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| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode 224 Part 2: How Jennifer Merchant Continues the Tradition of Op Art in her Jewelry | 07 Jun 2024 | 00:20:35 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jennifer Merchant: Jennifer Merchant is a studio t based in Minneapolis, MN. She graduated with a BFA in Metals and Jewelry from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is a full-time artist showcasing her work in galleries, museums and exhibitions. Her work has been published in several national magazines such as American Craft, Ornament and Delta Sky Magazine. Merchant is best known for her innovative layered acrylic process in which images and prints are layered between solid acrylic. Her work is graphic with clean lines and modern aesthetic. Pieces confound viewers, appearing transparent from one angle of view while showcasing bold patterns and colors from another. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional resources: Transcript: Like the op and pop art that inspires it, Jennifer Merchant’s jewelry challenges your eye. Clear from some angles and bold and colorful from others, the jewelry is created by layering acrylic with images from art books. Jennifer joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she developed her technique; how she chooses the images in her jewelry; and why art jewelers need to work together to push the discipline forward. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Jennifer Merchant. Jennifer was also a guest several years ago. She thought she would be a metalsmith but segued to acrylic jewelry, which is what she has become known for: creative and innovative acrylic jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches. They have eye-catching graphics embedded in them. I was also surprised to learn that hand carving is sometimes involved. Welcome back. When you left college, did you know you were going to have your own business? Jennifer: Not right away. I think it took me about five years to really get the confidence together to start my own business. I definitely spent that first five years after graduation very lost and not really sure what in the heck I was going to do with my jewelry degree, especially because I went to school in Savannah, Georgia. That's where I made all my art connections and jewelry connections. Moving back to Minneapolis, I was off on my own. I didn't have a community at that point. It definitely was a number of years of wondering, “How am I going to end up using this degree that cost me so much money?” I had been waiting tables and was increasingly unhappy because I knew I had something different to offer the world. I ended up getting fired from a job. I had been speaking with a friend at work who had another friend that was putting on an art show. She had told me about it because she knew I was an artist. I remember getting fired from the job and calling her up right away, like, “I think I want to do that art show because I need to try to make some money.” It went okay, and it inspired me to say, “Jewelry is something you can do and make a living with. Let's give this a shot.” I had to move back home with my mom for a couple of years and cut my expenses way down, because I wasn't going to take out another loan to start a business. I built it very small, very scrappy. I had a second bedroom in my mom's house where I had my workshop, and I started from there doing little local events. That's where it all started. Sharon: Wow. What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to somebody who's just starting out? Jennifer: I would say when you're just starting out, really try to find your voice. Sharon: What do you do? What does one do when they find their voice? For instance, some people have found the voice, but they're homemakers or they work in an office. What do you do when you find your voice? Jennifer: I think once you know what you want to say, the next step is finding out who wants to hear it. And that is a very hard step, finding your niche and finding your people that resonate with your voice. I think the only way to really do that is to get yourself out there, get your work out there. I think with the Internet now and how accessible online stuff is, it might be a little easier to get yourself out there through social media, through the Internet, than maybe it was years ago when you had to have a physical presence out in the world. People can start by getting their work out there online and hopefully seeing who is interested, who connects with it, and then finding places in the real, outside world to continue that process and eventually find your market. Sharon: Do you have people who come to you with the image they want to include already? Jennifer: Not very often. I've had people ask me about that, but I think ultimately, I have to be drawn to the image specifically in order to be able to incorporate it in a piece. I did have a client that had a specific art piece she wanted in a bracelet for her daughter. That I was able to do because I resonated with the work and it was something that worked well within the form of jewelry. I've also had requests where someone wants family mementos or something encased in the acrylic. That's a very cool, sentimental thing, but visually, it doesn't really work with my aesthetic as well. I'm not going to do something just because I get asked for it. I also have to be drawn to it enough in order to go through with it, because it is a labor-intensive process and it is an art of passion. If I'm not super excited about the thing I'm making, it's probably not going to turn out that great either. I have tried to do things early on in my career specifically for a client that just didn't quite work out. We weren't on the same page. I think as you get more into it, you figure out the types of things you can push the boundaries on and the types of things that you can't. When someone's request is something that you can do and make them happy with, and when it's just not something that'll work out, you know. Sharon: That's interesting. So if somebody brought you their wedding photo, it depends on whether you like the wedding dress or something like that. Jennifer: Or if it has enough visual interest. I think the thing that makes my work successful is the images that I do use are interesting within a small scale of jewelry, and not all images can do that. I work with a lot of op art and pop art, and there's a lot of visual interest going on in a small space. With a photograph or something more sentimental, that's not always the case. It just wouldn't look as cool as they think it's going to. Sharon: I've seen comic books used in your work. How did you come to that? Jennifer: All of the things in my work that look like comic books are actually Roy Lichtenstein pieces. His pop art was inspired by comics, and he reimagined them into huge canvases and paintings. My jewelry does something similar, where I take Roy Lichtenstein's work and images and collect tons of books and rip out those pages and put that in my jewelry. It feels kind of meta. I've actually met some of his descendants and collectors and friends over the years, and a lot of them assure me that he would really appreciate what I'm doing with his work. It's a very similar idea as to how he repurposed art and things that he saw into something new and different. Sharon: That’s interesting. I didn't know that. Did you study art history in college as you were studying jewelry and metal and all that? Jennifer: Yeah, art history is definitely part of your Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. It wasn't always my favorite class because the art history classes were about art that was ancient and a lot of religious art and that sort of thing. I think I had one class where it was modern art in the 20th century, which, of course, is the most interesting to me. But that art history background definitely sparked some interest in different art movements and art periods. Art Deco is a very favorite design motif of mine. As I was talking about earlier, I'm very inspired by pop art and op art. I think art history plays a huge role. I never thought at the time when I was in school that I would end up studying more about art history and specific artists and doing that kind of research, but it is really important to my work now. Sharon: Can you explain what the difference between pop art and op art is? Jennifer: Sure. With pop art, everyone knows Roy Lichtenstein and Warhol. They took popular things or everyday objects like a soup can and made them stylized and put them in the context of fine art as this kind of ridiculous thing. Op art deals with optical properties. A lot of op art is very linear. It kind of tricks your eye. It looks like it's moving, but it's a static image. Funny enough, when I started working with op art, I was actually collecting those optical illusions books for kids. There'd be very few usable images in there, but there'd be a few black and white, scintillating-looking, squiggly-lined spirals or something like that. That sparked my interest in optical art and looking it up outside of the context of those silly books for kids. I found out this is a whole art movement, and there are artists like Richard Anuszkiewicz and Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley that pioneered this in the 60s, when it really became a thing. I just find it so fascinating. But it's kind of funny that my two art movements that I use a lot in my work are pop and op. Like, who knew? Sharon: Do you ever use any other kind besides those? You say you like Art Deco. I don't know what you’d use for an image, but I guess you could use an Art Deco image. Jennifer: I think with Art Deco I am more inspired by the overall forms of pieces or the shapes. I like the ideas. I like the repetitive nature of Art Deco. They went from Art Nouveau, where it was all crazy and ornate, and then Art Deco kind of simplified things. It was a little more streamlined. I really like that. I think I carry those design principles through my work, not as much the direct visuals. Although if I could find great books with Art Deco prints of patterns or wallpapers or whatever, I’d love to use those. I just haven't quite found the right image sources yet for that. Finding pop art and op art books has been pretty easy for me, and the images are just so striking, so that's why I’ve gravitated towards those. I'm open to other types of art and other artists. I just haven't moved on yet from the things I am working on. I can only focus on so many things at a time, but I could see myself doing some collections using Rothko paintings or Gerhard Richter with those interesting images, Jackson Pollock with the splashes. Those kinds of things I could see being very interesting within the context of layered acrylic. It just depends on where my book collection takes me. Sharon: So, if we're looking at used books at a used bookstore, we should keep our eyes open for interesting things that could be used as interesting prints. Jennifer: Yeah. I actually buy so many of my books online because physical shops only have so many things, and what I'm looking for is so specific. The art sections are usually kind of small, so I've ended up finding a lot of online retailers. I've gotten pretty good at being able to figure out whether a book is going to be visually interesting based on the online listing. I will even look at the size of the book, if they list dimensions, to give me ideas. If it seems like a good coffee table art book with lots of pictures, that's what I'm trying to find. Something with lots of great images. Sharon: It sounds like people would be very interested in your leftovers. Jennifer: I have a whole shelf of these books that are like little skeletons. You can see the sections where I've really gone to town ripping pages out, and then other sections that are left. There's plenty of things I leave in the book that I think are amazing, but they just aren't going to work for jewelry. Yeah, I've got a lot of skeleton books on my shelf. I keep them. I can't get rid of them. Sharon: I like that, skeleton books. Once again, it’s a Herculean task, the whole thing of starting your own business. Would you say that there is somebody that inspired you and keeps inspiring you? Jennifer: I wouldn't say it's a specific person. I think after that initial, tiny show that I did trying to sell my work, I think the most inspiring thing was seeing the other artists and seeing people that were making a living doing their work. I think that's what's really inspiring to me, finally meeting other people that were already doing what I wanted to do and realizing, “Wow, this is a viable career path.” There's not a lot of artists in my family, so no one really had any advice to give me back in the day. They weren't necessarily unsupportive, but they didn't really know how to encourage my art, either. It's been very helpful getting out there and seeing people that are doing things and just being inspired. Different artists and different people inspire me for very different reasons. Some artists, their work is the thing that inspires you, and other artists have such a great work ethic or a really creative way of marketing. I try to keep my eyes and ears open all the time, and I let inspirations muddle around in my brain. And then one day some other thing will trigger an idea. You just never know. I try to always be open. Sharon: I'm surprised; I usually see you at shows where there are a lot of other art jewelers, which is what I categorize you as. I see art jewelers, makers a lot. I'm thinking of New York City Jewelry Week, which is where I saw you once or twice. The last time I saw you, I wasn't able to say hello. I would think you'd be more—well, maybe it's the way I am, but I'd be more envious or competitive seeing all the other art jewelers, as opposed to finding inspiration. Jennifer: I don't know. I don't think of it as a competition in any way. I think it helps me a lot because my work is so different from everyone else's, so there isn't a super direct comparison. I think maybe for some other types of jewelers it might be a little different because there is more of a direct comparison with their aesthetic or their materials. In that respect, there isn't really competition. I used to be a lot more of a competitive person, but as I've gotten older and been in the business long enough and met all different artists, you just see that it's so much more about passion and drive. You can be successful doing just about anything if you're willing to put the work in. I’ve met so many different people with so many different types of jewelry and art, and they're successful in radically different ways. Even if some other artist is successful in a way that will never work for me, I still love learning about what they're doing. Even if it doesn't directly apply to me, there's something in that lesson, in listening to them and their story that might click something for me in an indirect manner. So, I really do try to be open and inspired by everyone, and I definitely don't see it as competition. I think it's great seeing more and more art jewelers getting work out there, making things that are big and bold and wild and weird materials. The more of it that's out there, the better for all of us, because then the consumer or the client is seeing more of it out in the world. Then when they come across my work, it might not seem as weird or as off putting. They might get it a little bit faster and a little bit easier because of all the other people that came before me and all the people that are alongside me. I think working together as a community, being inspired by each other, helping each other be successful, that can only help all of us. Sharon: Do you think when people first see your art, they don't think of it as jewelry because it doesn't have diamonds or emeralds? Do they think of it as a throw away, in a way? Jennifer: Oh, yeah. I've had the gamut of reactions to my work, and it really depends on the setting it’s in as well as how people respond to it. There are definitely people out there that, to them, jewelry is diamonds and gold, and that's fine. I might not be able to change their mind. Other people see the work and, right away, think it looks cool. Maybe they didn't even know it was a bracelet, but they were drawn to it. Then when they find out it's an actual wearable piece, they're even more blown away. You never know what kind of reaction you're going to get from people. I've definitely had to do a lot of educating on my process and the materials because when someone sees a plastic necklace that costs $2,000, they kind of scratch their heads, like, “What is going on here?” And then I tell them all about the process and all the different steps and all the different things that went into it. Sometimes you win people over, and sometimes they're like, “Why bother?” I just try to pay more attention to the people that are won over and interested. If they're not, that's fine. I know my work is not for everyone, and I'm okay with that. Sharon: That’s an interesting philosophy. You’ve given me a different perspective as well on your jewelry. Thank you for being here today, Jennifer. Jennifer: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 224 Part 1: How Jennifer Merchant Continues the Tradition of Op Art in her Jewelry | 05 Jun 2024 | 00:22:31 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jennifer Merchant: Jennifer Merchant is a studio t based in Minneapolis, MN. She graduated with a BFA in Metals and Jewelry from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is a full-time artist showcasing her work in galleries, museums and exhibitions. Her work has been published in several national magazines such as American Craft, Ornament and Delta Sky Magazine. Merchant is best known for her innovative layered acrylic process in which images and prints are layered between solid acrylic. Her work is graphic with clean lines and modern aesthetic. Pieces confound viewers, appearing transparent from one angle of view while showcasing bold patterns and colors from another. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional resources: Transcript: Like the op and pop art that inspires it, Jennifer Merchant’s jewelry challenges your eye. Clear from some angles and bold and colorful from others, the jewelry is created by layering acrylic with images from art books. Jennifer joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she developed her technique; how she chooses the images in her jewelry; and why art jewelers need to work together to push the discipline forward. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, my guest is Jennifer Merchant. Jennifer was also a guest several years ago. She thought she would be a metalsmith but segued to acrylic jewelry, which is what she has become known for: creative and innovative acrylic jewelry such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches. They have eye-catching graphics embedded in them. I was also surprised to learn that hand carving is sometimes involved. Jennifer exhibits all over the country. She's been an active member of SNAG, the Society of North American Goldsmiths. She is also a member of other major jewelry organizations. Jennifer is going to tell us all about why she has chosen this route and her process in general. Jennifer, welcome to the program. Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. Sharon: I'm glad to have you. Why did you start working with acrylics? Jennifer: I actually started working with acrylic while I was still in college at the Savannah College of Art and Design studying metalsmithing and jewelry. Our professor gave us little chunks of acrylic one day, probably with the thought of using it for die forms. But I decided, “Hey, you can cut and sculpt this very similarly to working with waxes for lost wax casting.” I liked the immediacy of the acrylic, that once you carved it and sculpted it and polished it, it was a finished piece. It had a lot of really cool optical properties. So, I always kept it on the back burner as an interesting material. Then when I graduated from college and I moved back to my hometown of Minneapolis, I didn't have the tools and equipment to keep working with metal. So, I kind of fell into, “Hey, there was that acrylic I worked with a couple of times in school. It was very interesting. Let's see what we can do with that,” because it was cheap, and I could cut it with simple tools. I started experimenting with it from there. Sharon: And you make all sorts of jewelry with it. Do you know when you start out that you'll be making a necklace or a bracelet with the pieces you have, or do they talk to you as you put them together? Jennifer: I make pieces both ways. Sometimes I'll design a piece very specifically and have an idea and a picture in my mind of what I'm making. But then there's other times, especially when I'm working with the scraps that are left over from pieces that I've made in the past. A lot of those scraps are still very interesting, and they'll be in weird shapes. Those will speak to me, and I'll create something new and different with some of those. I kind of work both ways. Sharon: I know you're in a lot of stores and galleries. Do stores tell you what to do, or do you just say, “Here it is, do you like it”? Jennifer: I'm more of a, “Here's what I've been making. Let me know which ones you like.” I think sometimes it's important to follow your own inspirations. People tend to be drawn to the things that I'm most excited to make. That being said, some galleries have different clientele bases with different price points, so they’ll tell me, “Hey, these pieces were working really well.” I'll take some feedback. But ultimately, I focus on making the things that I'm drawn to. Sharon: Do you have a studio inside your home or do you have a place that you go? Jennifer: For years I did have a studio outside of my home that I really loved, but a few years ago my husband and I bought a home, and I decided to move my jewelry practice into my home. So, now I work from home. But who knows, maybe in the future I'll expand a little bit and have another space in addition outside the home. It can be kind of a challenge working at home sometimes, but I've done both. I like working both ways, so we'll see what the future has for me. Sharon: Do you have assistants who work with you? Jennifer: I've had assistants in the past. I don't anymore. I scaled my business way back during COVID and took a breather to reevaluate what I'm doing and where my motivations are. I'm only just beginning to build it back. At this point, I don't work with anyone, but hopefully in the future I can find someone to help out with some of the production. It's a little challenging to find an assistant because my process is very unique. It's not something that people know how to do, so there's a lot of training involved. When I do work with people, it takes quite a while to get somebody that can help finish pieces to the quality standards that my galleries and clients expect. Sharon: When you were reevaluating things, what did you decide? Did your method change during COVID? Jennifer: I think things just slowed way down during COVID. 2020, honestly, it was going to be my year. I had a couple of really big events planned, one of which I got to do because it was in February, but the rest all moved online. There was such a lull in events and things to participate in. I had started questioning what my motivations are, because you really have to love what you're doing in order to be an artist as a profession. We had bought a house and were settling in. I've just been taking the last few years to figure out life so I can bring my A-game to my business again. Sharon: Did you stop production because you were doing it yourself during COVID? Jennifer: I did slow way down on production. If I had a client that was interested in something, or if I had an online event or that kind of thing, that would motivate me to produce some new pieces. But there were just fewer things going on to spark that creation. I have a harder time making things just because. I like to have an outside influence, like a show that's coming up or events that are going to happen and people are going to see my pieces. When I don't know when those things are going on, I have a little bit of a harder time. I think that is why during COVID, everything slowed down for me especially. But it also gave me a lot of time to think about what I want out of my business and where I want to go. And in May, I'll be launching my first web shop where you can actually buy my pieces directly from me. Sharon: Wow. I know that's a Herculean task. Jennifer: For me personally, the web shop is an extra big step because all of my pieces, even my production work, is one of a kind because of the images I'm using within my jewelry. They're all found images from art books and other sources. So, even if it's the same shape, like the marquee hoop earring, no two are going to be the exact same. So, every time I list a piece online for sale, I have to photograph each and every single one of them. It's taken a long time to get some of those things down where I could do it quickly enough and efficiently enough to be able to post all of these pieces with the right listings. It's a lot more work than having a design where you can put a picture of it and sell 25 of them. It's been a daunting thing to tackle. Sharon: Did you have to wait until you were efficient at photographing and making them so you could just churn them out? Jennifer: My work is very difficult to photograph because it is clear and transparent from some angles, and then it's bright and colorful from others. It's also very reflective. So, trying to photograph it cleanly and communicate the piece in a single image is very difficult. My work tends to resonate more from multiple angles. It has taken years to figure out the best way to represent these pieces in an image or two. Sharon: The online shop, do you think it's your most valuable social media outlet? Is there one? What do you think that is? Jennifer: For me, I'm not huge on social media. Instagram, I think, is the most fun. It's very image forward, which is something I really enjoy. Definitely, as I launch my website, I will be on social media a lot more to market. I think up until now I've mostly worked with galleries and shops or done specific events, so I haven't cultivated my online audience as much. I'm excited to explore that new chapter and get more into it and see what I can do from my home. That way in the future, when something happens where in-person events may not be happening as much, I can still have a connection to my audience. I've been getting asked for years, “Where can I find your pieces?” Because everything is one of a kind, if it's at a gallery in California, someone in Georgia is going to have a hard time getting their hands on it. I think it'll be really nice having my own shop so that people can have one destination to go, as well as all of the others, to be able to have that access. Sharon: How did you start getting galleries and stores interested in you? Jennifer: I have been contacted by most of the places that I work with. Earlier in my career, I did a lot more events and shows and I was able to meet gallery owners. Also, early on in my career, I met some of the people that work for the American Craft Council, which is based in Minneapolis. When they saw a local Minneapolis artist at a show in Chicago and met me and thought my work was cool, they were like, “You're in our city. Let's invite her to some events.” They really took me under their wing and wrote about my work and got me out there. I got a lot of contacts just from people seeing the articles that they had posted. For me, it's been a lot of just doing what I do, and because my work is so unique and different, people that it resonates with will remember and contact me, like, “Hey, we've never seen anything like this. Let's try it out at our gallery.” I've been very fortunate in that way, where I haven't really had to go out on my own, cold calling and trying to get appointments and that sort of thing. I just try to make really interesting work, get it out there as much as I can, and then hope that it snowballs from there. So far, that's been working for me. Sharon: Wow. I think it's great that you didn't have to cold call and that people were interested in your stuff, which is very unusual. I don't know anybody who does anything like that. So, you’re very lucky. Jennifer: I'm very lucky that it worked out for me because I can be a little socially awkward with the cold calling and things like that. That was never my favorite part of the business. I am fortunate that my work speaks for itself. It's kind of a love it or hate it thing, which can be its own challenge, but it's definitely unique enough where when people see it, if they're interested, they will hunt me down and ask me about it. That's been very nice. Sharon: If an outlet wants more than one, maybe they want five bracelets, do you tell them right away that you can make the five bracelets, but they’ll all have different graphics? Jennifer: Yeah. I did a couple wholesale shows a while ago where it was that challenge of, “Well, here's a design, but they're all going to be different, and you're not really going to know until you get them.” I think most people that are interested in my work like that one-of-a-kind nature of it. That's part of the interest, so they trust me. If they get pieces that maybe that imagery doesn't speak to them or their clientele, we'll talk about it and I can swap it out, get them some prints and patterns that they like better. It's kind of a back-and-forth process. And the longer I work with a gallery or a person, the more I get to know what works there. Then I can tailor my offerings to them for what works. Sharon: Where do you find your images and the pictures that you put in your jewelry? Jennifer: When I first started, I was using magazines because they were readily available, fairly inexpensive, and that's how I started this whole process of layered acrylic. But the paper in those is not very good quality and the pictures fade. It's also a challenge to find enough usable content. So, then I started purchasing art books. I would become interested in a specific artist and start collecting books about their work, and those books always had a lot of really amazing images. They're printed on really nice paper with good quality inks, and they're much more successful layering than magazines. Now I exclusively use books. I've become somewhat of a rare and vintage book collector. It's a really fun part of my job, hunting down these different books, figuring out artists that inspire me to start collecting things about their work and then finding really cool images. If there's a particular book that has a lot of really great images that I like, I will start looking for other copies of it. There are certain books about Roy Lichtenstein's work. There’s one about posters that has a catalog in the back with all these smaller thumbnail images, and they're so great for making earrings, things like that. I must've bought that book like 10 times. So, that's where I get my images. It's all purchased materials like books that I then rip up and cut up and put in between the acrylic. Sharon: Well, you answered the question. I was going to ask you if you cut the books up or what you do. You also mentioned that magazines got you going with layered acrylic. Can you tell us about that? Jennifer: When I was younger, I subscribed to all kinds of fashion magazines and fun things, and I would keep them after reading them. I had shelves and shelves of magazines. When I first started working with acrylic, I had this idea that acrylic has pretty cool visual properties, optical properties, and when you put images underneath it, it looks so interesting. That's when I started going through my fashion magazines, lots of issues of Vogue. I would see cool prints on dresses and things like that, and I would rip those pages out and try to fit the prints and things that were in there within my jewelry designs. That's how I got started with the whole thing. It was just cheap materials I already had. Sharon: What are your sales policies? Do you accept returns? If I'm a client and you give me something and I say, “No, that's not what I want,” do you accept returns? What do you do? Jennifer: Yeah, I do accept returns. I think it depends. If it's a piece that already existed and they buy it and it just didn't work out, or it doesn't fit quite right or it wasn't what they were expecting, absolutely. It becomes a little more of a gray area when it's a custom piece, when someone wants specific imagery and this and that. That tends to be a little more delicate. That being said, I want people to keep my jewelry because they love it, not because they're trapped. So, even a custom order, if it doesn't come out quite as they were expecting, I try to work with people to either make it right or try something new. Some of the events that I do, it's a museum show where they're handling the sales and they're getting a commission, I'm getting a commission from the sale. Even though I'm selling to the customer directly, because it goes through the museum, usually it's an all-sales-are-final type situation, just because of the nature of the commissions and if they've already paid me and then the person changes their mind. It depends on the venue through which I'm selling the work. I would say most times, yes, returns are acceptable within a certain time frame, but there are certain instances where they are final sale. But even in that situation—I had a client come a couple of years later to a show, and she had this ring. I decided, “You know what? It's a really cool ring. Let's swap it out.” She wanted a pendant. I like to be a little flexible. Like I said, I want people to have my jewelry because they love it, not because they're forced to keep it. Sharon: I'm curious; in your studio, do you have pets that keep you company? Jennifer: I do. I've got a dog and a cat. My cat, Shackleton, likes to work with me. I have two workspaces in my home. Downstairs is the shop, the studio, and then upstairs I have an office where I do the bonding and the image gathering and looking through layouts. The cat, Shackleton, likes to hang out upstairs in the office and sit on all my papers and be in the way, but be very cute. Then my dog, her name's Sophia. She tends to stay out of the studio because it's loud and dusty. She'll come in the office and hang out, too, sometimes. But I don't know. She kind of does her own thing. She lets me work. Sharon: Well, it sounds like nice company. Do you make more than one piece at a time? All the pieces and extras, let's say, do you put them in a closet and then pull them out if somebody wants them? What do you do? Jennifer: I definitely always have some inventory on hand. I think as far as when I'm making pieces, as I was saying earlier, I tend to make when I have an event or I'm preparing for something coming up. Then I'll usually go above and beyond and make extra just to have. Also, because my pieces are one of a kind and the imagery is different on each earring, each ring, each bracelet, I will make more than I know I'm going to need or sell at a specific time, mostly to have options for my clients, because all the pieces are different and have different images. You never know what someone's going to be drawn to. It's especially difficult with things that have a size, like a ring or a bracelet. Then I make tons of them because you have to have lots of options. With those kinds of things, I'll take a lot more custom orders because someone will see something in person that they love, but it's not their size. I do my best to recreate things for people. I don't generally remake things with the exact same images because usually it's impossible, but I will do my best to get something with a similar aesthetic or feeling for people. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 219 Part 2: Power, Politics and Jewelry: Marta Costa Reis on the Second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial | 15 Mar 2024 | 00:23:30 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Marta Costa Reis Marta Costa Reis started studying jewelry in 2004, as a hobby, in parallel with other professional activities. She dedicated herself fully to this work in 2014. Costa Reis completed the jewelry course at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicacção Visual, in Lisbon, and the Advanced Visual Arts Course at the same school, in addition to workshops with renowned teachers including Iris Eichenberg, Ruudt Peters, Lisa Walker, and Eija Mustonen, among others. In addition to being a jewelry artist, Costa Reis teaches jewelry history at Ar.Co, writes about jewelry, and curates exhibitions. She also serves as artistic director of the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and as a board member of Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does jewelry symbolize power, and where do jewelry and politics intersect? That’s the central question that Marta Costa Reis and her fellow curators, artists and speakers will explore at this year’s Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. Marta joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why this year’s theme is so timely; how Portugal’s turbulent political history influences jewelry today; and how to plan your trip to make the most of the biennial. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, we're going to be talking about the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I am talking with Marta Costa Reis, who is going to tell us all about it. Welcome back.
Sharon: Are you a maker?
Marta: I am a maker.
Sharon: Have you been developing jewelry that's linked to power?
Marta: Actually, not so much. My themes are a bit more, maybe spiritual is the word. I don't know. I'm interested in themes that revolve around time and our connection to time and what is behind us. It's quite different, but this was already the theme of the first biennial. We have to move on and have different themes. Of course, I couldn't do work myself for this biennial. I don't have the time or the mindset to be making at this time. I'm fully focused on the biennial.
Sharon: I was noticing you have several curators. How did you choose the curators of different seminars and exhibits? How did you choose them?
Marta: I can speak, for instance, about the main show that is called Madrugada, daybreak. The main title. I wanted someone that was not a Portuguese person so we don't stay too closed in our own bubble. I wanted someone from another country but who could understand what happened here. Mònica Gaspar is Spanish. Besides being an amazing intellectual and teacher and writer and very knowledgeable about jewelry and design, being Spanish, they had a similar process as ours. They also had a very long dictatorship, and at almost the same time as we did, they became a democracy. So, she could understand more or less the same events. That was important, to have someone with that experience of changing from the dictatorship into a democracy.
We spoke last year Schmuck in Munich about it, and she was interested, but she has a lot of work, so it took a little while to convince her. It's because we are a team and we can share the work that were able to do it and Mònica is able to do it. Patrícia Domingues is the other curator. She's Portuguese, but she's younger than we are.
Sharon: Who is that?
Marta: Patrícia Domingues. She recently had a show in Brooklyn. I can write it down for you later, maybe afterwards.
Sharon: Okay. Patrícia. How do you spell the last name?
Marta: Domingues, D-O-M-I-N-G-U-E-S. I think I got it right. I know how to spell it, but sometimes saying it in English is more difficult. She has been living abroad for a quite a long time, but she's Portuguese, so she has a perspective that is both an insider but also an outsider. I wanted that very much, someone that is not closed here in our little bubble. She's she recently finished a Ph.D. She's younger. She's very much in contact with everything that is being reflected about jewelry in the world right now.
I think they are amazing curators, and they bring a lot to the biennial and to the show. I am there as well not only because I enjoy it, but I wanted to help out with the work, sending the invitations and keeping track of everything so that everything goes smoothly. We are a very small organization, and we do a lot of it ourselves on a voluntary basis. We have to take different jobs in this process. But I'm happy they joined us, and I'm very happy to be working with them on this show.
Sharon: Are you the main curator? Is there a main curator who chose the other ones?
Marta: Yes, that is me. I am the main curator for the whole biennial. Then there is a team and we discuss. We basically invited Mònica and Patrícia and they agreed. The other shows, for instance, the tiara show is curated by Catarina Silva, who is also the head of the jewelry department at ARCO. I'm also taking care of, it's called Jewels for Democracy. That's the show that I mentioned about the women being honored. There's a lot of people involved, but it's quite smooth.
Sharon: Somebody has to keep everything moving and coordinate. How are you promoting the show in Portugal and in general? Anything?
Marta: We will start promoting now. We have the two shows in April. We did the launch last November for the whole biennial. We try to be active on Instagram. Not so much on Facebook, but mainly on Instagram. We will start a more intense campaign. We have a professional communications person that will take care of this. We will start a more intense communication campaign very soon. We have it in two parts, so we are focusing on April. Then we'll have the other show in May, and then it's the end of June. It will be in different parts.
We will also announce the masterclasses very soon. I haven't mentioned the masterclasses yet. That's what I was forgetting. There will be two masterclasses, one with Lin Cheung and one with Manuel Vilhena from the 22nd to 26th of June. We'll open the registrations very, very soon. This week we'll open the registration. You'll start seeing more about it, and we will promote it in different venues. I did an interview for SMCK Magazine, the European magazine about jewelry. It just came out in their last issue. I did it in October or at the end of September, but it just came out. So, we're doing a number of things, but it will become more intense at the end of this month, in February. We will reinforce the communication and the advertising.
Sharon: How long are the shows in the biennial? Does it go through the summer, or is there an ending point or beginning point?
Marta: The main thing is that in the last week of June, everything will be open. The shows in the Royal Treasure Museum, the shows at the Design Museum, the colloquium, the schools, the masterclasses, the students, the galleries. Everything will be open in that last week of June. That will be the right moment to come to Lisbon. That's when we are concentrating everything. On the 30th of June, the two shows at the Royal Treasure Museum will close, but the show at MUDE, the Design Museum, will continue until the end of September, so it will go through the summer.
Sharon: Why do you call it a masterclass? Who's teaching it and what are they teaching?
Marta: It's Lin Cheung. She's from the UK. Manuel Vilhena is a quite well-known Portuguese artist and amazing teacher as well. It's five days. I'm not sure how to differentiate between a workshop and a masterclass, which I guess is a workshop with the masters, and they are masters. They are some of the top teachers I know. I did a small course with Manuel Vilhena a few years ago. Not yet with Lin, but I know they are amazing teachers. I'm sure everyone who comes will enjoy it.
Last biennial, we also had masterclasses, one with Caroline Broadhead and the other with Christoph Zellweger. They are very interesting moments of sharing and learning and deepening your understanding of your own work, not just for students but for artists in every moment of their careers. It's super interesting to be able to have these few days to stop and look at what you do, what you want to do next with very good teachers like they are. This can be a very special moment. For a long time, I did as many workshops and masterclasses as I could, and it was so great.
Sharon: The people who teach the classes, do they vet the people coming, or can anybody who wants to come into the class and take it?
Marta: There is a small vetting process, but basically you send a CV and your motivation, not even a letter, but a few words of why you want to do these classes. That will be the vetting process. But it's pretty much open to everyone in every stage of their education or career.
Sharon: The exhibits and going to galleries, are there charges? Are they free? What is the story with that?
Marta: To visit the galleries, some of the venues will be free. The museums have tickets, but most of the venues that are not museums are free.
Sharon: MUDE is the design museum that just opened.
Marta: Yes. It opened a while ago, but it was under renovation for a long time. It's the only museum in Portugal that has a contemporary jewelry collection. They have been building a collection, and hopefully it will grow. They also have lots of fashion and all kinds of product and graphic design. It's a very interesting collection, very interesting building. They haven't opened yet. We will be one of the first shows. The first temporary show after the renovation will be this one.
Sharon: Wow.
Marta: Yeah, it's exciting.
Sharon: Do you think there'll be a triennial?
Marta: Hopefully we'll do the next one. I have a few ideas. I cannot say yet, but yes. I like to start thinking about the next one while still doing this one. If the team wants to, if we get the support we need, for sure there will be another one.
Sharon: Now for somebody who wants—I started thinking of myself and other people, but members of the audience, if there somebody who wants to come alone, who wants to come to Portugal alone to see the exhibit, where do they stay? You said the end of June is the best time to come.
Marta: The last week of June, yes.
Sharon: Okay, and they stay at a hotel?
Marta: Lisbon is a wonderful, very safe and, I think, easy to navigate town. We don't have a special hotel to recommend, but you can reach out to us and we can help give some suggestions. Stay in a hotel, you will get your program, tell us you are coming. We will try as much as possible to help you out. If you want to organize a group, we can help organize the group as well. But it's easy. Uber goes everywhere, taxis go everywhere, you have the subway, you have buses, you can walk, bike. There are all kinds of ways to travel in town. It's not very big. We're not always able to do it, but many of the events, the venues, will be quite close. There will be a few groups in different locations, but you can visit a lot of things by foot that will be very close by. I think it will be very easy to come even if you're alone.
Sharon: Okay. As long as I have you, tell us about the market for art jewelry in Portugal. Has it grown? Do people care about it?
Marta: I think like almost everywhere else, it's a specialist market that certain people enjoy a lot. Actually, it's not very known by everyone. Most people, when you say jewelry, think about more traditional, more commercial jewelry. Like everywhere, there's a way to go, I think. But there is a group of interested people. There's certainly very interesting artists.
We've had contemporary jewelry, art jewelry being done and presented in shows here since the 60s. We've had a school, the specialized school in Lisbon, since the 70s. We have two galleries. One of them just turned 25. The other I think even more, maybe 30. So, we have had the market for a long time. Now, of course, it's a little bit slow, but I think that happened everywhere with the recent crisis. But it exists, and it's been here for over 40 years, 50 years now. Like everywhere else, it's a continuous work, but people love it. Many people love it. I think it will never stop being interesting and important to a number of us.
Sharon: Okay. Go ahead, if there's anything else you wanted to say.
Marta: About the market, that's basically it. It's an issue, and also what we wanted to promote. That's why we did the biennial, to help people see there's a lot more jewelry than the ones they're used to in the traditional way. That's part of the reason we're doing this, not just for ourselves or the ones who already know what jewelry content actually is all about, but for the ones who don't and might be interested in knowing. Getting the beautiful works that are done out there and reaching out to more people, that's it.
Sharon: Okay. I'm trying to read my handwriting here. I was reading your information last night again, but let's see. The cost, the people and most of the stuff is in English as well as Portuguese.
Marta: Yes, everything will be translated. The colloquium will be in English. Everyone will speak English at the colloquium, and in the museums you will have English. Everything will be translated. Our website is translated. Our Instagram, not all is translated, but because it translates automatically, it's not even an issue anymore, I think. But yes, usually you will always have Portuguese and English, except the colloquium that will be fully in English. It will be quite easy for everyone. English is indeed the common language for almost everything, so we just assume. In Portugal everyone speaks English more or less.
Sharon: Do they learn it in school?
Marta: Yes, yes. In school, movies. The movies are not dubbed. They are in the original English, so we are used to listening to English from when we are very young. It becomes a very common language.
Sharon: That's interesting. We'll have the Instagram and the website listed when we post this.
Marta: Okay, great. Going back, if people want to travel to Lisbon, if they by chance come before June, they will still have very interesting things to see besides the program of the biennial. There are the galleries that will have shows in Lisbon. There's Galeria Reverso and Galeria Tereza Seabra. They both will have shows as they usually have. In April and May, if you visit Portugal, come, because there will be jewelry to be seen. If you plan to come for the biennial, June is a very exciting month. The city is beautiful. It's when there are flowers, there's green, there's the sun. People are just happy in June, everywhere I guess.
Sharon: How is the weather then? Is it hot?
Marta: No, it's warm. June is still quite good. End of July, August is maybe a bit too much, but June usually is still quite good. I won't say the number because I would say it in Celsius so it doesn't mean anything, and I don't know how to say it in Fahrenheit. I won't say a number for the temperature, but it's really nice. The best thing is that the evenings are warm. That's the best, when in the evening it's still warm and it's nice outside. That's June.
Sharon: Are there a lot of people in the streets still when it's warm outside and warm in the evenings? I know you don't live in the center.
Marta: Yes, people will go out. As I said, in June you have traditional parties. The patron saint of Lisbon, his day is in June. From there, you have many, many parties. People go outside, they will eat outside. There will be concerts outside, there will be movies outside, everything will be outside and it will be very nice.
Sharon: I hope that we can all go. I have here the official name is the Second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial, right?
Marta: Exactly.
Sharon: What is the theme once more again?
Marta: The theme is political jewelry and jewelry of power.
Sharon: Okay. And PIN is involved with this also? PIN is the art jewelry—
Marta: PIN is the Portuguese Contemporary Jewelry Association, and it's the organizer of the biennial.
Sharon: Reading through this information I was ready to book my flight. It looks wonderful.
Marta: Yes. I'm happy you come. But surely, if people want to come, reach out to us. If you write to us through Instagram, the website, it will be easy to reach out to us, and we will help in any way. If you want to come, we can help make it happen in the easiest way possible for you. We're happy to have you and everyone who wants to come.
Sharon: Well, thank you very much for telling us about it.
Marta: Thank you for having me and helping us tell our story.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 177 Part 2: History at Your Fingertips: How Beatriz Chadour-Sampson Catalogued 2,600 Historic Rings | 23 Dec 2022 | 00:35:37 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Beatriz Chadour-Sampson
Beatriz Chadour-Sampson studied art history, classical archaeology and Italian philology at the University of East Anglia, and at the University of Münster, Germany. Her doctoral thesis was on the Italian Renaissance goldsmith Antonio Gentili da Faenza. In 1985 she published the jewelry collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne. Since 1988 she has worked freelance as a jewelry historian, curator of exhibitions and academic writer in Britain. Her numerous publications on jewelry, ranging from antiquity to the present day, include the The Gold Treasure from the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (1991), and 2000 Finger Rings from the Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland (1994). She was the consultant curator in the re-designing of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum (opened in 2008), London and was guest curator of the ‘Pearl’ exhibition (2013-14). She is an Associate Member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, London. Today Beatriz Chadour-Sampson works as a freelance international and jewelry historian and scholarly author. Her extensive publications range from Antiquity to the present day.
Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript:
Working in jewelry sometimes means being a detective. As a freelance jewelry historian and curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum, Beatriz Chadour-Sampson draws on her wealth of knowledge to find jewelry clues—even when a piece has no hallmark or known designer. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she creates jewelry exhibits that engage viewers; how she found her way into the niche of shipwreck jewelry; and what it was like to catalogue 2,600 rings. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. My guest is Beatriz Chadour-Sampson. She’s been the curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum for almost 35 years. Welcome back.
Beatriz: You asked about the catalogue. We didn’t know if the exhibition was going ahead at one point, but I was asked by V&A Publishing to do a book on pearls, which I did. So, yes, we did a book which was for sale during the exhibition. That was in 2013. We redesigned the jewelry gallery, and 2008 was the end of that. The pearls exhibition was in 2013, the beginning of 2014.
Sharon: Why was it redesigned, the gallery?
Beatriz: The jewelry gallery. With all galleries, there comes a point where they need to be refreshed and renewed, and the previous design needed it. You even had gates you had to get through, and if you weren’t quite as slim as myself, you would have problems getting through the gates. When it was redesigned, it was a completely different aesthetic. As I said, the boards have to tell the story, so when the visitor walks in, they have to understand the story and go from one to the other. Some people say the gallery is very full, but it is a study collection. We asked the education department artists to do certain things.
I was very keen on going “from cradle to grave.” The gallery is chronological, so you want a display before you start to know why you wear jewelry. A child wears jewelry or a mother wears jewelry to protect them at childbirth, or they wear it for status or religion or whatever it is. Jewelry is multitasking, multifunctional. Today we think of jewelry as decorative, but that is not the case. Jewelry was made for an occasion and a reason. With status, you always have the big diamonds and the big stones. That has always existed, in recently centuries definitely. But there are so many more reasons for jewelry, for mourning and birth and good luck. That sort of exists today, probably with charms. So, jewelry is multifunctional.
Then we have a screen with pictures from different centuries showing portraits because, at a jewelry gallery, you can’t see the pieces on someone. They need the body, but they don’t have the body. So, it’s good to have a screen showing how the jewelry was worn through the centuries, which is very important. Also in the display, each board—let’s say you had earrings, a necklace and a bracelet. The concept was that what you wear on the top of the head goes on top. What you wear around your neck comes next and then the base, so you have a feeling of an abstract body in a way. It’s not always obvious, but I try to think of it logically.
Of course, with the contemporary, we couldn’t do that. It is all chronological until you get to about the 1950s, and that’s it. You have to find a completely different concept. So, we decided to do it by materials. Good chronology at the beginning, but then it comes into materials. Natural materials, new metals, techniques. You couldn’t do decades. That couldn’t work. So, we did it by materials, which is an interesting aspect because you have all the different materials they use in comparison to all the gold and silver you see throughout the gallery. Suddenly, you’re seeing a whole wall of completely different materials.
Sharon: What is your role as co-curator? You’re curator and co-curator of so many places. What’s your role as a co-curator? What do you do? What do they call in you for?
Beatriz: It’s an advisory role. The Victoria and Albert Museum is a bit more than just an advisory role. You’re working with the team, with the architect. It’s a team procedure, but as I say, everybody has their own role to play. It intermingles, of course.
Sharon: At other times, you’ve talked about a different museum in Switzerland where you came, and it looked just—was it at eye level? Was it low? Was it too high?
Beatriz: Oh, that one, no. You remembered that detail. The eye level, that was the Victoria and Albert Museum. That is in the center of the gallery because we did a display for a tourist who goes to the museum and only has 10 minutes to look at jewelry history. So, in the center you’ve got these curved glass cases. The jewelry is on special mounts. You remember that. I asked my colleagues of different heights, from four foot something to six foot something. In the storage room, we had glass doors where there was a lot of storage space with artifacts in it, and I used Post-it Notes to put the different heights of people to see what a good eye level is. So, if you’re looking at a broach or a tiara or something, you want it on the level where you more or less visualize it on your body so you can see it well. So, yes, that’s the Post-it Notes. I used not only double-sided tape and pieces of paper, but also Post-it Notes, trying to find the right height for the pieces.
Eye level is hugely important, but the other museum you’re thinking of may be something I’m current advising on. This is really an advisory role. It is a museum that will open next year, the Dubedeen, a German museum. Of course, there are gemologists there that are very specialized, but their museum experience is missing. So, I’m giving a little bit of advice on the background of things. Don’t put a plinth that you can fall over. Don’t make drawers that a child can get their fingers caught in. You learn these things from places like the Victoria and Albert Museum. There’s health and safety. There’s also the height of displays, the attention span of visitors. Text shouldn’t be too long. It's more of an advisory role than an active role.
Sharon: I’m thinking about attention span. You must have seen that really go down. It seems nobody has more than two seconds for attention anymore.
Beatriz: There is an element of that. I think the Koch Collection of rings in the Jewelry Gallery is one of the most visited in the England museums. When you get to sparkle and glitter, there’s more attention span, but not so much on the text.
Sharon: Yeah, that’s probably true. You’ve also done a lot of work on shipwrecks. That’s very interesting.
Beatriz: That goes back to 1989. By sheer coincidence, I came to work on shipwrecks. I was in New York when I was working on the Concepción Collection. I met Priscilla Muller of the Hispanic Society of America in New York, and I helped her with some Spanish and Portuguese jewelry. When she was asked, she just didn’t have the time to work on the shipwrecks. She thought with my Spanish and Portuguese knowledge, I would be suited for that, so I was asked by Pacific Sea Resources in 1989 to work on an incredible shipwreck called the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción from 1638 that sank. It was the usual thing, mutiny and the wrong person taking care of the ship. That’s a private story, not a jewelry story, but the interesting thing is that the jewelry was basically made for Spaniards in the Philippines. The jewelry was made in the Philippines, the majority of it for Spaniards. It was a Spanish colony at the time.
When I was first went through it, I thought, “It looks quite European. It looks O.K.” I signed the contract, and little did I know how much research was involved for the material, which I hardly knew. It was because of the influence. The Spaniards definitely had European design books they brought with them. By then, you had printed books with designs in them, and they must have had them there. Chinese craftsmen were working for them in the Philippines, and of course the Chinese had great skills with outside countries. Some of it looks very European, and some of it is Indian influences, Siamese influences, and influences from Java, Sumatra. The chains, heavy gold chains, were certainly Chinese filigree. In fact, I told the Ashmolean Museum it belonged to Sir Elias Ashmole, whose portrait and chains still exist in the Ashmolean Museum, and I told them that one of the gold chains he had was Chinese. It was given by the Kuffners from Brandenburg, and I happened to find out that the Kuffners from Brandenburg travelled to China. So, that all fit. That was a little like detective work. That was published in 1990.
I’ve recently been working again on shipwrecks, just a few pieces of absolutely fascinating jewelry found off the shore of the Bahamas, which has now been in the Maritime Museum on the Bahamas for only a few months. I also worked on the Atocha in Key West. I organized an exhibition in Hanover for them, where we did a display of the Atocha and Santa Margarita events. But what’s so fascinating about shipwrecks is that we see so many portraits of beautiful jewelry from the Renaissance, the 16th, 17th centuries, where they really documented beautifully painted jewelry in paintings. Thanks to that we can study them in detail. All this jewelry doesn’t exist anymore, especially gold chains, because gold chains were the easiest thing to melt and reuse for more modern jewelry. As I have said, I have a smile when somebody talks to me about recycled gold being something new. Well, it's nothing new. Recycling gold goes back centuries.
Sharon: I’m surprised because in the pictures, you always think it’s a straightforward gold chain with no Chinese engraving or anything. You think of it as a gold chain.
Beatriz: Some of it is simple, what they called a P-chain. You saw loads of it, especially on Dutch paintings. But in the Atocha there was a spiral. You can see they’re very tidy on the portraits, but it looks as if they had a spiral at the back holding the chain so they flowed down properly. Some of those chains we had were definitely Chinese filigree because those chains are filigree. In the 1655 shipwreck from the Bahamas, there’s a chain like that, and that’s mainly why they asked me to look at it. That certainly reminded me of some of the Concepción work, which was Chinese craftsmanship.
The trade was amazing. You had trade happening in the Philippines. Even the Dutch were trading with the Spaniards. The Dutch were trading silks and spices from China and so on. These big galleons went from the Philippines to Acapulco and Vera Cruz and then to Havana. They went on a route around South America, loading and offloading things from Europe. It’s interesting because in Seville, there’s the Archivo General de Indias, and there they have all the books on the shipping material. Like with the Atocha, they found out which ship it was because the gold bars have a text mark on them, and that coincided with the documents they have in Seville. It’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating field.
Sharon: It seems like it.
Beatriz: It’s a mystery and it’s global, of course. Made in Asia; there’s nothing new. It’s hundreds of years. There would not be any porcelain in 18th century Europe the other way around.
Sharon: Do you get to see the ship right away? When it comes up, do you see it when they pull it from the ocean?
Beatriz: No. When I was asked to work on the Concepción, I had to travel to Singapore where it was being cleaned and conserved. In one instance I had to say, “Stop cleaning because I think there’s enamel underneath, black and white enamel. Stop.” You have to be careful because you have to get rid of the marine dirt. No, I got to see it after it was cleaned or while it was being cleaned.
Sharon: Wow! And then what? It goes to the museum? What happens afterwards?
Beatriz: It nearly got split up and sold at auction. I’m glad it didn’t because it’s a historical find, but unfortunately you have to go the Mariana Islands to see it. You can’t see it always. The material is put together, and it was published in a black and white archaeological report. It was published in 1990, so at least it’s documented. National Geographic did a beautiful spread with color, so you know what it’s like.
Sharon: What have you learned from parsing these shipwrecks, from researching the shipwrecks?
Beatriz: The extent of influence in Europe of some motifs and how far they went. It was made in the Philippines and sold in Europe because everything that was made and transported on this galleon, the Atocha, at some point went to Seville and then it was traded on. We definitely know that the emeralds the emperors were after came from Colombia and then went through Havana to Seville. It’s a fascinating trade, but the trade is something we never think about. In Roman times, the Roman emperor wanted pearls, so they traveled to southern India to get pearls. History does amaze one.
Sharon: It does. You’re working on many projects now. What can you tell us about some of them?
Beatriz: I can tell you what’s half-finished and what’s coming. I’ve had a year of three books. I co-edited a book with Sandra Hindman, founder of Les Enluminures. I need to add Les Enluminures because for many years, I’ve been their jewelry consultant. They’re based in Chicago, New York and Paris and are specialized mainly in Medieval and Renaissance jewelry, but this has nothing to do with the book we did. It just happened to be that we worked together again. Sandra and myself did something called a liber amicorum in honor of Diana Scarisbrick, a leading jewelry historian. It was for her 94th birthday, and we kept it a secret until her birthday. It had 20 authors in three languages all writing in her honor. That has come out. It’s now available. It was published by Paul Holberton. It’s on varied topics, from archaeology to today, really. 20 authors contributed towards that.
Today I received my copy of a book I worked on for the Schmuckmuseum, so it’s now published. The launch is on Sunday, but I won’t be traveling to Germany for that, unfortunately. It has to be a Zoom celebration for me. It’s to do with the humanist Johann Reuchlin. He was from Pforzheim. He lived in the late 15th to the 16th century, and it’s about script and jewelry from varying periods. It’s a lot of contemporary jewelry as well. The cover doesn’t really tell you that because it was the 500th anniversary of, I think, his death date. So, he was honored in this book, which has just come out, with essays from many people. Lots and lots of jewelry. That was published by Arnoldsche, and it’s called—I have to think of it—German sounds so much easier in this case. It means script and pictures worn on the finger. I worked on rings with script on them.
Sharon: With writing you mean?
Beatriz: Yeah, writing, that’s it. There are a lot of other topics in the book as well, but jewelry is certainly the dominant. Yes, they are rings. Mary Queen of Scotts is somebody who wrote her inscription inside the ring and was loyal to the queen. Had that been seen, her head would have gone to the chop. It’s rings with prayers on them or rings with some sort of amuletic inscriptions. It’s all inscriptions on rings in my case, and it’s about Josiah Wedgwood who gave this ring to John Flaxman. You’ve got a whole history behind it. It’s rings with script on them, highly visible on the bezel, either visible on the bezel or inside the hoop.
Sharon: In English or German?
Beatriz: It’s basically German, I’m afraid to say, but with lots of good pictures with excellent captions, which are international. I am bilingual in German and English, but I haven’t written German for a long time.
I’ve actually written a third book that’s coming out, but that won’t come out until January. That was a huge task. It’s on jewelry from Bossard from Lucerne. It started in the early 19th century, but the two I worked on were a father and son from 1869 until 1934. That was the period of historicism. It was also a time of fakes of Renaissance jewelry being made, because there were so many collectors who wanted Renaissance but couldn’t afford the real Renaissance jewelry. So, it was very tempting for fakers to make fake jewelry. When I started, I didn’t know what I was in for, but I have come to the conclusion that it’s pure historicism, what Bossard made. I had very little jewelry to go on, just a few pieces in private hands, but I did find by sheer coincidence a drawing, and I found the bishop who it belonged to. You have a hundred drawings by the Bossard Company over this whole period, and it’s very interesting material to see their designs they were making. In some instances, it’s real Renaissance. I don’t know if they were Renaissance or if it was actually made later. Then it gets critical. It’s a very complex period, but a very interesting archive in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich.
Sharon: For next year, do you have other projects going on?
Beatriz: Yes, the coming projects. I mentioned the gem museum, which is opening next year. I’m in the midst of advising. I’m going to be working very shortly—I’ve already started a bit—on the jeweler Eileen Coyne from London. She’s been working on jewelry since the 1970s and continues to make jewelry very, very different to anything I’ve worked on before. What I find so fascinating is that her imagination and inspiration come from the material. It comes with the material and the tools. She also uses interesting gemstones and beads that come from ethnic backgrounds. She uses the most amazing materials. Also jades, carnelians, all kinds of things. So, we’re going to do a book. She had a shop in the 80s and into the 90s. Her jewelry was displayed in Harvey Nichols in London, and she had a shop where all the celebrities and royals went shopping. It was quite an interesting clientele. We’ll see if we get photographs or if they allow us to show some of the things they bought. It’s very much about discretion in such cases. So, that’s interesting, a completely different type of jewelry.
I’m really excited about it, but at the same time, I’ve also been involved, and am more involved now, in an artificial intelligence project. That is a ring that has been designed by Sylvia Reidenbach and John Emeny in England. Sylvia Reidenbach is German, but she teaches in Glasgow and London and all over Europe as well. She has created, with John Emeny, a ring with artificial intelligence based on one or two rings from the archaeological museum in Munich, a few rings from the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremburg, and 150 rings from the Koch Collection. There’s one design. The machine makes the design, mixes it all and combines it into one design. The ring is now being made. The stone is labradorite. It’s been on display since Wednesday last week in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum but will be coming to Zurich afterwards. So, I’ll be learning a lot about AI and design. That is completely different from anything. I like the natural materials and history, and then the contrast is the AI.
Sharon: The AI is the dimensions of all these hundreds of rings?
Beatriz: Yes, the images are put into the machine, the AI. Don’t ask me the technology of it because I haven’t got a clue about AI technology. I’m at the beginning of it all. I’m learning, but I have seen how it develops. The images are fed into the machine, like the 150 rings from the Koch Collection and the others, and the machine designs one ring out of that.
Sharon: Wow! So, it’s already made and in the museum.
Beatriz: Only just now. It’s hot off the press, but there’s more to come on that. There will be more to come on that, yes.
Sharon: You’ve written several other books. You wrote “A Life in Jewels.”
Beatriz: That is the book we did for Diana Scarisbrick, honoring her. I’ve written books since 1981, so it’s added up quite a bit. Sometime I can give you a list.
Sharon: How about the influence of women on 20th century jewelry? Has it changed jewelry? Has it made it more feminine?
Beatriz: It’s an extremely complex story, the role of women in design. You have to see it from the role of the woman in history. Just recently by coincidence, I’ve seen some material on women painters from the 16th and 17th centuries. In Bologna, for example, there were quite a few, and it’s only now coming to the fore. You also have to see high jewelers’ workshops in the field of jewelry. You don’t have a Renaissance piece of jewelry and know, “So-and-so made it.” That didn’t exist. It’s only in the 19th century that we start that. The hallmarking system in England goes back to the 13th century, but jewelry was considered smallware, so they didn’t consider putting a hallmark on it.
That changed later on, the but the name of the designer is something that we very often don’t know. The high jewelers of the 19th century, when you knew the name of who made it in Paris or New York, you never know the name of the designer. That is something that came in in the 20th century. You have some classical examples. With Cartier, it was Jeanne Toussaint. She designed some of the iconic pieces for Cartier and the Duchess of Windsor. She worked for I don’t know how many decades designing jewelry. She was a very important female designer. Then you’ve got Coco Chanel. She designed jewelry, mostly costume jewelry, but she also designed diamond jewelry. Not that she wanted to, but it was for the nation and probably the economy that she did it. Elsa Schiaparelli, with her fantastic surrealist jewelry, made that incredible neckpiece with beetles in plastic. If you had to date that as a jewelry store and you didn’t know the background, you’d easily say 1970s or 80s. It’s so amazing. In that period, you also had Suzanne Belperron with her really unique designs in jewelry.
Of course, the role of the woman changed after the First World War. You had millions of widows, and they had to work. The whole society was changing. After the Second World War, it became even more evident that women were working. I was very cheeky. I did a lecture. It was in the British Museum, and I was talking about the changing role of men and women buying jewelry. You can imagine the shock of some of them. I said, “Women go out and buy their own jewelry.” Before it was classical: the husband bought the jewelry for the wife. They were the earners, so they bought it. There were a few examples in the early 1900s, like the Duchess of Manchester, whose tiaras are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. She was one of these Dollar Princesses and quite a character. She liked smoking cigars and all. She went off with the family diamonds to Cartier and said, “Make me a tiara, and use up the garments.” You have Lady Mountbatten, who, after the birth of her daughter, Pamela, decided to go to Cartier and buy herself a nice bracelet that she could also wear in her hair in the 1920s.
There are a few examples. On the whole, it was always the husband buying the jewelry, but past that, you have women earning money and buying their own jewelry. The 60s sets off in that direction, and then it becomes jewelry that’s more affordable. Jewelry has never been so diverse as in the last decades. It’s never been so diverse in all its history. If you look at the Royal College of Art, I think you’ll find that, in general, there are a lot more women in training to become jewelers. You find so many names of women designers, now one doesn’t even talk about it. Whether it’s a man or a woman, it’s just become a norm.
Sharon: That’s interesting. If you stop to think about it, I don’t even know if there are that many male designers. I’m thinking about when I go to studios. You see more women than you do men.
Beatriz: It’s more and more, yes. There are more and more women, absolutely.
Sharon: What would you advise? What piece of advice would you give emerging jewelers or people who want to follow in your steps?
