Art jewelry
Art jewelry is one of the names given to jewelry created by
studio craftspeople. As the name suggests, art jewelry emphasizes
creative expression and design, and is characterized by the use of a
variety of materials, often commonplace or of low economic value. In
this sense, it forms a counterbalance to the use of "precious materials"
(such as gold, silver and gemstones) in conventional or fine jewelry,
where the value of the object is tied to the value of the materials from
which it is made. Art
jewelry is related to
studio craft in other media such as
glass,
wood,
plastics and
clay;
it shares beliefs and values, education and training, circumstances of
production, and networks of distribution and publicity with the wider
field of studio craft. Art jewelry also has links to fine art and
design.
While the history of art jewelry usually begins with modernist
jewelry in the United States in the 1940s, followed by the artistic
experiments of German goldsmiths in the 1950s, a number of the values
and beliefs that inform art jewelry can be found in the
arts and crafts movement
of the late nineteenth century. Just like the arts and crafts movement,
which was international and involved the exchange of ideas, people and
objects across national borders, so art jewelry today is an
international phenomenon. Many regions, such as North America, Europe,
Australasia and parts of Asia have flourishing art jewelry scenes, while
other places such as South America and Africa are rapidly developing
the infrastructure of teaching institutions, dealer galleries, writers,
collectors and museums that sustain art jewelry.
Terminology
Lalique "Thistle" pendant
Art historian Liesbeth den Besten has identified six different terms
to name art jewelry, including contemporary, studio, art, research,
design, and author,
[1]
with the three most common being contemporary, studio, and art. Curator
Kelly L'Ecuyer has defined studio jewelry as an offshoot of the studio
craft movement, adding that it does not refer to particular artistic
styles but rather to the circumstances in which the object is produced.
According to her definition, "Studio jewelers are independent artists
who handle their chosen materials directly to make one-of-a-kind or
limited production jewelry..... The studio jeweler is both the designer
and fabricator of each piece (although assistants or apprentices may
help with technical tasks), and the work is created in a small, private
studio, not a factory."
[2]
Art historian Monica Gaspar has explored the temporal meaning of the
different names given to art jewelry over the past 40 years. She
suggests that "avant-garde" jewelry positions itself as radically ahead
of mainstream ideas; "modern" or "modernist" jewelry claims to reflect
the spirit of the times in which it was made; "studio" jewelry
emphasizes the artist studio over the craft workshop; "new" jewelry
assumes an ironic stance towards the past; and "contemporary" jewelry
claims the present and the "here and now" in contrast with traditional
jewelry's eternal nature as an heirloom passing between generations.
[3]
The art historian Maribel Koniger argues that the names given to art
jewelry are important in order to distinguish this type of jewelry from
related objects and practices. The use of the term "conceptual" jewelry
is, in her words, an "attempt to detach oneself through terminology from
the products of the commercial jewellery industry that reproduce
cliches and are oriented towards the tastes of mass consumption on the
one hand, and, on the other, the individualistic, subjectively
aestheticising designs of pure craft."
[4]
Critique of preciousness
Art jewelers often work in a critical or conscious way with the
history of jewelry, or to the relationship between jewelry and the body,
and they question concepts like "preciousness" or "wearability" that
are usually accepted without question by conventional or fine jewelry.
This quality is a product of the critique of preciousness, a term that
describes the challenge of art jewelers in the United States and Europe
to the idea that jewelry's value was equivalent to the preciousness of
its materials. Initially art jewelers worked in precious or
semi-precious materials, but emphasized artistic expression as the most
important quality of their work, linking their jewelry to
modernist art movements such as
biomorphism,
primitivism and
tachisme.
[5] In the 1960s, art jewelers began to introduce new, alternative materials into their work, such as
aluminium and
acrylics, breaking with the historical role of jewelry as a sign of status and economic value or portable wealth.
[6]
As the focus on value gave way, other themes took its place as the
subject of jewelry. Writing in 1995, Peter Dormer described the effects
of the critique of preciousness as follows: "First, the monetary value
of the material becomes irrelevant; second, once the value of jewelry as
a status symbol had been deflated, the relation between the ornament
and the human body once again assumed a dominant position - jewelry
became body-conscious; third, jewelry lost its exclusiveness to one sex
or age - it could be worn by men, women and children."
[7]
Arts and crafts jewelry
The art jewelry that emerged in the first years of the twentieth
century was a reaction to Victorian taste, and the heavy and ornate
jewelry, often machine manufactured, that was popular in the nineteenth
century. According to Elyse Zorn Karlin, "For most jewelers, art jewelry
was a personal artistic quest as well as a search for a new national
identity. Based on a combination of historical references, reactions to
regional and world events, newly available materials and other factors,
art jewelry reflected a country's identity while at the same time being
part of a larger international movement of design reform."
[8]
Initially art jewelry appealed to a select group of clients with
artistic taste, but it was quickly picked up by commercial firms, making
it widely available.
