metalsmith | vol .29 | no.5
i di o t s
NR II, 2008
taxidermy bird, felt,
Swarovski crystals/
pearls, glass/plastic
beads
13 3 ⁄4 x 2 3 ⁄4"
vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith
23
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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metalsmith | vol .29 | no.5
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.
vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith
25
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
26
metalsmith | vol .29 | no.5
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
vol.29 | no.5 | metalsmith
27
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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metalsmith | vol .29 | no.5
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"
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 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"
30
metalsmith | vol .29 | no.5
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.
18
m e ta l sm i t h | vol .30 | no.1
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.
vol .30 | no.1 | m e ta l sm i t h
19
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
45
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
46
m e ta l sm i t h | vol .30 | no.1
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.
vol .30 | no.1 | m e ta l sm i t h
47
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
48
m e ta l sm i t h | vol .30 | no.1
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
vol .30 | no.1 | m e ta l sm i t h
49
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
50
m e ta l sm i t h | vol .30 | no.1
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).
vol .30 | no.1 | m e ta l sm i t h
51
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"
22
metalsmith | vol .30 | no.2
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"
vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith
23
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
24
metalsmith | vol .30 | no.2
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
vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith
25
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 |
no.2
o
e
of Mutation
by a k i ko 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"
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,
28
metalsmith | vol .30 | no.2
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
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"
m a n u fa c t u r e r : o n e o f f l t d .
30 m e t a l s m i t h | v o l . 3 0 | n o . 2
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 .
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"
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
32
metalsmith | vol .30 | no.2
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
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
m a n u fa c t u r e r : r o n a r a d
34 m e t a l s m i t h | v o l . 3 0 | n o . 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
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
vol.30 | no.2 | metalsmith
35