Beatriz: Remember that if you’re a jewelry historian, you’re an academic. Remember that. You have to really enjoy what you’re doing. In my case, I was very lucky. I’ve worked for so many different projects and so many different jewelers internationally. I’ve specialized in that, but it’s very difficult. Maybe, depending on the economic situation, people can volunteer in a museum to learn the trade. I think what you really have to know is do you want to work in a gallery, or do you want to work in an auction? Do you want to work in a museum? They don’t always mingle, so you have to learn where you want to go. It depends on what your interests are. If you have anybody, send them to me privately. I’m happy to talk it through.
Sharon: Thank you for being with us.
Beatriz: My pleasure.
Sharon: Well will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 177 Part 1: History at Your Fingertips: How Beatriz Chadour-Sampson Catalogued 2,600 Historic Rings | 21 Dec 2022 | 00:33:22 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Beatriz Chadour-Sampson
Beatriz Chadour-Sampson studied art history, classical archaeology and Italian philology at the University of East Anglia, and at the University of Münster, Germany. Her doctoral thesis was on the Italian Renaissance goldsmith Antonio Gentili da Faenza. In 1985 she published the jewelry collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne. Since 1988 she has worked freelance as a jewelry historian, curator of exhibitions and academic writer in Britain. Her numerous publications on jewelry, ranging from antiquity to the present day, include the The Gold Treasure from the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (1991), and 2000 Finger Rings from the Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland (1994). She was the consultant curator in the re-designing of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum (opened in 2008), London and was guest curator of the ‘Pearl’ exhibition (2013-14). She is an Associate Member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, London. Today Beatriz Chadour-Sampson works as a freelance international and jewelry historian and scholarly author. Her extensive publications range from Antiquity to the present day.
Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript:
Working in jewelry sometimes means being a detective. As a freelance jewelry historian and curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum, Beatriz Chadour-Sampson draws on her wealth of knowledge to find jewelry clues—even when a piece has no hallmark or known designer. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she creates jewelry exhibits that engage viewers; how she found her way into the niche of shipwreck jewelry; and what it was like to catalogue 2,600 rings. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. My guest today is Beatriz Chadour-Sampson. She’s been the curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum for almost 35 years. She’s also a jewelry historian, art historian, educator, author and a whole bunch of other things I’m sure I’m missing out on, but she’ll fill us in today. Beatriz, welcome to the program.
Beatriz: Thank you very much for your invitation.
Sharon: Can you tell us about your jewelry journey? It’s been quite a journey.
Beatriz: Yes, the journey starts many years ago when I was a small child, in fact. I’m not a young chick at the moment, but I started off in my childhood with jewelry. I have to tell you a little bit of the family history. I was born in Cuba. My father was Russian and my mother was British. There’s a whole story of European history, including being five times refugees from Europe within Europe. That’s the aside, but my father learned how to cut and polish diamonds during the war in Cuba. After the war, he opened an import/export business for gemstones. It’s not unknown. You’ll probably find on the internet a picture of me, age three, sorting stones in his office in Cuba. We left Cuba during the Cuban Revolution. I was a Cuban subject as well as my father, but we left and never returned.
He opened a business called Chadour Charms, Inc. in New York. I always spent my holidays in New York. My mother was working in a company where I couldn’t tag along. I spent most of my free time as a child on 47th Street, which was called the gold and diamond alley at the time. My father designed charms. He had the gold cast and then set the stones himself. On 47th Street we had many friends we visited. One had a refinery for gold and silver; the other one sold supplies for goldsmiths, which was quite exciting. I encountered pearls, corals, diamonds and all sorts of jewelry experiences.
That was from three years to early childhood. It was about three years altogether in New York. Then my father was offered a job in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He spoke fluent German. It was an American company building a pearl business in Frankfurt. That’s when I got even deeper into jewelry. Of course, there was also the trade. You can call it child labor today. In those days maybe it was seen slightly differently, but I did my homework with the secretaries. After that, I was stringing pearls, writing invoices and doing all kinds of things with pearls. When I was slightly older, I was allowed to make pearl pairs. Don’t think that a pearl is white. It’s nowhere near white. There are so many different colors and lusters that come in the pearl. So, I was setting pearls, hundreds of pearls, sorting them by a quarter of a millimeter, and then pairing them for earrings and matching the pearls in their luster so they could be worn as earrings.
From there we went on to jewelry, so stones and charms. Something interesting with the charms—I have a little anecdote. I was researching a book, “The Power of Love,” which came out in 2019, and I was looking in an auction catalogue for a famous love ring that Sir Laurence Olivier gave to the actress Vivian Leigh. Late at night, as I do very often, I was searching on the internet for the auction catalogue, and suddenly I see a charm bracelet. I couldn’t believe my eyes. One of the charms she had on the bracelet was designed by my father. I can prove that because I have the same charm on my charm bracelet. It was a ship in the sunset, as you see in the background. So, that was going down memory lane.
When I reached the age of 18, I said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with jewelry ever again.” I had enough. I grew up in the jewelry trade. It was all trade. Lo and behold, I then decided to study art history in Germany and England, but I did my thesis in Germany at the University of Münster. My subject at the end of this was Antonio Gentili, a Renaissance goldsmith. He came from Faenza. He worked for the Medici and the Farnese families, two very high families. He also did works for the Vatican. I remember in my early years after my dissertation, I used to see the Easter Mass on television in Germany. I was looking to see if the cross and candlesticks I worked on were on the show on the altar, which most years they were.
I then got into goldsmiths’ work. It’s through my jewelry background and my thesis on Renaissance goldsmiths’ work that I was awarded a scholarship to write the catalogue of 900 pieces of jewelry for what is now called the Museum for Applied Arts, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst. The collection covers 5,000 years of jewelry history. I was really plunged into the deep history of jewelry. There weren’t so many books at the time. They were more archaeology books. This explosion of jewelry books is something that came after I had finished the catalogue. There was a lot of research that was quite complex, but I enjoyed it. It was wonderful to gain that experience and knowledge of a wide part of jewelry history. That was in 1981. I finished the catalogue. It was published. That was also my first experience doing an exhibition because when the catalogue was launched, we had an exhibition with the jewelry. More recently I’ve been with the Cologne Museum since 1981. It was the first time. They’re now doing a new display of the jewelry. They’re still planning it. I think it’s due to come out next year, so there will be a new display of the jewelry I catalogued.
Then I was offered a job in Hanau, Germany. Many will not realize that Hanau has a history in jewelry that goes back to the 17th century. Up to the First World War, it was a center for producing hand-manufactured jewelry. Today, they have an academy where you can learn how to make jewelry. That goes back to 1772. So, it’s a city of great tradition of jewelry. I was Managing Director of the Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst. I was organizing exhibitions and competitions and catalogues, and it was all contemporary jewelry. When I was working in Cologne, that was my first encounter with contemporary jewelry. I met people who I became great friends with. I also took part in the many events of the Forum für Schmuck und Design, which still exists. So, those were my early experiences with contemporary jewelry, but when I got to Hanau, I was plunged right into it. I had all kinds of jobs to do, as I said, exhibitions, catalogues and competitions.
I stayed there for about three and a half years. In 1988, I was asked if I would catalogue the Alice and Louis Koch Collection. Louis Koch was a very famous jeweler in Frankfurt au Main, Germany, and he and his wife collected rings, among many other collections. It was a family of collections. By 1904, they had about 1,700 rings. There are over 2,600 rings now. I was asked to catalogue the 1,700 rings, which took me quite a long time, but I was doing all kinds of other projects in between. The collector allowed me to do that, which was great fun. In 1994, the historical collection was catalogued fully. It’s like an encyclopedia of rings from ancient Egypt on. It covers 4,000 years of jewelry history.
In about 1993, just before we finished the catalogue—and there are a few contemporary rings in the 1994 publication. I believe this collection from Louis Koch in 1904 went to a second and a third generation after he died in 1930. The fourth generation, we discussed it, and we came to the conclusion that they should make it their own and continue where their great-grandfather had finished. Now, their great-grandfather was, as I said, a very famous family jeweler in Frankfurt. The shop was called the Cartier of Germany, so you can imagine royalty wearing it and the national business. He was a quite a jeweler. They also expanded to Baden-Baden. He was a very fashionable jeweler, and he was a contemporary of René Lalique. He didn’t buy rings from any other contemporaries, but he bought a ring by René Lalique, so he must have realized there was something very contemporary about Lalique. He was the modernizer of French jewelry at the time, using glass and gold that was unthinkable.
So, we went on this venture from 1993 until the publication in 2019. We amassed a collection of 610 rings from the 20th and 21st century, which are all catalogued. Then the collection went into the Swiss National Museum. There was a small exhibition, but since 2019, there’s a permanent display of 1,700 rings. May I add that the 610 contemporary rings are all on display, so we reduced repetitions within the historical part of the collection. Interestingly, this room’s showcase is also round like a ring. With 1,700 rings, it’s not an easy task because you have to go in a circle. We had big, brown panels of paper and played around with the rings. It starts with themes and then goes on chronologically to the contemporary. You couldn’t make a mistake because once you got to ring 200, you couldn’t go back to number 50. You can imagine going up to 1,700. I can say there are two rings that are not in the right place, but that’s not too bad with 1,700 rings.
Sharon: Did you have to photograph them?
Beatriz: I’m very lucky to finish up on the Koch Collection. I’m now consultant curator to the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. I was responsible for the display there together with my colleagues in the museum. That was quite an experience. It’s wonderful after 35 years to still be able to do this. I think they were a bit concerned about my babies and that I would want to run away from it, but that isn’t the case. I really enjoy working with them. It’s a pleasure. It’s so rewarding, after 35 years, to see the collection on display, which was always in private hands from the 1900s onward.
I’ve just written six blogs for the Swiss National Museum. One is on the Napoleonic Wars, and the stories are all told by the rings. The next one coming out in November is on Josiah Wedgwood and his sculptor, John Flaxman. Rings tell lots of stories.
Sharon: Are the blogs in English?
Beatriz: Everything in the Swiss National Museum is English, German, French and Italian. So, you take your pick which one you want.
Sharon: Did you have to photograph everything? When you say you catalogued them, I think of a catalogue being a photograph and description.
Beatriz: Oh, no. The photographs of the historical collection were all done by a photographer. It’s very difficult because we had to choose one background for all. That was complex. It’s pre-1994, so it’s sort of an old, pale, gray blue. One color fits all because it was the encyclopedic nature of the books.
With the 2019 book, I was working with the photographer in Zurich. I spent many weeks and months in Zurich sitting next to the photographer and choosing which angle because contemporary rings don’t just have a hoop and a bezel. It’s a piece of sculpture, so you have to know exactly which angle to take the photograph to show as much as you can of the ring. I was actually working together with the photographer. You learn a lot with such jobs.
Sharon: Wow! Today there are all kinds of degrees you can get with exhibitions. Was it something you learned hands on or learned by doing?
Beatriz: I was working at the practice in my second home of the Victoria and Albert Museum, because I was consultant curator to the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery. I worked there for four and a half years on the displays. When you see the displays in the gallery, the concept was from me. I had little black and white photographs of the old gallery, nothing in color. It didn’t matter that I knew the pieces by heart and each piece of jewelry was about the size of a small fingernail, and I got a damp hand from cutting out 4,000 images of 4,000 pieces of jewelry, very high-tech, of course. I had my pieces of paper, and I started thinking that every board has to tell a story. For me with an exhibition, the exhibit has to tell the story, and the text below on the captions really helps you understand it. Visually, I think it’s very important that the pieces also talk. So, yes, I started before the architect was allocated and we worked together with 4,000 pieces. My colleague, Richard H. Cumber, worked on the watches, but otherwise all the jewelry is designed on black and white photographs on white sheets of paper with double-sided tape.
Sharon: Do you have thoughts about why you got so immersed in jewelry? You said you didn’t want anything to do with jewelry, but here you are immersed in it. What were your thoughts?
Beatriz: You mean deep diving in it?
Sharon: Yes.
Beatriz: I grew up in the jewelry trade and experienced the Cuban Revolution and hardships, being refugees in New York and so on and then moving again to another country. It was complex. As a child, it wasn’t quite easy. It didn’t do me any harm. I’ve survived, but it was a really hard trade. What I was doing later, and still do now, is historical jewelry. It’s a very different thing. I think I’ve gotten my love of jewelry back, yes, but I’m very keen on the wide picture of jewelry covering thousands of years.
In fact, I’ve been doing courses for the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2008. When I do the “Bedazzled” one, which is a history of jewelry, I start with 150,000 B.C. I jump off it pretty quickly, but for me, it’s so important for people to go back to that time to understand what jewelry was about. To me, it was certainly more amuletic rather than status. It was status as well probably. We can’t follow that, but certainly I think amuletic to protect from the dangers. They lived in a very natural world, so the dangers were much worse than we could imagine. I think it’s fascinating to see what was in other periods of jewelry history. It makes it much more exciting to understand what’s happening now.
Sharon: When you came to contemporary jewelry—it seems that you’re pretty immersed in that also—what stood out to you? What made a piece different or jump out at you? There seems to be so much copycatting in many ways.
Beatriz: Definitely, a lot of copycatting. I’ve worked on a collection of 450 pieces of, and I can tell you that’s one of the most copied ones. On Instagram, I have to be careful that I don’t get nasty remarks because I do point out, “Yes, we’ve seen that before. He was ahead of his time, but his style is still modern today.” When we were putting the Koch Collection together with the 610 rings, 20 from the 21st century, the individual l idea was very important for me. It has to be innovative; the idea has to be new; it has to be interesting. For the materials, it should be an experiment with new materials; different materials; materials you wouldn’t use for jewelry. We talk about sustainable jewelry. Pre-1994 we have two rings in the collection made of washing-up bottles. We were way ahead of the times. Of course, Peter Chang used recycled materials, and we commissioned a ring from him. We did commission people that never made rings before just to put them to the test. It was very interesting.
Sharon: I didn’t know that Peter Chang was recycled.
Beatriz: The materials are all recycled materials, yes. That is the amazing part, the recycled materials. These two crazy rings we bought from a German jeweler, it’s just washing-up bottles. If you’re creative and imaginative, you make something interesting.
We have many important names who made rings. We have some wonderful rings from Wendy Ramshaw and so on. We have a lot of big names, but that was not the point. We have a lot of ones that just graduated or were young or completely unknown. It’s more the idea and what they made. Of course, I was approached many times regarding rings and I had to decline, saying, “Sorry, we already have something like that.” I couldn’t say it was not exciting. The idea was already there, so it makes it difficult. Unless it was interpreted differently, yes, that’s fine.
So, I think we got a lot of crazy pieces. The collector always teased me. He said, “Can you wear the ring?” I said, “Of course, could you wear the ring? What do you think?” I always choose rings for wearing. Of course, I have to admit there are a few that are not wearable. I’ll admit to that, but I think with a collection like the Koch Collection, you’re allowed to do that. There are few you really can’t wear, or you can wear them with great difficulty.
Sharon: Yes, I think about that. I always think about how it would be to type with a ring like that, or how it would be to work at a keyboard, something like that.
Beatriz: I always say you don’t wear the big, high jewelry pieces when you go shopping or washing up.
Sharon: That’s true.
Beatriz: I won’t say any company names, but the high jewelers of New York, Paris, wherever, they make those pieces. Those are rings. If they look great, they’re wearable, but you wouldn’t wear them every day while you’re washing up or shopping or doing other tasks around the house.
Sharon: That’s true. That’s probably why people don’t buy them as much anymore. They don’t have places to go, Covid aside.
Beatriz: I think with Covid, the interesting thing is that we have rings that are sculptures. If you’re doing a collection and somebody makes a ring sculpture, I think it’s valid to be in the Koch Collection. We do have a few ring sculptures, including Marjorie Schick. But it’s interesting that you mentioned Covid and when the pandemic was on. I don’t want to go into the pandemic, but we have a much-increased Zoom culture. It did exist before the pandemic, people trying to reduce travelling and climate change and so on. It did come before the pandemic, but it is definitely an increased media. You can’t really wear a ring and say, “Well, here’s my ring.” You have to wear something that’s in the Zoom zone. That’s earrings and brooches. Fortunately, I’m somebody who likes earrings and brooches. I always have on earrings and brooches.
Sharon: What you have on is very Zoom culture. It shows up well.
Beatriz: The color shows up, yes. The earrings, they’re made of silver and made by Eve Balashova, who works in Glasgow. Zoom is not a problem with this jewelry because, as I said, I love the earrings and certainly the brooch that goes with it. In fact, when I bought the earrings I asked, “Can you make a brooch I can wear with it?”
Sharon: Wow! When you go out, do you see rings that make you say, “That should be in the collection”? Can you add new ones?
Beatriz: Since the display in 2019, there are only a few additions. It sort of finished with the publication and the display, but there have been the odd new rings. I write a lot about that. We have had a few, and I’m hoping that next year they will be on display. Maybe half a dozen rings; not many. We might have another exciting one, but we have to wait. Until the collector has actually gotten his hands on it, I don’t want to jinx things.
Sharon: But you identify them and then they say yea or nay.
Beatriz: Yes. They have bought things on their own as well, but we’ve done this together, yes. I’ve identified and advised. For me, it was wonderful. First of all, they don’t know the collector. It’s always the Koch Collection, but the family’s name is different, so it was always very modest, without great names. I was the one who negotiated everything, and it always gave me great pleasure when I could stand up and say, “We’ve chosen a ring for the collection.” You find this great joy on the other end, especially for those young or unknown ones. You could imagine what it meant for them. It’s always great joy.
I love working with contemporary artist jewelers. I worked for 13 years as a visiting tutor under David Watkins. I always said I learned more from them than they learned from me, but I helped them with their Ph.Ds. I really enjoyed working with them, and it continued with being able to buy or acquire what they made for the collection.
Sharon: You do a lot of teaching. You’re teaching other classes in January at the V&A.
Beatriz: Yeah.
Sharon: It started online.
Beatriz: Yes. In 2021, I did an online course, “Bedazzled.” Next year, in January and February, it’s called “Jewels of Love, Romance and Eternity,” which is a topic I’ve worked on because I published the book “Proud Love.” We have a few other speakers who can bring another slant into it. Again, I start with antiquity, because you can’t talk about love jewels without actually talking about Roman jewelry. Many people don’t realize that the engagement ring or the proposal ring or marriage ring started with the ancient Romans.
Sharon: I didn’t know that.
Beatriz: Diamonds in engagement rings started in the 15th century. It might be a little bit earlier, but that’s more or less the dateline. So, there are lots of interesting things to talk about.
As I said, I’ve been doing courses since 2008 at regular intervals. Also at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was co-curator of the pearls exhibition. I did a lot of courses on pearls as well, and that is a fascinating topic. It was wonderful to work on that exhibition. It was together with the Qatar Museum’s authority, but I was asked by the Victoria and Albert Museum to create an exhibition for the British public, which was very different to what they had in mind, of course.
Sharon: There are so many new kinds of pearls, or at least kinds that weren’t popular before. Tahitians and yellow pearls, that sort of thing.
Beatriz: Yes, all these extra pearls are the cultured pearls. It’s a history of the natural pearl. Qatar was a center where they were diving for pearls, so we did all the diving history, how merchants worked in that area in Bali and Qatar. The cultured pearl is, of course, Mikimoto. There are theories that the Chinese started the cultured pearls, but the one who really got the cultured pearls going was Mikimoto. He certainly did the science with it. He worked together with scientists and had the vision. Natural pearls were very, very expensive, and his philosophy was that every woman should wear a pearl necklace or be able to afford a pearl necklace. I think his task is fulfilled.
It’s interesting because the natural pearl doesn’t have quite the luster of the cultured pearl. By the 20s, you have the cultured pearls coming in, and then by the 50s—when I did the exhibition, we had so many stories being told. Of course, some ladies from the Middle East are probably kicking themselves because they sold the family natural pearls because they didn’t have the luster, and they bought the nice cultured pearls that are more flashy. Of course, now the value of natural pearls is unthinkable.
Sharon: Was there a catalogue?
Beatriz: With cultured pearls, you have the golden pearls and the Tahitian pearls and so on, but the color of the pearls depends on the shell they grow in, unless you have some that have been tampered with and are colored. But there are Tahitian pearls, golden pearls and all these different shades. Melo pearls have an orangey color. The color of the pearl is dependent on the shell it grows in. The rarest pearl is the pink pearl that comes from the Caribbean. That’s the conch pearl; that’s hugely expensive. You asked about the catalogue.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| Episode 176 Part 2: How Linda Orlick Helped Put the Jewelry Industry on the Map | 14 Dec 2022 | 00:19:27 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Linda Orlick Linda Orlick is a longtime public relations expert in the jewelry industry as well as an accomplished business executive with experience branding high-end products, people and companies. She is co-founder of the influential Women’s Jewelry Association, a volunteer organization founded in 1984 that began with 10 women in an apartment in Manhattan and blossomed to become a formidable entity and powerful voice for women in the jewelry industry worldwide. Linda served as its President for a four- year term. Additional Resources: Photos available on ThejewelryJourney.com Transcript: Linda Orlick entered the jewelry industry when gold was $35 an ounce and jewelry designers were unknowns who worked behind the scenes. Due in no small part to Linda’s passion for the industry and her work to brand and promote emerging designers, retailers and shows, jewelry is now a respected part of the American fashion scene. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history of the Women’s Jewelry Association; why it’s so hard for people to leave the jewelry industry once they enter it; and how she helped facilitate the design of the 4.25 carat canary yellow diamond ring Hilary Clinton wore to the 1993 inauguration. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. My guest is Linda Orlick. Linda has spent her whole career in jewelry. She has been very successful as a retailer and a consultant to retailers. She’s one of the cofounders of the Women’s Jewelry Association, and she helped build it into a powerhouse. Welcome back. Linda: I think I was also instrumental in launching the American Jewelry Design Council. That was founded by Jose Hess and Jean Francois Albert, with a lot of wonderful designers. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you a story. We used to meet once a year and have a retreat. I must include Michael Van Danzer. as one of the outstanding designers. One year, we had an appointment to meet at De Beers in London to talk about jewelry design and diamonds. There were 30 of us. I have to mention Susan Helmich, Susan Fabric as well. They were also women that were very much a part of the American Jewelry Design Council. Those were the women that stood out. That morning, one of my good friends called me and said, “You can’t go to London,” and I said, “Why?” They said, “Princess Diana just died.” Well, too late, we were all on our way to London. We arrived in London and were walking to Kensington Palace, not knowing if we were going to have our meeting De Beers. Everything was up in the air. It was the most sorrowful experience that we all shared together. My group did meet at De Beers. It was a very short meeting. Chairs were abundant, but there was just no stopping them. Although we had time enough to meet, there was also the trip home at Heathrow Airport, when the funeral procession was going on. Every person in that airport was hysterically crying and cried all the way home. It was such a personal tragedy for so many of us, but we carried on as best we could. Another retreat we went to was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We went there in September, when the aspen trees were golden in their bloom. These retreats really gave the designers a chance to talk about how they were going to continue their designs and how they were going to keep building, how they were going to invite new designers to come in, and how they were going to expand the world of jewelry design. One of the things they did was pick a theme, whether it be a wheel or a teardrop, and every designer that was part of the American Jewelry Design Council would a create piece with this theme. Then one of us had the idea to display them in different museum settings as an exhibit. It was also at the JA Show and eventually the JCK Show. Now, I had been on the board of Kent State University School of Design for 18 years. When I first joined the board, I fell in love with the school, and Henry and I were invited to be guest speakers. It was then called the Shannon Rogers and Jerry Silverman School of Design. We were invited to their fashionomics course that happened every Friday. So, we would get on a plane from New York to Cleveland, which is an hour flight, and spend the day at the school speaking to the students, answering questions, having a lovely dinner, and then getting on a flight that night and going back to New York. I continued that for 18 years. Every Friday in the fall semester, I would bring different designers or an editor from Vogue Magazine or another magazine and then come back the same day. I loved it. One day, the amazing president—her name was Elizabeth Rhodes—said to me, “We’d like to rebrand the school. Jerry Silverman is such a big name. How can we do that?” I said, “I have an idea. Come to my office in New York, and let’s have a branding session. Let’s talk about a strategy to rename the school, since it’s more about design.” My dear colleague Michael Carter sat with the deans and the professors. Every one of the teaching professionals of Kent State was in a New York conference room, and we renamed the Kent State School of Design. It was that simple, and it’s been that way ever since. For many years after that, I continued to travel to the school, bringing other guest speakers to their fashionomics course. It was very rewarding. I also helped them develop a New York program, where students worked in a studio in New York in the garment district. They housed students, and they had students come to FIT or be assigned to different designers, like Donna Karan or Diane von Furstenberg, to work with them so they could increase their skills as designers. That was an exceptional time to see the emergence of this wonderful talent come to life. Sharon: Wow! It sounds like you have quite a history. What is your connection to jewelry today? Do you have a connection? Linda: I will always have a connection. When I went to school and studied to be a medical technician, I worked for an amazing doctor on Park Avenue and 78th Street until I was almost nine months pregnant. I had the privilege of having patients like Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft. I once gave flu shots to all the cast of a Broadway show. I never in a million years thought I would be in the jewelry industry. My uncle, my mom’s brother, had a company called Raquel and Landy. He was one of the first jewelry manufacturing companies to make high jewelry in platinum and diamonds. He said to me, “Your great uncle was the founder of the first jewelry boutique on the Bowery of New York. He used to make jewelry for the Duchess of Windsor.” I said, “Hm. Jewelry, my great uncle, my uncle, my cousins.” It was meant to be for me. Most people who go into the jewelry industry, especially in the beginning, if you ask them, “Did you study to be in the industry?” they would say, “It just happened. I happened to fall into it.” Once you fall into it, you love it. I can call anybody I met back in the 70s as if I was with them yesterday. The jewelry industry has a special bond. Once they love you, once you give them your integrity and your honesty, you have friends for life. I worked with the well-known Mark Hanna, who is now with Warren Buffet’s company. In the very beginning, he and I worked for a company and developed jewelry. We have maintained our friendship throughout the years. There isn’t a person I’ve met that I’m not still in touch with. When I moved to Florida in August of 2019, purely by accident, we were about to have a hurricane, which never happened. My best friend said to me, “Come on, we’re going to the mall. I’m going to show you what it’s all about.” This is the first time I ever lived outside of New York City. We walked into the mall and into Neiman Marcus. Keep in mind that Henry Dunay was the most important jewelry designer at Neiman Marcus for probably close to 50 years, and along with him I used to make personal appearances. I used to help them with many of their promotional campaigns. I helped them with their events. In fact, there were times when they hired me to create in-store promotions for them or tie-ins with other designers. We used to have in-store events and try to bring the store together, which I was very involved with. I can’t remember what I was thinking about. Sharon: Neiman Marcus. Linda: We walked into Neiman’s, and I walked straight into the fine jewelry department. Neal Acartio, who was one of the managers in another store was there, and he looked at me and said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Well, I just moved to Florida. There’s no hurricane, so my girlfriend took me shopping.” He said, “You know, there’s a position open as a sales associate.” I said, “But I never did retail,” and he said, “It doesn’t matter. They’re interviewing tomorrow.” I got the job. I was working the next week just like that. I had so much fun. It wasn’t easy being on your feet for eight hours, but I met childhood friends. I immediately made strong relationships with beautiful clients that had me shopping for them. I absolutely loved it, and I probably would still be there, but on March 17, 2020, everything closed down, the store, the mall, the country. The pandemic was here. Everything closed. There was no place to go. I stayed in the house for 18 months. Neiman’s started to hire very slowly afterwards, but it took a very long time. I can happily say I’m still very involved in the industry. I most recently volunteered to work with my friends and colleagues at the Women’s Jewelry Association, which is coming up on our 40th anniversary, which I can’t believe. The Women’s Jewelry Association is going to be 40 years old next year, so I’m going to be actively involved and will attend the 40th anniversary of the Women’s Jewelry Association. Through my Facebook connections, through my social media connections, I would say I am as involved in the industry as I could be. Living here in Florida, I have a deep love for it, a deep respect for the way it’s grown. I watched these designers, who tried to lead with all the different and beautiful works they put out, getting better and better each year. To any young designer coming in, do it. Embrace it with both hands. One of the schools that stands out is FIT. Their jewelry department has expanded dramatically. I used to guest lecture. We started the Women in the Know Conferences at FIT through the Women’s Jewelry Association. That’s something that happens every year. The other design schools out there are very good, like Parsons. USC has a very important program. Kent State, when we went back, expanded their jewelry department. It was very impressive. It’s exciting to have seen it from the 1970s. It’s now close to 2023. I have another story I’d love to tell you about. My dear colleague at the Diamond Information Council called me one day and said, “Linda, Elizabeth Taylor needs a mask to wear for an event in honor of AIDS, to raise funds for AIDS research.” I said, “O.K., let me think about this for a second.” I went to Henry and said, “Henry, Elizabeth Taylor needs a mask.” When you say that to somebody with a wealth of designer possibilities like Henry Dunay, you can’t image what’s coming next. You’ll see by the picture of Elizabeth holding the mask that he didn’t just create a little pin and mask. It was a life-size mask with 936 diamonds supplied by dear friends at William Goldberg Diamonds and platinum from the Platinum Guild. The Gold Council donated the gold. This extraordinary mask, which was valued at over $1 million, was supposed to be carried by Elizabeth the day of the event. She wanted to auction it off at Christie’s. The night before, she got the flu, so she couldn’t attend the event. A model was the one who wound up carrying it, but Elizabeth’s connection with the mask was strong. We had beautiful photography that shows her with the mask. Henry designed mini mask pins for her and several of the guests, like Anna Wintour, so they would always have a keepsake from that evening. The mask went all over the world. It went to Wichita, Kansas, to raise funds for pediatric AIDS. In about two hours, it raised over $88,000 for AIDS. It was absolutely breathtaking, as you will see in the pictures. Sadly, the mask was pulled apart because the diamonds had to given back. Though Henry’s intention was to replace it with other diamonds, I don’t think it ever happened. Everybody used to say, “Oh, Elizabeth Taylor, she’s such a diva. You’re going to have such a hard time working with her.” I couldn’t tell you how absolutely wonderful and genuine she was. The few times we met her, when we presented the mask to her and at another event, where Henry designed a special necklace for her, she was as loving and generous and warm and friendly as anyone could imagine. Her dedication to raising awareness for AIDS was like none other. I will never forget those moments I had with her. It was very exciting. Sharon: It must have been. Linda, thank you for sharing all the history and different perspectives you have. You’ve seen a lot, and you’ll see a lot more, I’m sure. Thank you so much for being here today. Linda: Thank you so much. It’s been a wonderful journey to share with you. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 176 Part 1: How Linda Orlick Helped Put the Jewelry Industry on the Map | 12 Dec 2022 | 00:13:25 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Linda Orlick Linda Orlick is a longtime public relations expert in the jewelry industry as well as an accomplished business executive with experience branding high-end products, people and companies. She is co-founder of the influential Women’s Jewelry Association, a volunteer organization founded in 1984 that began with 10 women in an apartment in Manhattan and blossomed to become a formidable entity and powerful voice for women in the jewelry industry worldwide. Linda served as its President for a four- year term. Additional Resources: Photos available on ThejewelryJourney.com Transcript: Linda Orlick entered the jewelry industry when gold was $35 an ounce and jewelry designers were unknowns who worked behind the scenes. Due in no small part to Linda’s passion for the industry and her work to brand and promote emerging designers, retailers and shows, jewelry is now a respected part of the American fashion scene. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history of the Women’s Jewelry Association; why it’s so hard for people to leave the jewelry industry once they enter it; and how she helped facilitate the design of the 4.25 carat canary yellow diamond ring Hilary Clinton wore to the 1993 inauguration. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
My guest is Linda Orlick. Linda has spent her whole career in jewelry. She has been very successful as a retailer and a consultant to retailers. She’s one of the cofounders of the Women’s Jewelry Association, and she helped build it into a powerhouse. I’m sure many of you are members of the Women’s Jewelry Association. Today, we will learn a lot more about her jewelry journey. There’s a lot to say. Linda, welcome to the program.
Linda: It’s so good to be here. Thank you, Sharon.
Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry journey.
Linda: Well, I hope we have a lot of time. In 1974, when gold was $35 an ounce—
Sharon: Wow!
Linda: I guess, wow. My family and a few friends spent the summer in the Catskills. At that time, there were three ladies who had a company and were selling a collection of gold jewelry to other women like a pyramid scheme. It was a combination of chains and necklaces and earrings. I said to a friend of mine, “We should do this.” So, we went ahead and invested $400 each, and we got our first collection.
We thought we would be brave enough—we lived in Riverdale in the Bronx—to take a trip into the city and go into office buildings in the garment center, introduce ourselves to the receptionist, go into the bathroom and set up wares. There you have it: we were selling our jewelry. Women used to come in and give us hundreds of dollars in deposits, and we would come back and deliver pieces to them. The two of us looked at each other and said, “I think this is fun. This is good. Better than doing it out of our home,” because we both had small children. That’s how it all started. Again, gold was $35 an ounce. Can you imagine that was 48 years ago?
My next introduction was to a silver designer by the name of Minas. He was from Greece, and he had a beautiful collection of 18-carat pieces. In fact, I’m wearing two of his pieces. I fell in love with his collection. I had never sold to a retailer before. I didn’t know how to go about it. I walked into Bloomingdale’s one day with my little jewelry roll, and I said, “Knock, knock; I’m Linda and I’d like to introduce myself.” The buyer—her name was Susan; I can’t remember her last name—said, “Do you have an appointment?” I said, “Oh, did I need one?” Before I knew it, I was showing her the collection. She fell in love with it also, and she bought a nice selection of it. Now, mind you, a ring like this was $22. Again, it was 18-karat gold and silver. Everything was very affordable, so they sold out immediately. I kept the money from the order, and then I started to work full time for Minas, and I kept the relationship with Bloomingdale’s going.
Along the way, gold went from $35 an ounce to $800 an ounce. It was at the same time that Minas decided he was going to turn his business into all 18-karat gold. He felt that staying in the United States, it would be difficult for him to continue to sell his collection in all gold, so he decided to go back to his homeland in Greece and continue with his collection. By chance, I was at the Sheraton Center when the JA had their shows there, and I got a part-time position with Marsha Breslow, who was a wonderful colorist. She used to do lapis and 18-karat bead jewelry for Cartier and had her special collection for them. She used to take semi-precious beads and make the most extraordinary necklaces and earrings.
It caught the attention of Vera Wang, who was then an assistant at Vogue Magazine. Vera kept coming up to the office and working with us on different collections. Vera was working on a collection for Calvin Klein for one of his original runway shows. She asked Marsha to create a collection that would go on his runway. Excitingly enough, it also made the cover two seasons in a row of Fashion Times Magazine. For a jewelry designer to be on the cover of Fashions Times was unheard of.
Along the way, I called Women’s Wear Daily, who never featured fine jewelry. I believe it was Agnes Carmack, who was then an assistant, who answered, and I said, “I’ve got a gorgeous collection of earrings,” and she said, “O.K., bring it over.” We went up on the rooftop. I had a friend who was a model. This wonderful photographer they had, Tony Palmieri, photographed about six different earrings on her, and they landed on the front page of Women’s Wear Daily. It was the first ever.
I started to think to myself, “If Seventh Avenue can promote by name, why shouldn’t the jewelry industry?” I went back to Bloomingdale’s and told them about the Marsha Breslow collection. After being in Vogue Magazine and with Vera Wang putting it on Calvin Klein, people began to really take notice of the designers and names. We were in Bloomingdale’s, which was a Federated Store. The parent company was associated with Associated Merchandising Corporation. I became friendly with the CEO of AMC, Lee Abraham, and he called me one day and said, “Linda, I want something different for Bloomingdale’s that no other store has.” I said, “O.K., give me a few days to think about it.” I called him back and said, “Lee, I want to have the first design boutique ever in a department store, and I want it to be in Bloomingdale’s, in the 59th Street store.” He said, “You got it. The buyer Marty Newman, whom everybody loves so dearly, and the DM will be visiting you in the next week.”
Sharon: The DM is what? I’m sorry.
Linda: The department manager. “It’s our secret, but they are going to listen to your story about a designer boutique and it’s going to happen.” Sure enough, a week later, I get a phone call from Marty Newman, who went on to be one of my dearest friends. He said, “I’m not sure what I have here, but I want you to create a collection. We can give you six feet of showcase space.” If you walk into Bloomingdale’s and see the Louis Vuitton store to the right, there’s always that big flower. Exactly where that beautiful flower is was the showcase that he wanted us to work with.
So, we put in a collection. We were responsible for designing the showcase and hiring our own salespeople. They gave us a sales goal. We quadrupled that. Lee and the buyer were so impressed, he said to me, “Now you can go to the rest of the Federated stores,” which included Woodward & Lothrop. I created the first designer boutique. What can I say? The rest is history. Marsha Breslow went into these stores and the word “jewelry designer” came along with it.
It was a slow process because jewelry designers were still not recognized. It was a real uphill battle. In 1981, I was invited by the Manufacturing Jewelry and Silversmiths of America, MJSA, and I eventually met the man who became my former husband, Henry Dunay. I was invited to do direct mail advertising and public relations for the first group of American jewelry designers that were invited to the Baselworld Fair. Basel didn’t want any Americans to come to it. They fought and said, “Americans, what do they know about jewelry design? They design in 14-karat gold. They have no sense of design.” So, they stuck us in a little corner behind the cafeteria where nobody could see them. We did a mailing to hundreds and hundreds of retailers across the world. Little by little, when you have a designer like Henry Dunay or Jose Hess, names who were emerging designers, and they’re not being sold by weight, which is what they did early on. You sold your jewelry by weight. People started to recognize it. They became a real force in Basel. They were invited back every year, and every year the collections grew more and more incredible.
The American jewelry designers outdid all the other countries as far as designing metals and working in 18-karat and precious and semiprecious stones. I went to the Basel Fair for 21 years and became very friendly with the then-head of the fair. Eventually, the Basel Fair hired me to promote the fair to American retailers to try and get more American retailers to come to Basel. That was when there were so many competitions in New York. There was the emergence of JCK, the JA show, which launched the Couture Show, the JCK Show, which launched Luxury. They converged on Las Vegas and took over the ability for retailers to come to one place and see extraordinary designs. Then, of course, you had the European retailers wanting to come, too. It gave Basel a real run for its money. I had done public relations for the JA Show for many years, and I helped create a lot of exciting highlights for the Couture Show. I had a very close relationship with Robb Report magazine.
Sharon: Which magazine?
Linda: Robb Report magazine.
Sharon: Robb Report, O.K., yes.
Linda: Robb Report is very high-end luxury jewelry. I created a Robb Report event at the Couture Show after the major entertainment, which was always sponsored by Vogue Magazine. It had over-the-top musicians performing, and it was a luxury fair the couture jewelers could go to with over-the-top desserts and interesting things. That grew to be very big and kept the tour very special until Couture and JA decided to make its move to Vegas.
When that program was over, I became the public relations and marketing person for the JCK Show. I was also watching the Luxury Show within the JCK Show. We came up with a lot of programs and conferences that would create wider visibility for the show. In fact, because of my 21 years in Basel and my relationships not just with jewelry designers, but with the watch companies, I was able to create the first watch luxury show. I introduced the concept to my colleagues at JCK and I brought my dear friend, Steven Kaiser, on board to oversee the show. The Luxury by JCK Watch Show is still in existence today and is the first and only luxury watch show in the U.S. So, that was very exciting.
The rest, as they say, is history. I watched the industry go from $35 an ounce and deciding how much I should pay for this based on a scale, to a showcase with the most beautiful designs ever created in the world. I have to give a lot of credit to my former husband, Henry Dunay, because in my opinion he was—and still is—one of the greatest jewelry designers in the industry. He set the tone for finishes on jewelry with his love for pearls, his love for precious and semiprecious stones, his ability to search out stones and create a design around it.
For instance, my dear friend who worked at the Diamond Information Center, called me one day and said, “I have a 4.25 canary yellow diamond that was found in a mine in Arkansas by a local jeweler. If Henry could create a ring for Hillary Clinton to wear at the inauguration, she will wear it.” Henry was leaving for Europe the next day, and I said, “You’re not going. To design a ring for Hillary Clinton and have her wear it at the inauguration, that comes first. Please put off the jewelry trip for another few days.” Sure enough, he created the most beautiful cinnabar ring. It was from the argosy of Arkansas. You saw pieces of platinum and different textures in the 18-karat gold that depicted the topography of Arkansas, with the 4.25 diamond set inside. It was a cushion shape. It was never cut. It came out of the ground just the way you see it in the ring. It was extraordinary.
Sadly, the jeweler wanted the diamond back rather than having the whole ring donated to the Smithsonian as it should have been, so Henry had to take the ring apart. He said, “One day, I’ll have a stone made that looks exactly like it and I’ll reset it.” I don’t think that ever happened, but people got to see it. It went on view in the Museum of Natural History. It became part of one of the exhibits at the Museum of Natural History. It was an extraordinary ring. I do have pictures of it to share with everybody.
Sharon: We’ll have those on the website.
Linda: It’s an exciting journey. Back in the early 80s, I made lots of good women friends in the industry. I think it was in 1982. There was a blustery, snowy night, and we were all at the JA show. It was at the Hilton in the Sheraton Center. We were invited by two representatives from New England to a meeting to tell us about the women’s group they put together, New England Women in Jewelry. We thought it had a lot of merit, and my friends and colleagues and I kept going back and forth and back and forth. Do we need this organization? What do you think?
We finally decided we would call our friend, Ronny Lavin, and 10 women we were close with to talk about it. There was Nancy Pier Sindt, who was an editor with National Jeweler; a designer, Joan Benjamin; Jo Ann Paganetti, who was a professor at FIT; Marian Ruby, who was the jewelry buyer at Finley at the time. I hope I’m not leaving anybody’s name out. We said, “O.K., I think we should do this. Let’s become mentors. Let’s create a scholarship program. Let’s create a platform for women to share their ideas and grow their businesses.” We voted on the name Women’s Jewelry Association.
Nothing could have prepared us for what was coming next. I sent you our original newsletter. We came on like such a force that we expanded our bylaws to include the rest of the country. The New England group became our first general chapter, and the rest is history. Most importantly, of course, there was somebody we all loved and respected, Gerry Friedman, who was the editor in chief of National Jeweler Magazine, and we were going to ask Gerry to be our first president. She was like, “Of course.”
We had several meetings where we put together a group of programs of other women to talk about what’s going on in the industry, what suppliers and vendors to use, the world of design and all different topics. Gerry always had a group to her home for dinner, and one day we were talking about what’s going to make us stand out. There are lots of men’s groups or enough men’s groups, and they had dinners. All of a sudden, it came to me: We had to create the first awards in the jewelry industry for women, by women. We all agreed we would do this. Through Gerry’s connections at the Lotos Club, we created the first Awards for Excellence dinner. It was at the Lotos Club, and it was a total sellout. We had to move it to the Harmonie Club, which was a little bit larger in space, again through Gerry’s connections. Again, it was a sellout. We honored Helene Fortunoff and Bess Ravella. We honored Angela Cummings for best designer, Marian Ruby for best retailer. We had Nancy Pier Sindt for best editor. The list goes on and on. It became such a sense of pride for all of us, to recognize each other for our accomplishments in the industry.
The award dinner kept growing and growing. We moved to Tavern on the Green, and again, it was a total sellout. We kept growing. For the last two years, it’s been at Chelsea Piers. There are over 700 women and men that attend. The awards have literally become the ticket in the industry. It’s a current event. It’s a great place to network. It’s a great place to catch up with your friends and your vendors in the industry, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful evening.
I am proud to say that from those original 10 women in Ronny Lavin’s apartment, there are now 20 chapters all over the world with, I believe, a membership of 17,000 women and men worldwide. The Women’s Jewelry Association is a force to be reckoned with, and now they have programs in all different regions. They have ongoing programs. When I look back on my career, the Women’s Jewelry Association stands out as one of my greatest highlights. Along the way I’ve gotten beautiful emails from members who said I actually changed the course of their lives by creating the Women’s Jewelry Association. I take those comments very seriously and to heart, because I was always trying to do something different and trying to make room for people to grow. If somebody got laid off from a job, I was the first person they would come to. I would always help them find a position or help them with what they’re going through and perhaps help them look at a different career within the industry.
When I started in the industry, there were barely any women. One of the women that stands out to me is Helene Fortunoff, because she was one of the very first women to ever have retail experience. She took all of her children to work with her every day. Five of her children worked with her every single day. Now not only are her children in the business, but Esther and Ruth have carried on their mother’s incredible journey in the jewelry business. It’s remarkable to see how, from the beginning to where we are now, the jewelry business has become one of the major industries in the world. Diamonds and precious and semi-precious stones, pearls, pearls, pearls—because I love pearls—are now the mainstay of what people look for when they’re going shopping for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, or just when a woman wants to buy her own jewelry.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| Episode 175 Part 2: The Link Between Jewelry and Architecture with Eva Eisler Head of Jewelry Department of the Academy of Arts in Prague | 07 Dec 2022 | 00:22:09 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Eva Eisler A star of the Prague art world, Eva Eisler is an internationally recognized sculptor, furniture/product designer, and jeweler. Rooted in constructivist theory, her structurally-based objects project a unique spirituality by nature of their investment with “sacred geometry.” The current series of necklaces and brooches, fabricated from stainless steel, are exemplars of this aesthetic. In 2003, she developed a line of sleek, stainless steel tabletop objects for mono cimetric design in Germany. Eisler is also a respected curator and educator. She is chairman of the Metal and Jewelry Department at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where she heads the award-winning K.O.V. (concept-object-meaning) studio. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum and Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, among others. Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript: Eva Eisler is the rare designer who works on projects as small as a ring and as large as a building. What connects her impressive portfolio of work? An interest in sacred geometry and a desire to discover new ideas that can be applied in multiple ways. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she communicates a message through jewelry; why jewelry students should avoid learning traditional techniques too early; and her thoughts on good design. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. My guest today is Eva Eisler, Head of the Jewelry Department of the Academy of Arts in Prague. She’s probably one of the most well-known artists in the Czech Republic. Welcome back.
How long were you in New York? A long time?
Eva: 25 years.
Sharon: Wow! I didn’t realize that. And did you teach the whole time?
Eva: I taught for a few years at Parsons School of Design, and then New York University pulled me in. It was Judith Schwartz, who was the Director of the Department of Art Education, who wanted to expose the students to metalworking. So, she asked me to come and teach there.
Sharon: Did you do jewelry and other things because you wanted to have not so much grayness in the world, to have color, to have joy?
Eva: Are you asking?
Sharon: Yeah, I’m asking. Did you break out, in a sense, because of the world around you?
Eva: I think that one challenge after the other gave me strength and conviction. This is something I can work with, the medium of jewelry, because it’s so communicative. I had so many incredible encounters through wearing a piece of jewelry. For example, I went to a party at Princeton University. I’m talking to this professor of physics. He’s telling me how they are developing an artificial sun, and he’s looking at my piece. When he finished talking about his project, he said, “Is this what I think it is?” I said, “Clearly, yes.” It was a piece of metal bent into an S, one line and one dot. It’s basically telling you that it depends on a point of view and how you perceive things. I used to like to come up with a concept that I would play with in different theories.
Sharon: Did you expect to be in the States for 25 years? That’s a long time.
Eva: No. We were allowed by Czechoslovakia to go for one year. After one year, we politely applied for an extension. It was denied to us. So, we were actually abroad illegally and we could not return because we did not obey the rules.
Sharon: When you came back, did you teach? We saw some of your students’ work. What do you tell them about your work? What do you teach them?
Eva: It’s a different system. In New York, you teach one class at a time if you’re not a full-time professor at the university. In New York, it’s very rare. The intensity and the high quality of professionals in all different fields allows schools to pull them in, so they can take a little bit of their time and share with students what they do. It’s not that you devote your full time to teaching.
In the Czech Republic, it’s different. At the academy where I have taught for 16 years, you’re the professor, and you have a student for six years with a special degree in the master’s program. For six years, you’re developing the minds of these young people. I don’t teach them techniques. We have a workshop and there is a workshop master. I talk to them about their ideas. We consult twice a week for six years. It’s a long time. I would be happy if somebody talked about my work for half an hour once a year. I would have to ask somebody because I need it as well. It’s a different system, the European system of schools.
Sharon: You’re head of the K.O.V. Studio. How would you translate that?
Eva: The academy is divided into departments, and each department is a different media: Department of Architecture, Department of Industrial Design and so on. We are part of the Department of Applied Arts, which is divided between ceramics, glass, textile, fashion. My studio is about metal, and for metal in Czech, you write “kov.” When I took over the studio, I put dots in between the letters, which stands for “concept, object, meaning.” In Czech, meaning isn’t even a word. That way, I could escape the strict specialization for metal, because when you’re 20 and you go study somewhere, do you know you want to work for the rest of your life in metal? No. Today, we are also exploring different materials, discovering new materials. I am giving them assignments and tasks. Each of them has to choose the right material, so the person comes up with using concrete or cork or wood or paper or different things, glass or metal.
Sharon: How do you balance everything? You have so much going on. How do you balance it?
Eva: I have to do three jobs because teaching does not make a living, even though I’m a full-time professor. It’s an underpaid profession, maybe everywhere.
Sharon: I was going to say that, everywhere.
Eva: Then I do my own art, and I do large projects like designing exhibitions, curating exhibitions, designing a design shop. Things like that to make money to support those other two. It’s a lot, yes. I have grandchildren.
Sharon: A family. Yes, it’s a lot. You’ve done jewelry shows and you’ve evaluated shows. What’s important to you? What stands out? What jumps out at you?
Eva: I sit on juries. In 2015, I was invited to be a curator of Schmuck, the jewelry exhibition in Munich. It’s a big challenge, selecting out of 600 applicants for a show that at the end has only 60 people from all over the world. When I looked at the work, we flipped through pictures one after the other. It’s so incredible what jewelry has evolved into, this completely open, free thing, many different styles, many different trends and materials. There’s organic and geometric and plastic. I noticed these different groups and that I could divide all these people into different groups, different styles, different materials. Then I was selecting the best representation of these groups. It made it quite clear and fast when I came up with this approach.
Sharon: Does something jump out at you, though, when you’re looking through all these—let’s say you’ve divided all the glass, all the metal—
Eva: Very rarely, because we go to Munich every year. I go and see exhibitions all over, so it’s very random. You can see something completely different and new. I worked on a very interesting exhibition that year at the Prague Castle. Cartier does not have a building for their collection, a museum. They have the collection traveling around in palaces and castles and exhibition galleries around the world, and each place has a different curator. I was invited to curate it in Prague. It was the largest Cartier exhibition ever displayed. It was around 60 pieces for this show, and it was in Bridging Hall of the Prague Castle, an enormous space.
That was very interesting because at the moment I accepted this challenging job, I had never walked into a Cartier anywhere in the world, in New York, Paris, London, because I was never curious. It was real jewelry, but when I started working with the collection, which is based in Geneva, and I was going to Paris to these workshops and archives, I discovered the completely different world of making jewelry, how they, in the middle of the 19th century, approached this medium and based it on perfection and mechanisms and the material. So, the best of the best craftsmen were put together in one place. It was very challenging.
Another exhibit I worked on was for a craft museum. It was called The Radiant Geometries. Russell Newman was the curator, and I was doing the display faces. My work was part of the show as well. That was a super experience.
An interesting show I had was at Columbia University at the School of Architecture. The dean was Bernard Tschumi, the deconstructivist architect. He invited me to do an exhibition of jewelry and drawings for their students of architecture. Can you imagine? The students looked at the work, and they thought they were small architecture models. I developed a new system for how to hold them together. For that exhibition, I built cabinets that I later developed into a system with vitrines. After the exhibition with vitrines, I started making chairs and tables and benches, and later on I used it again for an exhibition when I was in Brussels. One thing leads me to another. One thing inspires the other. I go from flats, from drawings and paintings, into three-dimensional objects. I need a lance, so I design it and then some company makes it.
Sharon: Wow! What do you think has kept your attention? We’ll have pictures of the jewelry on the website so people can see it. I love the necklace you have on. It’s avant garde. Everything in the exhibit and everything your students did was avant garde. So, what holds your attention about it? How would you describe it?
Eva: I think making something like many people did before you doesn’t make any sense. We are surrounded by so much stuff. It only makes it worth spending your talent and time when it’s something new. You’re discovering something new that somebody else can learn from and apply somewhere else. For example, this necklace is just held by the tension of the spring wire. Next time, maybe I can use it for some lighting. Who knows?
Sharon: I’d like to see that if you do it. What makes a good exhibit? You’ve been in charge of so many exhibits. What makes a good jewelry exhibit?
Eva: It should be based on a common theme or concept, and all the objects should together tell a story. Also, the exhibition design or architectural design of the show is very important. A lot of exhibition architects are creating something so powerful that you can’t see the work that is showing. My rule is that the installation basically should disappear. The work is the most important thing, right?
Sharon: Yes, that’s true. You mentioned a story, like each area or part should tell a story. Would you agree with that?
Eva: If it’s large exhibition of jewelry in different styles, let’s say, it should be grouped into similar topics so it empowers them. If you have one piece of this kind, another piece of a different kind next to each other, then—I don’t know; it can be anything. It depends on the curator or the architect. Look at the Danner Rotunda in Munich. Their collection is strung together. Maybe the curator or the artist who did the installation wanted to create a dialogue of completely different characters, like when you have guests for dinner and you’re thinking who sits next to whom. You want to create an exciting dialogue.
Sharon: When you came to New York, do you think you stood out? In Czechoslovakia did you stand out? Could you hold your own within these different parties?
Eva: I’m not the one who can judge it, but yes. I heard from different people what caught their attention, and why, for example, Judy Schwartz said, “I was waiting patiently all these years,” whenever she finds the time to teach at NYU. I was always amazed by her education. Toni Greenbaum wrote a beautiful piece when we first met. She was intrigued by what I wore and how I looked, but mostly by a piece of jewelry I wore. I sewed the dress a day before because I thought, “What am I going to wear?” I designed it myself. If somebody asks me what I collect—mostly everybody collects something—I usually say I collect people. People together create society, create culture. One cannot stand alone. Through the work I do, it brings me to people. I try, and the results bring me to better people. That’s what I value most.
Sharon: That’s interesting. That was going to be my next question, but you answered it. Everybody does collect something, and people have different definitions of collections. Collecting people is a collection, yes, and you collect people all over the world. Thank you so much for being with us today, Eva. I really appreciate it.
Eva: Thank you so much for inviting me and talking to me. I’m saying hello to everyone who is listening.
Sharon: Well will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 175 Part 1: The Link Between Jewelry and Architecture with Eva Eisler Head of Jewelry Department of the Academy of Arts in Prague | 06 Dec 2022 | 00:20:55 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Eva Eisler A star of the Prague art world, Eva Eisler is an internationally recognized sculptor, furniture/product designer, and jeweler. Rooted in constructivist theory, her structurally-based objects project a unique spirituality by nature of their investment with “sacred geometry.” The current series of necklaces and brooches, fabricated from stainless steel, are exemplars of this aesthetic. In 2003, she developed a line of sleek, stainless steel tabletop objects for mono cimetric design in Germany. Eisler is also a respected curator and educator. She is chairman of the Metal and Jewelry Department at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where she heads the award-winning K.O.V. (concept-object-meaning) studio. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum and Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, among others. Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript: Eva Eisler is the rare designer who works on projects as small as a ring and as large as a building. What connects her impressive portfolio of work? An interest in sacred geometry and a desire to discover new ideas that can be applied in multiple ways. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she communicates a message through jewelry; why jewelry students should avoid learning traditional techniques too early; and her thoughts on good design. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
My guest today is Eva Eisler, s. She’s probably one of the most well-known artists in the Czech Republic. Her work is minimal and refined. She also designs clothing, furniture, sculpture and so many other things I can’t tell you about. She has taught and studied at Parsons School of Design, and she’ll fill us in on everything she’s learned. I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but she’ll fill us in today. Eva, welcome to the program.
Eva: Thank you for having me.
Sharon: Great to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Did you study it? Were you artistic as a youth?
Eva: I only thought about this yesterday. You’re the first person I’m going to tell this story to. During the war, my grandfather, because he was very practical and forward-thinking, was buying jewelry from people who needed money to have safety deposits for later, whatever happened after the war. When I was born in 1952, there was still a little bit left of the treasure he collected and enclosed in a beautiful wooden treasure box. When I was a good girl, I could play with real jewelry in gold and stones.
When I grew older, I never thought of jewelry as something I would design. It was something I could play with as a girl, but when I got older, living in a communist country—Czechoslovakia turned into a Soviet Bloc country after the war—everything was so gray and constrained and monotonous. People were afraid to say whatever they thought, and I was feeling that I had to start something provocative, to start some kind of dialogue about different things. So, I started making jewelry, but because I didn’t know any techniques, I did it in the form of ready-mades, looking for different metal parts out of machines, kitchen utensils, a stainless-steel shower hose, a clock spring, sunglasses, all different things. I didn’t know people like that existed somewhere else, like Anni Albers, who in the 40s created a beautiful necklace out of paperclips. I learned that much, much later.
I was not only making jewelry. I was also making lamps and small sculptures, because creating things always made me happy. My mother was an art teacher. My father was a scientist. He was one of the founders of robotics in the 50s, and he ended up teaching at the most famous universities around the world later on. That’s how I started making jewelry, but I wanted to proceed with a profession in architecture. That was always my main interest. After school, I worked for a few years as an architect. Later on, I got married and had children, and I wanted to be free from a steady job and do what I loved most, create.
Sharon: When you were an architect, were you designing buildings?
Eva: I was part of a team for experience. I was given smaller tasks that I had to do, mostly parts of the interior.
Sharon: Did you do sculpture and jewelry on the side? Your sculpture is such a big part.
Eva: Yeah, we’re talking about when I was 25, 26. In 1983, my husband and I and our two children moved to New York, because John was invited by Richard Maier to come and work for him. That was a big challenge that one should not refuse. So, we did the journey, even though it was not easy with two little children.
Sharon: Did you speak English at all, or did you have to learn when you came?
Eva: I did because my father, in the 60s, when it was possible, was on a contract with Manchester University in England teaching. Me and my brothers went there for summer vacations for two years. One year, I was sent to one of his colleagues to spend the summer, and then I married John, who is half-British. His British mother didn’t speak Czech, so I had to learn somehow. But it was in Europe when I got really active, because I needed to express my ideas.