There are many different movements that contributed to the category of art jewelry as we know it today. As part of the English
Arts and Crafts movement, flourishing between 1860 and 1920,
Charles Robert Ashbee
and his Guild and School of Handicraft produced the earliest arts and
crafts jewelry in a guild setting. Presenting their work as an antidote
to industrial production, the first generation of arts and crafts
jewelers believed that an object should be designed and made by the same
person, although their lack of specialist training meant that much of
this jewelry has an appealing handmade quality.
[9]
Responding to changes in fashion, as well as the Victorian taste for
wearing sets, arts and crafts jewelers made pendants, necklaces,
brooches, belt buckles, cloak clasps and hair combs that were worn solo.
Arts and crafts jewelry also tended to favor materials with little
intrinsic value that could be used for their artistic effects. Base
metals, semi-precious stones like opals, moonstones and turquoise,
misshapen pearls, glass and shell, and the plentiful use of
Vitreous enamel, allowed jewelers to be creative and to produce affordable objects.
[10]
Art nouveau
jewelry from France and Belgium was also an important contributor to
art jewelry. Worn by wealthy and artistically-literate clients,
including courtesans of the Paris demimonde, art nouveau jewelry by
Rene Lalique and
Alphonse Mucha was inspired by
symbolist art, literature and music, and a revival of the curvilinear and dramatic forms of the
rococo
period. As Elyse Zorn Karlin suggests, "The result was jewels of
staggering beauty and imagination, sensual, sexual and beguiling, and at
times even frightening. These jewels were a far cry from the
symmetrical and somewhat placid designs of Arts and Crafts jewelry,
which more closely resembled Renaissance jewels."
[11] Lalique and other art nouveau jewelers quite often mixed precious metals and gemstones with inexpensive materials, and favored
plique-a-jour and
cabochon enamel techniques.
Other important centers of art jewelry production included the
Wiener Werkstatte
in Vienna, where the architects Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser
designed jewelry in silver and semi-precious stones, sometimes to be
worn with clothing also created by the workshop. The Danish Skønvirke
(aesthetic work) movement, of which Georg Jensen is the most famous
example, favored silver and native Scandinavian stones and an aesthetic
that falls somewhere between the tenets of art nouveau and arts and
crafts. Art jewelry in Finland was characterized by a Viking revival,
coinciding with its political freedom on Sweden in 1905, while
modernisme in Spain followed the lead of art nouveau jewelers. Art
jewelry was also practiced in Italy, Russia and the Netherlands.
[12]
In the United States, arts and crafts jewelry was popular with
amateurs, since unlike ceramics, furniture or textiles, it required only
a modest investment in tools, and could be made in the kitchen.
[13] One of the first American arts and crafts jewelers,
Madeline Yale Wynne,
was self-taught and approached her jewelry as form and composition with
the emphasis on aesthetic qualities rather than skill, stating that "I
consider each effort by itself as regards color and form much as I would
paint a picture."
[14]
Brainerd Bliss Thresher, another American arts and crafts jeweler, used
materials like carved horn and amethyst for their aesthetic qualities,
following the example of René Lalique who mixed quotidian and precious
materials in his jewelry. As Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf suggest,
whereas the British Arts and Crafts movement tried to reunite art and
labor, many upper-class Americans like Thresher united art and leisure:
"The practice of craft as a recreation could be a relief from the
pressure of a difficult job, a demonstration of one's good taste and
savor vivre, a polite manifestation of progressive politics, or an expression of the sheer pleasure of satisfying labor."
[15]
Art jewelry fell out of style in the 1920s and 30s, overshadowed by
art deco, as well as audience response to its functional and
aesthetically challenging nature (too fragile and outrageous). However,
it marks a significant break with what came before, and laid down many
of the values and attitudes for later twentieth century ideals of art or
studio jewelry. As Elyse Zorn Karlin writes, "Art jewelry valued the
handmade and prized innovative thinking and creative expression. These
jewelers were the first to use materials that didn't have the intrinsic
value expected in jewelry, and they rejected mainstream jewelry tastes.
They thought of their work as an artistic pursuit and made it for a
small audience that shared their aesthetic and conceptual values."
[16]
Modernist jewelry
"Sparkling Vortex", necklace by Marc Lange, 2007. Made of titanium, zirconium, yellow and white gold, and set with diamonds.
The history of art jewelry is tied to the emergence of
modernist
jewelry in urban centers of the United States in the 1940s. According
to Toni Greenbaum, "Beginning about 1940, a revolutionary jewelry
movement began to emerge in the United States, and this was then spurred
on by the devastation of World War II, the trauma of the Holocaust, the
fear of the bomb, the politics of prejudice, the sterility of
industrialization, and the crassness of commercialism."