Sharon: Does your jewelry reflect Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic? It’s different than jewelry here, I think.
Eva: There were quite a few people who were working in the field of contemporary avant garde jewelry. I can name a few: Anton Setka, Wasoof Siegler. Those were brilliant artists whose work is part of major museums around the world, but I was not focused on this type of work when I still lived in the Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia at that time. It was when I arrived in New York. I thought, “What am I going to do? I have two little children. Should I go and look for a job in some architecture office?” It would be almost impossible if you don’t have the means to hire babysitters and all the services. So, I thought, “I have experience with jewelry. I love it, and I always made it as a means of self-expression and a tool for communication. O.K., I am going to try to make jewelry, but from scratch, not as a ready-made piece out of components that I would find somewhere.”
I didn’t know any techniques. Somebody gave me old tools after her late husband died. I started trying something, and I thought, “Maybe I can take a class.” I opened the Yellow Pages looking at schools, and I closed my eyes and pointed my finger at one of the schools and called there. This woman answered the phone, and she said, “Why don’t you come and see me and show me what you did?” When I showed it to her, she said, “Are you kidding? You should be teaching here.” It was one of my ready-made pieces. Actually, a few years before I came to New York, I went to London and showed it to Barbara Cartlidge, who had the first gallery for contemporary jewelry anywhere in the world in London. She loved it. She loved my work, and she bought five pieces. She took my work seriously, because basically I was playing and wearing it myself and giving it to a few friends who would get it as a present. So, I was shocked and very pleased.
This is what I showed this woman at the Parsons School of Design. This woman was the chair that took care of the department. I said, “I cannot teach here. I don’t know anything,” and she said, “Well, clearly you do, but you’re right. You should take a class and get to know how the school works, and maybe we can talk about you teaching here a year later.” I took a foundation course in jewelry making. It was Deborah Quado(?) who taught it. One day she said to my classmates, “This woman is dangerous.” I forgot to say that before I started this class, the chair invited me to a party at her house to introduce me to her colleagues. It was funny, because I was fresh out of the Czech Republic, this isolated, closed country, and I was in New York going to a party. I needed those people that became my friends for life.
That was a super important beginning of my journey in New York into the world of jewelry. A few years later, when I made my first collection, someone suggested I show it to Helen Drutt. I had no idea who Helen Drutt was. She was somewhere in Philadelphia. I went there by train, and Helen is looking at the work and says, “Would you mind if I represent your work in the gallery?” I said, “Well, sure, that’s great,” but I had no idea that this was the beginning of something, like a water drain that pulls me in. The jewelry world pulled me in, and I was hooked.
From then on, I continued working and evolving my work. When I started teaching at Parsons, students would ask me whether they could learn how to solder and I said, “I advise you not to learn any traditional techniques because when you do, you will start making the same work as everybody else. You should give it your own way of putting things together.” At the end, I did teach them how to solder, and I was right.
I tried to continue with the same techniques I started when I was making these ready-made pieces, but with elements I created myself. Then I tried to put it together held by tension and different springs and flexible circles. I got inspired by bridges, by scaffolding on buildings, by electric power towers. I was transforming it into jewelry, and it got immediate attention from the press and from different galleries and collectors. I was onto something that kept me in the field, but eventually, when my kids grew older, this medium was too small for me. I wanted to get larger. Eventually, I did get back into designing interiors, but it was not under my own name.
Sharon: When you look at your résumé, it’s hard to distill it down. You did everything, sculpture, architecture, interior design and jewelry. It’s very hard to distill down. Interior design, does it reflect the avant garde aspect?
Eva: Yes, I am trying to do it my way. I love to use plywood and exposed edges to make it look very rough, but precise in terms of the forms. If you think of Donald Judd, for example, and his sculptures and nice furniture, it’s a similar direction, but I’m trying to go further than that. I’m putting together pieces of furniture and vitrines for exhibitions and exhibition designs. While I am taking advantage of the—
Sharon: Opportunity?
Eva: Opportunity, yes. Sorry. I don’t have that many opportunities lately to speak English, so my English is—
Sharon: It’s very good.
Eva: On the other hand, yes, I’m interested in doing all these things, especially things that I never did before. I always learn something, but it’s confusing to the outside world. “So, what is she? What is she trying to say?” For example, this famous architectural historian and critic, Kenneth Frampton from Columbia University, once said, “If one day somebody will look at your architectural works all together, they will understand that it’s tight with a link, an underlying link.”
Sharon: Do you think you have an underlying link? Is it the avant garde aspect? What’s your underlying link?
Eva: It’s the systems. It’s the materials. It’s the way it’s constructed. I’m a humble worshipper of sacred geometry. I like numbers that have played an important role in the past.
Sharon: Do you think the jewelry you saw when you came to the States was different than what you had seen before? Was it run-of-the-mill?
Eva: When I came to New York a few years later, I formed a group because I needed to have a connection. I organized a traveling show for this group throughout Europe and the group was—
Sharon: In case people don’t know the names, they are very well-known avant garde people.
Eva: All these people were from New York, and we exhibited together at Forum Gallery and Robert Lee Morris on West Broadway. That brought us together a few times in one show, and through the tours I organized in New York, Ghent, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna and Prague.
Sharon: Wow! We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. | |||
| Episode 174 Part 2: What’s Next in Artist-Jeweler William Harper’s 50+ Year Career | 30 Nov 2022 | 00:26:13 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About William Harper Born in Ohio and currently working in New York City, William Harper is considered one of the most significant jewelers of the 20th century. After studying advanced enameling techniques at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Harper began his career as an abstract painter but transitioned to enameling and studio craft jewelry in the 1960s. He is known for creating esoteric works rooted in mythology and art history, often using unexpected objects such as bone, nails, and plastic beads in addition to traditional enamel, pearls, and precious metals and stones. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum Craft+ Design, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Philadelphia, the Hermitage Museum, totaling over 35 museums worldwide. A retrospective of his work, William Harper: The Beautiful & the Grotesque, was exhibited at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2019. Additional Resources: William's Instagram Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Rather than stifle his creativity, the constraints of quarantine lockdown and physical health issues helped artist-jeweler William Harper create a series of intricate jewels and paintings imbued with meaning. After 50+ years as an enamellist, educator and artist in a variety of media, he continues to find new ways to capture and share his ideas. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about his creative process; why he didn’t want his art students to copy his style; and why he never throws a piece in progress away, even if he doesn’t like it. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. I’d like to welcome back one of today’s foremost jewelers, William Harper. To say he is a jeweler leaves out many parts of him. He’s a sculptor, an educator, an artist, an enamellist, and I’m sure I’m leaving out a lot more. Welcome back.
Yes. Is that how you got to the collection you did during lockdown quarantine?
William: Yes. I live in New York, and New York had almost a complete shutdown. My husband and I were afraid we were going to come down with a disease if we intermingled with too many people. We essentially were in lockdown or quarantine for several months. In that period, I decided I wanted to do something absolutely different from anything I had done before, and I wanted it to be politically motivated. So, just as Goya or Manet or Picasso did important paintings based on criticizing a political body—in Guernica, for instance, Picasso was painting the disruption of the small town of Guernica in Spain. Very powerful. I wanted to see if I could do that in jewelry, which was really strange, I have to say.
I had been playing for at least a year with the idea of trying to do a piece inspired by the expression “the tainted fruit of the poisoned tree.” That’s an obtuse way of approaching a piece of jewelry, but I thought of it in terms of the bottom of the tree, the poisoned tree, was our ex-president. At the top, there were elements that represented his monstrous children. You see my politics right there. It’s a beautiful piece. If you know the substance behind it, it will mean more to you, but you don’t have to. I wanted each piece to be beautiful. Now, my idea of beauty can be unlike a lot of people’s, but I think an artist has to know his guidelines for what he wants to be beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with the term “ugly” if it has an aesthetic purpose. I did this entire series on that idea.
Sharon: Does quarantine mean something besides—
William: No.
Sharon: Do people ever choose your pieces because of the political message?
William: In this last group, the Quarantine Pieces, there were 10. The first two I sold were to a collector who appreciated very much the political leanings behind it. You don’t have to know. If I had someone come in that I knew was a staunch Republican, I wouldn’t tell them what the motivation was. Well, maybe I would, and then I’d tell them they weren’t special enough to own one of my pieces.
Sharon: I was asking about quarantine, and you said you didn’t mean more. Let me ask you this. You taught for more than 20 or 25 years at Florida, right?
William: I taught for 21 years at Florida. Before that, I taught for three years at Kent State. Before that, I taught for three years in a Cleveland high school.
Sharon: So, it’s 30.
William: Yes. I came to the conclusion not too long after I started teaching in college that a lot of people were there and didn’t really know what they were doing. They were able to get tenure simply by hanging on long enough. But in teaching at a high school, it forced me to be very exact about what I wanted them to do, and yet allow them to have a lot of leeway to do anything original and outside the box. I consider those three years in high school to have been very important to me as a college instructor. I guess it worked, because at the end of my 21 years at Florida State, I was named a distinguished professor. So, I guess my teaching methods paid off.
Sharon: Do you think you can impart your ideas? It sounds like you imparted them to high school students, but can you teach your ideas?
William: No, I don’t want to teach my ideas. I want to teach a subject matter or a format in terms of a specific media. Maybe it’s a drawing problem. I remember early on in my first year of teaching, I came across a group of toadstools in the yard that were starting to shrivel. I picked up enough to give each table triple toadstools. I simply put them on a piece of white paper on the table, and I said, “This is your inspiration. Now, what do you do with it? And it has to be in pencil.” That was how I handled that situation. If a student’s work starts to look like mine, they were not a successful student and I was not a successful instructor.
I have always urged students to find their own voice. A lot of people can’t do that. They have mastered a technique, but if the technique leaves you cold when it’s finished, then it’s not very successful. I want some kind of emotional connection with whatever they feel when they’re creating or painting or making a piece of jewelry. I want to see that they have made a connection to what they are deep, deep down and have it come out in their work.
When I taught at Florida State, I was a very popular teacher. Students who were in engineering or communications or theatre would take my course and then decide they wanted it to be their major. I would tell them their father was paying far too much money for them to go to college to major in something that was going to be totally useless to them when they were out of college. I considered that a very important part of my teaching, because I didn’t want people getting bogged down. I didn’t need high numbers of students. As long as I knew they were taking it as an elective, I was fine with it. If said they wanted to major in it, I had to make sure I foresaw that they would have it in them to do well.
Sharon: When did you decide you could part ways and make a living from this?
William: That was a rather difficult thing to determine. It was a goal, but I didn’t know if I would ever get to it. In 1995, I had been represented for a few years by an outstanding New York gallery, Peter Joseph Gallery. He handled high-end, handmade furniture. It wasn’t anything you would find in a furniture store; it was artist furniture, and he decided he wanted to add me to his group. I was the lone jeweler within the group of artists in his gallery, and it was a gallery that only represented a small number of people. I think when I was in it, there were only 11 or 12 artists he represented. He was able to sell my work very well.
I always wanted to be able to just throw in the towel and see if I could do it on my own. In the spring of 1995, when I found out I was being named distinguished research professor, there were two other gentlemen in meteorology who were also named. I was always upset at how low my salary was in comparison to a lot of other people. In Florida, every library had to have a book of what every professor made and what they taught in terms of their load. The gentlemen in meteorology were making three times what I was making.
I spoke with my then-wife and said, “It’s time to take a chance and see if I could do it by myself.” I prepared myself the next day with a folder that had a resignation letter in it. I went to the vice president who was in charge of everything and said, “There’s a disparity of treatment with the three of us.” They were all making three times as much money as I was, and I at least wanted to be brought up closer to what I should have been paid considering what my title suggested. When I told the vice president that, he said, “Bill, you know you have the weakest team in the college. I can’t depend on your department to bring any enhancement of reputation,” and I said, “Well, in that case, I resign.” He looked at me quizzically, and I pulled out my letter and said, “Here it is,” and I signed it and gave it to him.
It was the only way I could do it. Then I was forced to go home and get a studio and do things I knew could sell enough to keep us at the same level we had been at when I had a university job. I should say the one cog in the wheel I was able to overcome—and people don’t necessarily know this about me, but in 1990, both of my retinas detached. I had to have emergency surgery. After several surgeries, my right eye was fairly stabilized. I don’t have much peripheral vision, but it was stabilized. My left eye, I’m totally blind. I’m halfway towards Beethoven, who wrote his last symphony without being able to hear the music. My one eye serves me well enough, obviously, to continue making rather intricate work.
Sharon: How come your jewelry is so different? It’s certainly not mainstream. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not mainstream. What would you say makes it so different?
William: I’m just special. It’s the format I’ve already described. I don’t want to make jewelry that’s like anybody else’s. I definitely don’t want to fall into categorization.
Sharon: Have you thought about doing production, more than one?
William: I tried it once and it was a total failure. My daughter had a boyfriend who knew someone who was the vice president of one of those TV networks where you could call and buy things. Carl said, “Bill, come up with a group of pieces, and I’ll see that so-and-so is able to see them so you can become part of the team.” I worked and worked and worked, and they weren’t me, and I didn’t think they were vanilla enough for the home shopping network to carry. So, that was the end of that. I knew it wasn’t within my set of talents to do that. You asked how it is—
Sharon: I can’t remember what I asked. Do you see people on the street, let’s say two women, or a man and a woman who wears a brooch and says, “Oh, that’s a William Harper. You must know him,” or “I know who that is”?
William: My funniest story about that is when my ex-wife and I were in Venice. It was a foggy morning, and we sat down in a café to have some cappuccino or hot chocolate or something like that. I had to turn my head because I don’t have any sight in the left eye, but from my left I saw a couple coming. They were chattering away, and then I could tell the gentleman was trying to describe to the woman the piece of very large, spectacular jewelry my wife was wearing. They passed close enough so I would hear it. They thought they were insulting me. The gentleman said, “You see that piece of jewelry? There’s a man in the United States named William Harper, much, much better than that.” I didn’t correct him. I thought it was a story I could hold onto the rest of my life. Actually, it was a compliment.
Sharon: It is. Why do you say your work is fearless? I would say it is fearless, but why would you say that?
William: The word I was trying to think of before was branding. I’m not a brand.
Sharon: Right, you’re not a brand.
William: But anyone who sees one of my works, if they’re remotely familiar with the field, they will know it’s mine. Many ladies tell me that they were wearing a piece of my jewelry and a stranger would come up to them and say, “Excuse me. That’s a beautiful piece of jewelry. Is it a William Harper?” Or maybe they didn’t even know who it was, and the wearer would say, “Yes, it’s Harper. Isn’t it beautiful?” That’s happened a number of times. I love when a lady reports that back to me.
Sharon: Is it fearless?
William: It’s not your everyday piece of jewelry that a lady’s going to wear. It is more potent than that. I also hope—although I can’t force it, obviously—when someone owns a piece of mine that they dress accordingly, where the outfit they have is secondary to the piece of jewelry. I have seen my jewelry on the lapels of a Chanel jacket, and that combination doesn’t help either one of us.
Sharon: I can see why that doesn’t work. When you’re deciding how to do something, are you thinking about how you can be different or fearless, or how the piece can be different?
William: I don’t worry about that. I have enough confidence in my creative ability to know that it will come out strange enough. Even within the art jewelry movement, my work is fairly in the category of not being a decorative pin, let’s say, that has no life to it, that’s put on somebody’s sweater. That kind of work becomes an adornment to the costume the lady is wearing. I want my work, as I said, to be strong enough that the lady is going to have to sublimate what she would like to wear and get clothes that are very plain.
For instance, the red blouse you have on would be a perfect foil for one of my pieces in navy blue or black. In a way, she is becoming like the wall that holds a beautiful painting. It’s the same way. Her body is the presentational element for my piece of jewelry to really perform.
Sharon: What have you been doing in terms of your jewelry since the restrictions lifted?
William: When I finished the tenth piece in the Quarantine Series, which was March 22, 2020, I had worked until 2:00 in the morning. I was very happy with what I had done. I had just finished the piece absolutely and I went to bed. The next morning, I woke and could not move anything in my body. I thought I had had a stroke, but after several days in the hospital, I was diagnosed with a very rare affliction. It’s an auto-immune disease called Guillain-Barre syndrome It’s not fatal, but it’s a menace because you lose almost everything, like walking. I couldn’t sign my own name, for instance. I had to go through a long process of physical therapy. I’m 95% functional, but I don’t feel that I’m ready to take a chance with a torch or deal with anything where I could hurt myself or, god forbid, burn down the apartment. The entire building would shake.
So, I tried to keep away from that, but in the process, I knew I had to do something. My husband and some close friends said, “Bill, you love to paint. You love to draw. You love collages.” So, I have spent the time since then doing very intricate collage drawings that became very, very colorful. They’re all 24x30, I believe, and they’re really very beautiful. About a month ago, I was giving a lecture at Yale, and when I showed these slides and drawing collages to the head of the department, he said, “I can see they’re absolutely you. They look just like something you would have done without looking like your jewelry.” That was the highest compliment he could give me. I really have enjoyed doing it. I think making those saved my mental health because I’ve had something to do.
It’s still hard for me to go to a museum because I can’t stand long enough to walk around, and I refuse to go in a wheelchair. I don’t want to do that. So, I’ve been restricted to what I can do in terms of being ambulatory. For instance, it was just this week that I finally, with the aid of my husband—who’s also a Bill, incidentally—to start using public transportation. Until then I had used car services, which over a month’s time, when you can’t do anything else and you have to go to doctors and physical therapy and stuff like that, becomes disgustingly expensive. I knew I didn’t want to keep doing that. It was eating into my savings. So, I thought, “O.K., Bill, it’s time to start using public transportation.” I’ve used it three times without any problem, but my husband is with me. I have trouble going up and down steps sometimes, so he wants to make sure I don’t trip and fall and get mangled by all the other troops coming out of the train that just want to get wherever they’re going to.
Sharon: But you give lectures still?
William: Oh, yeah, for a long time. Colleges, art schools, universities with art departments. We’re not really in session, so there wasn’t any lecture to give—
Sharon: I keep forgetting, yes.
William: —when all those things are shut down. The lecture at Yale—and that’s a pretty good place to start—was the first time I had done that for years.
Sharon: Wow! I want to say thank you very much because I learned a lot about you today.
William: Thank you, Sharon. It’s been lovely to be here with you.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 174 Part 1: What’s Next in Artist-Jeweler William Harper’s 50+ Year Career | 28 Nov 2022 | 00:21:48 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About William Harper Born in Ohio and currently working in New York City, William Harper is considered one of the most significant jewelers of the 20th century. After studying advanced enameling techniques at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Harper began his career as an abstract painter but transitioned to enameling and studio craft jewelry in the 1960s. He is known for creating esoteric works rooted in mythology and art history, often using unexpected objects such as bone, nails, and plastic beads in addition to traditional enamel, pearls, and precious metals and stones. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum Craft+ Design, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Philadelphia, the Hermitage Museum, totaling over 35 museums worldwide. A retrospective of his work, William Harper: The Beautiful & the Grotesque, was exhibited at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2019. Additional Resources: William's Instagram Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Rather than stifle his creativity, the constraints of quarantine lockdown and physical health issues helped artist-jeweler William Harper create a series of intricate jewels and paintings imbued with meaning. After 50+ years as an enamellist, educator and artist in a variety of media, he continues to find new ways to capture and share his ideas. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about his creative process; why he didn’t want his art students to copy his style; and why he never throws a piece in progress away, even if he doesn’t like it. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. I’d like to welcome back one of today’s foremost jewelers, William Harper. To say he is a jeweler leaves out many parts of him. He’s a sculptor, an educator, an artist, an enamellist, and I’m sure I’ve leaving out a lot more. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Crafts, the Museum of Fine Arts, and most recently he had a one-person show, “The Beautiful & the Grotesque,” at the Cleveland Institute of Art. I can’t do justice to all of his work, so I’ll let him try to do some. Bill, welcome to the program. William: Thank you. It’s great to see you again. Sharon: It’s so great to see you after everything we’ve gone through. Give us an overview of how you got into jewelry and enameling, your art, everything. How did you get into it? William: One of the questions you gave me to ponder ahead of time was if I was interested in jewelry when I was a child. I was not even interested in jewelry when I was in college, except for taking one course to make the wedding rings for my now ex-wife, but that was it. A few years later, I got a phone call from Florida State University asking me if I would like to interview for a job teaching jewelry and metals and enameling. I wrote back and said, “I don’t think I’m the person you want, because I don’t know very much about jewelry.” So, I said no. Two days later, they called me again, and I told them the same thing. Then two days later, they called me again and I said, “Let me think about this. You’re on the quarter system. Are you willing to pay me for one quarter, when I’m not there and I’m cramming on how to teach jewelry?” The head of the department said, “That sounds like a great idea. As long as you can come three weeks ahead of the students, we’ll be happy.” I’m basically self-taught except for watching people at a few workshops. I think being self-taught is a very valuable tool because I was not chained to the style or techniques of any major professor, which happens so much, especially to students coming out with MFAs. For years, their work will look pretty much like what their instructor was doing. I didn’t have that. I was my own instructor, and I was able to play out, in my 55-year career, how to do what I saw vaguely in my mind. I should say at this point, I had synesthesia—I could never say it correctly—which is the ability to hear music and see colors or see a painting and hear music. I’m blessed with that. I used to think it was a chain around my neck, but I appreciate the fact that I can do something that very few people can do. Sharon: You mean you see a painting or you hear music and you think about how that translates into art or jewelry? I’ll call what you do jewelry. William: Yeah. The strangest one is I can smell an odor, whether it’s bad or something overly sweet, like old lady rose perfume or cigars, and I have an instant reaction where I see—I don’t see things; I sense things in my mind. That’s the way it works. Sharon: You’ve talked about the dichotomy in your work. Does that play into it? William: Oh, absolutely. I’ve always been in opposites. Long before I was doing jewelry, I had a very successful enamel career. I would usually make two different objects in the same physical format, but one would deal with sensations that are opposite of the other, such as light and dark, good and evil, colorful and noncolorful. That informed that work. Now, after all the years doing jewelry exclusively, I try to build diametrically opposed ideas into the forms. You mentioned the exhibition the Cleveland Institute of Art gave me a few years ago, “The Beautiful & the Grotesque.” The title of that show epitomized what I’m usually doing in my work. Sometimes it’s not always obvious to the viewer, but it serves as a jumping point for me. If I can plug the catalogue— Sharon: Please do. William: Cleveland did a beautiful catalogue. Everything that was in the show was there. If you’re interested in it, it’s $25 plus $9.95 shipping. It adds up to $34.95. To get it, you can contact me at my email address, which is ArtWilliamHarper@mac.com. Sharon: ArtWilliamHarper@mac.com. William: Yes. Sharon: We’ll have a thumbnail of that on the website so you can click on it and order it. William: Good, you’ve seen the catalogue. Can you vouch for how beautiful it is? Sharon: It’s a beautiful catalogue. It has everything, the jewelry, the boxes, all of the art. When I say boxes, I’m thinking of the ones that are really art pieces. You said you think a lot of art is about thinking. What do you think about when you’re doing your art? William: It often starts way before I actually begin making anything. That’s a hard question to answer. For instance, I’ve done several series based on other artists, all of whom were painters. I prefer painting to jewelry right now, I have to say. But in terms of these influences, I would look at the work, for instance the work of Jean Dubuffet. He has incredibly beautiful, messy patterns that run— Sharon: Who? William: Jean Dubuffet. Sharon: Oh, Dubuffet, yes. William: I have loved his work for many, many years, and I have known that he was the instigator of what is called the art brut movement, which is art that is made by people that not only are not highly educated in universities or art departments, but they might have some kind of physical disability or mental disability, where they express themselves in these absolutely gorgeous, out of this world ways, not like any professional artist would do. Dubuffet collected those and was instrumental in having a museum set up—I think it was in Switzerland; I should know that—of this work. Talking about dichotomy, I wanted to catch that quality of not knowing what I was doing along with my sophisticated technique and taste. So, I did this series. I think there are 10 pieces. In order to do it, as I got into the third or fourth piece, I decided I wanted to write an essay about what the series meant to me being put into this catalogue. So, I gave it the name Dubu. Sharon: How? William: D-U-B-U. I came up with idea that a Dubu is a fantastical creature that can infect your mind and cause you to do absolutely glorious things. It was just something I made up in my mind. I should also say that I don’t start a piece and finish it immediately. I don’t even know where I’m going when I start a piece. I simply go into the studio and start playing around with the gold. I know that sounds silly, that somebody can play around with something as precious as gold. But in doing so, there’s another dichotomy. I’m able to come up with forms that I would never be able to otherwise. At this point, I should mention I do absolutely no sketches, diagrams, or beginning things on paper to guide me. I simply allow the materials to guide me. I trust in them and my manipulation of them that they will start leading me to see what I want to be after. Sometimes these are small enamel pieces. Sometimes they’re more complex with gold pieces. Sometimes they’re a consideration of how to use a stone or a pearl. As I’m making these things, I know I can’t use them necessarily in piece number one. So, my idea is, “O.K., go to my idea for piece number two and follow the same format of making things, simply because they amuse me.” I don’t take myself seriously while I’m doing these things. I think that’s part of why they’re successful. I should say one of the qualities that my work has been lauded for is being humorous without being funny, without being a caricature. I have found that is a rather rough road to travel, but I’m able to facilitate it somehow. Anyway, I have these pieces I made, piece number one and piece number two. I still want to play around with making, let’s say, a different kind of cloisonné enamel that had been used in pieces one and two. At that point, after I have made things that could become three different pieces, I take what I like and finish piece number one. As often as not, I think of the title first, which I know is a rather strange way to go about it. But in thinking of a title, it helps me guide the quality of the personage I’m dealing with. So, I finished piece number one. I don’t take anything away from it at that point. When I get to piece number two, I’d better start making things for piece number four. There’s this manipulation where all the pieces start moving around on my desk. When I start seeing there is a conclusion in making each one successfully, I know I can stop. Often in that process, I paint myself into a corner. I don’t know where I’m going, but actually that’s the best part in terms of the quality of the piece, because it gives me the opportunity to really think about what I’m after. After I’ve contemplated that, I’m able to get out of the corner, and I do piece number two and piece number three. This is a process I’ve used my entire career. I’ve done a series dedicated to Jasper Johns which is very intellectual, because he’s a very intellectual artist. I did a series on Fabergé. I don’t really like Fabergé. I admire him, but I don’t like him particularly. In my series, each brooch had an egg-shaped enamel part as a part of the physicality of the piece. One of the things I don’t like about Fabergé is that his work was very dry. It’s beautiful, but it’s dry. It doesn’t have any kind of emotion attached to it at all. It was perfect for the Russian nobility because they were decadent. They were inbred. They proceeded far too long in this sociological process. So, I changed it by having in each piece a little zip that went from the outside peripheral into the center, which was like a sperm getting to the egg and fertilizing it. That’s how I dealt with that matter. I’ve also done a series on Cy Twombly, who is my favorite painter. I know people wonder how I can be influenced by his work, which I admire for its messiness. I wish I could do it. People either get Twombly or they don’t. When I look at a group of Twombly pieces, I’ll have an idea of how to start meshing these into the same process I mentioned before, with the Dubus. I think I did the Twomblys 25 years ago and they still look fresh. That’s how my process works. Sharon: How do you know if you’ve hit a wall? If you say, “This isn’t going to work. I’m going to put it in the junk pile”? William: I don’t put things in junk piles. It’s too expensive and the enamel is too precious. I just put the elements aside. I know if I’m doing a series of 10 pieces, or if I decide I want it to be 12 pieces—it’s never more than 12 in a series—by the time I get to 10 or 12, I had better have come to a conclusion with all those pieces and not have left off too many elements. I just put those aside. I might use them again in four years, five years. My work is rather slow because I think a lot about it, and I don’t have drawings to follow. I don’t think of myself as a designer; I think of myself as an artist who makes jewelry. There’s a difference. Sharon: Do you know before you start how many pieces will be in a collection? Do you say, “I’m going to make 10 pieces. They’re going to be in the collection, and I have no idea what it is”? William: Yeah, I generally set a goal for myself. There are other pieces I do that I call knee play pieces. Knee plays come from music. Robert Wilson collaborated on a piece that is now an iconic gem called Einstein on the Beach. It was in five acts, which, if you think my work is unintelligible, this work was almost totally unintelligible. But it appealed to a certain kind of mind as being exquisite. Between each act, without scenery or costumes or anything like that, there were groups of instrumentalists and vocalists who would improvise. With the knee play pieces, it’s not determined what the music and the vocalization is going to be. The vocalization is not consisting of words; it’s consisting of almost primal sounds that are put together with a cadence of Phillip Glass music. The reason they call it knee play is that they connect the acts. As soon as this group of pieces, the knee play music, is over from act one, they will usually suggest some kind of music or situation you’re going to see in act two. That’s sort of a meandering, intellectual approach, but I really like the idea. In my career, I haven’t just made series. I’ve often done isolated pieces, and I would do those in order to open up thought processes I could use to get to the next series. Does that make sense? Sharon: Yes. Is that how you got to the collection you did during lockdown quarantine? | |||
| Episode 98: Inside William Harper’s Quarantine Jewelry Studio | 23 Nov 2022 | 00:24:04 | |
Between a contentious election, a global pandemic and a months-long quarantine, it’s no wonder that jeweler William Harper’s work has taken a darker turn than usual. Although Harper’s work has always been esoteric, the events of the past year have pushed him to play with the size, complexity and construction of his work. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to give us an inside look at the pieces he’s been working on and to talk about his creative process. What you’ll learn in this episode:
About William Harper Born in Ohio and currently working in New York City, William Harper is considered one of the most significant jewelers of the 20th century. After studying advanced enameling techniques at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Harper began his career as an abstract painter but transitioned to enameling and studio craft jewelry in the 1960s. He is known for creating esoteric works rooted in mythology and art history, often using unexpected objects such as bone, nails, and plastic beads in addition to traditional enamel, pearls, and precious metals and stones. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Crafts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A retrospective of his work, William Harper: The Beautiful & the Grotesque, was exhibited at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2019. Additional resources: Photos: A DUCK CAUGHT IN A THICKET: A GATHER OF SOULS: ESCAPE FROM THE PALACE: GOLEM: LA FLEUR DU MAL REDUX: PARASITE: THE ANNUNCIATION: THE EXILED ONE: THE POMPOUS CHARLATAN: THE TAINTED FRUIT OF THE POISON TREE: | |||
| Episode 29: Marrying Old and New: Ancient Treasures and Contemporary Statements with Sasha Nixon, Historian, Curator and Practicing Metalsmith | 02 Nov 2022 | 00:18:33 | |
Sasha Nixon is a curator, historian, and practicing metalsmith. She specializes in the study of contemporary art jewelry, particularly how individual artists are influenced by ancient and historical jewelry styles and techniques. She is co-curator of the Museum of Arts and Design’s (MAD) exhibition Fake News and True Love: Fourteen Stories by Robert Baines (October 2018–March 2019) and received MAD’s 2018 Windgate curatorial internship. She also co-curated the exhibition ANTIQUEMANIA, presented at Pratt Manhattan during the inaugural New York City Jewelry Week (November 12–18, 2018). The Society of North American Goldsmiths awarded Sasha their 2017 emerging curators grant for her exhibition, A View from the Jeweler’s Bench: Ancient Treasures, Contemporary Statements. She presented her paper “Pixels Bejeweled: Modern Media, Contemporary Jewelry, and the Replication of Desire” at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s international symposium “Digital Meets Handmade: Jewelry in the 21st Century” in May 2018. That paper and “In the Studio: Lin Cheung,” written for Metalsmith magazine, will be published later this year. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources:
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| Episode 219 Part 1: Power, Politics and Jewelry: Marta Costa Reis on the Second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial | 13 Mar 2024 | 00:22:33 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Marta Costa Reis Marta Costa Reis started studying jewelry in 2004, as a hobby, in parallel with other professional activities. She dedicated herself fully to this work in 2014. Costa Reis completed the jewelry course at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicacção Visual, in Lisbon, and the Advanced Visual Arts Course at the same school, in addition to workshops with renowned teachers including Iris Eichenberg, Ruudt Peters, Lisa Walker, and Eija Mustonen, among others. In addition to being a jewelry artist, Costa Reis teaches jewelry history at Ar.Co, writes about jewelry, and curates exhibitions. She also serves as artistic director of the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial and as a board member of Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Resources:
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How does jewelry symbolize power, and where do jewelry and politics intersect? That’s the central question that Marta Costa Reis and her fellow curators, artists and speakers will explore at this year’s Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. Marta joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why this year’s theme is so timely; how Portugal’s turbulent political history influences jewelry today; and how to plan your trip to make the most of the biennial. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, we're going to be talking about the Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I am talking with Marta Costa Reis, who is going to tell us all about it. I met Marta about eight to 5 years ago at the first biennial in Lisbon, Portugal. One of the goals was to gather together examples and information about the history of modern Portugal and the jewelry that's associated with it. When we think of Portuguese jewelry, we don't automatically think of art jewelry. But it has a history of more than several decades about the work that's been going on and art jewelry in general. The second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial is coming up this summer in Lisbon. The last one was held in Lisbon, too. Marta Costa Rice is going to be telling us about this biennial and what to expect this summer in Lisbon. There will be a lot going on in many venues. There is the exhibition at MUDE, which is a very well-known Portuguese design museum. There's an international symposium with people coming from all over the world to discuss the theme of the exhibition, which I'll let Marta tell you about. A lot is taking place at many of the galleries. One of the key exhibits is taking place at the Royal Treasure Museum. But I don't want to steal Marta's spotlight. Today, she'll tell us all about the second Contemporary Jewelry Biennial in Portugal. Marta, welcome to the program. Marta: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me and for this very nice introduction. So, where should I start? I don't even know. There's so much to tell. I'm currently organizing the second Lisbon Contemporary Jewelry Biennial. I do it as a new chairwoman of PIN, which is a Portuguese contemporary jewelry association. Sharon: PIN, P-I-N? Marta: PIN, yes. PIN has existed now for 20 years. It will be 20 years this September. It was created to organize quite a big event. At the time, Cristina Filipe was one of the founders and was the chairwoman for a very long time. Of course, you know her by the Susan Beach Grant. She received the first Susan Beech Grant for Mid-Career Artists, and that allowed us to publish a book which came from Cristina's Ph.D. about Portuguese jewelry, contemporary jewelry in Portugal. That time, when the book was published, that's when she had traveled to Portugal and we met. We had this challenge for ourselves, saying that if we managed to do a good program to present interesting shows, good visits, we could be able to do a biennial. That's its inspiration, this trip, how all this came to happen. Of course, the timing for the first biennial—we called it the AJF trip. It was like year zero, the pilot episode. The first biennial happened in the middle of the pandemic, so we were never sure that we really would be able to make it happen because there was still a lot of restrictions. But luckily it happened in September 2021, when people were able to travel a little bit. Then we managed to have a huge number of artists and collectors and interesting people. The theme was about the pandemic. It was jewelry of protection and connecting contemporary objects, contemporary jewelry of protection in the 21st century with very old relics and sacred objects that were shown together in an exhibition in a museum here in Lisbon. Of course, we did call it the biennial to force ourselves to do the second one. Sharon: I wanted to ask, what does biennial mean, literally? Marta: It's supposed to be every two years. That that's what it means. It's supposed to happen every two years. Of course, it's a little bit more than two years now. It's two years and a half between the first one and the second one. But because we have this idea to always have as a theme for the biennial something that is happening in the world at the moment. The first one was the pandemic. Now in Portugal 2024, we will have this very important event, which is the 50th anniversary of our revolution when we became a democratic country. I don't know if people are aware that we had an authoritarian regime for 48 years, and it happened in 1974. It was a very smooth revolution. Let's just say that, because it happened without almost any gun being shot. Of course, it took a little while. The Democratic constitution was approved a bit later, but that is the fundamental moment when we became a democratic country or started to become a democratic country. It happened 50 years ago now, so it's really a whole new generation, a whole new world, and we want to celebrate that. Jewelry, of course, has a lot to do with power or representations of power. There is also in contemporary jewelry a lot of political work. Many artists do work that is political or can be read in a political way. We wanted to consider those issues, jewelry of power and political jewelry. That's basically the idea of how it came about. Sharon: Why is it called the Carnation Revolution? Marta: That's an amazing story, actually. It happened because literally a woman that had some red carnations in her hands started to put carnations, the flowers, in the guns of the soldiers. Some of the most famous images of the revolution are soldiers with the flowers in their guns. It represents a lot of things, namely that the guns were not being shot. They were holding flowers. It happened by accident. It's suggested that this lady, apparently one of the soldiers asked her for a cigarette. She said she didn't have cigarettes, but she had a flower, and she put the flower in his gun. And then people started to replicate the gesture. Until today, the red carnation--there were also white carnations, but basically the red carnation is still very much a symbol of that movement, that revolution, and it took the name. For us, thinking about that, the gesture she had is also very much a gesture of adornment, the gesture of adorning that gun with the flower. So, we wanted to pick up on that and what it could mean. Sharon: How is jewelry linked to power? Marta: You have that example, for instance, in the Royal Treasure Museum that you mentioned, which shows the jewelry of the national treasure, jewels that belonged to the state—well, to the crown, basically. Some of them were private jewelry worn by kings and queens. Some of them are more royal estate jewelry. Basically, it's that representation of the power that it can show and the time when diamonds and precious stones and even precious metals were not used by everyone. It showed how powerful a person was, how important or how close to the eye of power. It's the idea of a crown or a tiara, of a whole set of diamonds, but also all the objects that you can put on your body, like the jeweled swords and things like that. Jewelry indeed has a lot to say about power, how you show yourself as a person of power or representing a situation of power, being a king or queen or someone with a very high responsibility. That connection always existed. This museum is brand new. It will be two years ago in June. This jewelry was not accessible. It was not shown for a very long time. It was only in a temporary exhibition, so it's an excellent opportunity to see these pieces that are absolutely incredible. Although many were lost and sold, they're still a very nice collection. Sharon: So, a biennial can be anything, theoretically. Every 10 years, it could be trucks. It could be jewelry, but it could be a biennial about anything, right? Marta: We tried to connect it to things that are ongoing in the world at the moment. For 2024, our main motivation with this event was that we knew it would happen in Portugal. There will be a lot of other moments of celebration of democracy, basically. That that's what the celebration is all about. But if you look at the world at large, it's also very topical, this issue and the themes. It's something that people can relate to at the present moment, not just Portuguese. That's what we thought could be interesting, to see how our jewelers, our artists, are connecting to the world at the present and what they have to say about it through their work, through jewelry. Sharon: How did you get involved in it? Marta: I don't know. It's probably a personality trait. I like to get involved in things. I like this tendency to be of service to something larger than myself. I became involved first with PIN because in my previous professional life, I used to—I was not a lawyer, but I studied law, so I worked with law. I started to be involved with PIN about some situations that were happening with laws that were changing that affected jewelry. So, I started to cooperate with them on that issue. Then I was very much involved in AJF's first visit to Lisbon, and then in the organization of the first biennial. Sharon: AJF means—I want everybody to understand that AJF means Art Jewelry Forum. Marta: Art Jewelry Forum, yes. So, I was the person helping in Portugal. There were others, but I was one of them. I got very much involved in the first biennial and then Cristina wanted to leave and not do the second one. She was very tired and wanted to move on to something else. I said, "Okay, but we did this biennial. We need to try to do the second one." That's what happened. And I said, "Okay, I'll try to take over and do the second biennial." That's what happened. That's my mission at the moment at this organization, the Portuguese Association for Contemporary Jewelry, to do the second biennial, and from then on let's see how many more we can do. Sharon: I noticed that she wasn't on the list of speakers. Are you giving any kind of prize or a grant like Cristina received 10 years ago to do her book? Marta: No. The program is two exhibitions in the Royal Treasure Museum. One of the exhibitions will be contemporary jewelers doing work to honor a woman of their choice that had a role in the democratic transition, so a woman that was especially hurt by the dictatorship or was especially involved in the democracy. Many of them are artists because we also had censorship and artists could not be free in their work. Many of the women the jewelers chose to honor are artists. A few of them even had to leave Portugal and move to other countries to be able to do their work. But not only do we have anonymous women, we have some politicians. We had one of the first women prime ministers in Europe, so she will be honored as well. There are a few other women that people felt needed some recognition or wanted to give them their recognition. In 1974, when the revolution happened, many of the actors were men because it was done by military men, and all the politicians were men. A few women started showing up afterwards. But before the end of our dictatorship, women had no representation at all in the public space. They were mostly shown as accessories. Good woman, good wife, good cook, but that's all. Only after 1974 did women start to have their own representation as professionals in other things besides being wives. We couldn't even travel to other countries without the husband's permission or have bank accounts or things like that. When I was born, that was still the reality in my country. It's not 200 years ago. It's very, very close to us. That's also why it's important to show those who have not lived through that that an authoritarian regime is a terrible thing. So, we are honoring these women. We have another show of contemporary tiaras by a contemporary artist that will be shown next to the crown jewels. That will be an interesting contrast. These two shows will open in April. So, from April to the end of June, you can see contemporary jewelry in the Royal Treasure Museum, which will also be a first. It's a very endearing project, and there have been great, great partners. Then in May, a show by the contemporary artist Teresa Milheiro will open as well. It's sort of an anthological show, but not only. She always had political themes in her work, so that's one of the reasons why she was chosen to do this solo. Then in the last week of June, between 24th and 30th of June, there will be an immensity of shows. The big show at MUDE that is curated by myself, Mònica Gaspar and Patrícia Domingues is an international collective show with artists from many different parts of the world. Not all parts of the world, because in many countries you still don't have a lot of contemporary jewelry. But we're doing our best to have it as broad as possible. There will be what we call parallel events, which are shows organized by artists, collectives and students that are doing shows at the same time in Lisbon. There's the colloquium with international speakers from many parts of the world. The colloquium will be in English. It will also be accessible online for anyone who wants to stay at home and still be able to accompany that. It will also be about political jewelry and politics and politics of jewelry and power. This will still be the main themes. There will be a show with schools from different countries, a meeting of the students and then an exhibition. The educational part is very present. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things or there are things I didn't say yet. There will be what you call a jewelry room with galleries from different countries. Galleries are still, and hopefully will be for a long time, a very important part of the jewelry world, so we want them to be present as well and show their artists and their choices. The last week of June will be absolutely filled with contemporary jewelry in Lisbon. Plus it's an amazing month. It's the best month in Lisbon. There are parties on the streets. It's the best. Sharon: Do the galleries choose what to show that's linked to this theme? What is the official theme? Marta: There is a title, which is Madrugada. That means daybreak. This title is inspired by a very beautiful poem by a Portuguese poet, Sophia de Mello Breyner. It's very short, but basically it says this is a new dawn after a very long, dark night. It's a poem about the revolution. She loosely calls it a new dawn. This is the theme. We asked the galleries to bring work that is connected to theme, to political jewelry, and we also asked them to present a Portuguese artist. Some of them already have Portuguese artists in their midst, in their group of selected artists, and some don't. What we want is for galleries to have a look at the national, Portuguese artists, and make their choice. That way, our Portuguese artists get more representation or more presence and maybe a little more representation in other countries. Sharon: You mentioned the educational piece of the shows and symposia. What do you have planned, and what are the topics? Are they in English? Marta: They are in English. The symposium is in English. I can give you some examples. We will have, for instance, and this could be interesting for you, the artist Cindi Strauss will speak about themes from the book she published recently on American jewelry in the 60s and 70s and the counterculture. She will be there. We will also have a Brazilian researcher called Dionea Rocha Watt, and she will speak about jewelry of power, like the jewelry that Imelda Marcos owns, or the jewelry from the recent scandal with the former Brazilian President Bolsonaro, who sold some jewelry he received, and other representations and connections between jewelry and power. But we will also have, for instance, Rosa Maria Mota, who will speak about traditional Portuguese jewelry. It was used by popular woman from the countryside that bought as much gold jewelry as possible as a way to preserve their finances and their power. It's the connection between traditional gold jewelry and women power. Things like that. It's always around politics and policy and power and jewelry. Hopefully it will be very interesting. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 173 Part 2: How Beauty and Meaning Combine in Antique Jewelry with Author, Journalist, Historian & Consultant, Beth Bernstein | 27 Oct 2022 | 00:22:02 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Beth Bernstein Beth Bernstein is a jewelry historian, jewelry expert and collector of period and modern jewels—a purveyor of all things sparkly. She has a romance going on with the legend, language and sentiment behind the pieces. Her love for the story has inspired Beth to pen four books, with a fifth one in the works, and to spend the past twenty years as an editor and writer on the subject of jewels-old and new. She is a die-hard jewelry fan, so much so that she has designed her own collection throughout the 90s and continues to create bespoke jewels and work with private clients to procure antique and vintage jewelry She owns a comprehensive consulting agency Plan B which provides a roster of services in multiple facets of the jewelry industry. These include building, launching and evolving designer brands and retail brick & mortar/online shops and curating designer shows and private collections. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Diving into centuries of antique jewelry can be intimidating for even the biggest jewelry lover, but Beth Bernstein is proof that anyone can find their niche in jewelry history. A collector of sentimental jewelry across several periods, Beth is a jewelry consultant and author of “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how antique jewelry periods are defined; what make a collector a collector; and how to keep antique jewelry in good condition without putting it away forever in a safe. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to heart part one. Today, my guest is jewelry author, journalist, historian and consultant Beth Bernstein. She is the author of several books. Welcome back.
Tell us about “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry,” your most recent book. I was a little put off because I’m not into antique, but it’s very readable and interesting. Tell us about it.
Beth: That was the whole point. I had read so many antique books, because I was given piles of them to read way back when. I have a library full of books on antique jewelry and vintage jewelry. There’s really no difference between antique and vintage, which I write about in the book, but antique jewelry is 100 or more years old. From 2022, if you go back 100 years, it would be 1922, but we went up to 1925 because we wanted to get in some of the Art Deco period.
Anyway, I wanted to write it differently than the books I had read, and I had an aha moment in doing that. I was doing tours through seven centuries of jewelry at the Miami and New York antique shows that were produced by U.S. Antique Shows. They knew I knew a lot about antique jewelry, so it was the company’s idea that I do these tours. It started out with one tour each show, then it went to two tours each show. Before the pandemic, it was going to go to three tours each show because people kept signing up.
I took people through seven centuries of jewelry, from the Georgian era all the way through the 70s, from antique to vintage. I would take them to dealers that specialized in those time periods, and we’d talk about it. Then I’d have a Q&A for an hour, which always turned into a two-hour Q&A. Then we’d go to the next tour. People would ask me to take them back to some places and help them pick out jewelry, because I do have private clients. I love dealing with private clients who ask me to find antique things for them. Sometimes they’re also at the shows.
So, the aha moment came when I was doing these tours. I thought, “Oh, my god! I know all these dealers are very trustworthy. They all have different points of view. They deal in different time periods. Why don’t I do museum-quality jewelry, but what’s on the market today? Not what you can find only in museums, but what’s out there today that’s sold? Why don’t I interview some of these wonderful experts I’ve been taking people to?” And that made it different and more readable because it was more interactive, more conversational.
The beginning of the book is how to define your collecting style, and the last chapters are how to mix modern and antique. I did that chapter with Rebecca Selva from Fred Leighton, who’s a mastermind of mixing modern, vintage and antique. So, that was really fun. Then there’s how to shop an antique show, how to shop at auction. There’s a lot of how-tos and advice given. I also brought the dealers and the stores in to give advice, and I didn’t stick to just the biggest stores. Of course, I interviewed Wartski in London; I interviewed Fred Leighton and Macklowe Gallery in New York, but I also interviewed smaller dealers like Lothar Antiques, who is at Portobello. It’s different companies and it’s global. That was the fun of the book. So, it’s part travelogue because I interviewed people across the United States, the U.K., Paris, Amsterdam and Belgium.
Sharon: Wow! Did you write the proposal and then go to the publisher? Did they come to you? How does that work?
Beth: I’ve always written the proposal and gone to the publisher. For this book, I went to my publisher for “If These Jewels Could Talk” because I thought they did a wonderful job. He kept going back and forth. He wanted it to be not so conversational at first. He wanted it to be more like the old antique books he published, because he published a lot of antique books. It’s called ACC Art Books. It was Antique Collectors Club originally, but now it’s ACC Art Books. Then, all of a sudden, he came around. He was like, “No, we shouldn’t do it like that. We should do it the way you originally suggested.” It took him a year to come to that.
Then I wrote it, and there was an eight-month lag after I wrote it because of the pandemic. I wrote it at the beginning of the pandemic and handed it in on deadline, but it took eight more months for it to be published than it was supposed to. That was kind of interesting. People had to be put on furlough, and then there was a paper shortage, and it wasn’t getting to the ports on time. When it finally came out, I was holding my breath until it finally came in.
What I’m hearing from everyone that has read it and reviewed it—I write for Rapaport and Jewelry Connoisseur, and the editor-in-chief of those magazines, Sonia, read it. She said, “I read it straight through because it was so readable. It was like you wanted to keep going.” That made me feel really good.
Sharon: And you’re working on another book now.
Beth: Yeah, I’m working on another two books right now.
Sharon: Can you tell us anything about those? I said this book was an overview, but it’s very specific. It’s not an overview like some of the other books I’ve read on antiques.
Beth: No, it’s very specific because it has all different time periods. It’s an antique book, so it could only go to the beginnings of Art Deco. Vintage starts after that. So, it was very specific. I did the grand period as a separate chapter because the Victorian chapter was so big. Because, as you know, there are three different periods in the Victorian era.
Sentimental jewelry is my favorite type of antique jewelry. That’s what I collect the most of. That was its own chapter, even though it crosses over Georgian and Victorian. So, I pulled out some things from different periods and made them their own chapters. I also thought alternative materials should be its own chapter. Berlin iron went into alternative materials; rock crystal went into different materials, things that I thought would be interesting on their own and in their own chapters.
Sharon: Did you collect antique jewelry from the beginning, or did you collect all different kinds of jewelry?
Beth: I have collected antique jewelry for the past 25 years. Before that, I wouldn’t call myself a collector; I’d call myself a person who wore jewelry I liked, and most of that was by modern jewelers. When I started collecting antique, like most people, I started with the Victorian era. It’s easier to understand than the Roman period, which is the first period, and the aesthetic period, which is more fun. When Queen Elizabeth goes into mourning, it’s very dark; it’s very black. It’s called the grand period. It’s also where the archaeological revival period comes into play. I think all the things people are redoing today, the crescent moons and swallows and snakes—her engagement ring was a snake ring—I think are pieces with meaning. All those pieces from the Victorian period have meanings that align with flowers. All the different floral motifs have meaning. Those were easy to collect, you could understand them, and they were pretty. So, that’s what I started collecting.
Then I went into the Georgian period, not so much the earrings, but the rings. I love Georgian rings. I have a whole collection of Georgian rings. It sits in a safety deposit box. You can’t wash your hands with Georgian rings because there’s a closed-back setting. During the pandemic, washing your hands so much, you cannot hold them.
I think you asked me if I have different parameters when I collect antique jewelry compared to modern jewelry, and yes, there are parameters for me. I don’t really collect modern jewelry. I buy what I like from modern jewelers, from different designers. Yes, I probably have one, two or three pieces from a collection because I like their design aesthetic. If it’s wearable, if it's versatile, if it’s made well and goes along with my style, I will buy modern jewelry, but I buy antique jewelry mostly for the character and the provenance. I tend to like jewelry that will appreciate with time, which most antique jewelry will, but also for the authenticity, the rarity and the museum quality of it. I also like sentimental jewelry the best. I tend to stick with those or jewelry with symbolism and meaning.
Sharon: You must have dealers who run the other way when they see you coming because you know so much.
Beth: Actually, the dealers love that because they don’t have to explain it to you. You just pick up a piece and you’ll ask some questions, but people that don’t know anything ask way more questions than I will. Quite frankly, antique dealers and people that own antique stores love talking about jewelry. That’s why they’re in antique jewelry. They love talking about the age and what it is, if they’re honest and honorable like the people in my book.
Sharon: I was reading about how there are so many different definitions of collectors. Somebody in the book, I can’t remember who it was, had a longer version explaining who has a collection versus who’s a collector. There are so many different definitions.
Beth: I don’t think it was a definition between who’s a collector and who has a collection. I think there are different types of collectors. One type of collector might collect only for historical reasons and never wear it, like art for art’s sake. Other people will combine and collect some things for historic importance. For example, I have some pieces I know are historical and really representative of the time period. I don’t wear those pieces that much because I want them in perfect condition. That’s kind of for art’s sake, but mostly I don’t believe you should keep your jewelry in a safe or a safety deposit box. Now, those pieces are in a safety deposit box for that reason.
Then there are collectors that only collect a certain period, like only the Georgian period or only the Victorian period. I’m a collector of different periods. I love Art Deco line bracelets with the different cuts of stone. I love the lacey feeling of Edwardian jewelry. I love Georgian rings. I love sentimental jewelry. So, I’m a multi-collector of pieces. Then there are collectors who want to wear their jewelry, so they only collect pieces they can wear every day. I don’t think it’s collection versus collector; I think it’s the type of collector, and there are many types.
Sharon: When you said Georgian, that’s my first thought. I have a couple pieces of Georgian, which are so delicate. I just couldn’t wear them. A Georgian ring, as you’re talking about, you can’t wear it.
Beth: You can wear it once in a while. You have to be very careful. Know how you can wear it and that you cannot get it wet. I’ve gone to shows where I’ve worn my Georgian rings. I put a bolt ring on a necklace and stuck it inside so when I washed my hands, I put the rings on the bolt ring so I didn’t leave it on the sink. That’s what I’ve always been worried about. You have to take it off to wash.
Sharon: That’s a good way to do it. I hadn’t thought about that. When does somebody cross over from being an enthusiast, which I consider myself? You might say I have a lot, but I’ve never discovered what I want to collect. I like bracelets, but I don’t collect them. How do you cross over?
Beth: I don’t know exactly how you cross over. I have two favorite stones, moonstones and rubies, I think because I’m a hopeful romantic. Moonstones are also lucky. They have a lot of meanings, and I love the fact that they change the light. A good moonstone will change the light. It’s just magical. Rubies are all about passion, and I love the two together. They’re beautiful mixed together, and I can enjoy antique jewelry or modern jewelry. Anyway, one of my first pieces was one of those slag moonstone necklaces from the Victorian period because I love moonstones.
The second was a turquoise forget-me-not ring. Forget-me-nots have two different meanings. They mean “remember me” from the giver to the wearer, or in mourning jewelry that’s all black, they mean the remembrance of somebody that’s gone. Mine was a more of a lover’s token. I also have a passion for hearts if they’re designed well. Not like holiday hearts; more like a double heart with a bowtie. That was a ring I bought from a dealer. It was a Burmese ruby and an old mine cut diamond tied together with a bowtie, which means two hearts together tied as one. Finding out the meaning of these things is wonderful.
I worked for a dealer at one of her shows, and she said to me, “You don’t have to own everything you think is pretty. You can just look at it and think it’s pretty. You don’t have to own it just because you think it’s beautiful.” So, I became more selective of what I was going to own, not just because it was pretty. Also having private clients and knowing what they like, I started to buy things to resell, so then I could own them and think they were pretty and then resell them. I didn’t keep them for my own collection.
But I think it’s a very fine line between being a jewelry enthusiast and being a collector and the type of collector you are. Like I said, I collect from different time periods. One time period I didn’t collect from was the Art Nouveau period, except for some pieces that were plique-à-jour enamel that had romantic sayings because it goes along with sentimental jewelry. I thought it wasn’t very wearable until I helped Macklowe Gallery and Peter Schaffer and realized there were different ways to wear them. It was a really good learning experience.
Sharon: I can see why. What do you look for? You say you became more selective. What do you look for?
Beth: Like I mentioned before, authenticity, verity. I don’t see it everywhere. There are Victorian pieces that were made during the Industrial Revolution that you can find. They’re either exactly the same piece or pieces that are like it that were made by the same maker. You can find the same snake ring by the same manufacturer again and again, even if it’s a little bit different. I try and find the snake ring you can’t find everywhere. I have five different snake rings. Two of them you can find in different places, I think, but I love them. I kept them because those are the rings you can wear every day.
Sharon: As your knowledge and your collection, whatever you want to call it, has grown, do you think you curate it more in a sense?
Beth: Yes, I do. I think it’s been curated now to be very sentimental, very meaningful. I also love different styles of chains and charms, so I love creating charm necklaces that have different meanings. One will be the travel charm necklace; one will be the love lock and protection necklace; one will be only the protection necklace. When I collect interesting charms, I’ll make different necklaces out of them. They’ll all be on different chains so I don’t have to keep changing it around.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being here today.