[17]
Modernist jewelry shops and studios sprung up in New York City (Frank
Rebajes, Paul Lobel, Bill Tendler, Art Smith, Sam Kramer and Jules
Brenner in Greenwich Village; and Ed Wiener, Irena Brynner and Henry
Steig in midtown Manhattan) and the Bay Area on the West Coast (Margaret
De Patta, Peter Macchiarini, merry renk, Irena Brynner, Francis
Sperisen and Bob Winston). The audience for modernist jewelry was the
liberal, intellectual fringe of the middle class, who also supported
modern art. Art historian Blanche Brown describes the appeal of this
work: "About 1947 I went to Ed Wiener's shop and bought one of his
silver square-spiral pins . . . because it looked great, I could afford
it and it identified me with the group of my choice - aesthetically
aware, intellectually inclined and politically progressive. That pin (or
one of a few others like it) was our badge and we wore it proudly. It
celebrated the hand of the artist rather than the market value of the
material."
[18]
In 1946 the
Museum of Modern Art
in New York organized the exhibition Modern Handmade Jewelry, which
included the work of studio jewelers like Margaret De Patta and Paul
Lobel, along with jewelry by modernist artists such as
Alexander Calder,
Jacques Lipchitz and
Richard Pousette-Dart.
[19]
This exhibition toured the United States, and was followed by a series
of influential exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
[20]
Kelly L'Ecuyer suggests that "Calder's jewelry was central to many of
the museum and gallery exhibitions of this period, and he continues to
be viewed as the seminal figure in American contemporary jewelry."
[21]
Using cold construction and crude techniques that suggested a spirit of
improvisation and creativity, Calder's jewelry shares his sculpture's
use of line and movement to describe space, creating jewelry that often
moves with the wearer's body. A strong connection with art movements is a
characteristic of American art jewelry during this period. While Calder
showed a
primitivist interest in African and ancient Greek art, Margaret De Patta made jewelry that was
constructivist, manipulating light, space and optical perception according to the lessons she learned from
László Moholy-Nagy at the
New Bauhaus in Chicago.
[22] Toni Greenbaum writes that "After his mentor, the painter John Haley, showed him work by
Matisse and
Picasso, Bob Winston exclaimed: 'That's the kind of crap I'm doing!'."
[23] The materials of modernist jewelry - organic and inorganic non-precious substances, as well as found objects - correlate to
cubist,
futurist and
dadaist attitudes, while the styles of modernist jewelry -
surrealism, primitivism,
biomorphism and constructivism - are fine art movements as well.
[24]
Art jewelry since 1960
The postwar growth of jewelry in the United States was supported by
the role that jewelry-making techniques, excellent for strengthening
hand and arm muscles and fostering eye-hand coordination, played in
physical therapy programs for returning veterans of the Second World
War. The War Veterans' Art Center at the Museum of Modern Art, led by
Victor D'Amico, the School for American Craftsman, founded by Eileen
Osborne Webb, and the workshops run by Margret Craver in New York City,
sponsored by Handy and Harman Precious Metal Refiners, all addressed the
needs of returning American servicemen, while the GI Bill of Rights
offered free college tuition for veterans, many of whom studied craft.
[25][clarification needed]
As Kelly L'Ecuyer suggests, "In addition to individual creativity, the
proliferation of craft-based education and therapy for soldiers and
veterans in the United States during and after the war provided an
extraordinary stimulus for all studio crafts, but especially jewelry and
metalsmithing. Public and private resources devoted to veterans' craft
programs planted the seeds for longer-lasting educational structures and
engenered broad interest in craft as a creative, fulfilling lifestyle."
[26][clarification needed]
By the early 1960s, the graduates of these programs were not only
challenging the conventional ideas of jewelry, but teaching a new
generation of American jewelers in the new university programs in
jewelry and metalsmithing courses that were established during this
decade. Teachers such as Arline Fisch, Stanley Lechtzin, Olaf Skoogfors,
Romona Solberg and Richard Reinhardt produced students such as Gary
Griffin, William Harper, Eleanor Moty, Louis Mueller and Albert Paley,
who would have a huge impact on the development of American art jewelry.
[27]
In the 1960s and 1970s the German government and commercial jewelry
industry decided to foster and heavily support modern jewelry designers,
thus creating a new marketplace. They focused in particular on
combining contemporary design with their traditions of goldsmithing and
jewelry making. The first gallery for art jewelry only, "Orfevre",
opened in Duesseldorf, Germany, in 1965. At present, art jewelry is no
longer a niche market, and many designers are sold in regular jewelry
stores.
Exhibitions
The acceptance of jewelry as art
[28]
was fostered in the United States very quickly after World War II by
major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, each of which held major shows of art
jewelry in the 1940s. The
Museum of Arts and Design
formerly The American Craft Museum, started their collection in 1958
with pieces dating from the 1940s. Other museums whose collections
include work by contemporary (American) jewelry designers include: the
Cleveland Museum of Art, The
Corning Museum of Glass, the
Mint Museum of Craft & Design in Charlotte, NC, the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Renwick Gallery of the
Smithsonian museum.
Some famous artists who created art jewelry in the past were
Calder,
Picasso,
Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim,
Dalí and
Nevelson. Some of which represented at Sculpture to Wear Gallery in
New York City which closed in 1977.
Artwear Gallery owned by
Robert Lee Morris continued in this endeavor to showcase jewelry as an art form.
A collection of art jewelry can be found at the
Schmuckmuseum in
Pforzheim,
Germany.