Beth: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Hopefully I answered all your questions.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 173 Part 1: How Beauty and Meaning Combine in Antique Jewelry with Author, Journalist, Historian & Consultant, Beth Bernstein | 25 Oct 2022 | 00:22:59 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Beth Bernstein Beth Bernstein is a jewelry historian, jewelry expert and collector of period and modern jewels—a purveyor of all things sparkly. She has a romance going on with the legend, language and sentiment behind the pieces. Her love for the story has inspired Beth to pen four books, with a fifth one in the works, and to spend the past twenty years as an editor and writer on the subject of jewels-old and new. She is a die-hard jewelry fan, so much so that she has designed her own collection throughout the 90s and continues to create bespoke jewels and work with private clients to procure antique and vintage jewelry She owns a comprehensive consulting agency Plan B which provides a roster of services in multiple facets of the jewelry industry. These include building, launching and evolving designer brands and retail brick & mortar/online shops and curating designer shows and private collections. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Diving into centuries of antique jewelry can be intimidating for even the biggest jewelry lover, but Beth Bernstein is proof that anyone can find their niche in jewelry history. A collector of sentimental jewelry across several periods, Beth is a jewelry consultant and author of “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how antique jewelry periods are defined; what make a collector a collector; and how to keep antique jewelry in good condition without putting it away forever in a safe. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week. Today my guest is jewelry author, journalist, historian and consultant Beth Bernstein. She is the author of several books including “If These Jewels Could Talk,” “My Charmed Life,” “Jewelry’s Shining Stars” and the recent and very readable “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry.” We will hear more about her jewelry journey today. Beth, welcome. Beth: Hi. So nice to be here. Sharon: It’s great to have you. Beth, can you tell us a little bit about your jewelry journey? Did you like jewelry when you were young? Beth: Oh, yes. My favorite thing was to wear a tiara. Most young girls, I would say, think they’re princesses, but I have a cute little story to tell. I had my appendix out when I was six, which is really young to have your appendix out. For some reason, they made me a Frankenstein scar. I hated the scar. Back then, they kept you in the hospital for two weeks. It really was the most horrible scar, so my mom wanted to make me feel like I was beautiful. Back then, Bloomingdale’s in New York was the store you went to. So, we go to Bloomingdale’s—I always had dime-store tiaras, the plastic rhinestone tiaras—and in the window I see this tiara-like headband dripping with Swarovski crystals. Later I found out my mom described it as the most ostentatious headpiece or even worse than that. Anyway, we go in. I’m l like, “I want that. I want that.” So, we go into the store, and she pulls over the salesperson. I didn’t know this at that time, but I heard the story later on. She said, “Bring her out a lot of jewels. I’ll make up a story about this one, but bring her out something for her age, like a little tiara-like headband thing.” She said to me, “I have to tell you something the salesgirl just told me. The tiara you love is reserved for a duchess from a faraway land.” I went, “Oh, my god, I have such good taste,” and she said, “You have royal taste, right?” From then on, I believed I had royal taste, and I got a pretty seed pearl headband, quite advanced for my age. I’ve loved jewelry ever since I was young. My mom wasn’t a big jewelry fan, but my grandmother was. My grandparents didn’t have a lot of money, but she saved, and she’d go to secondhand stores. I think they were like pawn shops. She’d find these gorgeous Art Deco jewelry there, and she’d get them for a great price. She had some faux and real. I would go over to her house, and she’d let me stay up way past when my mother would let me stay up, and we would watch a Late Movie. Most people don’t remember the Late Movie, but it had movies like To Catch a Thief and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and even melodramas like Madame X and Back Street. I would watch all these wonderful movies, Marlene Dietrich movies, and I loved the jewelry. So, we’d dress up in jewelry while we were watching the movies. She’d pour ginger ale in champagne glasses, and we’d drink like we were drinking champagne. The next day we’d go out and buy the jewelry at Woolworths, the five and dime, like we saw in the movies, but for 10 cents. It was all plastic and rhinestone jewelry. It was a lot of fun. So, yeah, I’ve always loved jewelry. Sharon: Would you say that’s why you started liking jewelry? Because of the tiara and dressing up with your grandmother? Beth: Yeah, and the movies. I was always very into movies, which is why I wrote “If These Jewels Could Talk.” It connects the celebrities in the movies to the back stories. I’m as much of a jewelry geek as I am a movie geek. I think it was the fun and the glamor of it as a kid. I’ll be very honest; it was at a time when I was probably eleven and my parents started talking about divorce. They got divorced when I was 13. So, it was a time in my life when I needed something to escape from all of that. It was a good escape to get into the glamor of those old movies and the jewelry. When I was six, having my appendix out and having that horrible scar, putting that thing on my head actually did make me feel pretty and like a duchess from a faraway land. I did start believing I had royal taste. Sharon: That’s funny. I’ve heard several people say they liked tiaras when they were younger. I’m not sure I knew what a tiara was then. As you got older, did your education bring you to jewelry? Beth: Not really, because I was an English major and a psychology minor. Basically, I was writing poetry and short stories, wanting to be the great American novelist and poetess. I was doing really well in school. I was going to Boston University. I had some poetry and short stories published, and I was editor of the literary journal. My father owned textile mills in Italy and my mother, when she went back to work after my parents got divorced, became a senior vice president of a huge sportswear company. There were fashion and textiles in my blood. So, I was going to school, and my father said, “I’m not going to support you while you’re a starving writer trying to write poetry or a novel. Write about what you know. Write about fashion.” I said, “Absolutely not,” even though I love fashion. But then I did start writing about fashion. My first story was actually for McCall’s magazine about rust-proofing your car, because I was a non-fiction assistant editor. I got turned down from Condé Nast and Hearst because I didn’t type enough words a minute. I was typing on a regular typewriter, and I was just under. But McCall’s didn’t give you a typing test, so that was my first job. After McCall’s magazine, I started working as a freelancer. I wrote about fashion. I also styled fashion shoots, but my favorite thing to style was jewelry and, for some reason, shoes. When I went to the big houses in New York, like Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta and Donna Karan, I loved to see what jewelry they were going to sell with their collections. Eventually, I continued to write about fashion for a bunch of magazines. Then, all of a sudden, I came up with an idea for a jewelry collection. Prior to that, I also became a wardrobe stylist for TV. I styled for MTV, Showtime, Comedy Central, all the cable channels. While I was doing that, because of all my contacts in jewelry through styling and by writing about jewelry and fashion, I had a sort of a collection. So, I knew who to go to to put the collection together. I went to this one company where I was very good friends with the owner, and he said, “Oh yeah, it’s a great idea. I think it would sell great at Henri Bendel.” This was when Henri Bendel was really cool. So, I thought it would be a collection for Bendel. He helped me put it together, because I didn’t know about castings and all that kind of thing. It sold at Bendel. Then a friend of mine, who was an actor and a comedian while I was in wardrobe styling, said, “Why don’t you start your own jewelry company? You have really great ideas,” and I said, “You know what? O.K.” That was how my life went. I was like, “O.K., I’ll go from fashion into wardrobe styling then to jewelry,” because I really did love jewelry. Sharon: You were designing it, too. Wow! Beth: Yes, now I’m designing it. I started a small collection, and it sold to over 250 stores. However, I was selling to Barneys New York, Beverly Hills and Chicago and Barneys Japan, but that was Barneys first Chapter 11. They owed me a ton of money, and I didn’t know how I was going to produce for the other stores. So, long story short, they owed me a ton of money, but they kept us all in the stores and paid us up front to keep going, but we never got the money they owed us. I was really stretched to the limit because I literally wasn’t making any other money. So, I started writing about jewelry because I knew more about it. Now, I knew about casting and setting and how to do waxes and all that. I wasn’t doing it, but I knew all about that, so I started writing about jewelry for magazines I had worked with and other people in fashion had recommended. I was also very good at revamping magazines, making them more modern and into the future. So, I started writing while I was also designing jewelry. That’s how it all happened. With Barneys, I got 30 cents on the dollar. Six years later, which is when I finally closed my business—back then, they rarely liked independent designers. There was only so much money to be made. I made so many mistakes with reps. A jewelry designer who was very smart said to me, “The worst thing that could happen to you is not having your own name on a collection,” and I said, “No, the worst thing that could happen is not having a volume, because I’ve been writing all my life.” He said, “So, you have the answer. Go design for these big designers. Get paid well and keep your bylines. Keep writing.” That’s exactly what I did. Then I decided it was the smaller designers that needed my help. So, I started my own company to help small, independent designers with marketing, merchandising design and writing their press kits, as I was still writing for magazines. I’m answering you before you’re even asking me a question. Sharon: No, this is free form. Go ahead. Beth: Basically, while I was doing all these different things, I started to collect antique jewelry. I had this feeling for antique jewelry. I love the idea of old mine cuts and the old rose cut diamonds. I didn’t like a lot of bling or sparkle. I love the meaning behind Victorian jewelry. As I was collecting from the dealers, I was learning little by little. There were a lot of jewelers in New York back then. Eventually, I picked out a ring in the case at an amazing Madison Avenue shop, and she said, “It’s one of my favorite rings in the case.” She and I had just met, and she’s since passed away. I usually dedicate my books to my mom or my grandmother or both. My mom passed away young, and my grandmother lived until 97. They were the real inspirations in my life, but I dedicated “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry” to Hazel Halperin because she taught me so much of what I know. When I picked out the ring, she said, “It’s a favorite in my case. I do layaways, so you can pay it off.” I’m like, “Great.” Then she said, “Do you want to come work for me?” and I said, “You don’t know me. How do you know you can even trust me?” She said, “I know I can trust you. Every ring you picked out in the case is my best ring. It’s like you have an eye for this.” She gave me books to bring home every weekend to read. I went to work for her on weekends. I was working seven days a week doing writing for magazines, still some consulting work, some custom work, and working for her, learning about antique jewelry on weekends. That really helped me learn how to collect antique jewelry. Through her, I was able to go to the big antique shows and meet other dealers, whom I still know to this day. A lot of them are still alive and are quoted in the book, because I’ve been dealing with them for 25 years. That’s how that came about. Sharon: Did learning how to collect antique jewelry help you learn how to collect in general, or was it only antique? Beth: Only antique. Because I designed modern jewelry, I knew what I liked about modern jewelry. With antique, she taught me things to look for, like if something was repurposed, if something was put together, like if the shank was added later than the actual front of the ring. She taught me a lot of different aspects about antique jewelry. She taught me about the time periods and how to identify them. She taught me so much, and the books she had me bring home to read taught me a lot, too. She was a wonderful teacher. She’d always throw in a little story about my life as it was at that time, and how dating would relate to some jewelry stories. She was funny and I just loved her. She really helped. Sharon: Was she your inspiration? She was an inspiration for the antique jewelry book, but was she an inspiration for your other jewelry books, like “My Charmed Life”? Beth: Well, “My Charmed Life” isn’t a jewelry book. It’s a memoir. It’s called “My Charmed Life.” Penguin published it in 2012. I’ll tell you about why it’s called “My Charmed Life.” It’s “My Charmed Life” and the subtitle is “Rocky Romances, Precious Family Connections and Searching For a Band of Gold.” I was writing a memoir. It was a bit different because I also wrote first-person essays for women’s magazines on dating, relationships and family. They always had to have some humor, so I knew that anything heartfelt also had to have a bit of humor. If it’s grief, it has to have humor. So, I learned the combination of doing that, and I love writing those kinds of things. So, I was working on a memoir, and I kept hearing the word, “Platform. You need a platform.” I thought, “I have a platform in jewelry, but that’s not going to work with this memoir, so I need to change it up a bit.” So, I connected different pieces. Every chapter starts with a piece of jewelry. There’s love beads. There’s solitary rings. There’s the Claddagh ring from when I was going out with the Irish guy. There were a lot of different chapters. It was all metaphor for what I was talking about, and that was chapters from a young age up to age 50. It wasn’t really about the pieces of jewelry; it was about what was going in my life and the jewelry related to that. People call it a jewelry book, but it wasn’t. When you start reading it, you’ll realize that it’s really a book about life. It’s universal. It’s about parents divorcing, parents dying young, family relationships, relationships with nieces and nephews, being single when your younger brothers have kids, and all these different things women can relate to. What links do you like more than jewelry? It’s the mosaic ashtray you make for mom in day camp that she still kept, or when she got divorced, how she traded in her Jackie O. pearls for love beads, which were my love beads. She was wearing my love beads because she was a young mom who got divorced. It was the 70s and she wanted to be cool. So, it was all about that. That was the first book. The second book was about emerging modern jewelers who I got to know from consulting and writing about them. I wrote about 38 designers who I thought really had it. These days, the market is saturated with modern designers. Stephen Webster was an amazing designer. I thought, “Who can write the forward for this book?” I went to Stephen because we were friends, and they knew he’d do a great job because he was once an emerging designer himself. He was funny, and he had all that heartfelt humor. He was a bench jeweler. He wrote a great forward. He said, “You’re going to have to really fix this up,” and all I had to do was fix one word that I didn’t think was right because it was very British, and I didn’t think everyone would understand. Stephen had to fix one word. It was such a great book. The next book was “If These Jewels Could Talk: The Legends Behind Celebrity Gems.” That was about the stories behind celebrity jewelry and celebrity jewelry houses, like Van Cleef & Arpels, who made the jewelry for celebrities and films, and how the jewelry helped character development. I was very into the films, as I said. One of my friends said, “You wanted to write that book 20 years ago.” I said, “Yeah, I did,” because of my geekiness about film and because I could remember every line in certain films I loved. I learned more about who owned the jewelry as I was writing the book. Back then, a lot of the big stars like Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly—when she was Grace Kelly and before she was princess of Monaco—wore their own jewelry. Joan Crawford wore all of her own jewelry in films. Elizabeth Taylor wore her own jewelry in certain films. When it came to awards shows, when they were televised, they wore their own jewelry. It was really interesting. I loved writing that book as well. And then here we are with “The Modern Guide to Antique Jewelry.” I’m not only writing a book about antique jewelry, but I think—once again, I’m going on without you asking me a question. We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 172: The Joy of Jewelry Marketing: Expert Tips to Make Your Jewelry Brand Stand Out with Laryssa Wirstiuk, Founder and Creative Director of Joy Joya | 19 Oct 2022 | 00:29:21 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Laryssa Wirstiuk Laryssa Wirstiuk is the founder and creative director of Joy Joya. She’s passionate about helping jewelry entrepreneurs tell impactful stories about their brands and products, so they can reach their target customers. Laryssa is also the author of Jewelry Marketing Joy: An Approachable Introduction to Marketing Your Jewelry Brand and the host of the Joy Joya Jewelry Marketing Podcast. She has presented at a number of industry conferences and has appeared as a guest on webinars and at other digital events, speaking on the subject of marketing for jewelry brands. Many people don’t realize that Laryssa has academic training in creative writing; one of her first jobs after graduate school was as an adjunct instructor at Rutgers University, where she taught creative writing for five years. She never abandoned her passion for teaching and strives to educate as many people as she can about jewelry marketing. She believes that knowledge about marketing is the prerequisite to success in business. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: How do independent makers and jewelers stand out in an incredibly saturated market? It’s not by using the same marketing strategy as everyone else. That’s the motto at Joy Joya, a digital marketing agency for jewelry brands founded by Laryssa Wirstiuk. Laryssa joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why digital marketing is necessary for jewelry brands; why branded content should be more than just a sales pitch; and why brands may want to rethink their focus on PR. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Laryssa Wirstiuk. She is the founder and creative director of Joy Joya, a digital marketing agency for jewelry brands. She’s also the host of the Joy Joya Marketing Podcast and has recently started a second podcast. We’ll hear all about her on Jewelry Journey today. Laryssa, welcome to the program.
Laryssa: Sharon, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be on your podcast.
Sharon: I’m so glad to have you. As I was reading the intro, it occurred to me—I’ve asked myself this many times, but never you—do you have a Spanish background? Joy Joya sounds Spanish to me. What is that?
Laryssa: I don’t personally have a Spanish background. I’m actually Ukrainian, so totally different. But I’m super passionate about Spanish culture and studied the language for a long time. That is actually where the name for my business came from. So, you are right.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I’m trying to think—there was a big jewelry show I went to in Barcelona a few years ago. I think it’s Joya. So, I was wondering about that.
Can you tell us a little about your jewelry journey? Tell us how you got to when you are now.
Laryssa: Sure. It kind of makes no sense, but I’ll try to keep it brief and straightforward. My training and background actually have nothing to do with jewelry at all. I went to school for creative writing, and I started my career in marketing as well as teaching writing. My background was always from this communications standpoint. Always, though, I was super passionate about jewelry. Apart from work, it was something I always loved looking at. Of course, when I was a broke college student and just starting my career, I couldn’t purchase a lot of jewelry, but I loved looking at it. I just had this passion, and it kept poking me in the back for many years, saying, “Why aren’t you doing more with this?”
I had a moment in my marketing and writing career where I was really unhappy in the industries I had been working in. I had a job in healthcare marketing. I dabbled a little bit in technology marketing, education marketing. Those are all great industries, but I was never really passionate about any of them personally. Still, in the back of my head I was like, “Jewelry, jewelry, jewelry.” So, I randomly decided one day—it corresponded with me moving from New Jersey to California. I was overhauling my life in that way, and I wrote on a napkin, “I’m going to move to Los Angeles and continue doing marketing, but I’m going to focus on jewelry.” I just decided that one day.
Sharon: Wow! Were you teaching before that?
Laryssa: I was also teaching, yes. As a millennial, I finished grad school during the 2008-2009 recession, and I entered a job market that was completely messed up. Like many people my age, I had 20 jobs. I was doing all the things. I was like, “Freelance this, freelance that,” teaching, marketing, all of this stuff for many years. I decided I wanted to take all of this experience and see what I could do with it in the jewelry industry.
Before I moved to California—because as you can imagine, it was a big transition moving across the country—I took a few months to live with my parents to save up a little money and try to really figure out what I was doing. I took a job working at a jewelry store, and that’s where I started to learn the language of the customer experience. I got training in selling engagement rings and diamond jewelry. It really confirmed for me that, up to that point, jewelry had been a casual hobby and interest, and now I was like, “I really love this industry.” I fell in love with it. It made me feel confident about this thing I wrote on a little napkin about what I was going to do next.
Sharon: What did you fall in love with?
Laryssa: I loved the product in general. Then it was having that experience of working in the store and helping people get their engagement ring or find the perfect gift for Christmas or Mother’s Day. I was helping people shop and understanding the emotional resonance of what jewelry means to people. I thought that was all so magical.
Sharon: You told me you worked in social. You moved into digital and social marketing in other fields and then segued into jewelry. Do I have that right?
Laryssa: Yes. Even though I’ve been focused on jewelry marketing for six years, my marketing career spans back to 2010 because prior to that, I was working in other industries.
Sharon: How did you get into social when it comes to the other industries and jewelry? It still has so much potential in jewelry.
Laryssa: Social media, you mean?
Sharon: Yeah. I should say digital. I went back and forth between digital and social, but go ahead.
Laryssa: That’s another layer of this, talking about timing and when I finished school and all the changes that were happening in the economy. That 2009-2010 timeframe was when social media became a thing. I think Twitter had launched one or two years prior to that. Instagram was just starting out. Facebook, maybe three or four years before that. It was so new, and I was intrigued by that. So, I was like, “Whoa, what is this? We can make friends and interact with people in all parts of the world based on our interests.” At that time, social media was truly social, not so much in the way it is now, but it was a place to connect. I even had a blog I wrote about social media because I loved it and was so interested in it. It was a natural passion of mine. It was something I was exploring not just in my work, but also after hours. After dinner, I would work on my blog about marketing because I was so interested in it.
Sharon: How did you segue to social or digital in jewelry from commercial, let’s say?
Laryssa: I don’t know. I don’t have a specific step-by-step way I did that. I think it just felt like a natural fit for me. I don’t really know how to explain it.
Sharon: What made you start your podcast? How did you start it? Everybody has a podcast today. It’s ridiculous.
Laryssa: I started my podcast in 2018. So, I’ve had it for like four years now.
Sharon: It’s a long time in podcast years today.
Laryssa: I know. Going back to digital and content, the content creation and distribution and social part, they’re natural passions of mine. Any way I can share myself through content, I want to be doing that. For me, podcasting felt like—I don’t want to say the easy way, but it felt low-entry. I could sit at home and do it, and as long as I learned the tools, I could upload it every week or however often. I also felt like I had a lot to share about certain things, primarily in this industry. Most people are communicating on Instagram, for example, and I didn’t feel like Instagram was giving me the space to fully expand upon the things I wanted to share.
I’m a pretty introverted person, which I think surprises a lot of people because I have so much to say and I’m on camera all the time sharing videos. But I think when I’m in conversation, especially in group settings, I tend to be the one that hangs back a little bit. I’m very quiet and I’m listening. But I feel that when I get on my podcast, it’s my time to shine. I can talk and feel very comfortable in that medium, for some reason.
Sharon: When you started your podcast, what did you want to accomplish jewelry-wise? Did you have an idea?
Laryssa: Sure. I was still very new to the industry at that point, and as I’m sure you know, Sharon, this is an industry that’s very multigenerational. People don’t usually just hop into it. They typically are in it because their families have been in it, or they’ve been in it for many, many years. As a newcomer to the industry, I felt that I needed to prove myself in some way. I felt that the podcast would give me a chance to show people that I am passionate about this industry, that I care and I have something to offer. It was my way of offering that.
Sharon: Did you immediately come up with Joy Joya because you liked jewelry so much? How did that happen?
Laryssa: It was the first name I came up with when I officially started my business in 2016. I don’t remember how I came up with it, but I did like the play on words, the fact that “joya” means jewel in Spanish. I liked that the word “joy” is in there, like the English word joy. It felt natural to me because I think marketing and the topics I talk about can be overwhelming and challenging for a lot of people. Everyone wants to be better at marketing and everyone struggles over that, but I wanted to come to it in a fun, playful, approachable way. The name felt like it expressed that for me.
Sharon: I think you’re right in that it does express it, but there is so much to learn, especially for jewelers who started before Covid. I remember so many people saying, “What do I need online for?” and then being shocked when it actually brought some return.
Laryssa: It’s so true.
Sharon: Your podcast focuses on social, digital, that sort of thing, right?
Laryssa: Yes, primarily digital marketing, but I do occasionally touch on more old-school topics. I just did an episode on direct mail, for example. I’ve covered other, tangential marketing-related things, but typically I’m focused on digital marketing.
Sharon: There’s so much digitally, it could go on for years and years. So, the new podcast, is it Gold Mine?
Laryssa: The Gold Mine is a new segment of my current podcast, but I do have an actual new podcast called Success with Jewelry. It is a cohosted podcast with my partner, Liz Kantner. Liz is a social media marketing expert for the jewelry industry. She works primarily with makers, like metalsmiths and indie jewelry designers. Some consider us to be competitors, but we do service slightly different parts of the industry and have our own strengths.
Earlier this year, we randomly decided to start meeting once a week as friends on Zoom. We would talk about our clients and business challenges we were having, what’s going on in the industry, just connecting and trying to have community with each other. In those conversations, it evolved into us wanting to offer products or services together. We started earlier this year with a webinar series called Success with Jewelry. We had a pretty good showing for that. People would come to our Zoom presentations, and we would talk about various topics in marketing.
More recently, we decided to start this new podcast. Like me, Liz also feels like she has so much to say and offer, but she’s primarily on Instagram and feels very limited by that. I think she sees all the fun I’m having with my podcast and how much I’m able to share and communicate. So, I said, “Hey, let’s try to do this together and invite people into our private conversations to make others feel like they’re not alone in the business challenges they’re having, so they feel a sense of community.” It was also just for entertainment because we like to banter and have fun. So, that’s what we’re doing.
Sharon: I do this weekly. How regularly do you sit down to do your podcast? You also sit with Liz and do a separate podcast?
Laryssa: I do my own podcast twice a week and I do a podcast with Liz once a week.
Sharon: Twice a week. That’s a lot.
Laryssa: It is a lot.
Sharon: Why should jewelers consider digital marketing or social networking? What does it buy them? I see a lot of jewelers at shows. What does it buy them outside of that?
Laryssa: It gives them more resonance. I’m going to call it resonance because if you interact with someone in person, of course that is an amazing experience. There is nothing that beats an in-person interaction. But as we all know, the marketplace is super crowded. We are so distracted. We are bombarded by a million messages all the time. The moment you leave that in-person interaction, then what? Maybe you have a business card or some other printed material, but if that jewelry brand has a digital presence, there’s an opportunity for them to continue connecting with that person in a digital space, whether that’s through email marketing, through their social media posts, through their website, so the connection isn’t limited to that in-person experience.
Sharon: Do indie makers and jewelers, people already up and running, call you and say, “Hey, I’m lost”? What do they call you and say?
Laryssa: Most people who reach out to me have some level of digital marketing going on, and they are frustrated with it, they’re not sure if they’re doing it right, they need it to be optimized, or they need to know what the other options are. They’ve already tried it themselves a little bit. I would say that’s primarily the type of people who reach out to me. I occasionally get people who are starting from scratch, but that happens more rarely.
Sharon: Do they say, “I have a website. I’m trying to redo it, and I don’t know how to make it up to date”? What do they do?
Laryssa: That could be one scenario, that they need their e-commerce website to be more effective. A lot of times what happens is the different digital marketing touchpoints—so, let’s say social media, email, the website—there are a lot of inconsistencies or disconnects between these things. What I’m good at is finding how to make all these things work together and be like a well-oiled machine instead of having these random bits and pieces everywhere.
Sharon: So, branding and rebranding is one of your strengths?
Laryssa: Yes, definitely. It’s something I definitely work on with clients.
Sharon: How would you describe a brand when it comes to jewelry, when it comes to engagement rings and Christmas gifts and anniversary gifts? How would you describe it?
Laryssa: How would I describe a brand?
Sharon: Yeah.
Laryssa: It’s so individual to the business. I don’t know if there’s one way to tackle it. In this jewelry industry we’re in, there’s unfortunately so much same-same.
Sharon: Yes, there is.
Laryssa: It’s really a shame. I think everyone has something unique, but either they’re afraid to step into that uniqueness, or they just don’t know how. They’re too close to it, so they can’t see what the unique thing is. I’m always trying to challenge businesses in this industry, not just people who work with me directly, but through my podcasts, like, “Come on. Let’s find the thing that makes you unique, because we don’t need any more of the same thing. I can guarantee you that. There’s already too much of the same thing.” It’s a little bit of a disease in this industry.
Sharon: I know you’re in Orange County, California. I’m in Los Angeles. Sometimes I think if I were in New York, it might be different or easier because you’d be in the center of things. You’d have more access. Do you find that, or do you think that?
Laryssa: To be in the center of things for a brand?
Sharon: Or to be in New York. Do you feel like sometimes you should be elsewhere?
Laryssa: No. I’m in Glendale, actually. I’m not in Orange County. I am pretty central to the downtown L.A. jewelry scene. I do have a lot of clients in New York, and I don’t feel like not being there is an obstacle at all. I think in this world now, especially post-
Sharon: That’s true. How about on the West Coast? There’s so much going on on the East Coast when you talk about conferences and jewelry things. On the West Coast, it’s hard to find things besides bling if you’re trying to find anything different.
Laryssa: That’s true. Yes, because in New York, there’s—New York City Jewelry Week is coming up. We just had trade shows in August. For me as a service provider, the trade shows are more like I just want to go and see. For me as a service provider, I find the people who attend those trade shows are engaged in trade, and they don’t want to talk about anything else. That’s an important part of the industry. So, you guys do that, and then when you realize it’s not working, you can come talk to me.
Sharon: No, I understand. Maybe it’s me. It just seems that there’s a lot less on this coast than there is on the other coast.
Laryssa: Yeah, that’s true.
Sharon: I love jewelry, but every time I go to a conference, it’s been on the East Coast. I’ve been fortunate that I could go. That’s one of the reasons I started the podcast. I felt like, “What about the person in Iowa or Idaho? They want to know about what you’re saying, right?”
Laryssa: Yeah, definitely. What’s your favorite New York City show?
Sharon: I go to more conferences, more educational. There’s ASJRA. It’s been in Chicago; it’s been in New York. In the last few years, it’s been online. I also like Art Jewelry Forum. They have different things. They do have it here, too. You speak on a lot of panels. You’ve spoken at JCK, AGS. Tell us what those mean and what they are.
Laryssa: Yes, recently I was speaking at JCK. That is pretty much the biggest tradeshow, at least here in North America. It happens in Las Vegas every year. They do have an educational aspect to that conference, but like I mentioned before, I think people’s mindsets are more like they’re there to do actual trade.
Sharon: Yes, to sell or to do business.
Laryssa: So, it’s me just going to pal around and see people I know primarily.
Sharon: There’s a lot to be said for that. There’s a lot to be said for the networking that takes place there. What topics are you talking about?
Laryssa: Yes. This year at JCK, I was on a panel called “The Fringe of Marketing.” We were talking about up-and-coming marketing platforms and tactics that people in the audience maybe wouldn’t be as familiar with.
Sharon: What would you say those are? Instagram, yes. TikTok?
Laryssa: Yeah, we spent a lot of time talking about TikTok. Also, the Metaverse and NFTs and things like that.
Sharon: NFTs? What does that stand for?
Laryssa: Non-fungible tokens.
Sharon: I was telling somebody this morning that you wake up in the morning and say, “O.K., today’s the day I’m going to learn more about Instagram or TikTok,” and then you say, “Why?” because 10 minutes is going to change it all. Even with Instagram, it seems like it’s gotten so commercial as opposed to what it was before, where a jeweler could really show their stuff.
Laryssa: It’s hard to keep up with. There’s something new every week, honestly.
Sharon: I bet there is. I’m laughing; my husband is a TikTok addict. My sister said to me, “Isn’t that for kids?” I said, “Yeah.” I know it’s for adults too, but it’s morphed a lot.
So, what are the top two points you want to make when you talk about jewelry?
Laryssa: Jewelry marketing?
Sharon: Yeah.
Laryssa: I think more people need to be leaning into creating valuable content. I’m just making up a number, but 99% of jewelry businesses are too focused on themselves, the “Me, me, me. Look what I have. Look at me. My stuff is pretty. This is what I can offer you,” and not as focused on the customer and providing value. What does the customer want? What can you give them? How can you make their lives better? And content is a great way to do that. Blog posts, video content, e-books, style guides, things that educate, inform, entertain, inspire the customer, rather than just being an infinite sales pitch for your sparkly thing. That is the primary point I would like to make.
My second point is that I think most of the industry thinks about marketing in a—I don’t want to say old-school or traditional way, because it’s not really, but they’re very focused on PR. How can I get on the celebrity? How can I get in the magazine? A lot of them also lean into social media and advertising. Those are the primary three things that almost every jewelry brand does with their marketing and outreach strategy. But if everyone’s doing the same thing and most people’s products look kind of the same, I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish there.
Sharon: Do you have to persuade a lot of jewelers? Do you find a lot of resistance?
Laryssa: To what I’m saying?
Sharon: Yeah.
Laryssa: I don’t think it’s for everyone, honestly. There are a million marketing agencies out there that will do that. They can go do that, and they can continue seeing the same results they’re seeing, but I think if someone is truly ready to try a different way or think differently about their approach, I’m the person for them.
Sharon: The things you said, blogs and style books, do you do all of that?
Laryssa: Yes.
Sharon: You must be well-positioned to do that. You’ve written some books, right?
Laryssa: I have written a book for my business and another unrelated fiction book.
Sharon: You just want to write, right?
Laryssa: Yes, I am a writer at heart. I studied it. I used to teach writing. It is, to me, the easiest and most natural way to communicate.
Sharon: And it comes in very handy with jewelry. Laryssa, thank you so much for being with us today. It’s been great to have you. I wish you the best with your business.
Laryssa: Thanks, Sharon. I really appreciate chatting with you. I love your podcast, and it was so fun to have you interview me.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
| |||
| Episode 171 Part 2: Find One-of-a-Kind Treasures at Bonhams’ Jill and Byron Crawford Collection Auction with Emily Waterfall, The Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams Auction House. | 12 Oct 2022 | 00:23:52 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Emily Waterfall Based in Los Angeles, Emily Waterfall is the Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams Auction House. With over 16 years of experience, Emily is responsible for business-getting, client development, appraisals and sourcing property for jewelry sales in Los Angeles and in New York. Emily began her career as an intern in London at an auction house where she caught her first glance of exquisite things in 2004. Once completing her internship, she worked in New York as a jewelry cataloguer for a leading international auction house for seven years working on several important jewelry auctions including the jewels of Kelly and Calvin Klein, Eunice Gardiner, Lucia Moreira Salles and others. Prior to joining Bonhams, Emily worked for a prominent jewelry buying firm based in Atlanta, GA from 2012 to 2018.
A native of San Diego, CA, Emily graduated with an undergraduate degree in Art History from Brigham Young University and has completed courses at the Gemological Institute of America and published articles in the American Society of Jewelry Historians newsletters. Additional Resources:
Photos are available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Auctions can seem intimidating to first-time buyers, but they are the best way to get a deal on a true, one-of-a-kind treasure, and auction house staff, like Emily Waterfall, Head of the Jewelry Department at Bonhams Los Angeles, are there to help buyers through the process. Emily joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what to expect at Bonhams’ upcoming auction of the Jill and Byron Crawford collection of artist jewelry; the most impressive pieces she’s seen during her career; and how collectors can enter the world of auctions confidently. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Emily Waterfall, who is head of the jewelry department in the L.A. office of the auction house Bonhams. Welcome back.
Tell us more about this auction coming up. You’re previewing online. How do you handle everything? If you’re the auctioneer, how do you handle it when—this is one reason I’m a little frightened by auctions, because there’s the bid on the line and there’s yours, and there are about five different people from all over the world. How do you handle it? Could I have a chance, basically, is the question.
Emily: Absolutely. There are various ways to bid. You can register a bid online. You can bid on our app. Maybe you have a busy day and you’re running around. You can register to bid on the telephone on the Bonhams website, or you can leave an absentee bid. I get carried away at auctions. I’ll do an absentee bid when I want to put myself on a budget and say I will not spend above this, regardless. That’s a fantastic way. Or come and bid in person.
Nowadays, we are very digital. Most people are bidding online. The days of auctions being full and everyone dressed to the nines are kind of over. Now, we’re more online based. I’ll be auctioneering, and I’ll have bids from absentee bidders; I’ll have telephone bidders; but I see a lot of activity online. It’s funny to me, because I always say when I’m auctioneering, “I see you out there.” I don’t see them, but I know they’re online, and I want to give them presence because they’re just as important as any bidder in the room. I hope that explains that.
Sharon: Yeah. You say, “I see you out there.” Do you have a computer? Is everybody on a computer, and you can see that this person has bid five times and their name? How does that work?
Emily: Everyone has a paddle number, like you’d have if you were in the room. We see those paddle numbers bidding on a computer screen in front of us, so I can track this person’s bid a few times. Maybe we have a new bidder entering online. It’s fascinating. For me, I love every second of auctioneering. It’s exciting to see who’s going to jump in and bid, and sometimes it’s really nerve-wracking.
Sharon: Do you get flustered? When you say nerve-wracking, do you get flustered?
Emily: Absolutely. There are moments when I feel like my heart is racing. We all make mistakes, so I try to brush those off because it’s a pretty intense moment. We have to give ourselves some grace, but in general, we’re well-trained. We all go through very similar training, and it takes years to perfect the craft of it.
Sharon: What kind of training do you go through to become an auctioneer?
Emily: It depends on your house. Everybody’s different. They have their different styles of training, but you usually go through an intensive training where you just practice auctions over and over and over. You have people come in and observe you. They record you. You can see if you have any weirds ticks or anything like that. It’s an interesting process. Then you’re given an opportunity to start selling, but for short periods of time and just to start practicing. It takes years. It takes years to feel the flow and the energy of it, to know what to anticipate, to know how to engage an audience. We also have to engage them. So, there are a lot of layers to it.
Sharon: If a piece comes up and you know the history, will you say, “It comes from the collection of X, Y, Z, but the history is that they bought it in Mexico 40 years ago”?
Emily: I typically just say which estate it’s from. We like to mention the provenance, but we definitely don’t do anything historical. At that point, everyone who’s bidding has heard me singing its praises, so we just notate the important provenance and that we’re so excited to sell it, and then we go on to sell it.
Sharon: I have a friend who’s really big on getting a deal. I don’t feel so much like that. I feel like you’re getting something one of a kind; there’s not another one. Is it because it’s one of a kind that people should be participating in auctions? I realize dealers sometimes do it for a deal, but why do you think people should participate in auctions?
Emily: There are all types of buyers at auctions. I think it’s just particular to your taste. Absolutely, it’s a great value. I cannot argue that enough. Jewelry at auction is substantially less than retail. We’re determining the market daily, but what I’m covering typically has not been seen on the market for 20 to 40 to hundreds of years. It’s the time to find true treasures. We have a lot of repeat buyers in every sale, and I love to see what they lean towards, what they love and want to buy. It shows me their personalities. We all have a different item that might our eye, right?
Sharon: Right.
Emily: And it’s the hunt of it; it’s the excitement of the auction. I think a lot of different things bring people to auctions, but we’re uncovering property that genuinely has not been on the market. That’s the best part of it.
Sharon: You can do that because people call you and say, “Hey, my grandmother died and she left all this jewelry I have no interest in.” I bet you get a lot of those today.
Emily: I do. I wish I remembered this quote. There’s something about how the new generation foolishly laughs at the past. It’s interesting; there are always amazing collections that the next generation has no interest in. It happens often.
Sharon: That’s true.
Emily: So, our job is to help protect that story, sell it well, promote it as well as we can to help the family. Our job is to help people. It’s funny; a lot of people forget that. Our job is actually to work for the consigners, to help them and make the most amount we can for them.
Sharon: It’s interesting, too, when you say that about the past generations. It’s so amazing to me that people didn’t like Art Deco or Tiffany and were like, “Where’s the garbage can?”
Emily: I think they should adopt me, all of them. I love history. The history of jewelry to me is the most fascinating part of this job. Every generation has its own amazing personality to it, and we have to learn how to appreciate that.
Sharon: How is the history the most fascinating?
Emily: I love the stories of who owned it. I love the stories of how it was acquired. I love the stories of the makers and the periods of time that they were made. Jewelry is hand in hand with cultural events and fashion. Everything has evolved together. Jewelry has not been in a bubble by itself; it’s a reaction to what’s going on globally, and every area has had different events occur.
Jewelry, to me, embodies artistic expression, and I love different periods of expression. Studio jewelry art was amazing when it was coming out because everyone was reacting to boring diamond jewelry. Then again, French Art Deco was very much a reaction, and the amazing results of creative thinking were happening together from poets and artists, interior designers and architects and jewelry. It’s all hand in hand, and that to me is extraordinary.
Sharon: People can look at jewelry and say, “Oh, it’s so dated,” but you can look around the corner, let’s say. Can you see what’s next? Do you identify it? You don’t have to say it, but can you identify what’s next when you look at pieces?
Emily: I can’t find out exactly what’s next, but to me, it’s funny that yellow gold is king right now, whereas 15, 20 years ago, it was all white gold platinum. Again, this is the generation shifting from what their mothers had or what everyone was wearing. Tastes are changing, so it’s always evolving. I think there’s room for all of it. I don’t think anything should be neglected, because anyone who is expressing themselves expresses their view differently. It might be a chunky, 80s Bulgari gold necklace, or it might be a Graff perfect diamond necklace. Everyone has their different view of expression.
Sharon: It’s interesting; there are some pieces I’ll avoid because I remember they were all trying to get rid of it 40 years ago, and now it’s the hottest thing around.
This auction that’s coming up on November do you have a favorite?
Emily: I don’t think I can pick a favorite at all. To me, it’s a great collection across the board. It’s this idea that it’s not about the monetary value of what’s constructed; it’s more about the theory behind it and what was made. I have some pieces by Claire Falkenstein which are really interesting. We have some great Zuni Tunes pieces, which are wonderful, magical, Disney-inspired rings, quite a large collection of those. I’m excited to be selling those, and that in particular I’m going to have my eye on. Then I have Spratling and Pineda which I loved selling. Some Jensen—
Sharon: So, Claire Falkenstein, the artist who did some jewelry.
Emily: Yes.
Sharon: You’re selling some of that. O.K. And then the Disney rings, you said Zuni Tunes?
Emily: Zuni Tunes.
Sharon: Were they made by Disney or by different makers?
Emily: No, this is Native American. This is made by Native Americans selling on the side of the road. These are interesting pieces. We see them on the secondary market. We’ve not had any international auctions, so this is our first attempt, and I’m really excited about them. They have a wonderful collection of Zuni Tunes. So, for any Zuni Tunes collectors out there, please contact me. I’m so excited to sell them.
Sharon: You said William Spratling and Antonio Pineda?
Emily: Yes. I’m just looking at my list now. Los Castillo, Aguilar. It’s quite an amazing collection of Mexican silver. One private collector in particular is a wealth of knowledge. I can’t mention the name. I wish I could, but a very important buyer in that world is now selling their collection with me, and I’m honored to be selling that.
Sharon: Why would somebody sell a collection if they’ve spent years putting it together?
Emily: I think it depends on if we’re wearing it, if it has use to us. They might have moved on. It’s not ours to say. It’s all per collector and where they’re at. Like you were saying, there are some pieces you are willing to say goodbye to. This time, this client is prepared to say goodbye.
Sharon: That’s what I’m talking about with the hidden stuff. You mentioned a person in Orange County, which is not so far away. How do you find out about these things?
Emily: A lot of times people are recommended, which I’m honored by; I love those referrals. A lot of people saw how well we did with the Jill and Byron collection last October, and we are selling some pieces just because of that sale. We were contacted because it did well on an international market.
Sharon: Was that the first international modernist sale, you said?
Emily: It was for us. That was the first sale, and I believe that was the largest single collection to come to markets internationally at any house. It was an extraordinary event. We definitely broke records for certain artists like Betty Cooke. We had great sales for Native American of Laloma and Monongya and Spratling. Across the board, we commanded very high prices for some of those pieces. It was wonderful.
Sharon: As a buyer, I could understand that. If it’s a Spratling, there’s only so much Spratling around. I’m just using that because he’s a known name. You say there’s great value. Is there value because it’s one of a kind? Is it something that a normal person on the ground should consider? What should I consider, and do I have a chance?
Emily: You absolutely have a chance. It just depends on how many people are interested in that one lot. If you’re the only buyer, you’re going to get it at a fantastic price with little competition, or there will be quite a bit of people bidding against you and you need to be prepared to fight for it. Every lot we don’t really know who’s going to be interested and who’s going to bid until the auction starts, but it’s absolutely worth fighting, hands down. My best advice is to be prepared, know what number you’re going to spend, and just go for it. How exciting! It’s a great story to tell when you wear it. You can say, “Oh, I bought this at auction.” It’s a great conversation starter, and jewelry sparks a lot of conversation.
Sharon: I’ve only really looked at auction catalogues and online. Is it something where, if I talk to you or the specialist, you could say, “There’s been a lot of interest in this piece. I’ve had a lot of calls about it,” or “You’re the first person I’ve talked to”?
Emily: We don’t typically talk about interest because obviously we try to keep people’s interest private, but we can say to you the importance of it. We can talk about it. Sometimes they’re not one of a kind. With Spratling, there are several versions of some designs. So, we can speak on that for you.
We can advise you, not necessarily on how much to spend, but what to anticipate. Our job is to be helpful. Our job is to help guide you through it. We can be on the phone with you and cheer you on, be with you, and make sure we don’t let you go over a certain amount. We can be your buddy through that part of it.
Sharon: Is it best to go through Bonhams for an auction, or is it better to bid online? There are usually about five different places.
Emily: We love it when people contact us. We want to be helpful and answer questions you might have. Some people are being honest and just want to bid online, and that’s fantastic. Honestly, there are multiple ways today, but always ask an expert your questions. We definitely don’t want buyer’s remorse. We want to help you through the process and make sure it brings you joy. It should be a great experience.
Sharon: For example, let’s say I won the piece. Then you wrap the piece up and send it out? What do you do?
Emily: It depends on what you’d like to do. You can either pick it up from us at our office, which we love—we love to see what people bought—or we can do shipments. There are all sorts of ways we can make it happen.
Sharon: What do you want to accomplish with the preview at Art Jewelry Forum on October 4? It’s online. What do you want to do?
Emily: I want to express the breadth of all the amazing jewelry we have, let people know about it and discuss certain areas of it that are of interest. It’s letting people know what we have. That’s the most wonderful part of it, speaking to the importance of it. Again, I have an art history background. I know a lot about fine jewelry. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some phenomenal mentors in my crew, but art jewelry, to me, is a new market in terms of international recognition. I think it’s time for it to be considered as valuable. It’s time for it to be on the market on a regular basis. There are buyers all over the world for this, and I’ve seen that first-hand.
Sharon: Because art jewelry means so many different things to different people, are you talking about—is historical art jewelry different than Manfred Bischoff, who’s still alive? What are you talking about?
Emily: It’s across the board. It encompasses quite a large audience, being from different areas geographically, different time periods. I would like to encompass all of it. I would like it to be its own entity for auction and have regular sales and have property coming up for sale, because sometimes they’re hard to find. It’s a little more of a hunt. I would like to have artists that are here and artists of the past. I’d like to encompass all of it.
Sharon: Do you think Bonhams is pursuing art jewelry, in the sense of becoming the house you go to?
Emily: I’d love that, but I realize there’s room for everybody. We tested the market last year. We saw a great response. This year, we already had a Clifford Mexican silver sale. I think we’re just starting to step into the ladder of it and see what it is. I hope it evolves to where people choose Bonhams, absolutely.
Sharon: What is my next step? If I am listening to this, what would the next step be for somebody like me? Do I go online to your site or go online to place a bid? I’ve never done anything like that. What would somebody do?
Emily: Yes, go to Bonhams. The sale will be published online around October 4. So, go on there and just shop. Look and see what you like. Contact us. All our information will be available for you online. See what you like. We aren’t printing catalogues anymore. I’ve noticed that people that are very savvy to jewelry are looking on their phones, their iPads or computers. We’ll have additional shots of the items. We’ll have model shots so you can understand size and scale. From there, you can register to bid. And always ask us, the experts, for that sale. We want to help you.
Sharon: I’m laughing because when you say it’s online, who looks at a computer? I do if I’m at my desk, but I’m on my phone on Instagram. Some of the auction houses promote their auctions on Instagram. It’s the only way you hear about them sometimes.
Emily: Absolutely. Everything’s now really digital, which is great because it gives us more room to reach out to more people. I love looking through attractions. I love looking at different angles of the piece, looking at model shots, reading the descriptions. It’s very enjoyable.
Sharon: I bet it would be. I’m always surprised when there’s only one angle of a piece showed. You’re like, “Where’s the back?”
Emily: For modern studio jewelry, you need to see signatures. The signatures really matter. So do different angles, understanding scale. You want to know how that necklace will fit. You want to understand the scale of a brooch or a ring. You need to see it in proportion. That’s very, very important.
Sharon: Emily, I really appreciate you telling us about all of this today. I will remind everybody that the auction itself is November 10th. It starts Los Angeles time, or does it start New York time?
Emily: Los Angeles time. It starts at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Sharon: And it goes until everything is sold?
Emily: Yes, until the very end.
Sharon: You have your work cut out for you. Then on October 4, I don’t know about the other previews, but for Art Jewelry Forum, if you go online, you can sign up there. It’s free. Thank you so much for being with us today. We greatly, greatly appreciate it.
Emily: Thank you so much. I loved all your questions today. It was great speaking with you.
Sharon: Thank you so much.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 171 Part 1: Find One-of-a-Kind Treasures at Bonhams’ Jill and Byron Crawford Collection Auction with Emily Waterfall, The Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams Auction House. | 10 Oct 2022 | 00:23:24 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Emily Waterfall Based in Los Angeles, Emily Waterfall is the Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams Auction House. With over 16 years of experience, Emily is responsible for business-getting, client development, appraisals and sourcing property for jewelry sales in Los Angeles and in New York. Emily began her career as an intern in London at an auction house where she caught her first glance of exquisite things in 2004. Once completing her internship, she worked in New York as a jewelry cataloguer for a leading international auction house for seven years working on several important jewelry auctions including the jewels of Kelly and Calvin Klein, Eunice Gardiner, Lucia Moreira Salles and others. Prior to joining Bonhams, Emily worked for a prominent jewelry buying firm based in Atlanta, GA from 2012 to 2018. A native of San Diego, CA, Emily graduated with an undergraduate degree in Art History from Brigham Young University and has completed courses at the Gemological Institute of America and published articles in the American Society of Jewelry Historians newsletters.Find One-of-a-Kind Additional Resources: Photos are available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Auctions can seem intimidating to first-time buyers, but they are the best way to get a deal on a true, one-of-a-kind treasure, and auction house staff, like Emily Waterfall, Head of the Jewelry Department at Bonhams Los Angeles, are there to help buyers through the process. Emily joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what to expect at Bonhams’ upcoming auction of the Jill and Byron Crawford collection of artist jewelry; the most impressive pieces she’s seen during her career; and how collectors can enter the world of auctions confidently. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it’s released later this week.
Today my guest is Emily Waterfall, who is head of the jewelry department in the L.A. office of the auction house Bonhams. They will be having their second auction of modernist jewelry from the collection of Jill and Byron Crawford. This includes many masters of silver jewelry. We will hear more about this from Emily today and her own jewelry journey. Emily, welcome to the program.
Emily: Thank you for having me.
Sharon: So glad you could be here. Give us an overview of your jewelry journey. Did you like jewelry when you were young? Did your education lead you to this?
Emily: I loved jewelry when I was little. My mom had some fun pieces, in particular a butterfly necklace that I always coveted. It was a simple gold necklace. I remember when she wore it, I would play with it. Since then, she’s gifted it to me, so it’s a very sentimental item for me.
My journey actually began in art history. I studied art history for many years and was given an internship with Sotheby’s in London and moved myself across to the U.K. I worked there for many years and then made my way into the jewelry department where I truly found my calling.
Sharon: So, you weren’t studying in London; you moved to take the internship at Sotheby’s.
Emily: Yes, I was very lucky. A gentleman, who was a scholar of archiving, helped me make my way to the 19th century, which was hilarious because now obviously digital archives are everywhere. When I started, it was the days of cutting and pasting from printed catalogues using glue sticks. My job was to basically archive all the recent sales of any paintings that were important because we didn’t have search engines. We didn’t have those things, so my very first job in the art world was cutting and pasting and gluing.
Sharon: You’re bringing back memories. I remember working with a cartoonist who worked the old-fashioned way, and I thought, “Oh my god, O.K.”
So, did you study at GIA after? In art history, you don’t really study GIA, right?
Emily: I studied at GIA after. I was fortunate enough to do that during my time at Sotheby’s when I was a cataloguer in the department in the New York office. I took my courses then.
Sharon: So, you moved from London back to New York?
Emily: Yes, my visa was about to end, and Sotheby’s offered me a job in New York. So, I moved there and was working in several different departments. I started getting into jewelry and truly found love. I studied a lot of 19th century sculpture, and with jewelry, my art history background just blossomed. I was so excited to see all the pieces I was seeing. As a cataloguer in the jewelry department, every piece we sold went through my desk, so you can imagine the type of education I got. It was extraordinary. It was a very special time in my career.
Sharon: There are a lot of jewelers or people in the jewelry industry who study art history. Jewelry history isn’t really taught, so they study art history and either continue in that or they segue into jewelry.
So, why should I consider Bonhams? If I had art or jewelry to sell, why would I consider Bonhams?
Emily: There’s definitely room for every house in the world. That’s one thing I’ve learned. But in particular at Bonhams, we’ve had exponential growth over the last three years. In Los Angeles, we went from four auctions a year to 13, speaking to the fervor of which we’re growing. We’ve also invested a lot into art jewelry, Mexican silver, and other areas in the international market that weren’t necessarily being addressed.
Seeing a collection, if I’m not enthusiastic about it and I’m not enthusiastic about selling it, I’m doing a disservice to the collection. So, my advice to people is when they’re picking a house, make sure whoever is selling it for you has energy and the fervor to sell it well. That’s what my key is.
Sharon: So, you went from four to 13 auctions?
Emily: Yes.
Sharon: That’s a lot. Are you in charge of most of them? Is that just in jewelry, or is that art and jewelry? What is that?
Emily: That’s just jewelry in Los Angeles.
Sharon: Wow!
Emily: That’s my department. We run 13 auctions a year. It’s pretty exciting.
Sharon: You have to have passion to do something like that.
Emily: Yeah.
Sharon: Would you consider that Bonhams has a modernist bent? If somebody has a modernist collection, should they consider Bonhams?
Emily: Yes, I would say the sale we had last year for Jill and Byron Crawford was a huge success. That was across the board, from modern to Mexican to Scandinavian jewelry artists. We really covered the gamut with that sale and showed what we can accomplish with that.
A lot of what we’re doing is taking in collections, because collections come us. We hunt for them as well, but we have to take what we see and figure out how best to sell it, who’s the best market for it, how to speak to other departments or other areas, because every buyer at auction is interested in jewelry. Jewelry is the most common denominator. You might not collect Chinese works of art or cars or Impressionists, but everyone has jewelry.
Sharon: Wow! How is that? Let’s say if I collect Chinese export stuff, how is it that I come to jewelry through that?
Emily: Again, we reach out to clients that have shown interest in our area from other departments and we promote that, but a lot of people know to come to us with jewelry because they see on our website our sales. They might have been looking at the Chinese work. Right now, it’s Asia week at Bonhams in New York. They might see on the site that we’ve just had two big sales, one in Los Angeles this week, one in London, so they know to come to us for jewelry as well.
Sharon: You’re having a second auction of the Jill and Byron Crawford collection. Is that what’s left over?
Emily: Jill and Byron have been amazing to work with. They’re such amazing collectors, not only for the type of properties, but for the quantity. So, we’ll still have plenty to sell for them. We’re so excited to be selling it. The whole sale is not just Jill and Byron; a portion of it is. We also have an important collection of Mexican silver from an important collector from the Orange County area. We also have a collection of John de Spray jewelry which I’m really excited to sell. French jewelry, very industrial, right?
Sharon: Yes.
Emily: And we also have similar Scandinavian pieces, some studio artists. There are over 1,500 pieces, so we’ll be selling it for quite some time.
Sharon: And the next major sale for this particular collection is? What is it?
Emily: November 10th
Sharon: You’re also previewing it for Art Jewelry Forum in October. I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch, but who else are you previewing for? There’s so much.
Emily: Just you two. I’ll be previewing at Bonhams and digitally on our website.
Sharon: Wow! That’s interesting to know that you have an interest in modernists. There are not many houses that one would think to bring their stuff if they have a modernist collection.
What is it that you like about the auction business? You like jewelry; I understand that. What is it that you like about the auction business?
Emily: I tried to leave it many times. I truly love it because of the speed of it. It’s a very rapid, fast-paced place to be. I love auction day. There’s nothing better than auctioning property you fought for, to see it do well on the auction block. I’m an auctioneer as well, so it’s very rewarding standing up there selling it on behalf of a client and doing well on it. I love the quantity of property we see. We’re on the front line. We’re the sale market value, right?
Sharon: Yeah.
Emily: We’re on the front line of it. We’re seeing thousands and thousands of pieces a year, and with that comes the education through osmosis. There might have been benchmarks I hadn’t seen or another studio artist I hadn’t known about. We’re seeing more and more daily than you would see anywhere else, and that’s my favorite part of it.
Sharon: I think that would be very hard to match in any other profession, the excitement, the action. I could understand feeling like, “Let me try something else,” but that would be very hard to match. Do you think you’d be as happy if you were auctioning something else, like art jewelry or rugs?
Emily: Yesterday I was auctioning a furniture sale, and I didn’t feel as much pressure because it wasn’t clients I had consigned. It was a different feeling. I love auction. I would work in any part of it, absolutely, but my passion for jewelry will never be subdued. I love it. I love every part of it. I love screaming from the rooftop when a collection is selling. That’s just my personality. I probably wouldn’t be as happy, but I’d be happy to work anywhere in the auction world.
Sharon: What’s the best thing you’ve ever auctioned, maybe the highest price or the most interesting? What’s the best thing you remember?
Emily: There are maybe two of those. I can split those up. My favorite collection was a collection of Lady Ashley. It was in our main New York sale, and it was a collection of fantastic Art Deco jewelry. This was a treasure trove. She was married to a lord, then Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable next, another lord, and then a prince. She had amazing Cartier Art Deco boxes, compacts in their cases. Some I’d never seen in that style before. One in particular was a polka dot pattern, and it was black and white. It was amazing. She also had some impressive Cartier aquamarine bracelets, which we all know those are rare to find. That was such an amazing collection because it was an amazing story; it was an amazing property, and it sold exceptionally well at auction.
By value, though, it’s the sale we did last year. We sold an emerald bracelet. It was over 107 carats of emeralds perfectly matched. It’s most likely they were cut from the same stone. This one was from the Crocker Fagan family from San Francisco. We are so excited to work with them again. We also sold a Cartier egret from them. The emerald bracelet was estimated at $1.8-$2.2 million and we sold it for $3.2 million.
Sharon: Wow!
Emily: So, that was a joy.
Sharon: Do the numbers scare you when you’re auctioning? Do they mean anything when you put the hammer down and you’re at $3.2?
Emily: It’s exciting. At that point, you’re just full of adrenaline when you’re selling higher value lots. There’s a lot of elegance in part of it. There’s a lot of communication of bidders either on the phone, on the internet or in the room, so there’s a lot of conversation going on about value. It’s a very exciting moment. I smile. I’m the worst at bluffing. You can see what’s on my face 99% of the time, so in those moments, I have definitely a big smile on my face.
Sharon: Are you given auctions from New York? Do they tell you the things that are going to come? If you have a sale in London, Hong Kong and, by the way, we’re going to do it in Los Angeles, can you preview it or tout it? Is that part of your work?
Emily: Yes, the New York office and myself work hand in hand. I source property for both sales as well as my New York colleague, Caroline. We work daily together, and we both preview our sales in each other’s offices. I just previewed our September sale in New York. She previews every New York sale in L.A. We also preview up in San Francisco. We love our San Francisco clients. It’s a fantastic place to be. So, we’re making sure we’re everywhere we can be, and we work together. In terms of property, though, let’s not discount the West Coast. My goodness, I found the best property of my career on the West Coast.
Sharon: I’d like to know where it is. I was talking to somebody yesterday, and I thought, “Where’s the jewelry on the West Coast?” It’s all so bling. There’s no history.
Emily: There are major hidden gems on the West Coast. We have found extraordinary collections. Again, Lady Ashley was acquired in California, Crocker Fagan up in San Francisco, Jill and Byron Crawford here in Malibu. There’s amazing property in California. We have such phenomenal heritage and history here, and with that there are major, major collectors. They just might not be wearing it to the grocery store.
Sharon: I had never heard of Jill and Byron Crawford. They had an amazing collection and, yes, they’re not wearing it to the grocery store. Is part of your job developing new business?
Emily: Absolutely. I’ve worked with some clients for years. Sometimes they might not feel comfortable yet. They might want to see where the markets are, or it’s sentimental. Jewelry is the most sentimental category, absolutely. A lot of times, clients need time to part with pieces, but they know they have to say goodbye. It’s my job to make sure I’m writing whenever they say want to sell it.
Sharon: That’s a good way to think of it. There’s somebody I know who will ask me, “Are you finished with it?” and I’ll think, “Yeah, I guess I am.” I’ve only had it for a couple of years, but I’m finished with it. I’ve worn it. I’m not going to wear it more for whatever reason.
When it comes to larger auctions, do you handle them differently? This is a big auction. Is it being handled differently than the smaller one?
Emily: Every sale takes a different nuance to it. It depends on the property we have. We’re definitely not like a jewelry store, where we have a ton of one lot. We have just one, and every sale has different property, so we have to cater to every sale as its own entity.
We just had this September sale, where we had property from a motion picture director, Mankiewicz, who directed All About Eve. We also had a collection of Disney in there, art jewelry. Shifting to art jewelry is entirely different. We have to create a new narrative for the sale, how to handle it, how we can do the best for it. I love that part of it. I love the storytelling. We’re the keepers of these stories. When these collections are given to us, it’s our job to tell the story, get people excited and get them registered to bid, basically.
Sharon: I think that’s very important. When you buy something, who cares who it used to belong to? But still, it used to belong to somebody, a name that people recognize.
Do you work with dealers? Do you work with lawyers? Do they call and say, “Hey, Emily, have I something for you”? How does that work?
Emily: Every day is different. I guess that’s another part of the job I love. I can be called by a trust attorney tomorrow. I could be called by a tax attorney, dealers. On Tuesday, we had our jewelry auction—this is just to give you context.
Sharon: Yes, please.
Emily: I was auctioneering all day until about 2:30, and then I got an email from a colleague about a collection that someone wanted me to pick up that day. So, I jump in my car, go pick up the collection, back to work. Every day is super different. We get a lot of interest through attorneys, through dealers, through other colleagues, through friends. My favorite interaction is by word of mouth. I love when people recommend me. It’s very, very important for me, not only for selling, but for buying. Whatever you’re looking for, let me hunt for it. I’m a hunter. That’s my job. Let me find it for you. Let me help you sell it.
Sharon: Do people call you and say, “Please let me know if there’s an emerald ring or an emerald bracelet”? I never see them, but do people call you and say, “Call me if something comes up”?
Emily: Yes, we have wish lists. I think I have my own personal wish list. We’re constantly working on those. We try to make sure we can help and find those pieces for anyone.
Sharon: What’s on your wish list?
Emily: I have quite a big one.
Sharon: What’s at the top or near the top?
Emily: Obscure French Art Deco is at the top. Now I have a much better love for some studio jewelry, in particular Betty Cooke. I’m really obsessed with her. They were in the Crawford sale. Those are on my wish lists right now.
Sharon: Betty Cooke is still alive, isn’t she? I think she’s still alive.
Emily: Yeah. She’s another of these dynamic women that I adore because she started a business. These were the times when we weren’t necessarily allowed to have bank accounts and credit cards. She started a whole business for herself that’s still running today. I love having pieces of history like that.
Sharon: And she’s affordable too. It’s expensive, but it’s affordable.
Emily: She’s in my price range.
Sharon: As opposed to a huge diamond. I’m not saying you couldn’t buy a huge diamond, but it’s more affordable than buying a huge diamond, I think.
Emily: Yeah, exactly. It’s more like the jewelry I can wear daily going to my son’s baseball game, things like that.
Sharon: Is that why you have come to like modernist jewelry, because it’s wearable?
Emily: Yes. Again, having my art history background, I love concepts. I love intention in design. I love expression. For me, art jewelry really embodies all of that.
Sharon: Does it make a difference to you if you’re looking at a piece—I might look at a piece of art jewelry, modernist jewelry, and not understand it, but then I understand it better if somebody explains it. Does that happen?
Emily: All the time. It’s funny; when I first started out in art history, I always ran into people who would criticize contemporary art and say, “Oh, I could do that.” I think it’s similar in art jewelry. “Oh, it’s too crude,” or “It doesn’t sense,” but once you explain it, their eyes light up, right?
Sharon: Yes.
Emily: They completely understand it and embrace it. Art Smith, he was making jewelry that was more about form. It was more about dynamic shapes and lines, and that wasn’t being done before. It was different from the Harry Winston diamond necklaces at the time.
Sharon: That’s true. You have to recognize what’s coming next, what’s around the bend, what’s around the corner. And it’s hard to wear a diamond to go grocery shopping. | |||
| Episode 35: Metalwerx: Innovation in Jewelry Making and Learning with Lindsay Minihan, Executive Director at Metalwerx | 05 Oct 2022 | 00:22:53 | |
Lindsay Minihan is the Executive Director of Metalwerx, an innovative school and community studio for jewelry making and metal arts located in Waltham, Massachusetts. In the past 13 years, she has doubled the organization’s financial capacity, expanded the annual curriculum to include over 130 annual courses, created 29 workspaces for jewelers, and initiated many new programs to better serve the jewelry and design community. Members of the Metalwerx community work as teachers’ assistants and school ambassadors, ensuring that every experience is productive and memorable. Lindsay is trained as a metalsmith and is still creatively active while also making time to focus on family. Lindsay volunteers and supports other arts organizations, including Society of North American Goldsmiths and Women’s Jewelry Association. She has worked at major trade shows selling tools for Otto Frei and Foredom, juried national student scholarship awards for Women’s Jewelry Association as well as Excellence in Craft Awards for League of NH Craftsmen. Lindsay loves working with students, educators, and visiting artists, and is passionate about contemporary jewelry – both making and wearing it. She is always looking for ways to strengthen her local community and create opportunities for people to find self-empowerment as well as professional and personal enrichment through metal arts. What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional resources: | |||
| Episode 170 Part 2: Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture with Jewelry Designer, Warren Feld | 30 Sep 2022 | 00:18:14 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Warren Feld For Warren Feld, beading and jewelry making endeavors have been wonderful adventures. These adventures over the past 32 years have taken Warren from the basics of bead stringing and bead weaving, to wire working and silver smithing, and onward to more complex jewelry designs which build on the strengths of a full range of technical skills and experiences. He, along with his partner Jayden Alfre Jones, opened a small bead shop in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, about 30 years ago, called Land of Odds. Over time, Land of Odds evolved into a successful internet business. In the late 1990s, Jayden and Warren opened another brick-and-mortar bead store – Be Dazzled Beads – in a trendy neighborhood of Nashville. Together both businesses supply beaders and jewelry artists with all the supplies and parts they need to make beautiful pieces of wearable art. In 2000, Warren founded The Center For Beadwork & Jewelry Arts (CBJA). CBJA is an educational program, associated with Be Dazzled Beads, for beaders and jewelry makers. The program approaches education from a design perspective. There is a strong focus on skills development, showing students how to make better choices when selecting beads, parts and stringing materials, and teaching them how to bring these together into a beautiful, yet functional, piece of jewelry. Warren is the author of two books, “So You Want to Be a Jewelry Designer: Merging Your Voice with Form” and “Pearl Knotting…Warren’s Way,” as well as many articles for Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Links: Warren Feld Jewelry Warren Feld – Medium.com So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer School on Teachable.com Learn To Bead Blog The Ugly Necklace Contest – Archives Land of Odds Warren Feld – Facebook Warren Feld – LinkedIn Warren Feld – Instagram Warren Feld – Twitter Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Warren Feld didn’t become a jewelry designer out of passion, but out of necessity. He and his partner Jayden opened their jewelry studio and supply store, Land of Odds/Be Dazzled Beads, due to financial worries. But coming to the world of jewelry as an outsider is what has given Warren his precise and unique perspective on how jewelry should be made. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the language of jewelry design; why jewelry making should be considered a profession outside of art or craft; and why jewelry design is similar to architecture or engineering. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is jewelry designer Warren Feld. Warren wears several hats. He has an online company called Land of Odds. He has a brick-and-mortar store, Bedazzled Beads, and he’s a jewelry designer. He’s located in Tennessee. He’s been a jewelry designer for decades and has a written a book called “So You Want to Be a Jewelry Designer.” Welcome back.
Can you design a bad piece of jewelry? Can you come up with a bad piece of jewelry?
Warren: Yes and no. When we get into the cognitive issues, I deal with them in my book in detail. It’s a little too scientific for here, but in general, jewelry is organized as a circle. A circle is appreciated as something organized, unified, holistic. A circle in and of itself is beautiful. So, it’s really hard to design something that’s bad. While you can get better and better and better, it’s hard to get worse and worse and worse. It’s much harder.
Sharon: Let’s say I bring in a bunch of beads—I haven’t beaded for a million years—and some silk cord, and I say, “O.K., Warren, what should I do with this stuff?” Can you look at it and see something in it?
Warren: Usually. In that situation, they’re the designer; they have to live with it. I can guide them. I can help them make choices. I can help them narrow things down to two or three, but I try to always encourage them to make the final choice. But in my mind, I usually can do something really neat with it.
Sharon: It’s interesting that you say you learned so much just from taking things apart, seeing how they’re done. I had someone come on here and they were like, “Why did the guy glue this? I don’t understand.”
Warren: Yeah, you learn so much. That was a lucky break, that I decided to deal with repairs. I didn’t care enough about jewelry to say, “Oh, I’ve got to do repairs,” I thought I should do repairs. It was a lucky circumstance that it was one of my interests.
Sharon: Was the book burning a hole in your mind for a long time? Did you feel like, “I have to write this down”?
Warren: It’s really funny you say that. It’s like I wrote the book, and it’s all the stuff out of my head. It’s so great. It’s there in a book, so I don’t have to find it somewhere in my files. I don’t have to think as hard about different concepts. I can just go to my book and there it is. I don’t have to remember.
Sharon: Was it on your mind for a long time, the authorship, putting it all together?
Warren: About 20 years. I struggled, though. I wanted to write a funny book about funny things that happened with the different jewelry designers I’ve met in the store and how they try to solve things. I still might write that funny book, but this was the right book to get all the ideas out and really crystallize things. I was more interested in asking, “What does it take for jewelry designers to see themselves as a profession?” If they don’t see themselves as a profession, if they see themselves only as technicians, then we lose a lot. First off, as technicians, if they’re just following a set of steps and cranking out jewelry, machines can do that. We don’t need a designer. We don’t need the creativity. We don’t need that insight. We don’t need all those different artists’ hands to show what they can do, so we can appreciate a variety of ideas and concepts and interactions. What need is there if they’re technicians?
So, let’s make them professionals, but there’s a lot of pressure not to go in that direction. There’s a lot of pressure in art to keep subsuming jewelry under art and not let it have its own expression. There are a few jewelry design schools in the United States and more abroad, but they mostly teach metalcraft and technique. They really need to teach ideas. We have all these great jewelry designers all over the world who can describe their expression, but we really want to understand it. We want to build upon it. We want to understand how the ideas in their heads resonate, how that gets translated into jewelry, how people respond to their jewelry. We want to be able to articulate that much more deeply than just describing, “These are the materials. These are the dimensions and the measurements. This is the general philosophy of what they’re trying to do. This is the title of the show.” There’s a lot more. I was trying to build that. That was more motivating than writing my funny book. I might write that funny book.
Sharon: That sounds like a funny book, like a different podcast. It sounds like what you’re talking about would be difficult to put into words.
Warren: It is. I’ve had a lot of experience teaching students for a long time over 25, 30 years, so I’m used to translating hard concepts into language that beginners and intermediates can understand and grab onto. When I talk about parts, I give an example of a famous designer who does wrap bracelets, two pieces of leather and beads that go around your wrist, I’d say, two times. She charges $500 per bracelet, and I had the chance to repair many of them. She uses Indian leather, which dries out and cracks, and Chinese fire-polish beads, which is a clear bead with a color coating. The coatings rub off, so the side that faces the skin rubs off. This all happens well within a year, maybe six months. She uses a weak weaving thread that will break. She doesn’t reenforce the beginning and the end, so the weaving threads split at the beginning and the end. You have to reenforce the end so that doesn’t happen. It’s an architectural thing. For $500, she can use great leather, fire-polish beads, a nylon bead cord. She can do a silk wrap on each end to secure the ends, so they don’t split down the middle. She can still charge $500 and make a killing. It’s easy to come up with examples like that.
I can show you a piece I did. I did the piece as a series of columns, and the columns are connected with a hinge. You can’t really see it in the piece, but they’re hinged. What I wanted was, no matter what the body type, that the necklace would always be the right shape because it’s columns and hinges. It wouldn’t look weird. It wouldn’t create a bridge. It would always take the shape of the body. I pictured that a person might want to wear it close to the neck or lower on the breast, so it has a chain that’s adjustable.
I pictured the person wearing it to always want to capture someone’s eye, no matter what direction they’re looking at it, from the side, from the back. So, along some of the sides, I strategically wove in red Austrian crystal beads. They’ll catch your eye, but you don’t see it in the piece. The piece is basically blue. I used some brass beads that reflect light when white hits the piece. I used some glass beads that absorb light. Again, when I’m talking about design and architecture, I’m thinking about people viewing it. I’ve done all these things as examples of what people can think about. In the book, I’ve put a lot of this into English as best as I can.
Sharon: Most of the books I’ve looked at have been jewelry history or how-tos. I was thinking about this when I read your book, because you said that a piece of jewelry needs to be orchestrated from many angles, which is what you were just talking about. I remember a jeweler—this was years ago—who was talking about the fact that jewelry requires a lot of engineering. I never thought about that before in terms of bracelets not turning or things like that.
Warren: There is really no difference between making a bracelet and designing a bridge. It’s a different scale. You tie one end to the other. It’s got to look good and fit in a community. You’ve got to worry about your materials and how they handle stresses and strains. It has to be secure. It’s got to be durable. So, there’s really not much difference between the two. There’s all this architecture and engineering involved.
A lot of people don’t learn that. Most people learn a technique and they just do it, but technique has a part of it that helps you maintain a shape, and another part of the technique helps you maintain what I called movement and flow. Sometimes you have to be tighter or harder, sometimes not as hard, in order to achieve both maintaining the shape and maintaining the ability of that shape to adjust to all these forces and move and flow and feel comfortable. How many how-to books talk about that? They don’t.
Sharon: No, that is true.
Warren: In every technique the students learn that. I show them and force them to touch it. I personally touch on the results of different techniques and tell them what’s going on, what it feels like, what you can do. If it’s loose in one direction and tight in the other, you can’t make a curve. They never even thought about that, and now they do. They’re forced to think about that. When you teach a technique, I think it’s important. For a teacher to teach a technique that way, they have to be conditioned to teach that way. There’s no guide in jewelry design. There’s no academic base, a foundation for someone to ask those questions or be triggered to think that way. That’s one of the things I was trying to do in my book when I wrote the last chapters, where I teach all this stuff. You have to know.
I’ve had to train a lot of teachers through my education program. It’s really hard to do because at first you think, “I can make as much money not doing this work. I have to give them those instructions and just sit there.” I can’t do that in my program. I want the teachers to break the task up into little pieces and explain what this little piece of the task is trying to accomplish, so the students can know how to vary the technique as they’re going through the project and change the outcome if they want something that keeps its shape, moves shapes and feels comfortable. So, I have to train a lot of them. I have my strategies for training them. It’s really hard to do that, but I think very necessary. If jewelry becomes a profession, it’s necessary. We need to train jewelry designers as designers, not as craftspeople or artists.
Sharon: That’s a good point because there are so many “jewelry designers” today. They were doing something else before and decided to design jewelry, and they don’t have any training. They just said, “Oh, I’ll put these two pieces together.”
If you walk through a trade show or some sort of jewelry show, what are you looking for? How are you evaluating pieces?
Warren: I have enough experience in all these different techniques to spot what’s good and what’s bad. I will lead a tour of people on a shopping trip at a company and say, “This is good,” and I can show them why, and “This is not.” They end up spending thousands of dollars on really good stuff that they would have never gotten anywhere else. I can spot it because I make it. I made it. I’ve hidden the mistakes. I’ve had the most horrible problems happen with things falling apart, so I can spot it.
It’s the choice of materials. It’s the choice of construction. When you construct something, you have to go in with a support system, which is like a joint. You’ll see someone’s necklace turned around because things turn in the opposite direction from where they move. What turns to the left turns to the right. That’s not natural. That’s bad design. If you built a support system with joints, that never happens. If you take an S-clasp, a figure S, it has to have two solder rings, one on each side. If you’re using cable wire and crimp beads, you don’t crimp all the way up the clasp; you leave a little bit of a loop, so they have a ring loop on one side, a ring loop on the other. That’s four support systems for joints. An S-clasp always needs four joints, and the necklace will never turn around.
Sharon: It’s really important. I’m thinking it will eliminate a lot of what I have in my collection. Do you use the book as a guide in your classes?
Warren: The book is being pre-tested in classes. We ran a series of jewelry design classes. There were 27 topics. We’ve done it several times. On each topic you hear students’ questions. There are questions I have, how they answer, some resolution. A lot of the material in the book emerged from those discussions.
Sharon: What was your purpose in writing it? Was it to gain credibility or get your knowledge out there?
Warren: The book was really to push those ideas out there, to encourage and force more professionalization of the field and the discipline of jewelry design. The ideas are out there, but they’re not organized. From my experience, most people are unaware of the ideas about design. They’re very focused on the individual and unaware of all the architectural, like with the S-clasp. If someone comes into the store and their necklace keeps turning around, I can fix it so it could never turn again. They have something with either some rings or loops. It could have a hinge with it, and you can add a lark’s head knot, which is very loose and creates a lot of joint and distance support. You also have an overhead knot, which gives a little less support, but still a lot of joint support. A square knot is even less support, a glued knot, zero support.
If you have a piece where you’re gluing a lot of the knots, it’s going to break. It can’t take the stress. If you’re doing pearl knotting, whatever you’re doing, you want to minimize the use of glue. You have to glue at least one knot in pearl knotting, but that’s it. That’s as much support as I want to take away. Knots not only protect the pearls, but they absorb all the stresses and strains on the necklace from movement, instead of the stresses and strains ending up on the pearls, where it can crack. If they’re unglued and there’s an overhead knot to absorb all the stress and strain, your piece will break, but you won’t ruin your pearls. When people wear pearl knotting, they don’t worry about the architectural issue of stress and strain. You never see that in a book about hand knotting, but that’s one of the major reasons you have the knots, to preserve your materials and the piece as a whole. So, let’s get the information out there.
Sharon: That’s a very interesting point, a good point to think about. Warren, thank you so much for being here.
Warren: I appreciate it, thank you.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 170 Part 1: Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture with Jewelry Designer, Warren Feld | 28 Sep 2022 | 00:21:08 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Warren Feld For Warren Feld, beading and jewelry making endeavors have been wonderful adventures. These adventures over the past 32 years have taken Warren from the basics of bead stringing and bead weaving, to wire working and silver smithing, and onward to more complex jewelry designs which build on the strengths of a full range of technical skills and experiences. He, along with his partner Jayden Alfre Jones, opened a small bead shop in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, about 30 years ago, called Land of Odds. Over time, Land of Odds evolved into a successful internet business. In the late 1990s, Jayden and Warren opened another brick-and-mortar bead store – Be Dazzled Beads – in a trendy neighborhood of Nashville. Together both businesses supply beaders and jewelry artists with all the supplies and parts they need to make beautiful pieces of wearable art. In 2000, Warren founded The Center For Beadwork & Jewelry Arts (CBJA). CBJA is an educational program, associated with Be Dazzled Beads, for beaders and jewelry makers. The program approaches education from a design perspective. There is a strong focus on skills development, showing students how to make better choices when selecting beads, parts and stringing materials, and teaching them how to bring these together into a beautiful, yet functional, piece of jewelry. Warren is the author of two books, “So You Want to Be a Jewelry Designer: Merging Your Voice with Form” and “Pearl Knotting…Warren’s Way,” as well as many articles for Art Jewelry Forum. Additional Links: Warren Feld Jewelry Warren Feld – Medium.com So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer School on Teachable.com Learn To Bead Blog The Ugly Necklace Contest – Archives Land of Odds Warren Feld – Facebook Warren Feld – LinkedIn Warren Feld – Instagram Warren Feld – Twitter Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Warren Feld didn’t become a jewelry designer out of passion, but out of necessity. He and his partner Jayden opened their jewelry studio and supply store, Land of Odds/Be Dazzled Beads, due to financial worries. But coming to the world of jewelry as an outsider is what has given Warren his precise and unique perspective on how jewelry should be made. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the language of jewelry design; why jewelry making should be considered a profession outside of art or craft; and why jewelry design is similar to architecture or engineering. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is jewelry designer Warren Feld. Warren wears several hats. He has an online company called Land of Odds. He has a brick-and-mortar store, Be Dazzled Beads, and he’s a jewelry designer. He’s located in Tennessee. He has been a jewelry designer for decades and has written a book called “So You Want to Be a Jewelry Designer,” which sounds very interesting. The book sets up a system to evaluate jewelry and discusses how designing jewelry is different from creating crafts or being an artist. Warren will tell us all about his jewelry journey today. Warren, welcome to the program.
Warren: Sharon, I’m so excited to be here with you.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you artistic as a child? Did you study jewelry? How did you come to it?
Warren: I think I was artistic as a child, but my parents and teachers, my guidance counselors in high school, discouraged it. They put me on a track to be either a doctor or a lawyer, so I never had artistic training. In my thirties, I got into painting with acrylics. Not in a deep way, but in some artistic way. I never formally studied art. I became a health care administrator, and I was a professional hospital administrator at several hospitals. I was a policy planner in healthcare for the governor of Tennessee. I was director of a nonprofit healthcare agency. When I was around 35, I experienced a major burnout. I didn’t like healthcare and I felt very disconnected. I was doing a great job, but I just didn’t feel it.
At the same time, I met my future partner and wife, Jayden. It was a recession, and Jayden was having trouble finding a job. At one point I said, “What can you do?” and she said, “I can design jewelry,” and I said, “We can build a business around it.” I thought it would also be a good idea to sell the parts, and it worked. We first had a garage sale, where she made a lot of jewelry and sold a lot of parts, and we made $7,000. Maybe it was a fluke. So, six weeks later, we tried it again. We made the same jewelry, got the same parts, and made $4,000. So, we thought we were onto something. We eventually did the Nashville Flea Market and craft shows. We had a little store in downtown Nashville. We have a bigger store in downtown Nashville now. It worked. It was really around her jewelry designing and my business sense. I made some jewelry, but it was just to make money.
Sharon: Wow! So, you have two businesses. You have an online business, and you have the brick-and-mortar. Tell us about Land of Odds and Be Dazzled Beads. Tell us about the differences.
Warren: Originally it was Land of Odds. Jayden was the designer. We made jewelry, but it was more like I put a bead on a piece of leather and tied it in a knot. Eventually I started learning. While working at learning silversmithing, I did a lot more complex things, but she was the designer. She had country music artist clients and did a lot of custom work. The first few years, I really made jewelry just to make money. I didn’t see it as an art form. It wasn’t my passion. I wasn’t interested, but one thing I noticed was that everything I made broke. It was really bad, and I was clueless. This was in 1987. There was no internet, no jewelry or bead magazines. Nashville did not have a jewelry-making culture, so everything was trial and error, things on fishing lines, things on dental floss. I didn’t know how to attach a clasp, didn’t know about clasps. Everything was so trial and error, experimental.
At some point, I started taking in repairs. That was a really strategic move and a major turning point, because I got to see how other people made things and made bad choices because of what broke. I got to talk to the wearers, and they told me how they wore it, what happened when it broke, where it broke, lots of inside stories. I started formulating some things, and I started putting them to the test and making jewelry. I was in my mid-to-late thirties, and I started getting interested and focused on the construction and the architecture, not quite the art form. Jayden’s health also declined. She lost a lot of dexterity in her hands to be able to keep making jewelry. She retired, and I started making the jewelry and doing the custom work. The business started getting organized around my work. That was Lands of Odds. We were downtown in Nashville.
Sharon: At Be Dazzled Beads, you teach a lot of classes. You sell beads. You do everything.
Warren: It just evolved. It had to do with the fact that we were downtown. Nashville, at the time, was what Greenwich Village in New York was. It’s a lot of little specialty shops, a lot of excitement. It was really high-end, very sophisticated. It was so successful that the big companies started moving in, Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, Nascar Café, Wildhorse Saloon. When the city decided to redevelop the area for them, they took away 6,000 parking spaces in 18 months, and parking went from $2 to $20 a day. We lost all our customers really fast, and tourists changed. They were looking for low-end souvenirs, not high-end jewelry, so our business collapsed.
We put ourselves in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the liability is under my name. I closed Land of Odds, the physical store, and I put the assets under Jayden’s name. We opened a little shop in a little house, and Jayden wanted to call it Be Dazzled. At the same time, I was developing Land of Odds as an online business. Be Dazzled was a real place in a store. About a year after declaring bankruptcy, I got out of bankruptcy and the catalogue took off. We were doing really well all of a sudden, and I combined both businesses again. So, I just had this horrible business name, Land of Odds/Be Dazzled Beads. We managed those as two separate businesses, but it was really one business.
Sharon: So, you were online way before Covid or anything.
Warren: I was online in 1995. I was one of the first catalogues online. We’re still online. It’s a little hard to compete today online, but we’re still online.
Sharon: That’s interesting because so many jewelers are not. You call yourself a jeweler. I don’t mean you’re not a jeweler; you are, but they don’t work with beads. They work with silver; they work with gold. So, it’s unusual.
Warren: No matter what the materials, you end up with something with a hole in it or a loop on it so you can string it on or dangle it. I taught myself wire working, fiber art, micro/macro maze, silversmithing. Even though the tools are different, the materials are different, when you’re designing a piece of jewelry, you end up thinking through the same kinds of issues. The focus on parts was another lucky break because it made me realize early on that jewelry design was quite different than art or craft.
I started as a painter. When I first started making jewelry, I tried to paint it. I was very frustrated because I couldn’t get the colors I wanted. You can’t squish the beads together; you can’t do little nuances and subtleties like you can do with paint. There are these annoying gaps of light, negatives spaces you can’t control, and they destroy the whole idea of color. You have three-dimensional objects that reflect and refract light differently. It changes from room to room with lighting, the sun, the position of the person, how they’re moving. I have some beads in the store, green, transparent beads that cast a yellow shadow. You can’t duplicate that with paint, but you have to worry about if the jewelry starts to look weird on a person because you picked the wrong materials or the wrong colors. Jewelry applies to the person wearing it. You don’t want that to happen as a designer.
So, I realized that whether it’s beads or string materials, findings, whatever you’re using, they assert their needs within the piece of jewelry. It’s not just for the visual grammar, the color and pattern and texture, but they have needs for architecture. They affect some of the functions based on materials you pick, and the durability and how the piece moves. They affect the desirability and the value, how people perceive the piece. So, I began to see that I had to start with the parts and understand how they want to be expressed within a three-dimensional object that’s going to adorn someone’s body and move and meet someone’s psychological and social needs. It’s very focused on the parts.
What I was doing as a jewelry designer was very different than what I had done as a painter, as an artist. The lights went on, and it just was really intriguing. I struggled and dealt with it. It was very exciting and enjoyable to figure out, with that green bead that has the yellow shadow, what effect does it have on the piece, on the person wearing it, on people seeing it? I asked those questions, and that was really important. I was lucky to start with the parts and the business and not start with just designing jewelry and worrying about the visual grammar. Then I realized, both from being in business as well as teaching students, that most jewelry designers are very naïve to the impact of the parts. They’re very focused on the visual, the color. They don’t realize that so much more is going on in a piece of jewelry, so they don’t think about managing it.
Sharon: So that’s how you came to write this book, “So You Want to be a Jewelry Designer”?
Warren: Right.
Sharon: Wow! Being a painter and working in different materials, you’re all over the place.
Warren: I had been thinking about or trying to write this book for at least 20 years. Having all these insights, I wanted to write them down. I would write them down in these articles, sometimes fun articles and sometimes very straightforward, more academic articles, and I struggled with how to pull this all together. I was getting ideas about what was important. One of my goals is to say that a jewelry designer is not an occupation. It’s not a substantive art. It’s really a profession. It has its own discipline, its own way of thinking and writing and doing and asking questions, solving problems. It’s a profession, but how do I make it that way? I’ve worked that way pretty much on principle.
At one point, an education professor in town said that I might be interested in ideas about literacy and how you teach literacy to students. While I was researching that, I came across the idea of disciplinary literacy. This is an example of how a historian has to think very differently than a scientist. They use different evidence. The historian has to infer from different pieces of writing and histories and costuming to come up with an idea about cause and effect. A scientist has this rational, step-by-step approach for coming up with an idea of cause and effect. They think differently. They use different evidence. I thought, “Well, that sounds like me as a jewelry designer. I think differently than artists.” I’ve had to think differently than artists because as an artist, my designs weren’t successful.
That was the organizing principle, disciplinary literary. So then, what does it mean? What does someone have to know if they have to comprehend it? When you say someone’s fluent in design, what does that mean? How do you believe it’s real? What’s nice was that I had done all this writing, and everything started clicking into place. The organizing principle wasn’t as much of a struggle as it was to try to put it together as an idea of you need to learn A, B and C.
You need to learn about design elements and how to decode them, but in a way like you’re learning how to read them or write them or speak them. You have color. You can put colors together and create a sense of movement, another design element. Color is very independent, but movement depends on your positioning of color or line or whatever to get a sense of movement as a design element. So, here we have independent and dependent variables, vowels or consonants. Some of the design elements sounded like vowels and some sounded like consonants. How do you put it together? I realized you could put together a couple of design elements, like a T and an H in word, and you could know that E will work next. Another element or one of its attributes might work next, but a Z won’t work. THZ doesn’t work. That happens with design elements when you’re trying to put them together. When you understand design elements as sort of an alphabet, then you begin to formulate meaning and expression and words, and the words can get more and more complex.
So, you realize you’re talking about composition. You’re arranging design elements, and you have to arrange them in a way that they can be constructed together, which is another element. Then you want to manipulate them because you want to control as best as you can someone’s reaction to it. You want them to like it, to want to wear it, to want to buy it. This is all controlling meanings, as you’re taking something universal, where everyone knows what they mean. A certain color scheme, everyone knows it’s satisfying, but a simple color scheme in jewelry might be boring. It might be monotonous or it might not fit the context. It might not show power or sexuality or compliance, whatever you’re trying to do with your jewelry. You have to change that scheme a little bit, perhaps color it differently.
So, I’m going through these ideas and working them together with literacy. You want someone to be able to identify problems, identify solutions. You want them to understand how to bring all these elements and arrangements together in a certain kind of form, sometimes with a theme. And towards what end? You have to have an end. I struggled with this. What’s the end? What the jewelry is trying to get to, is it the same as an artist? And it’s not. In art, it’s about harmony with a little variety. In jewelry design, that could be monotonous, not exciting enough. In jewelry design, you want the piece to go beyond evoking an emotional response. You want it to resonate, excite, be just a little bit edgy so people want to touch it or wear it or buy it. They don’t just want to say it’s beautiful. You want to bring them the piece of jewelry so they actually will put it on, keep it on, cherish it, show it around, collect it. It has to do something more than an art. In the end, it has to do partly with how it resonates.
It seems to have more levels to it. It has to feel finished, and in order to feel finished, it has to be parsimonious. In art, there’s a concept called economy. You use the fewest colors to achieve your balanced end, but it’s very focused on the visual. In parsimony, you focus on every aspect of design, from the visual to the architectural and textual to the psychological. Parsimony means you can’t add or subtract one piece without making it worse. You’ve reached some kind of optimal set of all the design elements, all the understandings of other people that you’re bringing into the piece, all your understandings that you’re imposing on the piece. If it’s parsimonious, it feels finished, and that’s a success. So, you go a little bit beyond what an artist does for your piece of jewelry.
Sharon: Are these different in craft? I’m sorry; that’s what I’m trying to understand. Are they different in craft or fine arts?
Warren: In craft, your goal is to end up with something. Ideally, it should have some appeal, but it’s got to be functional. You just end up with something. In art, it’s got to be beautiful. It’s doesn’t have to be functional. In art, you judge jewelry like it’s a painting or sculpture, like it’s sitting on an easel. In jewelry design, you can only judge it as art as it’s worn. It’s not art until it touches the body, and that brings in all kinds of elements, the architectural, psychological, sociological, physiological. Jewelry functions in a context and you have to know what that means. So, it’s different.
Sharon: It’s only a piece of jewelry when it touches the body? Is that the same for metal and beads, for any kind of jewelry?
Warren: It is. You have art jewelry, let’s say. It’s art when it’s on an easel on display. It’s jewelry when it’s worn. You can appreciate it as a piece of art, but to me, as a jewelry designer, I want to appreciate it as a piece of jewelry. So, it’s got to be understood as it’s worn. You have to see it in motion. You have to see it in relationship to the body, the costume, the context. It has to meet the artist’s intent, what they wanted to do, and the wearer has to want to wear it. It must fulfill other needs, too. So, it’s much more complex than dealing with a painting. | |||
| Episode 169 Part 2: How Four Winds Gallery Brought Native American Jewelry to Australia | 08 Sep 2022 | 00:24:53 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jennifer Cullen Jennifer Cullen is the owner of Four Winds Gallery, a jewelry gallery in Double Bay, Australia that focuses on jewelry of the American Southwest. Established in 1981, Four Winds boasts a collector’s standard of traditional and contemporary North American Indian jewelry, pottery, sculptures, graphics and textiles. The gallery is the culmination of a long-term interest and passion for Jennifer. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Jennifer Cullen of Four Winds Gallery, an unusual jewelry gallery located in Double Bay, Australia. Welcome back.
What about coral? You have the reefs there, and there’s a lot of coral in Indian work, but I hear it’s becoming very hard to find now.
Jennifer: We have no coral in Australia to work with. It’s protected, and we have a lot of trouble with—what is it? The crown-of-thorns starfish. They’re doing a lot about coral beds on the northeast coast of Australia, with all that big, beautiful coral. They’re doing a lot to maintain that at the moment. All the coal that has been historically worked into North American Indian jewelry was traded in by the Spanish originally, so it’s all Mediterranean coral. The earliest coral strands in the 1800s were drilled and rolled strands of beads that they would wear around the neck with cotton sinew or twill, or whatever was strung through the center of it. And there were webs of coral. They would wear ropes of heishi done in clamshell. Later on, as they got better equipment, there was turquoise heishi and jet heishi. Heishi is the traditional word for a handmade, small bead.
Originally the coral was traded. The Native American groups loved the color. They had previously found their ability with color by working with the spiny oyster shell that comes out of the Gulf of Mexico. The spiny oyster shell comes in colors from reds similar to coral into purple and intense orange, like an Hermès orange. It’s a beautiful color. I actually have a lot in my jewelry because I love it. I sell a lot of it here, and I wear a lot of it. I love the orange. I’ve always had a passion for these oranges and reds and purples. People in the Southwest embraced it pretty rapidly and started to incorporate it into their jewelry findings and body adornment. So, in the 1800s, it was works of coral predominantly.
Then they started to learn how to work silver. That didn’t start until about 1868. Prior to 1868, there was very little in silver. They actually started by heating up copper and brass cooking utensils. They were soft materials that were exposed to them by the soldiers and the Spanish and the Mexicans, and they’d make it into jewelry findings and body adornment. Then they discovered silver, which is found in the Southwest of the USA, and they started to make that into metal findings to house the stones. That was the process.
When chatting at length with another one of my mentors, Lori Phillips, she used to talk to me a lot about the development of American Indian jewelry, history and development. She was a big dealer and collected from Pasadena in California back in the day. I was very close friends with her. Anyway, she taught me a lot. They started setting coral into silver vessels and housings and cabinets in about the early 1950s. There wasn’t a lot of coral set into jewelry, other than strands or ropes of coral beads, prior to 1952. So, finding the odd piece of jewelry that did have a bit of coral in it is a very unusual thing.
Generally, most of the coral still comes from the Mediterranean. It’s traded in now by different dealers. It’s become very expensive and sought after because they’re protecting the coral beds in Italy. It’s getting harder and harder to get it.
Sharon: It’s harder, yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah, but it’s not Australian coral at all.
Sharon: You’re so knowledgeable. Do you put on educational seminars besides flying in artists?
Jennifer: We used to write articles here in Sidney for the Antiques and Art Galleries Magazine every quarter. There were some pages of photographs and examples of things. Probably about seven years ago, when the paper folded and everything went digital, that’s when we ended up with the New South Wales Art and Antiques Magazine. Maybe it went down into Victoria as well and Melbourne south of us, which is not a big town, but it's a cultural center. So, I used to write articles. I have been meaning to put together all those articles I wrote for so many years and so many editions of the Antiques and Art Galleries Paper in New South Wales and compile them into a book. That’s on the to-do list. I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet.
I used to do talks occasionally at clubs or different places where women would want to be spoken to about wearable body adornment. I did some radio interviews with Dan Kotch back in the day. He’s a finance and investment guy who does radio interviews with people to talk about things that are considered good investments, that hold their value and appreciate over time, which jewelry does. Up in the Blue Mountains I did some talks. I was invited to talk to groups of artists that lived up in the mountains who did various forms of artwork. They wanted to hear about American Indian art in general, the textiles, the jewelry, the pottery making, how it was done. I’ve also done interviews with a local radio station here. They invited me to do a few talks on their Sunday afternoon program about jewelry. So, I’ve done a fair bit.
I’ve done fashion magazines, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and different things. I’ve done photoshoots of my jewelry over the years, where they’ve wanted to show unusual artwork. They often use it in their fashion shoots. They borrow jewelry and put it in their fashion shoots and give credit to the gallery, but then they’ll ask me to write some information about the gallery and what’s it all about, and then they’ll put that into the magazine. Women of Individual Style was a thing that came out one time, and I was asked to be a part of that one issue. They talked about me and how I dressed and all the body adornment I wore and how I put it together. So, over 40 years, there have been quite a lot of things I’ve been asked to do. I haven’t actually written a book and I haven’t organized a group of talks. I probably could, but running a business, having staff, trading pearls, going on buying trips, organizing four exhibitions a year, it’s a lot. You do the best with the bulls that are the most important for you.
Sharon: No, I understand. You have a lot of time left to do that.
I’ve never been in the Indian Market. I’ve always wanted to go, but I’ve been scared off by the crowds.
Jennifer: It is hectic. It is very hectic.
Sharon: Yes. You say when you come back, you have a buying exhibition?
Jennifer: Sure. I’m over there, often Instagramming things I’m finding and putting it on Instagram just to show people things I’m finding while I’m away. Then, when I get back, I have to ship everything home to Sidney and we go through it. We take a nice photograph of it, like a postcard, and I send it out. I have some 5,000 people on my mailing list. So, I send all my clients a huge postcard of beautiful jewelry. I’ll have an odd, old carving in there or something to make it look beautiful. I send it out and say, “Hi, that’s my latest buying trip. We’ll be having a champagne opening”—it’s usually the second week of September on a Saturday—“Please come see the collection, or you can view a lot of it online or you can email me.” My clients look forward to that because they’re not all traveling to Santa Fe and the reservation, so it’s as close to it as they can get.
Sharon: Absolutely. Where else are they going to get it, unless they go to Santa Fe?
Jennifer: And even then, you’re so overwhelmed. There’s so much product over there. All of it’s handmade by Native American artists. It’s a crazy time to do it with a lot of shops. It’s hard to find good quality material that’s authentic as well. But a lot of my clients do end up going on a holiday over there and want to be there.
Sharon: What are you looking for when you’re there? You say it’s hard to find the right things. What are you looking for?
Jennifer: I’m often hunting for early pieces that are by great artists, or things that are unusually aesthetically beautiful that impress me and are different to what I’ve found before. Or maybe it’s similar to something I’ve found before, but I haven’t seen something like that in a long time. It’s a hunt for the rare and the unusual and the beautiful.
It’s also visiting all my artists and seeing what is being made. In the winter, when they’re planning to bring it to market in the summer, I’m talking with them about what they’re going to make during the year. Am I going to set up a show with some of them? Can they make money if I buy from them at the Indian Market? Because they’re trying to sell to the tourists at retail price. As a representative, I have to buy at a wholesale price, so I can buy it and present it to my clients here for a reasonable price. We talk about what they might build or make during the year. We talk about all of that. Would they like to come for a show? When would it suit both of us? It can’t be in August, because I’m in America, or in September because I do my returns from my trip show. I have three other shows I do with my sister.
Then I’m looking, not for a huge amount of them, but for artworks and artifacts that are interesting, that resonate with the Southwest. Recently I got an old hunting lodge elk horn chandelier with little parchment shades over the lights. My electrician has to rewire it for the Australian current to hang it in the gallery. We’re still working on that project. We’ve got to get it rewired and hung up in the ceiling and get a secure hook, but I’m bringing things into the gallery that make people feel connected with the Southwest.
There’s something about that culture that—I don’t know. I don’t particularly believe in past lives and that kind of thing, but there’s something about that culture that so resonates with me. I can’t really explain it, but I just love it. It’s the only place I feel at home when I get out of the plane and the Albuquerque airport, and I rent the car and head out to Zuni or wherever I’m going. If I’m driving across to Prescott or different places, I feel quite at home. It’s a weird sensation. I also feel it while I’m here on the edge of the ocean. Those are two places where there’s a sense of freedom and expanse and openness that I love.
Sharon: I can understand that. I can understand both the ocean and Santa Fe, with the light and the sunsets.
Jennifer: What is it? The plains, the wide-open spaces. It’s a very open, incredible feeling of freedom. I don’t know how to explain it. It is beautiful, and Santa Fe is very pretty with the housing and the pretty streets. Everything is adobe-style, and I do love that as an architectural form. It’s very lovely, but what really is amazing is driving around the country in the Southwest. It’s so open. I just love it. Just talking about it, I love it.
Sharon: Is there turquoise all over the country, all over the U.S.?
Jennifer: Only in the Southwest, so Nevada, I think some in Utah, and the very southern states. It comes from copper and iron areas, where you find copper and iron is mined heavily, thus the color of the turquoise. It’s developed in veins within these mines. A lot of the beautiful turquoise like Bisbee and Villa Grove and Lander and some of the very rare or early turquoises were from small pockets of turquoise mines that were mined out and are now exhausted. You can’t get those stones anymore, unless you get them from jewelry that was made some time ago with this quality of stone. Maybe somebody has been sitting on some raw material that they’ve yet to make things out of. Sometimes you buy at auction or estates, and you find old jewelry that has great stones, but the jewelry is ugly, so you pull it apart and give it to an artist to remake into a great piece.
A lot of the turquoise you get today, which is Sleeping Beauty or Kingman or from more general mines, it’s more prolific in availability. A lot of it has been stabilized or treated so you can work with it. It’s stronger and easier to work with, but getting good, natural stone is always my preference. If it’s high grade, it won’t change much in color because it’s very dense and quite glossy. If it’s more medium in grade, it’ll be more porous, so more vulnerable to moisture acquisition. It will vary in color slightly over the years depending on your body oil. Not as much in the desert in the Southwest. The atmosphere there doesn’t change it too much. Here in Australia, we’re very humid, so it changes much differently than it does in the desert area. There’s something charming about that. It’s like it’s alive. It’s like it takes on some tones and colors of blue and green and everything in between depending on the wearer, the humidity, what country you live in. It’s a very personal stone. It’s like the stone and the sea. It’s always changing.
Sharon: Can you look at a piece of turquoise and tell where it’s from or if it’s old?
Jennifer: Yes, you can tell whether it’s recent and hasn’t been around for very long. You can generally tell whether it’s high grade, medium grade or low grade, depending on the density, the patina, the veining, all that kind of thing. Labeling what mine it comes from is a very tricky process because you have all these different mines scattered around the Southwest. Manassa is traditionally green, Kingman is traditionally blue, Blue Gem is traditionally very glossy, high grade and more of an aqua color. You’ll get variations within the mine as well that tend a little more green or a little less or more polished. So, it’ll look a little bit like another mine.
Then how old is the piece? I’ve been in discussion with dealers who have been handling turquoise for a long time. That will also help you decide where that stone probably came from, because that was the sort of stone they were using back when Leekya, for instance, was carving his turquoise stones. He liked the gentle, aqua-colored turquoise, and that was a particular stone. A more recent stone, Sleeping Beauty, is a high-grade, intense bluish stone. If it’s more recently made, it’s probably going to be that rather than Villa Grove, which is an older, softer, very blue stone, more of a cornflower blue. So yes, like anything, whether it be opals, pearls, old furniture, textiles, whatever, if you do your thing for long enough, you get to know all about it.
Sharon: And that’s how you learned? You didn’t study it, right?
Jennifer: I have a whole library here of books on North American Indian art, jewelry, painting, sculpture, kachinas, pottery, textiles. I’ve written articles all my life. I’ve been over there twice a year. I’ve looked at millions of pieces of jewelry, although not as many pieces of textiles and paintings and sculptures or pottery. So, it’s experience, knowledge, rating, education. The hands-on piece is always significant. People like Teal McKibben, Lori Phillips, people who were before me, women in particular who I identify with, who spent their lives studying American Indian art. They’ve all passed away now or they’re in their 80s. They taught me a lot, saying “Look at these. Look at how this is made and look at this stone.” It’s been a life’s education.
Sharon: It sounds like it. What’s your favorite kind of jewelry?
Jennifer: My passionate thing that I love more than anything to this day is very early Navajo silversmithing and turquoise. That’s what they call Villa Grove, or a sky blue turquoise stone. It’s not as high-end as Blue Gem or Manassa or Lander or Indian Mountain—there’s a whole lot of them—but I love the color. I love the soft, simple, understated, courageous and brave form of silver that the Navajo did in their silversmithing from learning to be blacksmiths, which is what they were first told they had to do. They were on the reservations shoeing the horses of the soldiers and the English and the French. Their talent for silversmithing evolved from that, with their strength and the creativity and simplicity and the beautiful execution of silver body adornment.
Originally it was all men making the silver things, so there’s a masculine tone to it that I love as well. That’s become the thing now. I’m wearing my salmon clothes. The balance of putting beautifully hammered, wonderful silver jewelry with simple sets of turquoise stone, on me, I just love it. Sometimes things are so beautiful. You look at so many things. How you can you tell why this one is better than this one? I say, “Well, look at it. Can’t you see?” But that’s me. So, that’s probably my most passionate thing, early Navajo silver jewelry.
Then, after being in the business and dealing with it for a long time, I grew to really love Leekya Deyuse and Zuni carved turquoise jewelry. Leekya Deyuse was a Zuni carver that was probably working from the 1920s to the 1950s. He died in the 1960s fighting fires in Zuni. He was not all that old. Anyway, I have grown to love very much Leekya’s carved turquoise. Not only turquoise; sometimes he did coral figures of leaves and bears and birds. His work is very hard to get, finely carved. He was one of the first guys who set the precedent of carving fetish necklaces on little animals and necklaces. He was one of the first to take the format of shell and stone and create it into a little medicine or good luck charm or protection from an animal. Then he took it another step further and started threading it on beads so you could wear it like a necklace. They are probably my two most favorite things to look for, really great Navajo jewelry and really great pieces by Leekya. There is certainly much more to it, but that’s it if I was going to put it in a nutshell.
Sharon: Who should we keep our eyes on then?
Jennifer: Who’s up and coming?
Sharon: Yes.
Jennifer: Cheryl Yestewa has been around for quite a long time, but I find her jewelry just fabulous and exploding in creativity in various ways. She works out of the desert, but she’s into sea inspiration. Anyway, she’s a wonderful artist.
I think Keri Ataumbi, who is—let me get the tribe right. Keri Ataumbi is Kiowa. She does really great work. I’m very excited about her work. We’ve had a couple of exhibitions of her work now, and she should be coming to her first exhibition in Sidney this Christmas.
Denise Wallace is a legend so she’s not up and coming at all, but I think her son, David, is a great carver. Carving free form in ivory is a very difficult and challenging thing to do, and I think he’s got a gift. I think David Wallace is somebody to watch. He’s not putting himself out very much yet, but I think he’s great.
I think for lapidary work—and she’s been doing it for a while—she’s the daughter of Cheryl Yestewa. Piki Wadsworth does the most beautiful lapidary. I think she just grows and excels and gets better and better at what she does. She’s Hopi. I think these are the people that come to mind at the moment.
Every time I go down into Gallop, I have a look at different artists’ works that are up and coming. A lot of them are doing some really interesting work, but a lot of them aren’t wanting to go to Santa Fe or get high-profile or get noticed. I have to rely on people I know from that region to collect their work during the year. Then I go to them and see what they’ve made.
Sharon: It sounds very exciting. Thank you so much for being with us. It’s been great talking with you.
Jennifer: It’s been my pleasure and so much fun. I hope you do come to the Indian Market one day.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 169 Part 1: How Four Winds Gallery Brought Native American Jewelry to Australia | 06 Sep 2022 | 00:26:10 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Jennifer Cullen Jennifer Cullen is the owner of Four Winds Gallery, a jewelry gallery in Double Bay, Australia that focuses on jewelry of the American Southwest. Established in 1981, Four Winds boasts a collector’s standard of traditional and contemporary North American Indian jewelry, pottery, sculptures, graphics and textiles. The gallery is the culmination of a long-term interest and passion for Jennifer. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: The suburbs of Sydney, Australia might be the last place you’d expect to find a Native American jewelry gallery, but that’s exactly what makes Jennifer Cullen’s Four Winds Gallery so special. After a lifelong love affair with the jewelry of the American Southwest, Jennifer opened her gallery in Double Bay, a Sydney suburb known for its high-end shopping. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history behind Native American silversmithing; how she educated Australian collectors about Southwestern jewelry; and why turquoise is the most personal gemstone. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is Jennifer Cullen of Four Winds Gallery, an unusual jewelry gallery located in Double Bay, Australia. Jennifer is talking with us from Australia today. I say this is an unusual gallery because it focuses on Native American jewelry and jewelry of the Southwest. When I look at the jewelry, I immediately think of Santa Fe, New Mexico. I love the jewelry. Santa Fe happens to be one of my favorite places. I saw these pieces on Instagram and I was blown away because I thought, “How can this be in Australia?” She has this gallery in Australia with these beautiful Native American pieces. I’m looking forward to hearing Jennifer’s jewelry journey today. Jennifer, welcome to the program.
Jennifer: Good morning from Double Bay, Sidney, Australia. I’m sure it’s a good evening over there. It’s so fun to talk with you.
Sharon: It’s great to talk with you. You were just telling me about your jewelry journey, and I want to hear more about it.
Jennifer: Turquoise is my birthstone. This is how this whole thing started for me, back when I was teenager, born in December, being a Sagittarian. Australia doesn’t really create turquoise as a birthstone here. We have little pockets of it, but it’s waste. It’s never looked at in the jewelry format. America is the land of fabulous turquoise. When I finished high school, my father happened to be CEO for Westinghouse, an American company. So, the family headed to the East Coast, as you would say. Westinghouse headquarters at the time was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When I went to the States, I put my university degree on hold here in Sidney and followed my parents. I wanted to buy some turquoise jewelry, and the first stop as a family traveling from Australia to America for the first time was Disneyland in California. We went to the gift shop in Frontierland, and I bought a great, big, funny turquoise, which I loved. My mother found it very curious, because my other jewelry was fine jewelry or gold jewelry that they had given me as they had gotten older. I loved it.
We made it to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where my dad worked. I did classical ballet and psychology part-time at the local Pitt University to fill my time. One afternoon after university, I went to the bathroom and took my ring off to wash my hands. When I walked out, I forgot to put the ring back on. I went back in, and it was gone. I was devastated. My parents said, “Don’t worry. There’s a nice gallery in Pittsburgh. They have American Indian jewelry. Go check it out.” So, I went and found Four Winds Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and fell in love with the culture. The jewelry, the textiles, the pottery, everything American Indian and Southwestern that was in the gallery, I loved. I bought a new ring on layaway, as you call it. I spent a lot of time there talking about the jewelry with a guy named John Krena who runs and owns the place. He opened it in 1974. He taught me a lot about it and helped me understand it.
After two years, we moved back to Sidney. I didn’t want to finish my university degree; I wanted to stay involved in and surrounded by the beauty of the artwork that comes from the Southwest done by American artists, who are quite gifted. I was interested in old jewelry and new, as well as paintings and artifacts and pottery and textiles to a degree, but the focus has always been the body adornment, the wearable art.
In 1981, I set up a tiny store in Double Bay in Sidney. People would come and say, “Oh, hi sweetie, what’s all this blue stuff? Do you make it?” “Well, no. I wish I was so clever, but it’s turquoise. It comes from the Southwest of the USA. It’s made by multiple American Indian artists.” That’s where it started. 41 years later, in 2022, I’ve changed stores a couple of times. I bought this store 3½ years ago. We’re at it again, but it’s been a journey, a hobby, a passion, a lifestyle and an income. It’s something that I’ve enjoyed all my life.
The gallery has four exhibitions a year. I try to fly out artists for two of those exhibitions to meet my clients, because people like to meet the people who make the things and understand where it comes from. They are always contemporary artists. A big part of the gallery as well is the historical worth of vintage and antique jewelry. When I went on buying trips, which were every August and February up until Covid, I would come back and have a “return from a buying trip” exhibition. That would be a general exhibition in August of all the treasures I found on that adventure of three or four weeks in Santa Fe, Gallup, Scottsdale, Zuni, the Pueblos and various shows and things I’ve been exposed to. So, that’s a general show.
During the year, I’d have a specific show for one of the great artists I represent, like Mike Bird-Romero. McKee Platero was out here one time. Cody Sanderson has been out many times. These are all Southwestern artists. Denise Wallace of the Wallace family, I’ve adored and represented her work for many, many years now. I also represented her husband before he suddenly passed away some time ago, and her daughter, Dawn, and son, David. They’re Alaskan. Their work is fossilized marine ivory with scrimshaw set in beautiful silver and gold housings. The Southwestern jewelry is turquoise and coral and lapis and cream clamshells and all the various materials that hail from that kind of jewelry more predominantly.
Sharon: All of your jewelry is beautiful and instantly recognizable, but the Denise Wallace is so different than the other stuff.
Jennifer: Oh, absolutely.
Sharon: You just look at go, “Wow.”
Jennifer: And it reflects the Alaskan culture. She and her husband, Samuel, were obviously inspired a lot by her Alaskan heritage and where she comes from. The materials they work with are entirely made of silver and turquoise and whatnot, but in the museums over there, they’ll start with masks and carvings that were done in the 1800s and early 1900s, and some earlier if you can find them in the different regions up there. She will study those and get inspired to turn the walrus mask, for instance, into a beautiful, big brooch.
I have a whole collection of her jewelry all in creams as well. It’s a beautiful, soft coloring. It’s all creams and yellows and a brownish caramel color, which is nice to wear with clothes because we really have a long summer in Australia. It’s warm here from about the end of October through April, so you tend to wear paler clothing and lighter clothing, and I like to wear more jewelry at work. So, her work is really lovely to combine since you’re able to put it on all the time during the hot summer months. It’s very nice. I like all the very early works of the Pueblo artists called heishi. It’s cream, and it goes beautifully with that as well.
But yeah, Denise’s work represents the Alaskan culture and what goes on up there. Whereas in Southwestern culture, there are hundreds and hundreds of great jewelers who are doing beautiful silversmithing and lapidary. It's a very unique art form. Her son, David, I think he’s one to watch. Dawn is already established as a great jeweler, and she’s been working with him off and on for a long time. David is kind of quiet, and he doesn’t like to get out in the public, but he’s a great carver. I’m excited to watch him and see where he goes.
Sharon: When I go to Santa Fe, I love the Native American jewelry, but I have to temper myself because it’s very easy to come back with all the Southwestern jewelry and artwork and go—
Jennifer: It’s not relevant when you’ve gotten home and you’re not going to put it in your home. Is that what you mean?
Sharon: I’ll wear it. Here and there, I’ll definitely wear it, but it’s like, “Why did I buy 25 pieces? I’m not going to wear that all the time.”
Jennifer: That’s interesting. I dress as a city woman. I don’t wear satin and lace. Maybe I do occasionally, but I wear fine wool things in winter, cashmere, black. I dress as a city woman, which I always have done; I’m from Sydney, for goodness sake. In Double Bay, it’s like the heart of cosmopolitan. It’s like being in New York or Chicago or any city environment. That is where I grew up. So, this is the way I am, but for some reason, I just love wearing interesting sculptural jewelry that is not traditional gold and diamonds, fine chains and little bits and pieces and pearls. I think that’s very pretty, but it doesn’t make a difference when you put it on. It’s pretty and you can wear it with anything, which I guess is a good thing. You can wear it with any kind of clothing.
This jewelry is a piece of wearable sculpture to me. It has impact. It has size. It has color. It has form. It has metal. It just makes me feel right when I wear it, and I wear it all the time. Even when I go to Pilates or I’m walking my dog, or when I’m down at the beach house, I wear a little pair of turquoise earrings. I always take a selection of blue turquoise pieces, maybe some green turquoise pieces to add to my orange oyster shell collection or my red coral collection. I always take plain silver. It’s like a little black dress because it will go with anything. To me, it’s worth putting on every day. It’s to improve the way I feel and the way I look. As I get older, I like to wear even more pieces because I’m comfortable to do it. As I’ve grown up, the jewelry has become better, more significant, higher-end, and I don’t worry anymore about, “Oh, what are people going to think if I wear this?” I just love it and I wear it.
I have a big following now nationally in Australia since the internet came to be and I got my website and all that business happened. When was that? In the early 2000s or something. You worry. You think, “Oh my gosh, now everyone can see what I’m doing. There’s a whole load of beautiful galleries in America. Maybe business will change because everyone can look globally at everything.” But it actually just reinforces that if you do something well and focus on the best, and if you’re knowledgeable about it and you have great quality pieces that are beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, it holds its own. My business has gone from strength to strength since then. We’re open six days a week, 10:00 to 5:00. I’m in here three or four days a week. I’m in the States usually all of August. It used to be two weeks in February, but after Covid, we’ll see whether that’s still happening. That was more on the West Coast, in the San Francisco region. Sometimes if I had enough time, I would go down to the Heard Museum afterwards in March.
Sharon: The Heard Museum?
Jennifer: Yeah, the Heard Museum. I’d see the show there with all the current artists. It’s expensive being away from the gallery, with international airfares, hotel accommodations, car rentals. I’ll take my manager with me, Leslie, who’s been with me for 20 years. He’s very supportive and helps me keep going when you’re in the rental car driving and saying, “Well, I think I should go check these out.” I wouldn’t want to do it by myself. I’ve taken all of my daughters. They’ve been with me a few times. I have three daughters. They’ve all been with me. My sister’s been with me. My mother’s been with me. My father’s been with me. Some girlfriends have been with me. My ex-husband has been with me a few times, but that didn’t work too well. I never drive by myself. I like to travel with someone.
The whole overseas adventure is a very expensive one, to go there and spend a number of weeks and then come back again, but I have to go. I love to go. I like driving around over there, doing the reservations and getting out of the plane at Albuquerque, getting the rental car, driving into Gallop, going on the reservation, going out to Zuni, meeting different artists then ending up back in Santa Fe. I like going to all the old shows, meeting all the people that also love to collect and handle and look for this material, going to Indian markets, seeing more of the artists I’ve been representing for years who are all gathered together in the plaza for two days. It makes it easier for me to visit everyone.
It’s been a great lifestyle. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, and it is an oddity. Dealing in North American Indian art on the other side of the world, it’s a very established business. I’ve built incredible relationships. I had hoped one of my daughters might step into it and continue the Four Winds, not that I have any intention of retiring any time soon. My middle daughter points out to me repeatedly, “What? Working for my mom?” I’m like, “Well, it would be nice to keep the operation going forever.”
Sharon: Looking at the map, Double Bay isn’t too far from Bondi Beach, is it?
Jennifer: Oh no, it’s probably 10 minutes by car. Bondi Beach is on the coast on the ocean, and Double Bay is on Sidney Harbor. It’s kind of an elegant, harbor side, upmarket, expensive little shopping area that’s also probably five to 10 minutes from the city. The city is on the harbor. Double Bay is also farther away on the harbor going towards the coast. Then there’s a little finger of land that runs up and down, and then on the other side of the little finger of land is Bondi Beach. So, it’s very close to Bondi Beach.
People who come from other states and internationally stay in Double Bay in one of the hotels, or they stay in the city. We’re very close to the city. They’ll get a taxi or an Uber, or you can get a train or a bus; public transport here is really good. So, you’re smack bang between the ocean coast and the city. I’m about halfway between. It’s a very, very pretty harborside shopping area. I’m trying to think—you know Carmel—
Sharon: Yes, Carmel.
Jennifer: —in California, that feeling that you’re not on a cliff; you’re down on sea level.
Sharon: Are you near Sidney? When you say the city, is that Sidney?
Jennifer: It’s Sidney. Double Bay is one of those smaller suburbs of Sidney. Sidney’s a very big town. I think we have about six million people in Sidney. Double Bay is a five- or 10-minute cab ride from downtown Sidney. You can still call Double Bay Sidney, but it’s a suburb of Double Tree close to Sidney. Most of my clients actually come from New South Wales, which is the state that Sidney is in. We have more clients from Australia now, New Zealand, South Africa, Paris, England, America, scattered all over the place. It’s fun. A lot of people from France and England and New Zealand and different places come to Sidney in January, which is the peak of our summer, to get out of the winter or to visit family or friends they have in Australia. Or they come to see Australia. They visit and travel around.
Sharon: Do Australians wander into your shop and say, “Oh my God, what is this?” What’s the reaction?
Jennifer: Yes, exactly. Back in the early days in the 80s, they would wander in. I was 21 years old back then, and the counter belt is at least $2,500. People would say, “Where do you sell these blue things? Do you make it?” I’d say, “I wish I was so clever. It’s turquoise. It’s made by artists from the Southwest of the USA,” and the talking and educating would go on. We’re starting from there. A lot of them would come in and go, “What is all this stuff, really?”
Then I would get the odd person who was a big collector who would find me. He’d go, “I can’t believe you’re doing this in Sidney, Australia. I’m from London, and I’m collecting the Southwest,” or “They’ve got a gallery where I buy things in London.” You would get some people that knew about it who were already collectors. Then they would talk to other people and say, “Go to that store, the Four Winds Gallery down in Sidney. She has really good material. She’s quite authentic.” It was word of mouth for a long time, doing my shows, plugging away, talking, working six days a week, having no staff. It’s the energy of a 21-year-old woman building a following for it.
Now, 41 years later, I am in Double Bay. I’ve been around. I’ve expanded the gallery. I’ve owned a store, and I’ve been here as a very established business for a long time. Everyone in this region knows me. Anybody who knows anything about turquoise will be out in a restaurant in the city, and if somebody has something turquoise on, they’ll say, “Oh, did you get that at Four Winds?” It’s either, “Yeah,” or, “No, I went on a holiday to Santa Fe.” It’s a commonly used reference point now. You still get the odd person walking in now, but it was more in the first 10 years of having the business that people would walk in who’d never been in before or never heard of it and say, “What’s going on here? What is this all about?”
American Indian jewelry has become more internationally and globally known with the internet, with social media, with all the things that are going on in America, the mining rights and water rights, going to reservations, the interviews that come on NBC or the radio stations or TV stations in America. I do interviews and stories on what’s happening on the tribal reservations and the injustices that are happening. It brings it more to the spotlight, and then it melds into the artwork and what’s going on. So, the beautiful Southwestern American Indian artwork is not as unheard of now as it was in the 80s in Sidney, Australia, when no one on earth knew what any of it was. It’s been a progress of education.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I remember ages ago buying one turquoise ring. Everybody had to have one turquoise ring, and that was it.
Jennifer: Also, when you look at the 70s and the hippie phase and the bikers and flower power, there was all that association with turquoise, bear claws and feathers, which was fun, but that was kind of insane. A lot of people didn’t identify with that, right or wrong. It was like, “We’re going to get into the hippie jewelry.” But I think having all of that and recognizing it as fine art, the labeling doesn’t matter, actually. Yes, it is Southwest and yes, it is Native American Indian. It is fabulous both historically and recently made. But it is a fine art form if you look at how it’s made, how the silver is executed, how the lapidary is done, the history they’ve inherited for generations about how to work with metal or cut stone or drill shells. As a tribal jewelry form, it’s the most sophisticated tribal jewelry form in the world, bar none to any other tribal group. It’s just amazing as an art form.
I like to think that you don’t have to resonate with Southwestern, cowgirl, cowboy, denim, hats and whatnot to love and embrace this art form. It’s just a beautiful, wearable art form irrespective. That’s always been my belief. This is not a gallery where I come to work every day in jeans and boots and a hat. It’s just my thing. It is if you’re from the country or you’ve bought a cattle property, but we’re city people and city folk.
We have paintings and kachina carvings and some pottery. These are beautiful pieces, quite classic in somebody’s home. It's white walls and timber floors. It’s plain and very modern how people decorate today, but with this beautiful piece of artwork. They might have one or two great pots as feature pieces, but they don’t become pottery collectors per se, as I see people in the Southwest do, where there are ledges and ledges built to house dozens and dozens of pots by a particular tribe because they’re a collector. People don’t do that here because our architecture and our lifestyle are very different. They have polished floorboards. They’ll have a lovely, seasoned marble kitchen bench top, and everything’s kind of washed and gray and black and modern and minimal, all of that. Then they’ll have the odd piece as a beautiful art piece in their home, but they’ll also have something from Japan, and they might have an early Australian aboriginal piece, rather than having the whole placed decked down in Southwestern artifacts or paintings.
With jewelry, you find that people can be general jewelry enthusiasts who collect great jewelry from all over the world, but you tend to find that people like the turquoise, the blues and the greys and the strong, big, sculptural silver. You think it’s a really big piece of jewelry, but try and recreate that same belt, for instance, in 18-karat gold set with huge diamonds. It would be millions. It would be unapproachable for a lot of people. So, it’s also the materials that are special. They’re collectable. It’s one-off. It's unique, but at this point, it’s still not treated the same. For instance, this is a huge piece of turquoise in a ring by McKee Platero. That’s large. If you try to replicate that size stone in a ruby or an emerald or a diamond, one, it would be very hard to find. Two, it would be extortionate because it’s so big. But I can secure a natural piece of high-grade turquoise that’s large and beautiful. It’s not artificial and it’s not a copy or a reproduction. It’s the real deal, and that gives me a lot of joy, wearing a unique piece of sculpture. | |||
| Episode 218 Part 2: Gina D’Onofrio’s Tips for Choosing a Qualified Independent Appraiser | 08 Mar 2024 | 00:27:24 | |
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Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That’s exactly why Gina D’Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here. What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Gina D'Onofrio With work in the retail, auction and manufacturing sectors of the jewelry industry since 1989, Gina D'Onofrio's experience encompasses jewelry design and production, appraisals, buying and selling of contemporary, antique and period jewelry, sales and management. Gina operates an independent gemological laboratory, appraisal service and consulting firm and has been catering to private individuals, banks, trusts, non-profit organizations, insurance companies, legal firms and the jewelry trade in the greater Los Angeles area. Gina received her Master Gemologist Appraiser® designation, upon completion of appraisal studies, written and practical examinations and peer appraisal report review with the American Society of Appraisers. In addition, she was awarded the Certified Master Appraiser designation with the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. In 2013 Gina received Los Angeles Magazine's coveted "Best in LA" award for her Jewelry Appraisal Services. She conducts presentations and entertaining speeches about appraisal and jewelry related topics to private and corporate groups in Los Angeles and throughout the USA.
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources:
Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That’s exactly why Gina D’Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, I am glad to welcome back Gina D'Onofrio, an appraiser who just returned from being an independent appraiser. She returned to the auction house Heritage as co-director of jewelry. She was also on the podcast in the very beginning, and it's good to have her on again. Welcome back.
If you become a certain kind of appraiser, let's say real estate or antique jewelry or I'll call it regular jewelry, how do you continue your education in those areas? What do you do if you're a real estate appraiser and you want to be an expert, or an antique expert? What would you do to continue education in that area?
Gina: You mentioned real estate. So, you mean you're appraising houses and all of a sudden you want to appraise antique jewelry?
Sharon: No, if you're in a particular area, is what I mean. You work in jewelry. What do you do to further your education besides going to the conferences, handling the jewelry? Are there other things you can do to further your education in those areas? In that area, I should say.
Gina: If you're working in jewelry, you're basically filling all the educational holes that you might have. When you say you work in jewelry, if you work for a contemporary jeweler, then you need to have more exposure to vintage jewelry. If it's vice versa, maybe you're working with antique and estate jewelry and you're not as exposed to what present day Tiffany and Company and Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels are doing, then you have to self-educate and gain more exposure to that kind of jewelry. As a jewelry appraiser, anything can cross your desk. Quite often, I might receive a collection that belongs to somebody, and she may have something that she bought last week and she may have something that her great-grandmother owned and she has inherited. You need to be able to recognize and evaluate and appraise both pieces. So, you do need a very well-rounded education.
Sharon: You raised the point of Cartier and David Webb and the high-end pieces that designers make, but not everything you see is going to be that. As you said, there's the piece that the grandmother passes down. Heritage, I presume, isn't all Cartier. What do you do then? What do you do if a piece comes across your desk and it's not a Cartier or it's not a David Webb? Do you look at a David Webb as the benchmark and then go from there?
Gina: No, you don't, because a piece that has no stamp or signature doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a fine piece. That's where having an understanding of jewelry manufacturing is critical. You do need to gain an education on how a piece of jewelry is made. GIA is teaching a class called jewelry forensics. In that class, they teach appraisers and other members of the industry how to look at a piece and recognize how it was fabricated. Was it made entirely by hand? Was it made by carving a wax and casting it? Was it made via CAD/CAM design and 3D printing? Was made by using a die struck method? These are all different methods of producing a piece of jewelry, and as an appraiser you need to have an education in that so when you're holding that piece of jewelry in your hand, A) you recognize how it was made, and B) you recognize the quality of the workmanship. That plays into the value of the piece.
For example, you might have a piece of jewelry, and you recognize that it was made entirely by hand. A great deal of time and effort has gone into making it, and the workmanship is excellent. Flawless, in fact. That is going to inform you as to what it would cost to replace that piece if your client wants to insure it for another piece that has been made entirely by hand.
Or, you might look at a piece that is mass produced using CAD/CAM and 3D printing, but it's a piece that's not finished very well. It's poorly made, and the setting work is very poor, too. In fact, some of the stones are a little bit loose because they weren't set properly, or perhaps they're not straight in the piece. That's going to tell you that it's a mass-produced piece. If it's not signed, you're going to be looking at other mass-produced pieces of the same type of lower quality in order to determine what it would cost to replace that piece. Understanding production is really important.
Sharon: Can you be an appraiser without having this background of manufacturing and that sort of thing? Could you be an appraiser?
Gina: You can. I'm really sad to say that there is no licensing of jewelry appraisers. There is no regulation, no government regulation. We self-regulate. That's why if you want to become a professional appraiser and you want to be the best appraiser you can be, you should join an organization that gives you excellent education and network with other very experienced appraisers who can help guide you in the right direction to get the education that you need.
Unfortunately, anybody can appraise jewelry and nobody can stop you. As a consumer, it's best to look for an appraiser that has reached the highest level they can possibly attain within an appraisal organization that requires their members to requalify every five years. The International Society of Appraisers has a requalification program. So does the American Society of Appraisers. They do require their members to requalify every five years. Then you have the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers that have different strata of membership, different tiers of membership, so look for an appraiser within that organization that has successfully completed the Certified Master Appraiser program, the CMA, and at the very least is a certified appraiser. Someone who has sat for the exams.
Sharon: What is requalification? Is that a test on paper or a computer, or is it just that you came to class?
Gina: It varies. It depends on which organization. I failed to mention the American Gem Society, I apologize. They also have an Independent Gemologist Appraiser program. For requalification, you have to attend a minimum amount of education every year. You have to prove you have done that. There is also an exam you have to take as well.
Sharon: You answered one of the questions I had, which is what you would ask somebody you want to be an appraiser for you. What would you ask them to know if they're good or not? What should I ask? What would somebody in the public ask if they're looking for an appraiser?
Gina: Yes. Everything that I just told you. Make sure that they have reached the highest designation they can within those appraisal organizations.
Sharon: I took some antique jewelry to an appraiser not knowing that they did all kinds of jewelry, but they weren't an expert in antiques. Was there any way to suss that out in advance?
Gina: That's a great question, Sharon. That's tricky. As I mentioned earlier, I feel that it's difficult to get a formal education in jewelry history today, so you are getting it piecemeal from wherever you can, which is why I developed my courses. There is no way to look at an appraiser and have them prove to you that they are a specialist in antique and period jewelry. Unfortunately, that's something that comes by way of reputation. You may have to ask, "How did you become proficient?" You may have to just ask them to explain that to you. It's a tricky one. As a consumer, I'm not quite sure how that could be proven.
Sharon: What would you suggest the public ask if you want to know if an appraiser is credentialed, a credible appraiser?
Gina: You ask them what level of certification, what designation, they have achieved within their appraisal organization. Are they a member of the ASA, the NAJA, the ISA, the AGS? If they are a member—you could be a member and not attain any education. You could be a candidate member, or you could just simply be a member. Ask them, "What education have you completed with these organizations? Are you designated? What is your designation? What is your experience with antique and period jewelry? Are you proficient with that type of jewelry?" Just outright ask them to show you what their education and designation is.
Most appraisers who have achieved this level of education and designation have spent a great deal of time attaining it and are proud of what they've achieved, and they usually put up on their website for everybody to see. But if they haven't done that, you can ask them for their professional profiles so you can read through what they've achieved, and you can even check it. You can call those appraisal organizations to see if the information you've been provided is true and accurate.
Sharon: I'm thinking about something you said earlier. If somebody says to me, "I don't have a formal education in this, but I've handled a million and one pieces in this era, and I can tell right away if it's fake or not and who made it," what do you say to that?
Gina: That's quite possible. Absolutely. Then that makes them a connoisseur and a specialist in antique and period jewelry. But are they an appraiser? Do they have an education in appraisal report writing? Can they write that appraisal report for you? That's the other part. That's the other side of the coin. That's the other thing they have to have to be an appraiser. Otherwise, they're an expert in that period of jewelry, but they're not necessarily an appraiser.
Sharon: That's interesting. When I thought about being an appraiser myself, it was the report writing that scared me off. That's very detailed and very scientific in a way. Very precise.
Gina: Yes, and that education is something that you can study.
Sharon: Okay. I think I'll pass.
Gina: You almost looked like you were considering it, Sharon.
Sharon: No, I think I've heard too much about the classes for the report writing and how they're pretty onerous, in a in a good way.
Gina: They're fascinating. I highly recommend it. Anyone out there who is writing appraisal reports and doesn't have a foundation in appraisal report writing from one of the major organizations, I really suggest that you go out and get that education. You'll be amazed at what you'll learn. It's going to make you even better at what you do.
Sharon: Why would you say it makes you better at what you do?
Gina: This education is written by appraisers, not just one appraiser, but collaborative groups of appraisers who have been immersed in that profession for many, many years. They have learned the best approaches and the pitfalls. They have studied the government requirements. They may have had a lot of experience in appraising for litigation, and this collective information has been formally put into a course. It's only going to help you as an appraiser. It's going to help you avoid ending up in court or possibly being disqualified as an appraiser for the IRS because you did not follow the proper procedures. If you know what pitfalls to avoid and how to arrive at a more informed opinion of value, it's only going to make your appraisal a better product for the person that's using it.
Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. I keep going back to Antiques Roadshow. They talk about the auction value and the retail value and the insurance value. It drives me crazy because you see the glassy-eyed look in somebody's eyes. I want to say, "Didn't you hear what they said?"
Gina: As an appraiser and as a specialist for an auction house, this is the biggest problem. This is the biggest obstacle for a private individual, understanding that there is not just one value. There are multiple values for the same piece of jewelry. It just depends on the market. It depends on whether it's the auction market, whether it is the liquidation market, or whether it is the retail market or whether it is the antique and estate jewelry market. Is it being sold as a brand-new piece? Is it being sold as a pre-owned piece in a retail scenario? Is it a custom-made designer piece? The same piece of jewelry could have various values depending on what you need that information for.
Sharon: I wonder, you talked about this handmade piece. Is there a replacement? Yes, there's an insurance value, but could you find a replacement somewhere in the market?
Gina: That's a great question. You know what? Appraisal organizations, we all have forums, email chat groups where we ask each other questions and use the collaborative brain trust of your peers to help you solve a problem, and a problem came up today. There was a photograph of a bracelet that was posted by a professional appraiser. This appraiser recognized the designer. The designer and the manufacturer—they are one in the same—was a French designer called Georges Lenfant. He was a manufacturer of chains, particularly beautifully constructed chains and bracelets, and he manufactured for all the major jewelry houses, Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, goodness me, so many of them. He was very active in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s. He had his own trademark that he would put inside a piece, but he didn't sign it. The piece was often signed with the jewelry house, Cartier, and then it had the Georges Lenfant stamp inside the piece. He was a French maker. I tell you all of this to explain that today, when pieces of jewelry come to market made by this particular maker, there is an extra layer of interest and value because these pieces are so beautifully made. This appraiser posted a piece of jewelry by this maker. This is one of those pieces that wasn't signed by a major jewelry house, but the appraiser was very good and was able to recognize that it was the Georges Lenfant trademark and posed the question, "Can anybody tell me where I can find examples of this piece so I can arrive at an opinion of replacement value?" It was a 1970s bracelet made by this French maker. Where would you replace a 1970s piece made by this maker? It would be with somebody who typically sells vintage jewelry, high-end vintage jewelry. That should have been the answer to this question.
Unfortunately, one of the answers provided was, "Contact the manufacturer and ask them what they would charge you to make it today." It's not being made today, not that particular piece. It's a vintage piece by a collectible maker. I guess that's a very long example to your question. You need to determine, is this a piece that's typically being made today, or is this a vintage piece that has collectible value? Do you recognize who the maker is? Is there a stamp inside there? Is there some way you can look this up? If you can't look it up, who do you go to? How do you find out? You need to know to ask all these questions. All this happens by networking with your peers, by attending appraisal conferences, by self-educating, and by handling a lot of this jewelry.
Sharon: Do you have a favorite period that you like to appraise, or a favorite stone that you are more partial to?
Gina: Oh, boy. Gosh. Well, my focus is 20th century jewelry. I have no favorites. I love all periods of jewelry, but because I am very much immersed these days in jewelry from 1930 to 2000, which I feel is an area of education that is not being covered enough, I tend to focus on 20th century jewelry and preferably the latter half.
Sharon: I can understand. How do you bring the jewelry in, and what do you do with it once you have it?
Gina: A typical day as a consignment director at Heritage Auctions. Well, that varies from day to day, but if you're talking about the consignment process, I could be going to visit with a client. It could be in his or her home. I could be looking at the jewelry and studying the jewelry and learning about the history behind the piece from the owner. Based on that information and based on the collection, I could be coming up with estimate ranges of what the piece of jewelry may sell for at auction. At that point, the owner of the jewelry may consign it to the auction house, at which point I take the jewelry with me and it goes through the auction process.
It gets shipped to headquarters, where it is professionally photographed. If there are any repairs that need to be done, it's done at that point. If lab reports need to be obtained, they are submitted to the labs for grading reports or gem origin identification reports. Then they go through the cataloging process, where the pieces are tested, gemstones are measured, and weight estimates are provided and entered into the system. Then all this information is compiled into the digital online catalog. If it's a signature sale, it also goes into the printed catalog and it goes to print. Those catalogs are distributed to all the bidders.
Then the marketing begins. Biographies are written and researched. Anything that will assist in helping to provide more information to a potential bidder is entered. Then the publicity begins and the public previews begin. The pieces are shipped and sent off to our major satellite offices where they are set up in jewelry showcases, and they are available for public preview. Sometimes special events are planned around these previews, and the planning behind those special events takes place as well. Once all of that is complete, then the pieces are offered up on auction day. When the pieces have successfully sold at auction, then they are packaged up again, money is collected, and the pieces are shipped to the new owners.
Sharon: Do you ever have repeat clients or repeat people who call you and say, "Gina, I have something I want to show you," because you've developed a relationship?
Gina: Yes, definitely. I have regular consignors and I have regular buyers, and sometimes they are one in the same. There are people that are constantly refining their jewelry collections, so sometimes they'll sell a piece that they no longer need, but they're also collecting pieces that are more to their evolving tastes. We have collectors. Then we also have repeat consignors. I have many clients who have accumulated lovely jewelry collections over the years, and they're very slowly thinning the collection or letting each piece go once they're ready to sell it.
Sharon: Is that because they're aging out, let's say, or they get tired of a piece?
Gina: It could be either. If you're a collector and you're refining your collection, then yes, you're refining it and you're selling pieces that no longer fit in with your style that is evolving. If you're downsizing, you could be downsizing everything in your life, including your home, your clothes and your jewelry collection. Sometimes lifestyle. Especially today, lifestyles change. We no longer wear the jewelry we used to wear, and it's just sitting around. Maybe it's time to sell those pieces to put it into something else. Maybe you want to start a college fund for your child, and that jewelry you're no longer wearing anymore is going to go into that fund. There are all kinds of reasons why people sell their jewelry. Sometimes it's a divorce settlement. Sometimes it's by court order. We've had many sales that have been by court order. The government wants to collect their taxes and it's a liquidation. Jewelry is going up for sale because it's by court order.
Sharon: It's certainly true that lifestyles change very fast and what you wore. I think, "Well, you're a middle-aged woman now. Am I going to wear what I wore when I was 20?" It's very different.
Gina, thank you very much for being here. I learned a lot. It was great to talk with you and I hope you will come back soon.
Gina: Thank you so much, Sharon. It was such a pleasure to talk to you as well.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 168 Part 2: What It Like to See Celebrities Wearing Your Jewels | 25 Aug 2022 | 00:22:55 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Barbara Klar Barbara Klar was born in Akron, OH, with an almost obsessive attention for details. The clasps on her mother's watch, the nuts, bolts and hinges found on her father's workbench, the chrome on her brother's '54 Harley Hog...Barbara's love of hardware and metal and "how things worked" was ignited and continues to burn bright. Coming of age in the Midwest, Barbara was part of the burgeoning glam rock explosion making the scene, discovering Pere Ubu, DEVO, The Runaways, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in out-of-the-way Cleveland nightclubs. Cue Barbara's love of music and pop culture that carries on to this day. New York...late 1970's, early 80's. Barbara began making "stage wear" for friends in seminal punk rock bands including Lydia Lunch, The Voidoids and The Bush Tetras, cementing Barbara's place in alt. rock history as the go-to dresser for those seeking the most stylish, the most cutting edge accessories. She certainly caught the attention of infamous retailer Barneys New York, who purchased Barbara's buffalo skin pouch belts, complete with "bullet loops" for lipstick compartments. Pretty prestigious for a first-time designer! Famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris invited Barbara into a group show at Art Wear and Barbara joyfully began to sell her jewelry for the first time. Barbara opened her first standalone store, Clear Metals, in NYC's East Village during the mid - 80's. In 1991 she moved that store into the fashion and shopping Mecca that is SoHo, where it was located for ten years until Barbara has moved her life and studio upstate to the Hudson Valley. She continues to grow her business, her wholesale line and her special commission work while still focusing on those gorgeous clouds in the country sky. Barbara's work has been recognized on the editorial pages of Vogue, WWD, The New York Times and In-Style Magazine as well as featured on television shows including "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Judging Amy." Film credits have included "Meet The Parents," Wall Street," "High Art" and The Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" video. Barbara has been hailed in New York Magazine as being one of the few jewelry designers who "will lend her eclectic touch to create just about anything her clients request, from unique wedding bands and pearl-drop earrings to chunky ID bracelets and mediaeval-style chains." Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Barbara Klar’s jewelry has been worn by the like of David Bowie, Steve Jordan and Joan Jett, but Barbara’s celebrity fans are just the icing on the cake of her long career. What really inspires her is connecting with clients and finding ways to make their ideas come to fruition. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the crash course in business she got when she opened her store in 1984 in New York City; why making jewelry is often an engineering challenge; and why she considers talent the least important factor in her success. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Barbara Klar, founder and owner of Clear Metals. Welcome back.
So, is your studio inside your home now?
Barbara: Yes, it is. It always has been. One time, I tried to have my studio in the back room of my store in SoHo. That just didn’t work at all. If they know I’m there, everybody is like, “Is Barbara here?” I could never get any work done. Eventually, I was able to get a building in Williamsburg and have my studios there. It was a great building because it had been a doctor’s office in the 50s, so there was a little living space in the back and the front had been all the examination rooms. That worked out perfectly for my studio at the time.
Sharon: And you’re in Woodstock, New York now?
Barbara: Yes, I am. I love it here.
Sharon: Had you moved there before Covid, or is that just an area you like?
Barbara: I’ve been here about six years now. I’ve been all over the Hudson Valley. I think I moved here prior to Covid. It’s a very arty town and full of weirdos and like-minded people. It’s a cool place. It has the history of Bird-On-A-Cliff, which was where all the Hudson Valley artists started. It started as an arts colony. So, it’s got that history, and it’s nice to be part of a history.
When I had my store—and I loved my store on 7th Steet in the East Village—I was so akin and felt such a vibe from the previous generations of jewelers that had stores on 8th Street in the West Village. It was a complete circle to me, and I feel that way now as well.
Sharon: So, you targeted Woodstock or this area to live in?
Barbara: No, I was going through a breakup. It was very painful. I found a place here. I knew it would be my home and my love. I was lucky. It’s one of those guided journeys.
Sharon: Looking behind you, I can see you have quite a well-developed studio. You have all your tools. It doesn’t seem like you’d be missing anything there.
Barbara: Definitely not. It’s great.
Sharon: Did you start out that way? Did you collect the tools throughout the years?
Barbara: Since 1979, I’ve been collecting tools. There’s always something else you need as a jeweler and a metalsmith. About 10 years ago I sold my house, which was a little bit south of Woodstock, and got rid of everything except my studio and my clothes. That’s where I’m at now, and it feels so good to not be buried with stuff. I just have my workshop, and that’s basically it.
Sharon: That’s the important thing, having your workshop. I don’t know if you still do, but you had a very successful line of men’s jewelry.
Barbara: Yeah, I was one of the first to do men’s jewelry. That was probably in the late 80s, early 90s. I’ve done a lot of men’s. I had a lot of gay male clientele. They were always coming in, and they had a large disposable income. It worked out great. I love to see a man in jewelry. I love what’s happened with the metrosexuals in the last eight or nine years. Even the nonbinary and straight males are feeling more comfortable with jewelry, and I think it’s really great. Coming from a rock background, you see a lot of flamboyancy on stage, and you see a lot of guys flashing metal. I think it looks great.
Sharon: It that what prompted you to develop this line? Did you ever sell it? Was it a production line or was it one-off? How was it?
Barbara: It’s limited production always. I had a friend ask me recently, “Barbara, on your website, why don’t you have a category that’s specifically men’s jewelry?” I said, “I’ll never do that because I can never tell what a man’s going to like.” With all of this large spectrum of gender identity, I can’t tell what somebody’s going to like. That’s not up to me, to decide what men’s jewelry is. So, I never really bought into that, but I know men and kids seem to like my work.
Sharon: They look in your window and come in and say, “I’d like to try that on”?
Barbara: Yeah, especially some of the bigger rings. I was always surprised what was attractive to them. Also, there’s a lot of word of mouth. I never relied on advertising. I got a lot of press, which didn’t seem to do much, but mostly it’s because of word of mouth that people come to me.
Sharon: Is the press how you developed your celebrity clientele? You were mentioning that you have quite a roster or that you’ve done a lot for celebrities.
Barbara: Yeah, that just kind of happened. In my store in SoHo, I used to have what I would call my “deli wall.” You know how you go into a deli in New York and you see all of the celebrities saying, “Oh, thanks for that corned beef sandwich. It was the best I had”? I had that in the background. Over time, celebrities would come in. A lot of stylists would bring celebrities. I developed the deli wall, and it was word of mouth again.
Sharon: I always wonder when I look at a deli wall if they ask people for their signatures, if they have a stack of photos in the back and say, “Would you sign this?” How did that work for you?
Barbara: I’d always ask them. It’s hard to do sometimes. I don’t want to overstep because every celebrity reacts differently to being recognized and interacting, but you’ve just got to do it. It’s funny; I’m impressed, but I know they’re human just like me. On my website, I sometimes look at the marketing stats, and that page is the most visited page. Here in America, we love our celebrities.
I know a lot of them had a big impact on me, so I get it. Once I waited in line for half a day because I made this belt for Tina Turner. She was signing records at Tower Records in New York City. I went up to her and showed her the belt, and I was so excited because she meant a lot me. She got me through a couple of breakups that were pretty devastating. So, I get it. I’m a fan. Definitely, I’m a fan.
Sharon: What did she say when she saw the belt?
Barbara: She was like, “Oh, I love it. I just love it.” She said, “I’m going to wear it.” I never saw her wearing it, but she was very kind and wonderful and gracious.
Sharon: That takes guts on your part, just to show a belt to a celebrity like that.
Barbara: It’s not comfortable for me because I’m very shy. I’m really a shy person. I even tried being in bands. My friends were in bands. I work better behind the scenes, but sometimes you have to jump off that cliff. I’m one of these people that I might be shy, but I’m also brave. I’ll take a risk. I think in these times, with the all the competition out there, especially for jewelry designers, you have to take a risk and you have to be brave.
Sharon: Yes, absolutely. It’s amazing to me; so many people I talk to who make jewelry, they say they’re shy, but you have to put yourself out there. You have to put your product out there. You can’t just sit in your studio.
Barbara: You can’t, and you also have to be able to talk about your work. There was a relationship I had at one time, and we had these arguments because he would make this incredible work. I would say, “What does it mean? How would you explain it? How would you define it?” and he would say, “Well, I’m not going to do that. If I have to do that, it negates everything. People should be able to draw their own opinions about what I’m saying.” I was like, “No, I don’t agree. I think you should be able to say what your intention was, how you see it. If it’s interpreted differently, that’s an extra plus in my mind.” I think everybody should be able to talk about their work.
Sharon: Especially if you are doing what I’ll call art jewelry. You’re not walking into a place like Tiffany, let say. That’s the only one of its kind.
Barbara: Exactly. The one-of-a-kinds are like that. When I had my store in SoHo, the greatest thing that was the most fun for me was making an inspirational thing that I thought nobody would ever wear or buy and putting it in the window, because that would get people to come in. They were outrageous; they were huge, and often I would sell those pieces. It was a shock to me.
Sharon: How did it feel to see celebrities, such as Steve Jordan, wearing what you made?
Barbara: It’s pretty incredible. Once it leaves my hands, it takes on its own journey. It’s an ego boost for a minute, but then you’ve got to make a living the rest of the time. I’ve been in this business so long, and you think, “Oh my God, I got my stuff on the Rolling Stones tour. It’s so great.” It’s impressive to people when you’re at a party and you can say that. Ultimately, it means nothing. Has he mentioned my name or anything on the Rolling Stones tour? No. That may never happen, and that’s fine. I don’t care. It’s fun.
Sharon: Is it validation to other people if you’re showing your work or talking about it, and you say a certain celebrity wore it? Isn’t that validation in a sense?
Barbara: It is. I try not to buy into that too much. The validation really comes from myself. I know what I’m doing. It’s fine. I don’t really need that, but that’s an extra special perk, I must say.
Sharon: A validation for you, but also—I’m not sure it would sway me, but for a lot of people—it depends on who the celebrity is, but it could sway somebody. They might say, “If ABC person wore it, then I want one like it.”
Barbara: Oh yeah, definitely. It works that way. To a lot of my rock-and-roll friends, the fact that I’ve sold a lot of work to Steven Tyler or Steve Jordan means something. Sometimes they’ll come to me with special commissions. One of my first commissions when I had my store in SoHo was for a client who had been to London, and he was obsessed with Keith Richards and the bracelet he always wears. He wears this incredible bracelet made by Crazy Pig Studios in London. He came to me and said he wanted me to make a bracelet like the one Keith Richards wears. I said, “Why would you have me do it? Why don’t you dial Crazy Pig in London and get the same bracelet?” He said, “Oh, I was in there. They were mean. They were really intimidating. I don’t want to give them my money.” So, I said, “All right. It’s going to be a little different, but I’ll make one for you,” and I made this incredible bracelet. I still sell it today. It’s the Keith Richards bracelet. It’s a fun story.
Sharon: Wow! Yeah, that is a fun story. You’re also writing a book now. Tell us a little about the title.
Barbara: Titles are interchangeable, but this has been the title for a while. It’s called “You’re So Talented.” I’m not sure what the subtitle is going to be exactly, but it could be “It Takes More Than Talent” or “Confessions of a Worker Bee.” It’s basically about my stories, my experiences not being a businessperson and being more of an artist, surviving New York. A lot of stories. It’s geared towards kids who have a lot of talent, but that’s not all it takes. Talent is like two percent of what it takes to be successful and to be creative and to be a survivor.
Surviving in New York City was such an incredible challenge, especially when you’re living and working on the street level. You can’t control what comes into your space. You don’t know how business is done. I had just opened my store in the East Village. I was 24 or something, and this big bruiser guy comes into my store and is like, “You gotta pay me for sanitation pickup.” I said, “What? I have to pay for sanitation? I thought the landlord took care of that.” He said, “No, we pick it up.” I’m like, “Well, how much do you want?” He said, “We want $75 a month.” I said, “What? I can’t pay that. I can barely pay my rent.” He said, “Well, how much can you pay?” and I said, “Well, I can pay like $15.” He said, “O.K.” and he walked out. Wouldn’t you know, every month he was there for his $15. It was crazy.
Sharon: You were honest, but you had to become a businessperson over the years.
Barbara: It was such a challenge. I have to tell you, another successful designer once said to me, “Nothing teaches you about money like not having any.” I think that was one of the wisest words, because I learned how to become my own bookkeeper, my own press person, my own rep. I also had to pay all the employee taxes, navigate the business end of it, try to get business loans. That was such an experience. I heard 2Roses talking about this on your podcast, too, about how business should be included in art school training. I was totally thrown out there and totally naïve.
Sharon: It sounds like the school of hard knocks.
Barbara: Definitely.
Sharon: And that’s what the book is about?
Barbara: Yes. People say, “You’re so talented.” If I had a quarter for every time somebody said that to me, I’d be rich. No, it’s not about that. It’s about perseverance, and it’s about hearing a lot of “no’s.” It’s about coming through the back door instead of the front door. The book is about things that were on my journey that were important and meaningful to me, and that I think young people could learn something from about moving to New York as an artist. It’s very different now. I don’t claim to know the ins and outs of New York City at this point in life, but I think my journey is still relevant.
Sharon: Definitely. I’m curious how you took the “no’s,” because you must have heard a lot of “no’s.”
Barbara: So many. It gets you to that next point. A no is actually good, because you’re forced to meet up with another solution or another path. I’ll never forget; I wanted to be like Robert Lee Morris, who had his work everywhere and bought a ranch in New Mexico and everything. I remember being tested for QVC in the 80s. They were having young designers on QVC. I did the test, and I heard them in the background saying, “I don’t know if she works well on camera. She might be a little too quirky. Her work is a little too eclectic.” I was like, “Oh God, really?” So, I was like, “You know what? I don’t care. That’s my thing. Maybe I don’t want to be a production person.”
I looked into having my work made overseas and all of that, and I realized, in the end, I would just be a manufacturer. For me, the art was more important. The hands-on making was more important. The person-to-person contact, communication with my clients and my employees was really important to me. I enjoy that way more than if I had been basically a business owner.
Sharon: It’s having the mark of the hand on it. If I know that you crafted it or somebody crafted it, it has much more meaning, I think.
Barbara: Absolutely. It means a lot to me. Recently I had a client whose mother was a big jewelry collector and had a couple of Art Smith rings. The client had lost one of the rings in the pair in Provincetown. It went into the ocean, gone. I was able to hold the matching ring in my hand and look at it and see a signature, because the client wanted me to recreate this ring, which I did do. But the whole time I was making this ring, I kept imaging Art. The ring was covered in dots of silver and pink gold and yellow gold. It’s a beautiful ring, very asymmetrical. The dots were raised like a half a millimeter off the band, and there were like 50 dots on this ring. So, I’m thinking of him making this ring in his studio. Every dot had to have a peg soldered onto the back before it was soldered onto the band. I did that 50 times, and I’m thinking, “My God, this guy was tenacious.” I had a lot of respect.
Sharon: How did you decide to start writing a blog? You write a blog. How did that come about?
Barbara: I really enjoy writing, and there are things I wanted to say that the work couldn’t say by itself. One of the things I’ve always been obsessed with since I was a child are charms. When I was five, Sherry Carr across the street from me had a shoebox full of charms, like the bubblegum charms, and I coveted that box. I was obsessed with that box. Every time I would see it, I would be like, “Show me the charms.” I wanted to knock Sherry out so I could get that charm. I started collecting charms at a very young age. They mean a lot to me, and they mean a lot to my clients. I talked about that in one of my blog posts. I think that was one of my first blogs, talking about charms and the meaning they hold for us. I think the spiritual side is important to me, the emotion you put to it and how it goes on the body. It’s for the body.
Sharon: Well, you have very eclectic jewelry, very unique jewelry. Barbara, thank you so much for being here today.
Barbara: I loved it. Thanks so much.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 168 Part 1: What It Like to See Celebrities Wearing Your Jewels | 23 Aug 2022 | 00:19:25 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Barbara Klar Barbara Klar was born in Akron, OH, with an almost obsessive attention for details. The clasps on her mother's watch, the nuts, bolts and hinges found on her father's workbench, the chrome on her brother's '54 Harley Hog...Barbara's love of hardware and metal and "how things worked" was ignited and continues to burn bright. Coming of age in the Midwest, Barbara was part of the burgeoning glam rock explosion making the scene, discovering Pere Ubu, DEVO, The Runaways, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in out-of-the-way Cleveland nightclubs. Cue Barbara's love of music and pop culture that carries on to this day. New York...late 1970's, early 80's. Barbara began making "stage wear" for friends in seminal punk rock bands including Lydia Lunch, The Voidoids and The Bush Tetras, cementing Barbara's place in alt. rock history as the go-to dresser for those seeking the most stylish, the most cutting edge accessories. She certainly caught the attention of infamous retailer Barneys New York, who purchased Barbara's buffalo skin pouch belts, complete with "bullet loops" for lipstick compartments. Pretty prestigious for a first-time designer! Famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris invited Barbara into a group show at Art Wear and Barbara joyfully began to sell her jewelry for the first time. Barbara opened her first standalone store, Clear Metals, in NYC's East Village during the mid - 80's. In 1991 she moved that store into the fashion and shopping Mecca that is SoHo, where it was located for ten years until Barbara has moved her life and studio upstate to the Hudson Valley. She continues to grow her business, her wholesale line and her special commission work while still focusing on those gorgeous clouds in the country sky. Barbara's work has been recognized on the editorial pages of Vogue, WWD, The New York Times and In-Style Magazine as well as featured on television shows including "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Judging Amy." Film credits have included "Meet The Parents," Wall Street," "High Art" and The Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" video. Barbara has been hailed in New York Magazine as being one of the few jewelry designers who "will lend her eclectic touch to create just about anything her clients request, from unique wedding bands and pearl-drop earrings to chunky ID bracelets and mediaeval-style chains." Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Barbara Klar’s jewelry has been worn by the like of David Bowie, Steve Jordan and Joan Jett, but Barbara’s celebrity fans are just the icing on the cake of her long career. What really inspires her is connecting with clients and finding ways to make their ideas come to fruition. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the crash course in business she got when she opened her store in 1984 in New York City; why making jewelry is often an engineering challenge; and why she considers talent the least important factor in her success. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is Barbara Klar, founder and owner of Clear Metals. Barbara began her work as a jeweler in 1980 in New York and has grown her business from there. She has a roster of celebrity clients. She has also developed a successful line of men’s jewelry. Steve Jordan, who replaced Charlie Watts throughout a recent Rolling Stones tour, sported her jewelry throughout. Most recently, Barbara has become interested in reliquaries. She is also writing a book. We’ll hear more about her jewelry journey today. Barbara, welcome to the program.
Barbara: Thank you, Sharon. I’m so happy to be here talking about my favorite subject, jewelry.
Sharon: So glad to have you. I want to hear about everything going on. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Did you always like it?
Barbara: I was obsessed with my mother’s jewelry box. She wasn’t a huge jewelry collector, but she had some gemstone rings from the time my father and her spent in Brazil in the semiprecious capital, Rio. I just loved her selection and got obsessed.
Sharon: Did you decide you wanted to study jewelry then?
Barbara: No, I really didn’t. My sister was the artist in the family, and I was always trying to play catch-up with her. Eventually I took a class at Akron University in Akron. Well, I made some jewelry in high school out of ceramics. I loved to adorn myself. I loved fashion. I loved pop culture. I was always looking at what people were wearing, and jewelry was so interesting to me because it was so intimate. It was something you could put on you body, like a ring. You could look at it all the time, and it became part of your persona, part of your identity. Sometimes it represented the birth of a child.
I used to go to the museum in Cleveland a lot, and I started seeing these top knuckle rings on women in the Medieval and Renaissance paintings. I ran home and went to my mother’s jewelry box because I remembered she had my sister’s baby ring in there. I put it on my little pinkie finger. She saw me wearing it and she got very upset, but I started scouting flea markets until I could find my own top knuckle ring. I wear a lot of them at this point in life.
Sharon: Wow! We’ll have to have a picture of that. I can see your fingers. You have a ring on every finger, it looks like.
Barbara: Practically.
Sharon: So, you went to the Cleveland Institute of Art. Did you think you’d be an artist or a graphic designer? What did you think you’d do?
Barbara: Like I said, when I went to Akron University, I studied beginning jewelry. My teacher at the time noticed I had an aptitude, and he said, “If you really want to study jewelry making, you should go to the Cleveland Institute of Art.” At that point, I made an application and I got in.
Sharon: Did you study metalsmithing there? When you say jewelry making, what did you study?
Barbara: It was called metalsmithing. It was a metalsmithing program, and at that point in time, Cleveland had a five-year program. You didn’t really hit your major until your third year, so you had a basic foundation of art history and drawing and painting. It was really a great education. I feel like I got a master’s of fine arts rather than a bachelor of fine arts. When we studied, our thesis was to do a holloware project. A lot of people did tea sets. I did a fondue set and it took me two years to complete. It was a great training, but it was also very, very frustrating because it was a very male-dominated profession.
Sharon: Do you still have the fondue set?
Barbara: I do. I entered it into a show, and they dropped it and it got dented. I have yet to repair that. Over the years, the forks have gone missing, but I have incredible photographs of it, thank God.
Sharon: Wow! So, you were the only fondue set among all the tea sets.
Barbara: Yeah, I was. I had to be different.
Sharon: You opened your own place right after you graduated. Is that correct?
Barbara: Pretty much. All my friends were moving to New York City, so I said, “Hey, I’ll go.” I’d been commuting there because my boyfriend at the time was Jim Jarmusch, and he had moved to Columbia to study. I had been going there off and on for a couple of years and when everybody moved to New York City. I was like, “Why not?” So, I went.
Sharon: How far is it from Cleveland or where you were going to school?
Barbara: It’s about 500 miles.
Sharon: So, you would fly?
Barbara: No, I would drive. Those were the days you could find parking in the city.
Sharon: That was a long time ago. I’m impressed that you would open your own place right after you graduated. Some people tell me they knew they could never work for anybody else. Did you have that feeling, or did you just know you wanted your own place?
Barbara: No, I didn’t. It took me a couple of years. I was in New York a couple of years. I moved in ’79 and I opened my store in ’84. One thing I did discover in those five years is that the jobs I did have—thank God my mother insisted that I should have secretarial skills to fall back on in high school. She said, “You’re not going to depend on any man.” So, she got me those skills, and I became a very fast typist. I realized eventually that to save my creativity, I needed to have a job that was completely unrelated to jewelry work. I would work during the day, and I found a jewelry store where I could clean the studio in exchange for bench time. I started doing that. A lot of my friends were in rock-and-roll bands, and I started making them stage ware when I could work in the studio for free. It just evolved into that before I opened my store.
Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry business today. Do you still make it?
Barbara: Oh yes, I still make everything. I have one part-time assistant. I no longer wholesale. I do a little bit of gallery work. I wish there was more, but I consider myself semi-retired. I’m trying to work on my book. Mostly I do commission work, and I do maybe one or two shows a year. I like to say I have a cult following that keep me in business.
Sharon: When you say you have a cult following, do rock-and-rollers call you and say, “I need something for a show”? How does that work?
Barbara: Pretty much. I’m lucky enough to have been in this business since 1984, so a lot of my private clients, now their children are shopping with me and they’re getting married. It’s really nice. I feel very blessed to have that.
Sharon: Yeah, especially if it’s a second generation.
Barbara: That means something to me because they have a different sense of style. The fact that they would find my work appealing moves me, makes my heart sing.
Sharon: Do you find that you go along with their sense of style? If you have one style you were doing for their parents, let’s say, do you find it easy to adapt? Do you understand what they’re saying?
Barbara: I do. I try to understand. First of all, I listen. I’m a good listener, but I’m still old-fashioned. I still like streetwear. I still love pop culture. A lot of times I’ll ask them what they’re looking for, and I can always tell. Even when I had my store, when somebody would walk into the store, I can get a sense of their style. I’m one of these designers who can design very different, very eclectic work, from simple and modern to intricate and whimsical. That used to be a problem for me in my early days because the powers that be—I had a rep. They were like, “Barbara, your work is so different. Why don’t you try to make it coherent?” I couldn’t. I tried to and I came up with beautiful lines, but for me, the joy is the variation and never knowing what I’m going to come up with.
Sharon: Is that what’s kept your attention about jewelry?
Barbara: I think so. And being challenged by commission work and by getting an idea and trying to make it come to fruition. I actually think jewelry designers are as much architects and engineers as anything else, because you get an idea and you’re like, “How am I going to make that happen?” That keeps me inspired and challenged.
Sharon: I remember watching a jeweler making a ring. This was several years ago, but they were talking about how jewelry is engineering because of the balance and all of that.
Barbara: Oh yes, totally. There was time when I really wanted to study CAD. I looked into it a bit, and I realized you also have to be able to draw in order to do CAD. It really helps if you have some knowledge of metalsmithing or jewelry making before you enter into a program like that, because you have to be able to visualize it and see how it’s going to come together, how it’s technically going to work. That interests me a lot.
Sharon: So, that’s not a problem for you. You can do that in terms of visualizing or seeing how it would come together.
Barbara: It’s a challenge. I’ll find myself getting inspired by an idea and spending a couple of days or even a week thinking about how it’s going to be engineered, how it’s going to fit together. I made a tiara for the leader of a local performance group. He’s very flamboyant, and he sings and has a beautiful band. I made him a crown out of a crystal chandelier that I got at a flea market. It was an engineering challenge. It was really fun.
Sharon: It sounds like it. I don’t know if I could even imagine something like that. I wanted to ask you about something you said a little while ago, that you wished there were more galleries who wanted your work. What was it you said?
Barbara: I’ve been making my living doing limited-production items that sell very well. I have a classic piece—I call it the pirate, which is a lockdown mechanism earring that is kind of my bread and butter. But what I’ve been doing in my off time is making, like you mentioned in your opening, reliquaries or pieces that are more art than jewelry specifically. That’s what I’ve been doing during Covid and everything. It's like a secret group of pieces I’ve been working on. It would be nice to have a gallery to show them in, but they’re very unique and different, so I haven’t found that yet.
Sharon: Tell us a little bit about the reliquaries. Tell us what they look like and what they’re supposed to represent.
Barbara: I got obsessed with reliquaries when I was going to the Cleveland Institute of Art because right across the street was the Cleveland Museum of Art. I spent a lot of time there, and they have a fabulous armor hall for armor and a 17th century room that’s filled with religious reliquaries. I was fascinated by how these fragments of bone or hair were incorporated into jewelry and what they represented as objects, how people would pray to these things or display these items with great meaning. It really moved me, and I started making them in college covertly. I continued that living through the AIDS crisis and now Covid.
I did some pieces recently for people who had lost their loved ones, incorporating pieces of hair or fragments of letters from their loved ones. I find that so meaningful because you have something to hold in your hands that gives you a link to this person whom you’ve lost. I made a beautiful reliquary for an ex of mine which was based on the dog they lost. Buddy was its name. I got a piece of the dog’s tail when he died and made a little charm out of it. It was under a little window. Then I had another artist make this beautiful portrait of the dog when it was a baby. I made a little locket-type thing that could be put on your desk, or it could be hung on the wall or you could wear it. That’s what I describe as tabletop jewelry.
Sharon: That’s interesting. When I think of a reliquary, I think of exactly what you’re saying, but without the jewelry—a piece of bone, hair, whatever, that people venerate.
Barbara: Yeah, absolutely.
Sharon: How do you incorporate it? You’re saying for this piece you put it in a locket, but how else have you incorporated it?
Barbara: Pretty much lockets, things that open. I have another piece I made that was based on a monk. I found a little porcelain painter’s image—it was about three inches tall—at a flea market years ago. I could hardly afford it. It was hand-painted porcelain. I kept it in my bench drawer for years, 20 years probably, and one day I pulled it out and thought, “You know, this monk needs to be seen.” So, I made a beautiful locket. It’s probably about four inches long that you too can display it on your desk. It has little doors that open, and you can hang it on your wall or you can wear it. It’s a very large piece, obviously, if you’re going to wear it, but it’s a statement piece and it’s very precious.
I did this piece actually about 10 years ago after living through the AIDS crisis. My friend, one of my clients, looked at this monk and said, “I know who that is.” I did the research. It’s on my blog. It is this monk who was from a very wealthy family that gave his life to treat lepers in Spain. He was the patron saint of healers. It touched me so deeply that I was creating this piece after everything I’d watched and lived through with Covid, with the AIDS crisis.
Sharon: Wow! Do pieces hit you as you’re going through a flea market? Do they hit you and you say, “That would be perfect”? How is that?
Barbara: I’m a collector. I collect things. I’m fascinated. I love to look at things. One time at a flea market when I had my store in Soho, I found this—I didn’t know what it was. It was like a little skeleton paw. It had no fur on it. It was a little skeleton about two inches long, probably a racoon’s hands. I used to make incredible windows to get people to come into the store. It was Halloween. At the same flea market, I had gotten some of the old-fashioned glass milk containers that used to have the paper caps on top. So, I had gotten those, and I thought, “I’m going to do a Lizzie Borden window.” I made Lizzie this incredible watch fob, and hanging from that was this little skeleton paw inside the milk container. It was great. You never know. I sometimes hold onto things until it’s like, “Whoa, O.K. Now’s the time.”
Sharon: I’m imaging it. It’s a drawerful of things, a shoebox full of things that you paw through and say, “Oh, this would be perfect.”
Barbara: Absolutely. That’s the great thing about being an artist. You never know when it’s going to hit. Like I tell people, I would never not have my studio inside my home, because you never know when you’re going to be inspired and have to make something. | |||
| Episode 167 Part 2: What It’s Like to Sell at London’s Famous Portobello Road Market | 18 Aug 2022 | 00:28:04 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kirsten Everts Kirsten Everts is a jewelry dealer and the founder of FRAM, a jewelry business specializing in buying, selling, and valuing 20th century jewels. Kirsten founded FRAM in early 2018 after completing the Graduate Gemology course at GIA and a further 20 years acquiring experience in fields varying from auction (Christie’s, London and Bonhams, Paris) to retail (de GRISOGONO, Geneva) and art advisory (Gurr Johns, London). Kirsten holds a permanent stand on Portobello Road in London, and she participates annually at international jewelry trade fairs in Miami and Las Vegas. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: It’s not easy to get a stand on London’s Portobello Road, but with tenacity and some luck with timing, jewelry dealer Kirsten Everts scored a permanent spot to sell her unusual 20th century jewels. Since then, Kirsten has found a group of loyal clients who love “weird” jewelry as much as she does. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why Portobello Road is changing; her strategies for choosing the best vintage jewelry; and why she will never sell another style of jewelry, even if it means making less money. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Kirsten Everts. Kirsten is a jewelry dealer in West London on Portobello Road. Welcome back.
Was it difficult? It sounds like it was difficult. You had to knock on a lot of doors to get into Portobello.
Kirsten: Yes, the two years before Covid, it was a very vibrant, highly sought-after, extremely busy Saturday morning market. Nobody wanted to cede their showcase to anyone new, but I kept asking. Then, what I was given at the time was a stand when someone was ill. I didn’t know until Wednesday or Thursday of the week whether I was able to go. That left me two days to get my act together, and it was quite a challenge. Slowly it became a more general thing. I got my own stand in a different gallery, but I wanted to be in the one next door because that one had a better vibe, so I had to ask for that.
These were very different times. This was when you could hardly even push your way through, there were so many people. That was 2018. I suspect in the 70s and 80s it would have been even more so. I’m quite sad I didn’t see it then because it must have been something to be there. Portobello, sadly, is changing a lot. I’m quite sad to think that what’s probably going to happen is we’ll have more costume jewelry dealers who are going to take up more space than the actual antique and vintage dealers using real materials, real diamonds, real gemstones. I don’t know how long this is going to last.
Sharon: I think being crowded is all relative. I haven’t been there for a long time, but you still had to push past a lot of people. It was nice to see. It was more than pleasantly crowded. I would have loved to have had the place to myself to take my time, but it wasn’t crowded the way I think of something being so crowded you can’t move. What is it that you like about dealing and buying and selling jewelry?
Kristen: That’s a good question. As a relative newcomer, I think it’s the fact that you can buy something with your very own money. Buying is easy; buying well is less easy. But to buy something with your own money that you have to stand behind is another thing. For me, selling is a small victory each time not only financially—because sometimes it’s not really a financial victory—but it’s an affirmation of what you do, your style and your taste.
For me, it’s always about the relationships more than anything else, which might be the wrong way of business, but I don’t feel that. Now, because I’m a little more established, I enjoy the fact that people come to me and say, “Oh, I think I’ve got something for you.” There’s nothing better. They might slightly put you in a box because you do midcentury jewelry. Maybe they think you do only that, which is untrue, but I think it’s a huge compliment when people pull you over and say, “You must have a look at this,” or “Have you seen this at auction? It’s got your name written all over.” I think that’s a compliment. It shows that you’ve been around for a while, even though it’s only been five years. I like that side of the business.
I also like going into partnerships with people who have an equal eye for something more unique, as my jewelry can be, and who are willing to share knowledge or curiosity. I think that’s what keeps it going, and the fact that you never really know what you’re going to see on any day at any given time. I see jewelry all day long, whether it’s on a screen when you’re going through auctions, or when somebody calls you up and says, “Hey, my grandmother’s just given me something. Can you help me?” More often than not, it’s lower value or not that interesting, but it’s still good to stay in touch with those prices and that kind of jewelry.
Every now and then, you hit something and think, “My gosh, this is fantastic. I need to take it away and think about it because I can’t give you a price now.” Everyone’s very happy; they just want an honest result. If that means you need to go home and do some research, most people are more than happy to do that, but I say that from my level. If we’re dealing in hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe people are expecting more. But for what I do, it’s a very friendly give and take, and I enjoy that freedom. I can be exactly who I am. I have no employees, and I can be myself. I think that’s really important.
Sharon: Do you find it hard to let go of certain pieces if you really like them?
Kristen: I have absolutely not a single inch of hoarding in me. If I like a piece—and I do like a lot of my own pieces—I will wear it for a week or so. After a week, something will change in me and I say, “I’m ready to sell you now.” I’ve sold one or two things I know I will never again see in my life. I have always said to them, “If you no longer want this, I am happy to buy it back, because I will never see this again.” So, maybe some of these pieces will come back. With regard to jewelry, I have no collector mind at all. I prefer to collect ceramics, or I prefer to collect memories sailing or going to the opera with friends. With jewelry, I’m very matter of fact.
Sharon: It probably works better for you if you’re not so tied to it. I think I’d have a hard time, and I hear dealers who say they have a hard time letting pieces go. Do people come to you and say, “I want a particular piece of jewelry; I’m looking for an engagement ring” or something like that?
Kristen: Yes, with regard to engagement rings, which is really not my thing because an engagement ring is a very emotional thing, and you’re making something for someone who is so emotionally involved with someone else. I don’t usually know these clients. They are referred to me. It can get quite emotional. I’m happy to do that; it’s not what I enjoy most, but I’m lucky enough to be the exclusive, go-to person in this country for a professional sports bond, which means that the manager of this sports team, in this case golf, sends all these young athletes or professional golfers to me to do their engagement rings. That came out of the blue. It came through a contact of mine based in Europe who didn’t want to do it. It’s turned out to be a really good relationship, especially with the manager. These are all young kids. I’ve been there myself with an engagement ring. I know what it’s like. And because they were referrals, a referral will come to you if the experience has been good. They always come to me having heard a great story from another golfer or friend, and it’s actually an easy, pleasant job.
I enjoy sourcing stones, in this case diamonds. I try and steer them towards what I prefer, which are old cuts, old European and mine cuts, rather than the brand-new stone that’s fresh off the wheel. I much prefer those, but I do it gently because, of course, I cannot impose my taste. Funny enough, if I compare the two and show them both, they will go with the old cut, which makes it more pleasant for me because I prefer these diamonds.
Before I would do all the jewelry making for them with my jeweler, but I realized that was very time-consuming and I didn’t actually enjoy it. So, I sell them the diamond, everyone’s happy, and then I send them to my jeweler and he does everything with them directly. First of all, it means they save a little money because they’re not paying me a service charge, but they actually get to design it with the jeweler rather than me being in the middle with thousands of WhatsApps going between two entities. It works really well. They’re happy, and they know they’re saving money. So, I do enjoy engagement rings.
Sharon: When you went first to Portobello, you said you hadn’t known about it when somebody sent you there. What were your thoughts about it?
Kristen: It’s extremely daunting. I remember coming there for the first time and seeing a very long street on a downhill slope. For me, I was still young to this country. I had lived here 20 years before, but I was very European. Hearing these wonderful London accents, people shouting at each other, setting up their stands, it was almost like My Fair Lady. I had no idea, but I loved it because you can feel that energy there. All the silver dealers were outside at the time—I don’t know whether it’s still like that—with plates and door knobs and all sorts of things, and you understand that behind the scenes, big things are happening for a lot of them. The knives and forks and the little Victorian brooches you see displayed are not what’s keeping them going. I found fascinating. It was daunting, because you had to insert yourself with these people who run the place, who, by the way, are wonderful. Try and get an appointment with them.
They were never where they said they were going to be. I didn’t know which numbers belonged to which buildings in Portobello. It was challenging, but I understood it had to happen this way. This was going to be the part of my education I had never actually had. It’s fine to sit in a nice, big chair behind a big, beautiful wooden desk at Christie’s and have people check what you’re doing, but the actual responsibility was not there. If I made a mistake, I wasn’t going to be fired. I wasn’t going to lose money. They weren’t going to cut my salary. When I joined Portobello five years ago, I think I was a bit of a late bloomer, but at 45, I was actually ready to tackle that on my own and to make friends and see how these things worked. It wasn’t easy. It was daunting. It really was, but they were encouraging. It was great fun, most of all.
What happened, and what still happens, is that you can lock up your stand, go for a little walk, and come across something where somebody doesn’t know what they have, but you do. Then, all of a sudden, your output is better. You’re there to see, but you’re also buying. That also makes money. It really isn’t just selling. When I’m at Portobello, I set up and actually go for a very long walk and see what everyone has. I ask them, “What’s in your safe? Have you got something more than what you’re showing?” I spend a lot of time trying to find something that will make me money. Then I’ll go back when I know my clients come around, because my clients are mostly private clients. They’ll come in from about 8:30-9:00, so I’ve got a good hour-and-a-half to do this for myself, and it works. So, I like doing both, and Portobello is extraordinary. I really hope it doesn’t succumb to a lower level of jewelry or antiques.
Sharon: Do you see that happening now?
Kristen: Yes, sadly I do. I really do. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just that at the moment in this country, I think there is a bit of a lack of jewelry. This comes through Brexit, mainly, through the climate post-Covid, through people packing up. I do see a slight decline at Portobello in the quality of goods since the last five years. Yesterday, a client called me up and said, “I’ve got about 40 pieces of jewelry to sell. Can you take them to Portobello?” That’s rare, but I do have 40 pieces of jewelry to take tomorrow. There used to be a lot more with a lot more dealers. I don’t see that anymore. I think everyone is a little bit in the same basket, where it’s a bit more difficult to find jewelry. We’ve become, sadly, such an island now with Brexit. A lot of people are concentrating only in the U.K., and there sometimes seems to not be enough jewelry to go around.
Sharon: So, you don’t think it’s worldwide or Europe-wide?
Kristen: It could be. We see each other every Saturday in and Saturday out. When I go to Paris or the mainland, I get excited because I’m seeing jewelry I haven’t seen. Likewise for American visitors or dealers; they’re feeling a different vibe and seeing other jewelry dealers. When we went to the Miami and Las Vegas shows this year because we exhibit there—and when I say we, it’s me and another dealer, and sometimes even three of us. There was a very different energy in America. I almost felt there was more money to spend there, or there was a greater need or thirst for antique jewelry. I do midcentury, so I have fewer clients coming from there, but they’re very excited to see you in the flesh and to see something in the flesh, because otherwise it’s on Instagram or in a photograph. I don’t actually know about other countries, but I hear it because I speak to my colleagues and friends in Europe, and they are saying the same.
Sharon: What did you do during Covid? Did you shut down, or did you go online?
Kristen: I did shut down. I spoke with a friend of mine who does something to the likes of website analysis about what can be done for e-commerce and what can’t, and I think his conclusion was, “I think your jewelry is so different that you can’t actually sell this online.” Selling online means—I will use a very blunt example, but let’s say you have an enamel pansy brooch. If you’re into jewelry collecting or if you’re a dealer, you know approximately what it should feel like, what it should weigh, whether the enamel is damaged or not, is the pin on the back correct, has anything been altered. You know more or less what it should cost.
But I have mobile bangles by people nobody’s ever heard of. I know them because they’re artists from Denmark or Sweden from the post-war era made in gold, which is superbly rare for Scandinavians, dated and signed from 1963. I can’t sell that online. You can’t do it. When that friend said, “I don’t think you are a candidate for online selling,” I thought, “O.K., well, then I’ll do something else. I’ll just build a website,” which I had never gotten around to. So, that was interesting. That was a fun experience, to do a website on your own. That led to inquiries. It’s not up to date now, but it should be and it will be.
What I did do is I much more developed my Instagram. I spent a lot of time trying to make it look homogenous, trying to find the words that will get you the right customers. I had never really spent any time on Instagram. So, I did that, and that’s turned out to be quite good. Even though my account is still quite small—I haven’t got thousands and thousands of followers—the ones that follow me are good, kind and supportive.
Sharon: I would imagine, based on what you’re describing, that it wouldn’t be a real young customer because I think you would have to have some maturity to appreciate what you’re looking at.
Kristen: Yes, exactly. That’s why I love having these—we can call them mature—40-plusers because they concur with you. They say, “Yes, this is a very wacky mobile bracelet and I love it. I probably can’t wear it much, but it is a work of art. I want this.” That’s wonderful.
Sharon: Do you think because you grew up in the Netherlands and around the world, you have more appreciation for these as art pieces?
Kristen: That’s funny. I was thinking about that question even though you hadn’t said it. I was questioning myself earlier today. I think there’s something in me I can’t quite explain which attracts me to, like I mentioned earlier, the industrial and the groundbreaking, a group of people who—we call it jewelry, but actually I think they were calling it wearable art. The Dutch in particular in the 60s were hugely sponsored by the government to get the country going again after the post-war period. There were some very nutty creations that came out of that, but there were some very important, groundbreaking forms and materials that were being used. That really resonates with me. I don’t want to call myself modern, but I think I am. My flat is extremely modern. I don’t like anything fussy. I think it’s the Scandinavian things. I like practicality, but it’s got to be adorning. I forgotten your question, but I’m hoping this is—
Sharon: I was asking if your appreciation for pieces of jewelry as art pieces is because of your background.
Kristen: Yes, wearable art jewelry, I need that. For me to have a fizzy moment, I need it to be very unique and groundbreaking and daring. I think that’s great fun. For me, that’s special. I’d much rather have something by a wacky Danish mobile maker who made for children in the 60s and 70s and make a bracelet for his wife, of which there’s only one and that was never done again. It’s different. The Calder jewelry, which I probably can never afford, or the Art Smith of America, I love all that. They were real artists. That makes me take much more interest than a love bangle or a Victorian enamel pansy brooch.
Sharon: Do you wear some of the unique pieces yourself, or do you just collect them?
Kristen: No, I wear them. I found a system where when I wear my own jewelry, I can quite easily sell it off my body, so to speak. Time and time again it happens: I wear something for myself and I’ll cross someone in the street, not a random customer, but somebody who I know, and they will say, “My gosh, I would like to buy that.” Sometimes when I’m tired of a piece and it needs to sell, I wear it and it will sell. So yes, I wear them. I’ve yet to find a piece that I fall completely in love with and am incapable of selling. I think I don’t have that bug.
Sharon: I suppose it’s good for somebody in your business. We talked about this, but you said you made some notes about the questions I had asked. I want to know if I’ve covered everything or if there’s more you wanted to add.
Kristen: I must have a look. As a jewelry journey, I think it was important for me to mention the university. I was lucky enough to go university, and for that university degree of applied arts, I was taught a section, a module, that I wasn’t expecting at all to be taught. The module was maybe six months long. Sometime in that module, it spiked an interest in me for jewelry I never thought I would like. It’s so inherently who I am that I almost had to make peace with falling in love with a type of jewelry that is from a really small section in the history of jewelry.
I thought, “Can I survive loving this?” I think I go through ups and downs thinking, “No, I must start buying Victorian enameled pansy brooches because that will be my bread and butter.” But when I do, it betrays who I am. So, I sell less, but I’m selling what I love. I thought that was important to put across because I struggle sometimes. I struggle sometimes when I’m not making as much money as I’d like. When there’s a period of stagnation, I think, “My gosh, I really need to do something else now,” but I can’t sell my soul. I’m the worst jewelry dealer in the world because I actually care about what I sell, and I cannot diversify too much into other areas because I don’t stand behind it. I’m shooting myself in the foot, but I think if you stick to it long enough, maybe something good will happen.
Sharon: I’m sure that’s why people are attracted to what you have. If I wanted a pansy brooch, there must be a dozen places you can get one. If I saw one in your case, I would say, “What are you carrying that for?”
Kristen: Exactly. There was one interesting question you had, which was whether the purchases made through my business were impulse purchases. My reply to that is yes. There always are impulse purchases because we fall in love. However, I think an impulse purchase can be something you love, but it can also be bought out of a panic because you need something to sell.
Over the years, I’ve learned very much to slow down and take a breath and look at it again a bit better, maybe from below or beside. There are one or two dealers, who are much better dealers than I am, who come into my head. I can hear their voices saying, “Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that?” I think that only comes with the experience of spending your own money and sometimes not spending it very wisely. That can’t be taught. You need to make a mistake, maybe even several, and you need to be happy with those mistakes.
I have been on the verge of throwing jewelry away because I think I have made such a big mistake, but of course you can’t because it’s metal or gold, and it would be atrocious to throw a pair of earrings away just because you made a mistake. There will be someone for that pair of earrings. Just remember the mistake you’ve made. So, your question about impulse buying was an interesting one, especially if you’re a dealer like me who likes to keep a tight style.
Sharon: That’s very interesting. That’s a lot to think about. I was talking to a good friend of mine, a jewelry buddy, about impulse purchasing. Not to resell, but in terms of buying. I probably don’t analyze things as much as somebody else might because I like it. Don’t tell me; I don’t want to hear it. Kirsten, thank you so much for being with us today. It’s great to have you.
Kristen: It was a great pleasure.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 167 Part 1: What It’s Like to Sell at London’s Famous Portobello Road Market | 16 Aug 2022 | 00:22:22 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Kirsten Everts Kirsten Everts is a jewelry dealer and the founder of FRAM, a jewelry business specializing in buying, selling, and valuing 20th century jewels. Kirsten founded FRAM in early 2018 after completing the Graduate Gemology course at GIA and a further 20 years acquiring experience in fields varying from auction (Christie’s, London and Bonhams, Paris) to retail (de GRISOGONO, Geneva) and art advisory (Gurr Johns, London). Kirsten holds a permanent stand on Portobello Road in London, and she participates annually at international jewelry trade fairs in Miami and Las Vegas. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: It’s not easy to get a stand on London’s Portobello Road, but with tenacity and some luck with timing, jewelry dealer Kirsten Everts scored a permanent spot to sell her unusual 20th century jewels. Since then, Kirsten has found a group of loyal clients who love “weird” jewelry as much as she does. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why Portobello Road is changing; her strategies for choosing the best vintage jewelry; and why she will never sell another style of jewelry, even if it means making less money. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Kirsten Everts. Kirsten is a jewelry dealer in West London on Portobello Road. If you’ve been to Portobello Road, you know it’s where you can find probably more antiques and vintage finds than anywhere on the planet. Kirsten is originally from Sweden and has lived in several places around the world. We’ll hear all about Portobello Road and her jewelry journey that brought her there today. Kirsten, welcome to the program.
Kirsten: Thank you. I’m very pleased to be here.
Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry journey.
Kirsten: It started quite late in life, probably around when I was 13 or 14 years old, when I started accompanying my parents to viewings at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. I was maybe aping their style a bit. They were more interested in Russian silver and Fabergé and gold boxes. That was the way it was then, but it did pique my interest for small, historical, beautiful objects. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they shone brightly, as they were adorned by gems and diamonds.
At the time, I was young and easily enamored by things that shone, and there was these big estimates and results attached to them. I think at the time, the girls my age who were my friends were receiving fairly important gifts in the form of a Cartier love bangle or maybe a Chopin ring. It may have bothered other people to not get them, but it certainly never bothered me because I started to develop a fairly individual and non-branded taste at the time, even though this was a bit later.
Because, as you mentioned, I’ve grown up in all these countries, some of which are not possible to visit safely today, I saw a lot of ethnic jewelry. It would be brass or copper and silver and feathers and wood. My mother never really wore important jewelry, but she looked absolutely tremendous in this ethnic jewelry. That marked me because not only was she beautiful wearing it, but I understood that these pieces meant a lot more to the tribes they were coming from than a love bangle that has been produced over and over.
So, that’s a little bit about how it started. It evolved later with studies in art history and applied arts. I was studying in Holland, and the applied arts and jewelry were being taught in certain modules. That really piqued my interest because post-war Dutch jewelry history has a lot to do with industrial forms and shapes and materials, and they were so out there. I realized I was actually very attracted to big, whacky and unique one-off pieces. So, it grew from there.
Sharon: This sounds like Swedish. You were born in Sweden—
Kirsten: Actually—I’m sorry to interrupt you—I was born in Holland. My mother’s Norwegian, so that’s a common mistake. Because they were diplomats, we traveled to these countries. I was happier looking at semiprecious stones, agates and wooden, beautifully handmade silver torques than more traditional jewelry, I suppose.
Sharon: You were close to ethnic jewelry. Were you in Iran?
Kirsten: Yes. I was between all sorts of countries, but when I was 13, 14, we were living in Pakistan and India. There were trips to Afghanistan, but there was a lot of discovery of the country itself. My parents made sure we didn’t escape at Christmas to the Maldives. We were there to understand the country, so our trips were very much in the country. As a result, we came across some wonderful things that are now no longer there, sadly. But it was always a lovely thing to come across these tribes and maybe buy a silver torque or a big pair of earrings that they wear so well. Of course, now in hindsight, with a little bit of knowledge, I can only imagine that Alexander Calder would have been influenced by the shapes and forms I saw then. It’s just beautiful, big, bold things that really meant something to them.
Sharon: You say you came to it late, but it’s something that started early for you in terms of—
Kirsten: Maybe I shouldn’t consider it late. I think early teens is quite late. Some people say they were inspired by their mother’s jewelry collection when they were five. I had none of that. It came and grew slowly and much more in my 20s, when it was presented by a professor and there was an actual module concentrating on these things. I didn’t ever study the history of jewelry. That comes in free time when I feel like reading about something. Possibly like most of us, I’m quite self-taught when it comes to proper history. But yeah, maybe you’re right; maybe it wasn’t that late.
Sharon: Yes, people do start with it sometimes with their mother’s jewelry box. My mom didn’t have a jewelry box. Did you go into art history because it was the closest thing to jewelry or just because you love art history?
Kirsten: It’s more embarrassing than that, really. I went into art history because at the time, it was an easy thing to study. I didn’t know what I wanted to study, and it was an easy choice. My parents are artistic. We traveled a lot. There was a lot of culture growing up. It seemed to make sense to put these paintings and sculptures into a historical context. It was a wonderful study to do. If I look back now, I should have done it now rather than then, because it’s such a wonderful thing to study at a later age when we have more maturity. So, it was more a default because I wasn’t going to be a doctor or an engineer, and this seemed to be wonderful. It piqued a great interest in all sorts of things. Being able to put a painting or a bronze into a certain time lapse is quite a nice thing.
Sharon: As part of this, did you ever make jewelry? Were you a bench jeweler or a maker?
Kirsten: No. I did a course a couple of years ago in London because I found it important to understand how difficult it was. I thought that might let me understand the value of the piece or the workmanship behind it. I was thinking you need to get your hands dirty to understand it more. I did this ring course. It was a one-day thing. I’m so happy I did it, but it takes so much patience and a certain amount of creativity and ability to actually work certain metals. That was enough for me. I was never going to be a bench worker, but I’m really glad I tried. It took a day to make a ring, and I appreciate handmade jewelry a lot more because of it, because I had to spend this day at the bench.
Sharon: It does take a lot of patience, yes. I’m impressed you made the ring in just one day, because a lot of times it can take three days. The name of your jewelry company is FRAM. What does that stand for?
Kirsten: FRAM means forward or go forth in Norwegian. I thought that was appropriate for a young business that I was starting on my own. It felt like a positive note to it, but the true origin came from the fact that I have a passion for sailing. There’s a ship called the Fram, which is in Norway in the Fram Museum. It’s a ship that went to the Arctic and the Antarctic in the late 19th century and came back successfully, which can’t be said for all expeditions at the time. I thought, “I love boats, especially wooden boats, but I can’t put a boat on my business card; no one will understand why I’m doing jewelry. But I can call the business FRAM.” It’s easily remembered; it’s easily spelled. Actually, as a result, I get called Fram a lot because people don’t know my first name. I’m actually quite thrilled by that. It has nothing to do with jewelry; it’s just a word that sounds nice.
Sharon: It’s memorable. It’s easy to remember, but it is like, “Why?” or “What’s the connection here?”
Kirsten: Exactly. Well, there’s none.
Sharon: Tell us about your business. You’re a dealer.
Kirsten: Yes.
Sharon: Tell us about your business, who buys it, how you sell and that sort of thing.
Kirsten: Yes, with pleasure. The business is a small business; it’s just me. I started it from scratch after I decided that the company I used to work for and I had nothing left in common. I felt a bit restricted there, and I needed to get this creativity out. It was a little bit haphazard that I left. It was a bit quick. It was a little bit unplanned. I’m very happy being a small business. I would love some feedback from friends, from a colleague at some point, but we’re small. Our clients have grown slowly throughout the two years of the pandemic, of course, but we’ve grown steadily. It’s very organic.
They have turned out to be mostly women. I would like to put an age bracket on it, but I can’t because it varies from 30 to about mid-70s. They’re all very strong, independent women, and they have their own taste. They know exactly what they like, what they can and cannot wear. Some are able to spend more than others. That makes absolutely no difference to me. I like the relationship. I’ve noticed that the customers I’ve developed have become friends, almost. We talk about other things. We go to the opera together. We’re invited over for dinner. They share stories about their lives. For me, it’s a whole package deal. I’m so happy when they have a great piece of jewelry that I believe in, but I also really want to understand them. I don’t know if that’s possible with all jewelry. Maybe other people have that as well, but I have a feeling I have that quite strongly. Maybe that’s because I’m not too expensive, or maybe that’s because I meet a lot of them at Portobello with a very friendly dialogue. I don’t know, but it seems to be that.
Sharon: Do you have people who buy from you and come back to you?
Kirsten: Yes, I have a lot of return clients who, when they can, will say, “I’d like to buy something unique. Have you got anything at the moment?” I will be very honest with them if I haven’t. I can say, “No, but maybe I can find something for you.” That doesn’t seem to bother them. If I have a little search in the market, if I can find something unique, that doesn’t put anyone off. They are absolutely repeat clients. They don’t have to come back every month, but I have noticed that some of them were there in the beginning and are coming back now, and it’s four or five years later. They remember you, and I think it’s because we have this wonderful, honest and open relationship. I am exactly who I am, and I will not pretend to be anything else. I think that might come across. I’m not pushy or menacing, so they come back.
Sharon: You were in a different business, in the corporate world. Had you been thinking about starting a jewelry dealership or whatever you want to call it?
Kirsten: No. I’ve always been interested in jewelry. I started in 1998 at Christie’s in the jewelry department, and it developed from one jewelry world to the next. It went from valuing pieces as a junior employee at Christie’s. Then I moved to Switzerland and I became the stone buyer for a company that did all this black diamond jewelry before black diamonds became what they are now. I bought their stones, so there was a wholesale aspect to that. Afterwards I went back to auction houses and ended up in a company in England doing valuation. It’s always been jewelry-based, but I think what happened is in 2018, I thought I had done everything from wholesale to auction to retail. I thought the only thing I could do where I could be free—which is very important to me, to have that freedom—is to start a business, but it had never crossed my mind because it’s a scary thing.
Sharon: It’s interesting that you did have such a foundation. It is a very scary thing to go out on your own. Was there a catalyst? Was it just like, “It’s time”?
Kirsten: I think it was time. I could feel that the company I was with was concentrating much more on paintings and sculptures. I was promised jewelry. It wasn’t quite working, and I thought, “I can’t go on like this. I’m going to waste my life away.” I was probably in my mid-40s, and I thought it was time to grab life and to do something for myself and to take that responsibility. I thought, “I’ve had so much experience”—about 20 years up until then—”I’m sure I can make this work. If I don’t make it work, then we’ll see, but I think it’s now the time to go.”
I have to add that when these crossroads or these junctions happen in your life, and it’s a big step to take into a deep void—I had very little money in the bank, and I certainly had no clients that were going to come with me. Situations like that sometimes show you that there are one or two people who show up in your life who believe in you or have been in the same position earlier and want to help you. Of course, by helping me, they help themselves, so it’s very equal. I think, as it turned out, one client did say, “I’ve got this jewelry. Can you help me?” And a dealer friend of mine was very kind to help me with Portobello. That was what allowed me to gain some confidence and finances to slowly, slowly make my own way, so to speak, without too much financial damage.
Sharon: Did you target Portobello? Did you say, “That’s where I want to be”? Did you sell elsewhere?
Kirsten: No. I didn’t know about Portobello because my education in jewelry was more or less abroad. I knew of it. I hadn’t ever made the effort to go down there, but I was advised to do it. At the time, Portobello was a lot busier than it is now, especially since Covid. You might remember it much busier. I think I had to go every week for about year to say, “Can I have a stand?” In the end, I got one at the back of the gallery. I think as a newcomer, you’re almost seen as fresh meat. I think they didn’t really know what I was doing. It was a fairly nerve-wracking experience, especially at 5:30 in the morning, but it turned out well.
It was only recently that I’ve understood the importance of Portobello. My career was a little bit backwards. I started at a wonderful auction house at Christie’s, very protected, and slid down this pole and ended up doing Portobello, which is essentially an antique street market. Of course, I should have done it the other way around, but it so happened this is now, and I enjoy it very much. It’s a very steep learning curve to see a piece of jewelry that you have to make an instant decision on because somebody else might buy it if you turn your back. I think there’s a great education in—I don’t want to say judging—I can’t remember the word now, but seeing a person and understanding, “Are they a safe person to deal with? Are they here to steal something? Are they going to actually take this seriously? Where are they from?” I think people knowledge is very important.
What’s been wonderful with Portobello is the camaraderie with the other dealers. Something that doesn’t make sense in someone else’s showcase makes enormous sense in mine, and I understood that you don’t always need to buy something. They’re happy to lend it to you. It’s a very friendly, I’ll-scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine situation. Everyone wants to make money at the end, and you do end up working fairly quickly with the people you have a connection with. It’s extraordinary. I advise anyone starting or even not starting to do it occasionally. It’s just once a month, and I think it keeps it real.
Sharon: That’s a good way to say it. It’s very hands-on. These are the people buying and selling, whether it’s a Christie’s or a Portobello.
Kirsten: Yes.
Sharon: Right now you’re toward the front of the gallery.
Kirsten: I think I got lucky because during Covid we lost—not literally, but a lot of elderly dealers decided to pack up the business at that moment, especially once it was going on for so long. They chose to go stay in the countryside and open a little shop there or trade from home through e-commerce. Portobello emptied out quite quickly as a result of that, but when we were able to start trading again after four months of severe lockdown, there was a certain amount of us that stayed loyal to Portobello. One, because we had to work, two, because we wanted to, but we were there when we were out of lockdown. It was still very much a scare. As a result of that, I got a very nice stand, I like to think. I don’t know why I’m towards the entrance. It’s a great location. I think people moved around. There may have been issues with some people getting government funding, others not. I don’t know. Maybe different people have different deals with the people who run Portobello, but either way, I ended up in a very nice spot. It’s very cold in the winter, but it’s lovely in the summer. | |||
| Episode 166 Part 2: How to Source Vintage and Antique Pieces from Reputable Dealers | 12 Aug 2022 | 00:20:26 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Erik Yang Erik Yang is the founder of The Lush Life Antiques, which offers a selection of vintage designer jewelry, both signed and unsigned. His primary focus is on American and European costumes, Mexican silver, Native American Indian, Bakelite, modernist and contemporary designer jewelry. Each piece is carefully hand-selected for its design, quality, and construction. In his 25 years as a jewelry dealer, Erik has segued from exhibiting at shows to selling exclusively online. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: The most valuable thing Erik Yang has isn’t his collection of vintage jewelry and antiques—it’s his expertise. As founder of The Lush Life Antiques, Erik has built a reputation as a trusted dealer for his integrity and in-depth knowledge of jewelry and antiques across several periods. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how to find trustworthy vintage stores and dealers; how the internet has shaped antique pricing expectations; and why you should always get a receipt. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today my guest is Erik Yang, founder and owner of The Lush Life Antiques. Welcome back.
We talked a little bit about the importance of a dealer’s reputation. What makes one dealer more trustworthy over another? I would rather have somebody say, “I don’t know,” if I ask them, “What is this from? or “What is this made of?” as opposed to giving me some story.
Erik: Right. There are a lot of people that don’t know, and there are a lot of people that use that as a disclosure: “use your opinion, “buyer beware,” but they know. A lot of people pass off their mistakes to other people that are unsuspecting. A lot of collectors give their mistakes to dealers who don’t really know and say, “Here, I’m divesting. Please sell this for me at the market. I don’t need this. You keep the difference.” That happens all the time. They tend to use people that don’t have the knowledge base, but the collector has the knowledge base. Maybe this is getting into a little more complicated discussion, but dealing with a reputable dealer is difficult.
We had this discussion when you were here for that exhibit. I think when you’re dealing with somebody who has been in business for quite a long time, is very known in the industry, is a published author, someone you can Google and they’ll have multiple hits for interviews or articles or this or that, someone who is respected, I think those are the type of people you can deal with safely. I always joke that I’ll buy something from somebody I know very well, when they’ve been in business for 30-something years, and I’ll ask them, “Can I have a receipt?” There are people that do the market every month, and they don’t know how to write a receipt, let alone have a receipt book with their business name and their contact information on it.
When I receive a receipt and it just says, “Necklace, $30,” with nothing on it, I can make that myself. Someone like that, who is that casual about their business, if you have an issue with something, if you buy something from them, you have no recourse aside from going up to them and saying, “I bought this necklace from you for $100 and it turns out it’s not gold. I would like my money back.” Well, you don’t have a proper receipt, and they’re probably going to say, “I don’t know. It’s been too long. I can’t do anything.” That’s quite common. If someone has their letterhead on it, their business name, their contact information with the information of the item, they will stand by that product because not only is there a liability with it, but they tend to be a lot more established and reputable in their business. At least that’s my opinion.
I’m helping with an estate right now, and they’re donating some of the pieces to the local museum. I didn’t know when I first looked at one of the items that it actually had the receipt of purchase. The curator asked me for assistance with this piece. I looked at the letterhead and I knew the store; I knew the owner of the store. It had a very detailed description of the item and the price that was paid. I said, “Let me contact this person and get some information for you.” I did, and they said, “We definitely sold this item, but it was sold so long ago—it’s been almost 10 years—that we don’t have the paperwork on it. We don’t recall X, Y, Z about the piece, but we are happy for you to send it to us at our expense. We will review it. We will give you a revised receipt of information for whatever purposes you need, and we’ll send it back to you.” That’s reputable, and that’s why that person has a very established business. It’s all about reputation. I was quite impressed with how they handled that. It was much more than I thought they would do. They went out of their way more than they had to. But if somebody doesn’t have any kind of brick and mortar, and they just show up at a flea market one weekend, you’d better be careful with what you’re buying.
Sharon: It’s interesting you say that about the receipt. I hadn’t thought about the information on the receipt and the letterhead. It’s not that difficult to make something like that, but most people don’t go into a lot of detail it seems.
Erik: No. I have my receipt book with my business name on it, and I try to give as much information. I ask them what they want, usually; “What do you need on the receipt?” because some people do buy things for investment, but most of my clients are buying some earrings to wear for an event and they could care less who made it. That’s just how it is. There are different levels of collectors. Now, if it’s something like a Van Cleef & Arpels diamond bracelet, they want something a little more specific, especially if it’s expensive.
By doing that, by putting that down next to your name, you have a liability. They can come back to you and say, “You sold this to me as this and it’s not.” I had this recently, and I’m glad I got it on paper. I bought a brooch that they sold to me as 14-karat gold with sapphires. It looked 100% correct and it tested for 14-karat, but it wasn’t 14-karat; it was just extremely heavily plated. You had to file into it a little bit to get to the core metal, but it was brass, basically, with a very heavy gold plating. They did not want to stand by their product, and it’s a very well-known store locally. I said, “I have your receipt saying this,” and they said, “Well, we’ll give you store credit.” I said, “Well, I bought it yesterday. The credit hasn’t even gone through,” and I basically forced them to give me the money back. I wasn’t happy with that, and I haven’t gone back. That’s a good example of someone who has a very established business that’s been around for over 30 years locally that didn’t stand by their product. I didn’t pursue it. I could have, but I’m not the type of person to leave bad Yelp reviews. It was just an unpleasant experience. When people have asked me about that particular store, I’ve told them, “You better be careful.” I didn’t mention specifically what the scenario was. I said, “Just be careful with them. I know you shop there. Be very careful with your purchases.” That’s all you can say.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I’ll have to think more about it and be more aware. I do tend to buy things a little quickly without looking at all the detail.
What did you do during Covid? You operate online. You don’t go to shows. How do you sell?
Erik: People ask me that all the time, and I say I sell wherever I can. I’m in transition right now for a number of reasons, but at the time Covid was happening, I think I was in three stores. I’m down to two now. I originally had five locations in Dallas. Slowly the stores have closed or I pulled out for various reasons, bad management of the stores. I never had my own brick and mortar. I always sublease spaces. During Covid, though, a lot of stores here closed completely. We also had some issues with rioting here. I won’t get into politics or current events, but there was rioting happening in New York and Beverly Hills, and that’s when Bergdorf Goodman and all of Rodeo Drive was covered up. They just boarded up everything. Two of my stores were in prime areas that were targets for that, so at that time, I pulled all of my merchandise. That was during Covid. I pulled all of my merchandise out of the stores by request of the store owners because they were scared for their own items; they didn’t want to be worrying over possible theft of my things as well. I left costume or things that don’t have an intrinsic value, but anything that was silver or anything that was meltable that could be pawned, I did take out. All of my Native American pieces ended up getting boxed up and taken out during Covid.
Still, our stores were managing on Instagram and Facebook posts. We did curbside pick-up just like the grocery stores do, but these were big stores, and they’re trying to sell for everybody in the store. I’m just one vendor. So, I took everything more online, and that’s where I’ve been stuck for the last couple of years, which is fine. I’m back in the stores. We’re fine now, but Covid was very brutal for a lot of people. A lot of local stores, especially the antique stores and the vintage stores, just didn’t survive for obvious reasons. It’s hard to experience a lot of things. You have to try things on, and it’s a little difficult to do everything online.
Sharon: Are you focusing more online? Now you have several outlets online, it seems.
Erik: I am doing online. I’m trying to be more active with Instagram. They’re dragging me into the 21st century. I’ve always used social media for different things, but not necessarily for selling. I have pretty big displays in both of my local shops, and I’m continuing online. I’m primarily selling on eBay at the moment. I am rebuilding a website which I had before. I let it go by the wayside. I’m trying to remarket it a bit for many reasons, but primarily I have some significant collections in right now that I’ve been hired to liquidate, and they’re almost too good to go. I hate to say it, but they’re too good for eBay. They need to go on a higher venue. I’ll get to it. I’m still processing all the low-end pieces from these two collections right now. So, it’s going to be a while. It takes time.
Sharon: Wow! We’ll keep our eyes on everything because it’s hard to find you.
Erik: I know. I’ve joked that if I ever had a brick-and-mortar store, all the Yelp reviews would say, “Wow, he’s got great stuff, but he’s never open.”
Sharon: You’re on eBay under what name, The Lush Life?
Erik: The Lush Life on eBay. I’ve been on eBay since 1999. I took a huge hiatus for a long time. I had problems with eBay very early on, and I had a temper tantrum and said, “Enough with them. I’m going to go and open my own website.” I did, and I exclusively did that for at least 10, 12 years. Then I started doing shows, and then shows died. Then I started doing shows again, and then I’m back on eBay. So, it seems like I’ve come full circle. Nothing’s really changed. You have to change with the times. There are other options. I’ve looked at doing Ruby Lane and other things, but I’ll figure it out.
Sharon: But you are on Instagram as @arkieboy33.
Erik: Yes.
Sharon: Do you find that you sell through Instagram? Do people call you?
Erik: I have a little bit, not much because I wasn’t active with it. I know there are a lot of people doing a lot of business, and there are a lot of people that are exclusively selling on Instagram. For now, it is a valid forum, but what’s next? If you think about it, Myspace wasn’t that long ago. What is that? There are a lot of different venues I hear about, and I don’t know what they are. I’m familiar with TikTok and all of those, but there are a lot of other things. There are all kinds of apps now as well. I know I would not mesh well with something like Poshmark or Mercari or any of those, so I’ll just stick with eBay; it’s been around a long time.
Sharon: It sounds like you have it mastered. You’ve figured it out, at least.
Erik: The thing with eBay or that particular selling forum, as well as Ruby Lane and the more established platforms, is that the market for specific things right now is in Asia, and they are able to buy through those forums. It’s a little sketchy when you start having international sales and you assume the responsibility. On eBay, you can use their shipping program, so it costs more for them as the buyer, but there’s less responsibility as a seller. When I’ve had things go missing it’s been because of eBay, and I’ve been taken care of on my end, as has the buyer. There is a level of safety or security that I like. There’s something very stressful about sending very expensive items to someone you’ve never met, have never spoken to on the phone. Even though you have a credit card authorization, or you’ve run a credit card and you’ve captured the funds, it can be reversed. That’s a scary thing.
Sharon: Yeah, that’s interesting. Erick, you’ve covered a lot of territory. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.
Erik: Thank you for having me again.
Sharon: It’s been great.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 166 Part 1: How to Source Vintage and Antique Pieces from Reputable Dealers | 10 Aug 2022 | 00:26:55 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Erik Yang Erik Yang is the founder of The Lush Life Antiques, which offers a selection of vintage designer jewelry, both signed and unsigned. His primary focus is on American and European costumes, Mexican silver, Native American Indian, Bakelite, modernist and contemporary designer jewelry. Each piece is carefully hand-selected for its design, quality, and construction. In his 25 years as a jewelry dealer, Erik has segued from exhibiting at shows to selling exclusively online. Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: The most valuable thing Erik Yang has isn’t his collection of vintage jewelry and antiques—it’s his expertise. As founder of The Lush Life Antiques, Erik has built a reputation as a trusted dealer for his integrity and in-depth knowledge of jewelry and antiques across several periods. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how to find trustworthy vintage stores and dealers; how the internet has shaped antique pricing expectations; and why you should always get a receipt. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is Erik Yang, founder and owner of The Lush Life Antiques. Erik has spent the last few decades buying and selling a range of jewelry and antiques, from antique items to modern items, some of which he has designed and commissioned himself. Over the years, he’s become extremely knowledgeable and well-versed in jewelry and jewelry history.
I’m going to give you one perfect example. I recently met with Erik at the Cartier exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. Although the exhibit had opened just a couple of weeks before we were at the exhibit, it was the third time he had already been attending it. As he and I toured through the exhibit, Erik would explain how many of the Cartier items were used by women in the 20s or 30s. You know the items that you look at and go, “Who used that, and where did that fit?” or “How did that hold the cigarette or lipsticks, or what was that used for?” Erik would explain to me how they were used. I started to feel like I was with the Pied Piper, because people would gather around him to listen to his explanations and ask if they could follow him around to hear what he had to say. He definitely made many of the items come alive. Today we’ll hear about his own jewelry journey. Erik, welcome to the program.
Erik: Hi, Sharon. Thanks for having me here. It’s nice to be back.
Sharon: Yes, pre-Covid, a different world. Tell us about your jewelry. I know you didn’t start out in jewelry. What was your original career, and how did you get into jewelry?
Erik: I minored in art history in college, but my degree was actually in zoology/biology. I worked in a laboratory for a couple of years, specifically in the biochemistry/molecular biology department at the University of Arkansas for medical sciences. At that point, I was on a pre-med route. I opted to go into the Ph.D. program where I was already working in the labs. I oversaw the labs. I did the ordering. I did a lot of the behind-the-scenes aspect, but I also had my own experiments which were involving cholesterol metabolism. I decided it was a natural progression to get my Ph.D. in that field, but the more I got into it, the more unhappy I became. I was a square peg in a round hole, basically, and I ended up quitting, much to the dismay of the dean of my department.
I had done a local flea market. I already, at the time, had a little booth where I sold some random things. I did a local flea market, and I did quite well over the weekend. I decided, “I’m going to leave this program.” My dean asked me, “What are you going to do now?” and I said, “Well, I’m going to start by selling off some excess things in the house,” and I have been doing that for 30 years now. I don’t think I’ve made a dent, but that’s how I started in the antiques business, and it was a much better fit. It was a hard fit, but like anything, if you want to be successful, it’s not easy; it’s a lot of work.
Sharon: It was a hard fit because all beginnings are hard.
Erik: Yes. This was a long time ago. This is about 30 years ago. Technology was different. I didn’t have a computer. Nobody had smart phones at all. Researching where to go, how to know what markets to go to, where to go set up, where to sell your wares, was a hidden art. There were some older dealers that were definitely interested in younger dealers coming into the scene that thought, “Let’s help him out.” At the time, I had people inviting me to stay with them in New York. They said, “Come here. You can stay with us,” because they saw somebody they saw potential in, I guess. But that was a totally different time period. Now, if you want to know what to do, you can just Google it and find things out that way. But back then, it was making phone calls in a phone booth in the middle of nowhere and trying to get ahold of a customer, describing things over the phone and hoping they trusted your knowledge or your opinion about an item you saw.
Sharon: Wow! That would be a challenge. You’re knowledgeable about jewelry and antiques across many periods. What is it that interests you about jewelry in particular? What attracts your attention to different eras?
Erik: I’ve always had a fascination with jewelry since I was a small child. My mother had a lot of jewelry, nothing incredibly important. My mother is from Guadalajara, Mexico, and my father was from Taiwan. There was nothing significant, but there was a lot of small pieces of family jewelry. There was the jade and the Chinese pieces from one side, and my mother had a lot of Mexican silver. My great grandfather actually had a silver mine in Mexico, and there were some pieces from the family that she had which I actually still have. It was always fascinating to see those. When she would pull them out and show them to me, I knew nothing about them at the time. I do now.
One of my hobbies very early on—I did this throughout high school, and a lot of people don’t know this. I used to make doll houses on special commission. I made several, and I made quite a lot of money doing it very early. It is a very expensive hobby. Building a small house is the same cost as building a real house. One of the first pieces I made I sold to the president of the National Doll Association. Keep in mind, I have no interest whatsoever in dolls. I was very interested in miniatures, things that were small. I still am. I love small things. So, it easily translated into jewelry because with jewelry, each item is a small sculpture of some sort, whatever it is. There’s a lot of artistry. It’s done on a microscale like the miniatures I was working in.
I’ve made a lot of things. I’m not a bench jeweler. I have made some things here and there, and I do understand the complexity of manufacturing and creating, but that all relates to me making a little bitty chair using human-size, giant power tools to make and cut things and work at a bench doing that. It translated into jewelry quite easily. I’ve toggled back and forth between the two hobbies here and there, not that the jewelry part is a hobby anymore. That was my easy understanding of the jewelry business.
Making the miniatures involved different time periods. One of the more popular styles in making houses was the Victorian style because there was a lot of gingerbread trim and all kinds of ornate things that were done to these houses. So, I was researching a lot about architecture and styles and designs of that period into the 20s. I had that knowledge base of design early on, and we’re talking very early on, like 10, 11, 12. I think my first commission I did for a house was when I was 12. So, I’ve been doing this a long time. I didn’t even have a driver’s license. The ladies that I made things for used to come and pick me up and we would go pick out chandeliers. Anyway, enough of that, but that’s the history of how I got involved and why. There was this early, core knowledge that I had of different styles and craftsmanship because of that small scale. Like I said, it translated very easily into jewelry and still does.
Sharon: As an aside, why is making a miniature doll house so expensive?
Erik: It’s a lot of work. It takes just as much time to make something on a big scale as it does on a small scale. I just went to a miniature show, and a little miniature sterling silver tea set that was done by a silversmith was about the same price as a real one. If you were to melt it, the silver value is probably $10, but it was $2,000 for the tea set. You don’t think about that, but it’s a very expensive hobby.
Sharon: It seems very difficult and intricate. Yeah, how do you use the human-size tools on something so tiny?
Erik: Right.
Sharon: I’m surprised to hear you say that you have this foundation in Victorian because you don’t have a lot of Victorian stuff.
Erik: Right, probably not. A few little objects here and there. I’m actually very eclectic, because I do appreciate different styles of different time periods. I definitely enjoy it. I love going to some of these home tours and seeing what was done. I love Victorian jewelry. Like I said, it was an easy transition. I understand the complexity of it or why it looked this way in jewelry, and when the aesthetic was this way. It’s all very cohesive, definitely.
Sharon: What’s your favorite period, would you say?
Erik: Definitely my favorite period is Art Deco. That’s where I started in the antiques business, in Art Deco objects. I still love deco. I think it’s such a sophisticated look. There’s a clean line about it. A lot of people don’t get it. It did have a big revival in the 70s and a modified version of it in the 80s. There’s American Streamline, which is very sleek. That’s what I like. Then there’s what I call Romantic Deco, which is very flowery, ornate, a little more curves. That’s more French in its aesthetic. I like it, but it’s not exactly my favorite. I like things that are that are that real stark look, which was also very popular in Germany. That’s my favorite style. You don’t see it very much. That style was popular on the West Coast and Hollywood, and New York and Miami and Chicago as well, but not too much throughout the U.S. Every city’s going to have examples of that, but that’s what I like. That’s my favorite.
Sharon: Do you find pieces that reflect that?
Erik: Yeah, when I started in the antiques business, the one thing I specialized in—which was sort of where my business name came from. My business name has a double entendre, because I started with barware, and all of the handles and a lot of the utilitarian objects had real colorful Bakelite as the components of it. So, I always had Bakelite jewelry within my vignettes of what I was selling. At that time, I had one little case of jewelry; that was it. Now, I could stock a store, basically.
So, I started with the Bakelite, which is definitely a very 30s, Art Deco era. There’s a lot of geometric stuff that was done at the time. It was a new material, and they used it in a new fashion. There was a lot of whimsy in Bakelite as well. It was something you would see on screen. It was very popular. As you mentioned, in the Cartier exhibit, a lot of the pieces were Art Deco in their design. It’s one of my favorites. I do see it, but it’s not real common in my area. Really good examples of Deco jewelry tend to be in larger cities. That’s where it’s a little more popular because it is a very sophisticated look. I think you have to be very urban.
Sharon: And you also have to have money because the price of it keeps going up.
Erik: Right, exactly.
Sharon: So, your name, The Lush Life, is a double entendre because you started selling barware.
Erik: Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that. I just kept it even though I stopped selling barware. I kept it because it alludes to luxury as well. Anyway, that’s where that came from.
Sharon: I happened to go into store in New Orleans about five or six years ago, and they had a lot of vintage barware. They explained to me that it’s a real collector’s thing, which I didn’t know at the time.
Erik: Because of prohibition in the United States, most households, if they had a cocktail shaker, it was very simple, usually something sterling silver. Liquor wasn’t available. But when prohibition ended, that’s when the heyday of American barware went nuts. Really inventive styles were coming out. You would see things, roosters and penguins, all kinds of animals and all kinds of interesting forms and shapes on bar accessories. Not all of them, but a lot of them had Bakelite as the components, like the swizzle sticks or the handles or the finials. It was quite common, actually.
Sharon: I didn’t know that until a while back. It sounds like it would be an interesting thing to collect.
I know you do a lot of digging. You go to flea markets; you keep your eyes on garage sales, on auctions and things like that. Do you think that because of things like Antiques Roadshow, people know the value of what they have? Has it gotten harder to find the jewelry you’re looking for? Do people know it?
Erik: Yes, it’s definitely harder to find. I think with the smartphone technology, I see it all the time. I used to not really go to estate sales, but lately I have been, and everybody’s looking up everything on their phone before they’re buying it. I’ve never really bought that way. I’m aware of market prices. One in a while I may not know a particular maker. It’s very uncommon for me to be at an estate sale looking up something. I go by a look. If I like it, if I think somebody might like it and there’s room for a modest markup, I’ll buy it. I don’t care what it sold for on eBay, and I don’t care what it sells for on any other platform. I just know what I think I can get for it.
So yes, it is harder because there is a lot more competition out there, and it’s easier to find out what things are. It’s at your fingertips now. I guess phones started blowing up about 15 years ago. I don’t remember when the iPhone came out or when smartphones became real popular, but everybody is using that. You can look up an item online and see the same item at 20 different prices, whether it’s $10 or someone has it for $650. Realistically, if you want to see what the market bears, if you have an account, you can go on WorthPoint and see what it sold for in different years on eBay. eBay does give you a good idea of where trends are. Over the years, certain things go high; certain things plummet, but it does give you a relative value. So, when someone’s asking $650 for something and there’s no recorded price of that ever selling, they’re not going to sell it for $650. A lot of times people will offer me something and say, “Well, this person has it online for $650,” and I say, “But it’s still there. It’s been there for five years at that price and it’s not going to sell. One just sold on eBay for $39.95.” It’s become difficult because people think their things are very precious when they’re actually very mundane or very common. Then people have items they think are mundane, then they look into it and find out it’s extremely expensive. There’s that contrast. It’s either or, so it’s become difficult.
A great example: I was at a store one time, and a gentleman brought in a little sterling silver baby cup. He said, “I saw this on the Roadshow, and it’s worth a lot of money.” Now, this was a baby cup that was made by a company like Reed and Barton, something like that. It was sterling silver. Granted, it had some silver value, but it is a dime a dozen. Yes, they’re kind of hard to find without a dent in them or engraved, but on a good day, $100. I know this for a fact because I always buy them as gifts for my friends that have children, and they don’t sell for very much.
But the fact that he saw it on the Antiques Roadshow, he thought his was worth about $25,000, something like that. I said, “Are you referring to the tankard that was brought in the other day on the Roadshow?” The one that was on the Roadshow was Paul Revere. It was a tankard made by Paul Revere. I said, “They’re not the same,” but he insisted they were the same because they looked the same. I said, “Well, they are different sizes, first of all.” But you can’t educate when they don’t want to be educated. You see that in everything. Since I focus on jewelry primarily, I see it all the time. I see variations. That story relates to everything, of every category of jewelry that I see, where they think, “Oh, I have that.” No, you don’t. Yours is a copy of a famous piece, and it’s a poor copy. Just because it looks the same doesn’t mean it is the same. | |||
| Episode 165 Part 2: Making a Name for Art Jewelry in Denmark | 05 Aug 2022 | 00:23:29 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Annette Dam Annette Dam is educated from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway in 1999 and has since worked conceptually and exhibition-oriented. Annette Dam's works have been exhibited at exhibitions in Denmark as well as internationally. In 2015 she was selected for the World Craft Council's European Prize for Applied Arts in Belgium. Annette Dam received the prestigious Skt. Loye award from the Kjøbenhavns Guldsmedelaug. Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: For Danish artist-jeweler Annette Dam, the appeal of art jewelry lies in the challenge of making it. How do you turn an idea or feeling into a wearable piece of art? That’s the question she asks before starting any piece. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about her upcoming exhibitions and projects; how people from different cultures approach art jewelry; and why she wants to help the Danish art jewelry scene thrive. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today my guest is artist-jeweler Annette Dam, speaking to us from Denmark. Welcome back.
You used the word concrete, which is exactly the word I used when I was making notes. I thought, “Oh my god, that’s a real challenge.” You say that what you’re doing is a little bit like a riddle. You’re trying to make something concrete that you’re visualizing in your mind, but you want to make it real. That must be very difficult.
Annette: It is sometimes, but for me it’s also where a lot of my drive is. It’s where I get challenged. I get very frustrated and say, “I don’t know. How do I do this?” but that is what I think is exciting. I must like it even though I get so frustrated. I think it’s very hard sometimes.
For instance, I had an exhibition a while ago called “When Complexity Moved In.” It was about getting older. When you get older and more experienced and more knowledgeable, you’re able to see things from many different perspectives. You can see other peoples’ reactions and you can see their points. You may not agree, but you can still see their view, and it’s not black and white anymore. A lot of friends who are the same age as me have the same feeling. Life doesn’t get easier. Even though you may know a lot more, you get more experienced, it seems like it’s getting even more complex. All the grey, all the nuances, you get aware of them. How do I translate that feeling into jewelry? That is a real challenge.
Sharon: Yes, it sounds like it. It sounds like a brain twister.
Annette: Yes, it is, but that’s where a lot of my energy comes from, this riddle that I have to solve to get it into a material. I make jewelry that, at least in my opinion, is somewhat wearable. Some might disagree. So, there’s also a functional side to it, and I want it all to work together. Then you have a lot of ideas, and it’s also about subtracting so it doesn’t get confusing. That’s a lot of elements in that creative process, but that’s the one that drives me.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I could see how you have to streamline things and say, “O.K., I have a lot of ideas, but they can’t all go into this one piece.”
Annette: No.
Sharon: I was intrigued by your—I’m looking for the name of it, the silversmithing program.
Annette: Yeah.
Sharon: Tell us about that.
Annette: I can say that whenever I start a new project, I always want to learn something new, not only in terms of investigating an issue, but also technical skills when I want to investigate a material. I want to challenge myself a little bit in that department as well. There’s always a part of me trying out new thinking, being a beginner at something within the project.
In this case, it has a title called “Trespassing.” It’s about gender. It’s about the balance between femininity and masculinity and power structures and stuff like that. It’s things we talk about these days. It’s also a way for me to educate myself within this area. I have two children, two daughters that are 18 and 20. They live in this, but I have to more actively educate myself in these gender themes. It’s very interesting.
I started out doing these neckpieces that are a balance between a necktie and a traditional pearl necklace. It’s a long process where I also have to deselect something to make it clearer. Where is the balance? How long should the tie be compared to the necklace before it’s a necklace and not a tie? What does it really say? Does it say what I want it to say? That was a small beginning of it, but I had the chance to go to this very experienced, very good silversmith Carsten From Andersen. It was also something I got a grant for through the Danish Arts Foundation. I hadn’t done a lot of silversmithing, and that’s a hard technique. I had a little bit of teaching of it in school in Norway, but it has to be in your body in a way to actually do it. So, he’s teaching me. I’m starting out doing these—are they called puff sleeves? Like the one Sleeping Beauty was wearing. It’s clothes and a shoulder piece.
Sharon: In silver?
Annette: It’s in silver, yeah. I’m a big silver fan. It also has references to and elements of the parade uniforms the military wears. It’s morphing into a different plane with the balance between something innocent and very feminine and something very powerful and demonstrating military power. How can I make an interesting balance between that? I’m also making—what is it called? Like a jock strap.
Sharon: Yeah, a jock strap.
Annette: Combining that with a garter belt. It’s a way for me to explore. So, I’m doing this project and learning this new technique. Part of the project will be shown at a small gallery Portabel, owned by Camilla Luin, in Norway in September. The first step in that project will be shown there and then we’ll see where it goes.
Sharon: How long is this silversmithing program?
Annette: It’s just him and I deciding. When I think I’ve done enough and when I’m finished with what we talked about. We’re still not there, but it’s really interesting.
Sharon: It sounds like it.
Annette: He’s a great guy and he’s so good at it. I’m so impressed.
Sharon: I can give you a lot of credit for wanting to embark on something like that. I like it when people explain things to me, when someone takes me on a tour of an art gallery and I say, “Oh yeah, now I see it, O.K.” I saw your neckpiece with the pearls and the tie. I saw it online, and now that you’ve explained it, I go, “Oh yeah, I get it. That’s really interesting.”
Annette: Yeah, it combined those very traditional, classical, masculine, feminine accessories, and then combining them and seeing how it works out.
Sharon: That’s really interesting. You say you like to exhibit things. Why is that? Why are exhibitions important to you?
Annette: I don’t know. I think the pieces that I do, they relate to a topic, and it feels like I have this conversation doing it. I have conversations with myself, maybe with colleagues, family. But then to see it through someone else’s eyes when the audience comes, those discussions are really valuable to me. I gain a lot from them, so I like to exhibit. I like to make bigger pieces. I know they are not production work, where I will not sell 10 of them, or thousands of them, but I still like to do them. I like to have this conversation between myself and the audience and the gallerist and whoever is there. It’s very giving for me.
Sharon: You mentioned the question marks in people not exactly understanding when you say artist-jeweler. Did they understand it more in Norway or is it just in general?
Annette: A little bit more, actually. Yeah, they do. They have an art tradition. It’s a recent culture for doing craft in general. In my opinion, it’s more valued there. They appreciate it more. It was a good place to study. They didn’t question me as much.
Sharon: They didn’t say, “What are you talking about?”
Annette: I get questioned a lot in Denmark, but not necessarily other places.
Sharon: Interesting.
Annette: Isn’t it?
Sharon: Yes. I know that at one point you lived in the States, in California, I think. Did you do your crafts—
Annette: No, my husband is from California. I have never lived there.
Sharon: O.K. I was wondering if you were doing art jewelry. Have you tried exhibiting here?
Annette: No, I’m represented by Charon Kransen, among others.
Sharon: By whom? Oh, Charon Kransen.
Annette: I’ve been traveling a lot doing exhibitions in the States, but I never worked there or lived there. I find that the American audience, they are braver in a way. They appreciate some of my bigger works that I would never sell in Denmark. As you know, there are a lot of collectors in the U.S. We don’t have collectors in Denmark yet. We’re working on it, but they’re just braver in wearing extravagant jewelry in the US. They don’t mind having those conversations. I think if they wear a big piece that has a lot to say, they know they’re going to be questioned and they will have a conversation. I don’t know if the Danes don’t really want that, but the Americans, they don’t mind it. They like it, right?
Sharon: That’s interesting, because I know the pieces you have online, and from what I’ve seen, I don’t consider your pieces really big. They’re not small, but they’re not huge. It’s not like wearing a pectoral.
Annette: I totally agree. My jewelry is not that out there. They’re not that weird, but that’s a way to come for Danish wares.
Sharon: Do you see the market growing there for art jewelry?
Annette: No.
Sharon: No?
Annette: No, but I see it growing in other places, in other countries.
Sharon: In Scandinavia?
Annette: Throughout the world in general it’s growing. I’m very pleased, but not in Denmark.
Sharon: Interesting. I’m surprised to hear that.
Annette We have a long tradition of making jewelry, so it concerns that we don’t have an education for art jewelery at a higher level anymore. If you want to be educated within art jewelry, you have to go abroad nowadays.
Sharon: What happened to the school?
Annette: It got closed down. They kind of made a school at this art academy, but they exchanged it for accessories, and that’s not art jewelry. They kind of diminished that specific field within the accessory thing.
Sharon: It seems like there’s a market in Canada. You’re working on a project, the Nordic Bridges, in your exhibit in Toronto. Tell us about that.
Annette: Yeah, I was very pleased to get invited to this exhibition called Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. I was invited by Melanie Egan. She’s a curator at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. In the year 2022, there’s this project called the Nordic Bridges, which is a collaboration between the Nordic countries and Canada. The Harbourfront Centre is leading this project. There are exhibitions, venues with literature, film, dance, performance, gastronomy as well, all taking place at different places in Canada. It’s a huge project. This is a part of it, this jewelry exhibition where there’s one artist from each of the Nordic countries and I think six from Canada. I like the title.
Sharon: What does it mean?
Annette: It’s a guessing game. I don’t know. Do you have it in the U.S., a guessing game where the first question, at least in Canada, is animal, vegetable or mineral? In Denmark, it would be—how do I translate it? Is it living in the water, on earth or is it flying? You have to guess an animal in Denmark, but in Canada, I guess it’s a little bit different. But this is the game, and that’s the ... | |||
| Episode 165 Part 1: Making a Name for Art Jewelry in Denmark | 03 Aug 2022 | 00:21:58 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Annette Dam Annette Dam is educated from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway in 1999 and has since worked conceptually and exhibition-oriented. Annette Dam's works have been exhibited at exhibitions in Denmark as well as internationally. In 2015 she was selected for the World Craft Council's European Prize for Applied Arts in Belgium. Annette Dam received the prestigious Skt. Loye award from the Kjøbenhavns Guldsmedelaug. Additional Resources: Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: For Danish artist-jeweler Annette Dam, the appeal of art jewelry lies in the challenge of making it. How do you turn an idea or feeling into a wearable piece of art? That’s the question she asks before starting any piece. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about her upcoming exhibitions and projects; how people from different cultures approach art jewelry; and why she wants to help the Danish art jewelry scene thrive. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today my guest is artist-jeweler Annette Dam, speaking to us from Denmark. Annette’s work is very intriguing. It’s straightforward, but she also injects humor. When you look at her work, you say, “Oh, my god, it’s so true what she’s saying. It’s so true, but it’s also very funny. Why didn’t I think of that?” Her work has been exhibited in museums and at shows around the world. She always has several projects going at once, which we’ll hear about today. Annette, welcome to the program.
Annette: Thank you, Sharon. It’s nice to be here.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. How is it that you got into art jewelry?
Annette: That was kind of coincidental, actually. I always drew a lot when I was a kid. I always did lots of arts and crafts. I come from a family of do-it-yourself types and creatives, but not in an artistic way. So, I’m used to drawing and stuff. I remember when people asked me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I said, “I want to be an architect.” I kind of wanted to be that. There was also, I must admit, something about giving them an answer that they would accept and leave me alone. Then I got into this after gymnasium—
Sharon: High school.
Annette: Yes, high school, but in Denmark, it’s like the last part of your high school and the first of college. Anyway, I came to this school. It was kind of a boarding school. You do it often on your sabbatical, but it’s a very big thing in Denmark to go to these schools. They can be creative. They can be about athletics. They can be about politics. They can be about a lot of things. I went to, of course, an artistic one.
I was dreaming about coming into this class with glass blowers, but it was filled up, so I heard, “Well, maybe you should try jewelry,” and I said, “O.K.” It just opened to me because I had the image of jewelry as being precious materials, nice and fine, wearable, functional. Wedding rings and stuff like that. But that school opened up to me that jewelry could be so much more. This was in Denmark. After that, I wanted to search if there was a way for me to do jewelry. In Denmark, you could do goldsmithing. They had something called the Institute of Precious Metals, but it was an add-on if you were already a goldsmith, which I wasn’t and I didn’t want to become one. In my head, you would spend the first couple of years doing repairs, making coffee, and I wasn’t into that.
I had already been to Norway working at this ski resort. I went back, heard about this school in Norway, and met a girl who had gone there as an architect. She explained it and I said, “This sounds amazing, just what I want,” and she said, “Well, it’s very hard to get in. You’ll probably not make it.” I have a stubborn side to me, so at the moment she said that, I definitely wanted to try. After a long application process, I got in. I had five years at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. It’s a wonderful school. I can highly recommend it today.
I spent five years there exploring materials, concepts. The school is built on letting you a course of a lot of skills, technical stuff of course, but you always have to do something artistic with it. Even though you’re learning a technique, it has to be more than that. I thought that was great, that I could express myself through jewelry, an art form I really enjoyed doing. Altogether, I spent 11 years in Norway. It wasn’t planned, and my mother was saying, “When are you coming home?”
Eventually I had kids and I went back to Denmark. In Denmark, it’s very common to stop at these—what do they call it?—joint workshops, where there are a lot of people sharing not only the space, but also the machines and the tools. As a startup jewelry artist, those machines are very expensive. For me, getting into this joint workshop, where we were 10 people at the time, was really good because I’m not from Copenhagen. I moved back to Copenhagen from Norway. I’m not from there, so I didn’t have a lot of network there, but I got that through this workshop. There were a lot of wonderful people there. I wasn’t limited by not having all the big machines because they were already there. I stayed in that workshop for quite a lot of years. I made a lot of good friends. I stuck to doing exhibition work. I wanted to do bigger projects and exhibition work, and then I would teach on the side, do odd jobs. I was able to do these crazy things that I wanted to do, and that worked out quite fine, I think. I’ve been doing that ever since, actually.
There at one of the workshops I met a now very, very good friend and colleague. We made this project called Art Jewelry Copenhagen. That’s a platform where we make group exhibitions and workshops and seminars. We’ve been traveling a lot under this platform, Art Jewelry Copenhagen. When people asked me at the time, as a young chick, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I had answered, “An art jeweler,” I don’t know if I would have gotten off that easily as when I replied, “I want to be an architect.”
Sharon: Art jewelry means so many different things. It’s so hard to define. You’re described as an artist-jeweler. Then there are people who say they’re jewelry artists. How do you define art jewelry?
Annette: To me, art jewelry is a method to reflect current times. It’s a way of having a discussion with myself and then doing these pieces that comment on it, as all contemporary arts comment on the present day. That can be either through form, material, aesthetics, or it could be making a statement or commenting on the political or environmental landscape we have nowadays. For me, it’s this method of digging into things, having this discussion about how to look at it, a way through a process, investigating themes, materials that I didn’t know before, and then putting it on my own body.
Sharon: Art Jewelry Copenhagen, it seems like it’s been very well received. You went to Asia. You’ve been all over the world.
Annette: Yeah, the last exhibition we had was at ATTA Gallery in Bangkok. Unfortunately, just at the time it was looking up with Covid, we thought we were going there. We bought the tickets, and then suddenly Thailand made some restrictions so we couldn’t go anyway. That was really sad, but we made this exhibition at ATTA Gallery where Marie-Louise Kristensen and I had invited seven other artists from Denmark making these—we call the exhibition COPENHAGEN ReARRANGED. It was basically about inspiring each other. As artists, we stand on the shoulders of many artists and designers before us, but we also get inspired to help each other. We all exchanged elements. I had very typical elements from what I’m doing, and I gave them to someone else in the group, and I received something from another person that I had to implement in a new piece. Denmark also has a long tradition of working together and the notion that you can do more together than alone. We have a lot of unions; we have a lot of them from old times, and these, I don’t know, communities—
Sharon: Like guilds?
Annette: Guilds, but also for housing. There are a lot of groups that join forces, and then you can do something as a group that you could never do alone. We have a long tradition of doing that. That school I mentioned before is also a part of that culture where you join forces. So, in this exhibition, we joined forces with other colleagues that we enjoy working with and made this exhibition. The artists had their own work, and then you could very easily see which was a collaborative work and which was not. It worked out, but we would have loved to go and list it at a gallery again.
Sharon: Will you be able to do that now?
Annette: Yes, now we can do it, but the exhibition is over. We’ll go another time. Actually, COPENHAGEN ReARRANGRD has been a gift to me. I’m also doing things with my friend and colleague. Marie-Louise Kristensen has made me do something I wouldn’t have done alone.
Sharon: That’s Marie-Louise Kristensen.
Annette: Yes.
Sharon: Another art jeweler who’s very creative, also.
Annette: Yes.
Sharon: I’m jumping around here, but you mentioned the collaboration. You’re starting to put something together that you call Spacious Copenhagen.
Annette: Yes.
Sharon: Tell us about that.
Annette: Yes. Marie-Louise Kristensen won’t be in that project because she would prefer to stay free in a way. I think I’m at the point in my career and life where I’m ready to establish something that binds me a little bit more in Copenhagen, and I would love to create this space that I’m missing myself in Copenhagen. I’m trying to create this platform and artist space gallery called Spacious Copenhagen. I have plans for three exhibitions next year. I’m starting out. That’s a lot of work before—Aleah – Is something missing here? Do I need to fill it out?)
Sharon: Yeah, I’m sure.
Annette: —if it’s a bigger group exhibition. I have these three ideas that I’m going to carry out, and in the meantime I’ll see if I can also find a permanent space in the inner city of Copenhagen ideally. I need to have funding and financial ballast to do that, but I’m starting out. I’m doing the platform and the website at the moment, so small steps, but I want to have this place where I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to apply for someone else’s space, and I can also invite internationally whomever I want. Ideally, I would also like to create something like an artist in residence over time. A lot of ideas, but I have to take small steps because I’m just me. And I´m not a full-time gallerist but an artist that aims to make an exhibition platform and doing my own work as well. (05_Annette Dam)
We don´t have many galleries showing art jewellery or museums with jewellery collections – the Danish Design Museum has some pieces in their general arts and craft collection, but not really a considerable collection representing the field. What we DO have though, is the Danish Arts foundation´s `jewelry box´ which consists of works they bought over, I think, the last 40 years, and those pieces of jewelry one can actually borrow and wear, if you in some ways are attending an official event or celebration. The Danish Jewelry Box is a very special and democratic arrangement that you could probably do another podcast about – in that case I suggest that you talk with Anni Nørskov Mørch, who have an interesting jewelry journey of her own. (02_Annette Dam)
Sharon: What do Danish people say when you say you’re an artist-jeweler? Do they understand what you’re talking about? Because, you’re right, Denmark has a long history of this sort of thing.
Annette: Yeah, but we have a long history within goldsmithing, art and design. When I say I’m an art jeweler, they have two question marks in their eyes and they say, “Hm, combining art and jewelry, what is that? Is it still functional or are we offering something for an art department?” I have to explain what I’m doing in more detail before they actually know what I’m doing. We do have a long design history, and that’s very good. I really have a tradition to draw on and to reference. I use that in my pieces, but at the same time, it’s not as big a gift as some might think—not to me at least—because you’re also bound to it in a way. It’s hard to break loose and step into the art field, so it’s affected me there.
Sharon: How do you explain to people what you do when they have question marks in their eyes?
Annette: I get more concrete, and I show them and tell them the thoughts behind the actual piece. I’m getting much better at wearing my pieces, so they have the visual at the same time as me explaining. I think a lot of times they don’t have any visual images on their retinas, so it’s kind of hard to reference.
Sharon: Were you hesitant to wear your pieces?
Annette: At a certain point I was. I don’t know. I got a little bit shy and a little bit humble at the same time. I’m getting over it. I’m getting older. If I want this field to grow in Denmark, I need to represent it also in wearing it.
Sharon: That’s a good way to look at it. It’s so much easier to explain to somebody if you’re wearing the necklace or the neckpiece and saying, “This is what it is.” It must create a lot of conversations when you’re wearing it.
Annette: Yes, it does. People get amazed. They don’t know how much thought goes into it, that there are so many perspectives and that it conveys a lot of talk and discussion about issues. You can discuss things, because this is a starting point for my view on the things and then go from there.
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| Episode 164 Part 2: Royally Beautiful: How Incredible Jewels Have Been Passed Down Through the Nobility | 28 Jul 2022 | 00:26:07 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Prince Dimitri Prince Dimitri founded his company in 2007 after sixteen years as Senior Vice President of Jewelry with Sotheby’s and later as head of Jewelry at Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg auction houses. Dimitri’s love of jewelry dates from his childhood and unique heritage of a family where the heads of European Royalty were closely tied together in an era of extreme opulence, beauty and culture all over Europe. He began designing jewelry in 1999, with a collection of gemstone cufflinks that was sold at Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue. He also designed a line of women’s jewelry that was sold at Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus. He has designed for Asprey’s in London and done special lines for other American companies. With his own jewelry company he has been able to realize his own vision in his love of gemstones; the juxtaposition of unusual materials and color; imaginative forms and paying attention to detail and to superb craftsmanship. Additional Resources: Photos: Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Growing up surrounded by the world’s most beautiful jewels, it’s no wonder that Prince Dimitri became a jewelry designer known for his gemmy creations. After working in the auction world for many years, he launched Prince Dimitri Jewelry, which offers a range of jewels from affordable to six-figure masterpieces. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how jewelry became a symbol of royalty; the most memorable pieces that came across his desk at Sotheby’s and Phillips; and where royal jewelers throughout history found inspiration. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to thejewelryjourney.com. Today, my guest is Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia. Welcome back.
You know so much about this, I’m sure, because of studying through auctions, but is it because you looked at Russian jewelry, too, as part of your background?
Prince: Yes, and I’ve read all the Cartier books. My favorite book of the moment, apart from mine, is the one of Francesca Cartier. I did a podcast with her. The beginning of a certain style of tiara was the tiara of Grand Duchess Vladimir, my great grandmother. She had invited him to her palace in St. Petersburg and introduced him to the court. There was a particular tiara she liked that is now the property of the Queen of England. It’s the favorite, actually, of the Queen of England, but Cartier also was her favorite. He asked her if she would be kind enough to loan it to him so he could get inspired by it. She, being the most important patron of the arts in Russia at the time, immediately said, “Yes, let them have it.”
His first tiara, he made it for an American heiress who had married one of the sons of the King of Greece. I show it in my book on two pages, one next to each other, the two tiaras. You can see exactly my great grandmother’s tiara in it, but you can see exactly the Cartier style as well. It’s unbelievable, the alchemy he did. He took the design, tweaked it, altered it, made some changes, and turned it into a typical Cartier thing. It’s the typical art of the French. French art, I would say from the Middle Ages on, and especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, was the art of taking an element from foreign cultures, but doing the magic of turning it into a specifically French product. You see that with porcelains, with furniture, with Japanese lacquers and the Chinese porcelains mounted in the French bronzes, all of that. That’s what Cartier wanted to reproduce in his workshop, this mentality of being able to create magic like that, which is true creativity. It all started during the Renaissance times, which marked the beginning of that mentality. Every artist today works based on that.
Sharon: You like paisley as a motif.
Prince: Yes, I love paisley.
Sharon: Why?
Prince: Because the shape is so pretty, and the history is so interesting. It is believed that it arrived in Iran and India more or less at the same time, during the conquest of Alexander the Great. He conquered half of the world in those days, and he died pretty young, at the age of 30, I think, in India. A lot of his armies didn’t want to go back to Greece and just settled in India and then Iran. On the artifacts they had with them was a shape that was very similar to the paisley. It was the mango. The mango, in ancient Greek decorative arts, represented the symbol of fertility.
Sharon: What was the name of it?
Prince: The mango, the fruit.
Sharon: Oh, mango, O.K.
Prince: Yes, the Greek mango was the symbol of creativity, fertility and all that. The Persians and the Indians were already an advanced civilization, and they loved the shape and created their own out of it. It’s different from the mango, but when you see the two together, you understand how it originated.
It then came back to Europe in the 19th century. There was a huge revival of paisley, and it was immediately applied to fabrics. The center of fabric in Europe was a town in Scotland where they made all the famous shawls that all the elegant ladies of the 19th century wore. The name of that city in Scotland was Paisley. That’s why it’s called paisley. In French we call it the Kashmir motif, and in Italian also, because it’s from the Kashmir region of India. They made it very popular to the western world after it disappeared. It never came back. It’s this idea of art going back and forth between different continents, which I find fascinating.
Sharon: Your jewelry is mostly by commission. Is it somebody bringing you a bag of their grandmother’s stuff and saying, “What you can you do with this?” or is it, “My wife has a birthday coming up. What can you do?”
Prince: Exactly. We do a lot of that, or cufflinks for the husband or little pendants for young men for graduations. I do Damascus steel corsets, Damascus steel being the metal with which they made the swords for the crusaders. It’s folding sheets of steel, like how you fold sheets to make a croissant, like a baked pastry. In my book, you will see how when you cut it, the way it’s folded appears. It gives a wonderful design to the steel itself, and then you apply stones to it, and it makes something very, very interesting. I try and make it into my style of design at the same time to make it more interesting.
Sharon: And you say it’s appealing to your male clients?
Prince: Male clients or female clients who like more toned-down jewelry, more masculine jewelry, because some jewelry is masculine. During the whole Art Deco period and the retro period, all of a sudden they veered away from all the flowers and the fussy things from before to make more geometric forms, which were more masculine. So did fashion. The fashion was more strict. There were fewer feathers, less fabric. It’s a back and forth in history between the energies of yin and yang. You see it in decorative arts.
Sharon: Do you find it’s become more popular or growing in popularity? What’s the market?
Prince: The market nowadays is for smaller things that you can wear all the time and that you can dress up and down. I make things you can wear with a ball gown that will look amazing, but you could also wear it with a jean and a white T-shirt. It has this chameleon aspect to it. It will blend into your outfit and people won’t realize what you’re wearing. This is good. You want only the opinion of those who understand jewelry. You want them to understand. To people who don’t understand, it doesn’t matter. Stuff like that.
Sharon: I think—and this is based on some of the reading I was doing—you talked about it being very chic to mix the high with the low.
Prince: Yeah, to mix things like that. I remember during my second year at Sotheby’s in Geneva, there was a lady who walked in who looked like a model. She was a model; she was actually a Serbian model of unbelievable beauty. She was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and high heels, and on her pinkie finger she had stuck two rings. One was an emerald-cut, D flawless diamond of 30 carats, and the other one was a 25-carat cushion-cut Kashmir sapphire. I spotted those and I said, “Is this what I think it is?” and she said, “Yes, absolutely.” You know who that lady was? Mrs. Rizzoli.
Sharon: I’m sorry, who?
Prince: It was Mrs. Rizzoli.
Sharon: Mrs. Rizzoli, the publisher?
Prince: Yeah. I was told afterwards when she left, but it’s Rizzoli who did my book. I always remember what an interesting way of wearing jewelry it was. She has certainly influence my creativity, I think.
Sharon: I’m sorry; I’m just not following. Because you would expect somebody like that to be dressed a lot more formally?
Prince: I had never seen somebody with a jean and T-shirt wearing a 30-carat, D flawless diamond. She was wearing $10 million of diamonds on that finger, and nobody paid attention. I spotted it immediately because gems speak to me.
Sharon: When they speak to you, are they telling you what to do with them?
Prince: Yes, sometimes, but I don’t know. The first thing I notice is jewelry. It’s like a sixth sense I have.
Sharon: I don’t know how many places somebody’s going to walk in with a 30-carat, D flawless diamond. Maybe in New York. How many do you see? I don’t see that many, anyway.
Prince: Not anymore. Yeah, not anymore.
Sharon: You’ve probably seen a million. When I think of the high and the low, I think of people describing wearing something from Target and then something from, I don’t know, Tiffany. Maybe not so much anymore.
Prince: Yeah, from Tiffany, of course, or Cartier or anything. Even Fabergé.
Sharon: Yes. You talked too about having different lines at different price points. You have it for the ultra-rich and then you have it—
Prince: At every price point there is, because I like the challenge of being able to do something very pretty that’s affordable. With unlimited budgets it’s easier, but I also like the challenge. For instance, this is the best example. The other day, I had to do an engagement ring for the daughter of a friend of mine. The boyfriend of the fiancé couldn’t afford much. He didn’t have a very big budget, and he was wondering if we could do a mounting that would make the diamond look bigger and add two on the sides and all that. I said, “No, no, no. You don’t want a ring that says, ‘This is all I can afford.’ You want a ring that says, ‘I have fabulous taste, and this is it.’” So, I gave him a one-and-a-half-carat diamond, which is small, but I did a really nice mounting. We did something called the love note on each side.
Sharon: The love song?
Prince: The love note. The love note is also known as the note of Savoy, which I speak a lot about in my book and my Instagram. It’s the symbol of true love, and it comes with a motto: It binds you, but it doesn’t constrain. I said, “You already have a wonderful symbol in this thing. We’re going to make it in platinum. There’s no underhand. I want the diamond to touch the skin of your fiancé so she can feel it on the palm. It’s going to be a work of art.” It worked. We kept the budget under $20,000.
Sharon: Wow! It’s a love dot?
Prince: A love note.
Sharon: Is it a little knot on the side?
Prince: It’s a love note, two of them. It’s shaped like a figure eight, like an infinity note; one going up, one going down. It’s the note Savoy. You’ll see it in my book and on my website. I did an entire collection called “The New Look of Love,” and I do the colored version of it in gold with little cabochon stones. They are about $4,000 or $5,000 and they’re super nice.
Sharon: And you find those do well for you?
Prince: Yes.
Sharon: I’m curious what you think. I was listening to a podcast this morning talking about inflation and whether there’s going to be a recession with a little “r” or a big “r.” What do you see in terms of jewelry right now? How is the market for jewelry? Are people uncertain?
Prince: People are uncertain. It will slow down. I happen to be lucky right now. I have had a ton of orders lined up, but I don’t know how long it will last. It all depends on how the economy does. It’s always like that.
Sharon: Maybe you haven’t experienced it for a while, but when times are slower in terms of jewelry, are you doing more drawings in preparation for when things pick up?
Prince: Yes, I do that. In 2008, I did that. I was drawing a lot because I like to draw.
Sharon: Do you wake up full of ideas?
Prince: Sometimes, yes. Not every day, but all of a sudden I do have ideas.
Sharon: And they’re coming from things around you and things you see and what you read and history, like you talked about.
Prince: Yes, anything I could see in the street, for instance, any object, sometimes out of nothing comes an idea. You know what they say: for those who listen, even stones speak.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I haven’t heard that before. I think that’s a great line.
You talk about Catherine the Great being one of your ancestors. She was a fabulous marketer through her jewelry; her jewelry was a form of marketing. Could you tell us more about that?
Prince: Yes. She normally had a gold dress. The dress was very important. She had something like 150 brooches sewn on the dress. She looked like a Christmas tree, plus the tiara and the crown behind all of that. She understood that somebody walked into the palace in St. Petersburg, let’s say. If they saw her looking like that, they would instantly know that was the empress and that’s what she did. In a way, she invented the outfit, the uniform of an empress.
It’s funny you say that, because years later my grandmother told me, “Tiaras always give me a headache.” I said, “And could you not wear them?” She said, “No, I had to wear them because that’s what was expected of us. It was our uniform. We had to wear tiaras and jewelry and look the part because that’s what we were; that’s what our job was.” You see it today. The Queen of England, who’s a genius at what she does, is always the most elegant woman in England. If you didn’t know she was the queen, which is impossible in the modern day because everybody knows what she looks like, but if you saw a lady dressed like that, you would instantly know she’s somebody very important.
Sharon: You’re communicating through your jewelry.
Prince: Yes, it’s a uniform in a way. If you’re a policeman, you were a policeman’s uniform. If you’re a nurse, you wear a nurse’s uniform. If you’re a princess or queen, you wear that kind of uniform.
Sharon: Which raises a question as you’re talking, I’m thinking, “Why put tiaras with your jeans?” I don’t know.
Prince: No, that you can’t do. That is the one thing left that—first of all, you have to be of noble or royal blood, and it’s only with a white tie on certain, very rare occasions.
Sharon: Do you have to be noble if you can afford it? I’m just wondering.
Prince: Yeah. The protocol is that it’s only ladies of the nobility and of the aristocracy, meaning the nobility or the royalty, only those ladies are allowed a tiara, and they have to be married. Normally unmarried girls don’t wear tiaras yet.
Sharon: Interesting.
Prince: No.
Sharon; Did you have a lot of tiaras cross your desk when you were in the auction houses?
Prince: Yes, quite a few from royal families in Europe. Yeah, very nice ones.
Sharon: Did they want them melted down, or did they want you to try and auction them as tiaras?
Prince: Auction them as tiaras, because it makes more money like that.
Sharon: Yes, I suppose—well, I don’t. Would it? I guess it depends on what it was made of.
Prince: If you can wear it as a necklace, then it makes a lot of money. If you can’t wear it as a necklace, then it sells for less because it’s more a difficult thing to wear. A lot of those tiaras were necklaces fixed on an invisible frame that you put on your head. It stands up straight, and then you unscrew everything and you can turn it into a necklace, which was a very clever invention done in the 19th century. The Russians were the masters of that, jewels with a variable geometry, I call them.
Sharon: Jewels with a variable geometry. I think of the pieces that come apart as being more from the 30s and 40s, but you’re saying it was done earlier.
Prince: Well before, at the end of the 19th century. The Russians did that. You could take the center parts and wear them as brooches.
Sharon: I’m surprised to hear that you’re not talking about Fabergé jewels. Did you see those? Were they in your background?
Prince: I sold those, yes, but those were extremely, extremely rare. The most famous one in existence today is the Cyclamen Tiara of the Duchess of Westminster in England, which also unmounted to become a necklace. It’s absolutely a dream of a tiara. My grandmother had some necklaces and pendants and little things, but not many important ones.
Sharon: Fabergé, she had.
Prince: Yeah, it was mostly objects and little jewels. But tiaras, there were very few made, and they disappeared during the Revolution.
Sharon: Prince Dimitri, where do you want to take your business from here?
Prince: I want to keep on growing, wherever that will be.
Sharon: Have you found it to be any help or impediment, being a prince? It must be, “Oh my god, it’s a prince.” There’s an attraction there, but has it been an impediment in what you do?
Prince: No, not really. You’re right; there’s always a curiosity, but after a while, that’s it. There’s also a human being.
Sharon: When people ask you what you are a prince of, what do you say? A Yugoslavian prince?
Prince: Yugoslavia, yeah. That’s my birthright. When we were born, Yugoslavia still existed, even though it was a Communist country. Titles go on forever. They don’t change in case of mutations or geopolitical upheavals and stuff like that. It’s a birthright that follows the family forever because it proceeds from the family itself. One studies that in constitutional law in Europe, funnily enough, because some countries still recognize titles, the ones where there’s a monarchy. On my English passport and Belgian passport, my title is written because they recognize it. On my American passport and my Italian passport, it’s not written.
Sharon: Has it influenced your jewelry in any way?
Prince: No, it’s all aesthetics. It’s only about aesthetics.
Sharon: So it’s removed from that.
Prince: Yeah. Movement is very important.
Sharon: What’s your favorite jewel? What’s your favorite gem?
Prince: I don’t have a favorite gem because I really love all of them, but I have a favorite color combination, which is greens and blues together. For instance, there is nothing I like more than the mixture of aquamarine, emerald and sapphire together. There are lot of examples in my book based on that.
Sharon: How about the cut? Is there a favorite cut you have of a gem?
Prince: I like emerald cuts. I like a square emerald cut with cut corners. I like antique cushion cuts very much, and I love cabochon also.
Sharon: Do you work with all those?
Prince: I work with all of those. I also like pear shape, but it all depends on how it’s cut. Some cuts don’t work; others do. I like unusual cuts also, different shapes that are not seen very often. It depends on how you combine them.
Sharon: Right. I guess that’s the artistry.
Prince: Yes.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being with us today and telling us about your line of jewelry. We can find it at Neiman Marcus. Besides that there’s the book, which we can find—
Prince: You can find it on my website, Dimitri.com. You can find it on Amazon also. You can find it at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas for the moment, along with a collection I designed specifically for them.
Sharon: For Neiman Marcus in Dallas. When you say specifically for them, how would it have been different if you had done it for Neiman Marcus in Los Angeles, for instance? What was specific?
Prince: From the moment I sold to Neiman Marcus, it was the one in Dallas. We just started last fall, and it’s a variation of the cufflinks I was telling you about before. It’s stones inside of stones, but with different colors, different assortments, a different way of designing it. Similar but different. That’s what I’m doing only for Neiman Marcus.
Sharon: Do you see it throughout the states, though, in other places?
Prince: No.
Sharon: It’s basically Neiman.
Prince: Neiman in Dallas for the moment. I’m hoping to expand that.
Sharon: Well, we’ll look for you elsewhere, and we’ll also look at the book. Thank you so much for being with us today. We greatly appreciate it.
Prince: Thank you so much. It was so kind of you to invite me. I’m very touched.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 164 Part 1: Royally Beautiful: How Incredible Jewels Have Been Passed Down Through the Nobility | 26 Jul 2022 | 00:25:33 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Prince Dimitri Prince Dimitri founded his company in 2007 after sixteen years as Senior Vice President of Jewelry with Sotheby’s and later as head of Jewelry at Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg auction houses. Dimitri’s love of jewelry dates from his childhood and unique heritage of a family where the heads of European Royalty were closely tied together in an era of extreme opulence, beauty and culture all over Europe. He began designing jewelry in 1999, with a collection of gemstone cufflinks that was sold at Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue. He also designed a line of women’s jewelry that was sold at Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus. He has designed for Asprey’s in London and done special lines for other American companies. With his own jewelry company he has been able to realize his own vision in his love of gemstones; the juxtaposition of unusual materials and color; imaginative forms and paying attention to detail and to superb craftsmanship. Additional Resources: Photos: Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Growing up surrounded by the world’s most beautiful jewels, it’s no wonder that Prince Dimitri became a jewelry designer known for his gemmy creations. After working in the auction world for many years, he launched Prince Dimitri Jewelry, which offers a range of jewels from affordable to six-figure masterpieces. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how jewelry became a symbol of royalty; the most memorable pieces that came across his desk at Sotheby’s and Phillips; and where royal jewelers throughout history found inspiration. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia. After more than a decade in the auction world, rising to the top of the jewelry ranks, Prince Dimitri took his love of gems and launched Prince Dimitri Jewelry. He is also an author, having written “Once Upon a Diamond: A Family Tradition of Royal Jewels.” The book has been described as an extraordinary family scrapbook. It has photographs of his relatives, who are celebrities and royalty, showing them wearing their jaw-dropping jewels. It weaves in stories of his illustrious family background and the history that goes behind the photographs. We’ll hear more about Prince Dimitri and his jewelry as well as his jewelry journey today. Prince Dimitri, welcome to the program.
Prince: Thank you. Hello, Sharon. So nice to see you.
Sharon: Nice to see you.
Prince: I heard so much about you.
Sharon: Dimitri, I’m going to let you tell everybody what your official name is because I could not pronounce it. I saw different variations. Go ahead.
Prince: It’s a Serbian name. It’s pronounced Karageorgevich, and it’s written with letters that don’t exist in our alphabet.
Sharon: I didn’t realize that. It’s interesting; in everything I saw about you, it gave your name, but I didn’t realize it was Serbian. Tell us about your jewelry journey.
Prince: It all started as a child. I was obsessed with gems, totally fascinated when I saw my mother and my grandmothers wearing jewelry. When we were in the street and there was a jewelry store, I had to go in and look, and I would stare at the showcases. It never left me. I think I was born with it. It’s my passion in life. I joined Sotheby’s in 1984 and I stayed there until 2001. Then I was at Phillips for three years. Little by little, I started designing, and now it’s all I do.
Sharon: I thought it was interesting; some of the material I read said you started making jewelry because you decided you’d seen everything there was to see in jewelry after so long in the auction world. Tell us a little bit about that.
Prince: It’s not exactly like that. I started designing cufflinks when I was at Sotheby’s totally by chance. I had no idea I could design anything or that I was slightly creative. I was a gemologist and expert. I appraised jewelry, and that’s all I did. Then a friend of mine had some cufflinks he had made in Brazil with some lovely stones, but a very ugly mounting with thick claws around it. I looked at it and I thought, “You know, I love those stones, but those big, thick claws around it are so clumsy. You need to remount them.” He said, “How should we remount them?” All of a sudden, my mind went blank. I saw a little hole, and I said, “That’s it. You’re going to drill a hole in the center of the cufflinks. In that hole, you’re going to set a little diamond or a ruby or an emerald or a sapphire. It has to be a precious stone, one of those four. That will be how you mount it, through the stones. What you’ll see on your shirt will be that lovely, emerald-cut aquamarine with a little stone in the center.” Slick, clean, very gemmy, very chic, I thought. He did it, and it worked beautifully.
He said, “Why don’t we do a collection like that?” Long story short, we did the collection. It ended up at Bergdorf, at Saks. Little by little, I said, “Let’s make some rings and some bracelets and some necklaces on the same principle. All of it,” and we made all that. We were doing trunk shows on the side, as I was still at Sotheby’s then, and little by little, it took on a life of its own. Then I was given an offer to join Phillips with a group of other people. It was at the time when Sotheby’s was going through major changes and nothing was very happy there anymore, so I thought, “Why not?” That didn’t last very long, the Phillips adventure, so I continued.
Then, I was approached by a wonderful man who was called Salvador Assael, the king of pearls in those days. After the war, he had convinced all the big houses that black pearls were not black because they were dirty; they were black because it was a beautiful color. He finally opened their eyes. He told me the story of how they would look at the pearls and say, “But these are black pearls. They’re dirty. Pearls are supposed to be white,” and he told them, “No, open your eyes. Look at this. This one is a green one. This one is a pinkish one. This one is a peacock one with mixes of green and purple,” and they loved it. He became the number one wholesaler of pearls.
Sharon: Is that Assael?
Prince: Assael, yeah.
Sharon: Wow!
Prince: He’s very famous. He called me one day. He said, “You know, I love the old jewels and everything you make.” It was after 9/11. The market was not doing well for jewelry anywhere. He said to me, “I can’t sell anything anymore because there are only so many strands of pearls people want. Do you think you can design a collection for me? More importantly, do you like pearls?” I said, “Yes, I absolutely love pearls.” We made this collection, and before you knew it, we were in every Neiman Marcus in America except three or four of them, I think. We were in 35 Neiman Marcuses. We were the number two seller at Neiman Marcus and it became a huge success.
Then I met my business partner who put me in business to be a serious company. That was 2008, so things didn’t work as well as I wished. I had to go on my own because he couldn’t funnel any more into it, and now that’s all I do. I’m back at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, but the bulk of my business now is one-of-a-kind pieces. That’s what I really like. As I say in the preface of my book, I like the concept of alchemy. Bring me some lead; I will turn it into gold. All my friends look into their drawers and find these old stones and granny’s pearl necklaces that they can’t wear because they’re so dated and all of that. Sometimes they bring me bags of things that are totally unrelated and I do the magic. Half of the jewels in the book are made like that.
One of the typical examples: I was in Southampton with a friend. We were picking up pebbles on the beach together one day in August. We go home. She shows me these diamond earrings she wants me to remount, these little strings of diamonds that are badly made and boring. I went into the bowl where we had placed all the pebbles. I picked four of the most similar ones, and I said, “Here. This is where your diamonds are going. This is going to be your necklace.” She thought I was completely crazy. She said, “I know you are original and you have ideas, but—"
Sharon: You were mixing pebbles and diamonds? Is that what you were doing?
Prince: Yes. She said, “You’re going to have to explain this to me.” I said, “I will. I will do a drawing for you, and you will make your decision.” So, I did the drawing. I get a phone call from her a few days later. She goes, “I love it. I need this necklace more than I’ve ever needed a piece of jewelry.” It’s featured in the book; you’ll see it.
Sharon: How did the book come about? Did you want to write the book? Did Rizzoli come to you?
Prince: The same way the first cufflinks came to me: totally by chance. It’s one of the miracles of modern technology. It’s called Instagram. I put all my jewelry on Instagram, but I have tons of old photos from the family, and I post them and write fascinating stories of what all these people have done. For instance, how my great-grandmother saved the life of Albert Einstein; how Adolph Hitler kidnaped the sister of my grandfather and had them killed in a concentration camp. Some of them are beautiful stories; some are very, very tragic, but there are many of them. Somebody from Rizzoli sent me a message on Instagram saying, “I love your Instagram. We should make a book based on that concept. I need to talk to you.” Long story short, it took two and a half years, and here we are.
Sharon: Somebody should put together a book of all the stories of everything that’s come from Instagram, because people have started jewelry lines and written books from it. It’s really launched a lot of people. Was it hard for you to gather all the material, or did you already have it?
Prince: I already had all the material. What I didn’t have, my mother had. Also, some uncles and aunts and relatives had it, so that was easy. The difficult part was how we were going to make it work. We had to put the chapters in order. It was like a puzzle. We had everything on the floor in our minds, with the different chapters and stories and everything. Little by little, it came together. Everybody had a great idea. I had great ideas.
They lady who wrote the book with me had a great idea. She was a fantastic fact checker. She discovered, for instance, that—one of the stories I tell is how, before the war, my grandmother, then Crown Princess of Italy, had discovered Maria Montessori of the famous Montessori School. She decided she loved that program so much, because it was so modern and interesting and ahead of its time, that she wanted to create her own Montessori School at the royal palace for her children and children of the nobility.
My mother told me, “Yes, it was fantastic. Here’s the photo.” The school was in the Gallery Uffizi in Florence, which had been turned into a palace one year before, in 1942. She said, “Yes, and Maria Montessori was so nice. I remember her.” Well, it was a fictitious memory my mother had because she was eight years old. We found out through fact checking that Maria Montessori was actually in India for eight years at the time. The person she met was the associate of Maria Montessori who founded the school with her. My mother assumed that, because her mother was who she was, it was actually Maria Montessori herself who came, but it wasn’t the case. We discovered lots of stories like that.
Sharon: Interesting.
Prince: We discovered that my grandmother’s famous Cartier jewelry was not Cartier jewelry. I pressed and pressed the wonderful gentleman at the Cartier archives, the poor thing. I tortured him so much that he had to do three months of research to find out that it was my great grandmother, the Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia, who came to Cartier to buy some things and asked him if they could repair this tiara she had in her bag. It was a tiara from Chaumet, and nobody knew it. In every history book, it’s listed as the Cartier Tiara.
I had just enough time to jump on my phone and call the editor at Rizzoli when we were already in full print. I said, “This is what’s going on. We need to change the story.” They said, “You can delete the word Cartier. That’s all I can do for you. It’s too late.” We were in the middle of Covid. The paperwork was done in Bologna, which was the center of printing in Italy. “That chapter is going to be printed six hours from now, so let me hang up and call them.”
Sharon: Is that what you did? You just didn’t use the word?
Prince: We just removed that, yeah. We couldn’t say anything more, but I speak about it all the time. So, now people know.
Sharon: Interesting. I’ve seen the book and I’ve looked through it, but I don’t come from an illustrious background like you do. My ancestors were not royalty, so I didn’t relate to it as much, but now this humanizes it.
Prince: Yes. There are 16 pages of Romanov photos that have never been published before because I owned the four albums they were in, and I’ve never shown them to anybody. These are really interesting because it shows them in day-to-day life. They are in the south of France. They go to a spa in Gautreau, Seville, famous for its water. They visit the house of Joan of Arc. It’s really interesting.
The most fascinating series of photos is the second Olympic Games in history, photographed by my great grandmother. It’s all there in the book. There were also photos in Venice and photos in Spain at the bullfights, but we decided not to show the bullfight because it could be controversial. In those days, it wasn’t.
Sharon: You’ve lived all over the world. Prior to coming to the auction world, you went to school in Switzerland, then France?
Prince: I was in law school in Switzerland for a while, then in France. Then I did law school in Paris.
Sharon: When did you do GIA?
Prince: When I came to New York. When I finished law school, I had so many friends already in New York. New York was this magic world far away from us. There was something very exotic about America and New York. It was quite fascinating, so I decided to come here and finish my law studies. I had my degree already, but I thought it would be a good idea to do a training program on Wall Street, which is what lots of European people did. So, I did that on Wall Street for almost a year. It was very interesting. I learned a lot of things, but I wasn’t particularly ready to make it a career. There was an opening at Sotheby’s that I found out about, and that’s how it happened.
Sharon: Was it a huge decision, or was it a natural segue to go into that world from the world you were in, the business world?
Prince: Yes, it was a big decision. It was a very exciting decision. It was a logical thing to do because I have this Renaissance mentality. I think one should know about everything in life. I felt that with a law degree and a kind of Wall Street degree, which is a Series 7—it’s the exams you take to become a stockbroker—I thought, “I’m well educated enough to do what I really like, which is gemology and stones and jewelry and all of that.”
I worked at Sotheby’s right away. I knew enough about jewelry that I could become an expert right away, in the sense that I needed to learn gemology at the GIA, which I went did by following the prices in the market. Pretty quickly I moved up and became after six or seven years, I think, a senior vice president for the company.
Sharon: What was it about the auction world combined with jewelry that attracted you?
Prince: The amount of jewelry we sold every day, that was the exciting part. For every auction you see, the catalogue you see four times a year in New York, three times a year in Geneva, four times a year in London, and, in those days, also in Hong Kong, that catalogue represents the tip of the iceberg of what comes in and out the doors of Sotheby’s. Every day, it was mountains of jewelry. It was so exciting to see so much. I’m very impatient. I want to see a lot. One diamond that’s there day after day if you work in a shop is not exciting enough for me.
Sharon: You need the constant turnover and attraction.
Prince: Yes. That was great. One day we discovered, literally in a shoe box in a bank vault on Park Avenue, one of the most famous Cartier tiaras. The same one is in one of the Cartier books today. The lady who had it had no idea. She said, “I have this funny thing that goes on the head from my grandmother. Do you think it’s worth anything?” I was like, “Yes! It’s fantastic.”
Sharon: Wow! What else is in shoe boxes that we don’t know about, right?
Prince: There were lots of things like that. My most beautiful story from Sotheby’s, I have to say, was when this poor lady came in. She was a bag lady, literally, in tears and very nervous. I felt there was something going on there. She told me the tragic story of how her husband had divorced her, took all her money, and she had literally one little sapphire ring. She was hoping to get $2,000 to just be able to pay her rent or she was going to be evicted. She was going to be on the street. She starts crying and crying, and she said, “Do you think you can loan me the money?” I said, “Well, can I please see the ring?” She looks at me and goes, “Here it is. Do you think I can get maybe $10,000? Would that be possible? And you could loan me $2,000?”
I take a look at it. It is the most beautiful Kashmir sapphire I saw in my entire life. I said, “I think I can get more. Let me speak to my boss for the loan. Let me see.” I call everybody. I said, “Guys, you won’t believe this.” I tell them the story. They all look at the stone and everybody says, “Oh, my god! We’ve never seen a stone like that.” My boss says, “You know we don’t loan money against one piece.” I said, “John, she thinks it’s worth $10,000. Let’s offer her $75,000 to $100,000 for the ring and let it sell for over $200,000.” He goes, “Fine.”
I go back in the room with a check with me. I said, “Listen, it’s your lucky day. That is a lovely ring. I think we can put an estimate of $75,000 to $100,000.” She almost fainted. She goes, “Oh, my god!” Three months later, she comes to the auction. We opened the bid at $75,000. Before you know it, the hammer falls, and it sells for $380,000. She is sitting in front of me sobbing and crying, and then all of us start crying because we knew the story. It is a lovely story because we really changed the life of somebody.
Sharon: That’s true. You did the change her life, it sounds like. From there you moved to Phillips. From Sotheby’s, you moved to Phillips?
Prince: Yeah.
Sharon: And you were head of the jewelry department there?
Prince: Yes.
Sharon: Where were you when the man from Brazil came to you with the first cufflinks?
Prince: I was at Sotheby’s then. It was in 1997. It was 40 years before I left Sotheby’s, so I was starting that process little by little then.
Sharon: In your jewelry, you barely see the jewelry part; you see the gem. Is it the gems that are talking to you?
Prince: Both. I love that. A lot of my jewelry is very gemmy, like you say. You’re absolutely right, but a lot of it based on whimsical ideas, unusual materials like the pebbles from the beach or even rubber cords. I do things mounted on leather, Damascus steel, oxidized bronze, oxidized silver. 24-karat gold I use a lot. I do all sorts of things. The other source of inspiration is the shapes, shapes as you see them in decorative arts of every culture in the world.
That was the philosophy of Cartier. He instructed, already in the 19th century, the designers who worked for him to look at the decorative arts and to travel and take notes and make drawings of everything they saw, because that was the basis for all sorts of things. In the 19th century, there was a very famous book written, which is called “The Grammar of Ornament.” “The Grammar of Ornament” is a visual dictionary of every artistic style that ever existed in history in any country in the world. It’s absolutely fantastic, and I’ve gotten tons and tons of ideas from there. So did the people at Cartier at the beginning.
For instance, the Edwardian period of Cartier, it coincided with two things: when they rediscovered the Louis XVI decorative arts style with the garlands—it was called the garland style—and the introduction of platinum. Platinum in the old days was not considered a precious metal; it was for industrial applications. Then, when they studied it, they realized how hard it was and how white it was. So, it quickly replaced silver.
If you look at tiaras made with silver, which are the oldest ones from the first half of the 19th century, they are very heavy. They are lovely, but there’s something about them. With the introduction of platinum, Cartier was able to transform them into literally a spiderweb, completely ethereal. That’s when they double in size. They’re ten times as thin and you can put twice the amount of stones. It sits like an aura on your head. That is what gave them the impetus to create the garland style, the classical Art Deco that mutated into Art Deco. At the time, platinum became such a success that it became seven times more expensive than gold.
Sharon: Wow!
Prince: It’s interesting, yeah?
Sharon: Yes, very. | |||
| Episode 218 Part 1: Gina D’Onofrio’s Tips for Choosing a Qualified Independent Appraiser | 06 Mar 2024 | 00:30:58 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Gina D'Onofrio With work in the retail, auction and manufacturing sectors of the jewelry industry since 1989, Gina D'Onofrio's experience encompasses jewelry design and production, appraisals, buying and selling of contemporary, antique and period jewelry, sales and management. Gina operates an independent gemological laboratory, appraisal service and consulting firm and has been catering to private individuals, banks, trusts, non-profit organizations, insurance companies, legal firms and the jewelry trade in the greater Los Angeles area. Gina received her Master Gemologist Appraiser® designation, upon completion of appraisal studies, written and practical examinations and peer appraisal report review with the American Society of Appraisers. In addition, she was awarded the Certified Master Appraiser designation with the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. In 2013 Gina received Los Angeles Magazine's coveted "Best in LA" award for her Jewelry Appraisal Services. She conducts presentations and entertaining speeches about appraisal and jewelry related topics to private and corporate groups in Los Angeles and throughout the USA.
Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources:
Transcript: Auctions, appraisals, and the professionals who perform them are some of the most misunderstood elements of the jewelry industry. That’s exactly why Gina D’Onofrio, independent appraiser and Co-Director of Fine Jewelry at Heritage Auctions, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast. She discussed what a consigner can expect when selling jewelry with an auction house; how appraisers come up with values (and why they might change); and how consumers can protect themselves by asking their appraiser the right questions. Read the episode transcript here.
Welcome to the Jewelry Journey, exploring the hidden world of art around you. Because every piece of art has a story, and jewelry is no exception.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week.
Today, I am glad to welcome back Gina D'Onofrio, an appraiser who just returned from being an independent appraiser. She returned to the auction house Heritage as co-director of jewelry. She was also on the podcast in the very beginning, and it's good to have her on again. I got to know Gina when she was head of the western arm of the Association of Jewelry Historians, a volunteer position. I got to know her further when she was an independent appraiser. She recently returned to Heritage Auction House as co-director of the jewelry department. Why did she return to Heritage? That's one of the things she'll be sharing with us as she tells her story. Gina will also be describing why she chose to become an appraiser and what the job entails on a day-to-day basis. She'll tell us how she deals with the dual challenges of not only bringing in jewelry to appraise, but nurturing relationships that make clients keep coming back to her with jewelry. Gina, welcome to the podcast.
Gina: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be back, Sharon. Great to talk to you again.
Sharon: I'm so glad that you are on the show again. Now, my first question is if I describe to you a piece of jewelry and you've never held it or seen it or anything, but I tell you it's this many years old and it's these stones, if it has stones, can you tell me how much you think it would be worth?
Gina: Well, appraising a piece of jewelry that I can't actually see and evaluate and hold in my hand to determine the different value characteristics it might have, it would be flippant of me to give you a value. I think it would be unfair, because you may describe it to me based on your knowledge of the piece or based on what somebody has told you about the piece. If I hold it in my hand, I might see something totally different. I may have a different opinion.
Sharon: Could you tell if a sapphire was lab grown or if it was natural if you just looked at it without a loupe or without a microscope?
Gina: No, not without a loupe. Definitely not. Sometimes I can determine with a loupe, depending on the sapphire and the nature of the inclusions it may or may not have. But I would have to say that nine times out of 10, I need that microscope to separate the lab grown from the natural. In fact, I was doing a lot of that today. I have a collection of pieces from a dealer, and they need me to tell them if it's laboratory grown or natural. Most of the pieces they have provided to me are circa 1920 through to 1940, and about 70% of them are lab grown.
Sharon: That's interesting. One would think that they're mostly all the same. They're all lab grown or they're all natural, or most of them are one or the other.
Gina: Yes, one would think. In fact, one of the pieces had both in the one piece. It had square calibre cut sapphires in the piece, and some of them were natural and some of them were lab grown. They were selected not for the value of the sapphires. They were selected so that they were all uniform in color. At the time, I have no doubt that those lab-grown sapphires were much more expensive than they are today, just like I imagine lab-grown diamonds will be 20 years from now. Right now, they are falling rapidly in price. I imagine in the future we'll be looking at those lab-grown diamonds just like we're looking at lab-grown sapphires that were produced in the early 20th century.
Sharon: That's interesting. Like this dealer, if I have several pieces of jewelry that I want to sell or I want to auction off, should I make the rounds of auctioneers and see what the best deal is, or should I choose the one I like, the auctioneer that I jibe with the most?
Gina: That's an interesting question. There's a lot of depends there. It depends on the piece that you have. Some auction houses will only take a certain price point and above in order for them to bring your piece to a successful sale. So, already, your piece may or may not be suitable for some auction houses.
The second part of your question, I think, is very important because the market is going to do what it's going to do. If the auction house is one of the more reputable, top-tier auction houses—Heritage Auctions is definitely one of them. If they are going to be putting the proper marketing behind your piece, professional photography, if they have an international bidding audience, then after that, it's going to be important to know that you have a comfortable relationship with the representative of that auction house and that they are going to be your advocate, because it's not just the estimate. In fact, the estimate is probably the very least important thing about your piece if you were going to be selling it at auction. What's more important is what are they going to do for you? Are they going to represent your piece properly? Do they have the right audience for your piece? How many photographs of the piece are going to be taken? Is it going to be up for a public preview? Is it a traveling preview that your piece is going to be placed in? There are many aspects to this that need to be discussed with you as the consignor. Then also, what fees are you going to be charged? There's a lot of ifs. I wish I could give you a more direct answer, but if you were going to me, for example, at Heritage Auctions, I'm going to be exploring all those options with you so that you can make an informed decision.
Sharon: On the Antiques Roadshow, they say very often, "In a well-marketed auction, this would be X-Y-Z price." To me, a well-marketed auction is one that has to advertise. I'd see ads. That's it. What would you consider a well-marketed auction piece or auction?
Gina: Well, Sharon, coming from you, I think that's an excellent question since you are a marketing extraordinaire. These days, marketing is very different, isn't it? We're looking at more the digital aspect of marketing, because so many of us are online now, just like you and I are right now. Being online for marketing is what type of social media presence do you have? What type of email marketing do you have? Also, what is your bidding audience for marketing? How are you able to reach them? Through email, or are you just relying on more conventional forms of auction marketing, be it print advertising or be it public previews? I think in this present market, it's good to have a balance of both. But I am finding that digital marketing is becoming more and more critical.
Sharon: I would believe that. I'm curious, what are the fees involved? Is it the buyer who pays the fees or the auction house that pays the fees to the buyer? I never understood that.
Gina: Again, it depends. As far as the consignor goes, if you have the Hope Diamond, then I imagine that the buyer will have no fees to pay. It is such a highly coveted piece that everybody would be very competitive to have that on the cover of their auction catalog. But in the auction world, with most auction houses, both the buyer and the seller are paying fees. This is how the auction house survives. The fees are going to vary depending on the consignment. How many pieces are you consigning? What is the value of the pieces that you're consigning? That is going to vary. On the buyer end, the fees are very much locked in. I have to tell you, I don't join Heritage Auctions again for another two weeks, so I don't have the most current buyer's fees. But I believe that it is around 25%, give or take, up until a certain amount. Above that, the buyer's premium starts to go down in price. It's tiered depending on the value of the piece, the hammer price of the piece that you are purchasing.
Sharon: Can you negotiate? Let's say you do have the Hope Diamond. What is negotiable? How many pieces you are putting in, but how much you're getting for each piece or reserved prices?
Gina: As a consignor?
Sharon: Yes.
Gina: Fees can be negotiable if you have something important. If it's a lot of work to sell a piece, and by that I mean if you have 100 pieces that are probably going to auction for $1,000 or less, then you will probably pay the full rate because it's a lot of work to sell all those individual pieces for the amount of money that the auction house will receive. It really depends on what you have. But if you have something very important with important provenance like the Hope Diamond, then that's definitely negotiable.
As far as reserves go, reserves are something that the specialist should really set for you. That is something they will suggest to you. You may or may not agree with them, but at the end of the day, once you arrive at an agreed reserve, then that goes into your contract. That is contractual.
Sharon: Can you explain to everybody to make sure we're all on the same page, what is the reserve, what's a consigner, and what's the opposite?
Gina: Yes, the language. The consignor is the person that owns the jewelry. They are the person that is loaning the jewelry to the auction house to give them the opportunity to sell it on behalf of the consignor. So, the consignor owns the piece.
The reserve is the absolute minimum that the piece will hammer for, and hammer means the final bid, the highest bid that someone will pay for at auction. That is the absolute minimum that it will go for at auction. That is the reserve. It is also the opening bid for Heritage Auctions. For example, let's say a piece has an auction estimate of $1,500 to $2,500, and I may suggest to you that the reserve for that piece should be $1,000. The opening bid, the minimum is $1,000, so the bidding begins at that amount. If nobody else bids on that piece except for one person who has bid the reserve, $1,000, that is the price it will hammer for. That is the final sale. Does that make sense?
Sharon: It makes sense. I was wondering how long somebody has to pull the piece back, as they say. If they have the feeling they won't like what the hammer price is, can they pull it back?
Gina: The reserve, that $1,000 for that piece is in their written contract. And in the written contract, they have agreed to allow the auction house to take it through to completion. By the time it is photographed, cataloged, shipped, insured, marketed, the auction house has invested a certain amount of money in that piece. So, if there is a contract, if there is an agreement for the auction house to try and sell this on behalf of the consignor, they have to be allowed to take it through to completion. That is why it is in the contract, because the auction house is investing money in the piece.
Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. Jumping subjects, in jewelry you can do a lot of different things. Why did you decide to become an appraiser? You could have done a lot of things with a GIA, a gemological degree. Why did you decide to become an appraiser?
Gina: That's a great question. For me, I didn't initially plan on becoming an appraiser. I worked in different areas of the jewelry industry. I got my Gemological Diploma. I graduated in 1992. I got my FGA. I worked in retail and then I worked in design. At the time, I was also doing appraisals in Australia. We call them valuations. I was a valuer, but that was something that I did part time. I did what was required at the time. Then I worked for an antiques dealer and was involved in buying and selling of antique and estate jewelry. Then I worked for a manufacturer assisting in the production of jewelry. I worked in different areas of the jewelry industry.
Sharon: Why an independent appraiser? I would think that if you go to an auction house, I would like to think it's an independent appraisal. If the appraiser works for the auction house, whether or not they do, it would still be an independent appraisal. Is that true or not?
Gina: Well, to answer that question, we probably need to back up a little bit and define what an appraisal is. An appraisal is a researched opinion of value. In order for me to arrive at a researched opinion of value, I need to know what you, the client, want to do with the information. Are you purchasing insurance for your piece? If that's the case, we need to appraise your piece for what it would cost for you to walk into a store that typically sells that piece of jewelry. We research that market. We research all the stores that typically sell your jewelry. The most common price is what I would appraise it for.
If you are selling that exact same piece of jewelry, that ends up being a different value. So, I have to understand what you want to do with that information. If you, as a private individual, want to sell your piece of jewelry, your options are to sell it at auction, to sell it directly to a dealer or a store that sells pre-owned jewelry, or you could put it online on eBay or one of the online auction platforms yourself as a private individual. In all cases, there is a cost to selling that we have to factor in, and we also have to research what pieces like yours have recently sold at auction. We look at the most common price to arrive at an opinion of resale value. That value is going to be different to what you would pay for it in a retail store.
Sharon: You reminded me that earlier today I happened to be looking at an estate jewelry site and they said, "You can consign your jewelry with us." I thought that was interesting. I wonder, do they pay more for it? Where would we get the most for it? Is there a rule of thumb?
Gina: Well, again, it depends. What type of marketing, what type of audience do they have, what type of track record do they have? I really can't speak to the online vendor you're referring to because I don't know who it is. But basically, you want to sell your jewelry with the company or the platform that has the biggest audience and the best track record, and the ones that are going to do the most in the form of marketing for your piece. And then also you have to look at the cost of selling and take all that into consideration. Who is going to represent your piece in the best possible way?
Sharon: What was the process that you had to go through to become an appraiser once you decided that's what you wanted to do, plus the rendering and the custom design? What did you have to do?
Gina: For me, my skill set is a culmination of having worked in different areas of the industry. Everything that I had done up until the point where I started to appraise independently assisted me in being able to evaluate a piece. Aside from that, having a Gemological Diploma, having experience in different areas of the jewelry industry, having handled thousands and thousands of antique and period pieces of jewelry, having worked for a manufacturer and understanding the process of manufacturing jewelry, understanding the difference between a handmade piece versus a cast, mass produced piece. My past experience helped me with all of that. That's one side of appraisal education, hands-on experience.
The other side is understanding how to write an appraisal report and appraisal theory, which is some of what I was trying to describe to you earlier with some of the questions you posed. For example, understanding the difference between resale value, liquidation value, fair market value, writing an appraisal for the IRS, writing an appraisal as an expert witness for settling a dispute in court. This is all education that you can gain by attending classes with an appraisal organization. Reputable appraisal organizations have what we call principles of value. They teach classes on writing appraisal reports for different reasons. You also need to have a solid foundation in jewelry history. Unfortunately, there's no one path to gaining education in jewelry history. It's something that you acquire through various appraisal conferences and appraisal organizations. It is ongoing. I myself found that there was a serious need for education in jewelry history, so I have developed my own courses and I have been teaching them. I've been teaching 20th century jewelry history to various organizations and also in shorter form for jewelry seminars. This is something that a jewelry appraiser really needs a solid foundation in.
The other part of being an independent jewelry appraiser is not just knowing jewelry history, jewelry theory, jewelry appraisal report writing and jewelry manufacturing, but they also need to understand who all the major jewelry designers are. They need to self-educate by going to those jewelry houses. Cartier, Tiffany and Company, David Webb, Chopard, all the major jewelry designers. Learn who they all are. Learn what is typical of their design. Start handling more and more pieces from these major jewelry designers at auction previews. Attend as many auction previews as you can. Attend as many conferences as you can, as many jewelry shows as you can. The more exposure that an appraiser has, the better an appraiser they will become.
Sharon: So, there's no license or something you can get that teaches you all this, like how to write the reports and the history and whatever else there is involved, which is a lot.
Gina: Yes, it's a lot. It's ongoing. I've been doing this for 35 years now. I'm still learning. I teach it and I'm still learning, and that's why I love it. It's never ending. You can learn the theory of appraisal report writing with an appraisal organization such as the ASA, the American Society of Appraisers, or the NAJA, National Association of Jewelry Appraisers or the ISA. I'm mentioning them all because I'm not showing favoritism for one over another. They all have their strengths. I'm a member of all three, but they all have education they can provide for appraisers.
Then there are organizations like the Accredited Gemologists Association, which I believe is a must because they provide education for the cutting edge of gemology, the latest treatments and techniques that you need to learn. They have conferences twice a year and also online education. Then you should join the American Society of Jewelry Historians so that you can network with other people who are trying to self-educate on jewelry history and become privy to some of the education that they provide.
There are also two major antique jewelry shows that you can attend in the US. One of them is the Miami Antiques Show that is in January, and the other one is the Jewelry Antique Show in Las Vegas at the end of May, early June. I attend the one in Las Vegas every single year. I attend as many jewelry previews as I can and visit many estate jewelry retailers, too. The more that you handle, the more that you inspect, the better you are going to be as an appraiser.
Sharon: What do you look for when you're inspecting and handling these pieces? What do you look for?
Gina: You're training your eye. I'm training my eye. I'm becoming a connoisseur. You can see behind me there are a lot of books there. I do read a lot of books on jewelry design, jewelry designers and jewelry history. Then I go out and look at jewelry from those particular designers, and I look for consistency in how a piece is being made. I look at how that piece has been found. I look at consistency in the design.
For example, if I am looking at pieces of jewelry by an American designer, David Webb, David Webb was very active in the 60s and 70s. He died, I believe, in the late 70s, but his jewelry designs are still being made today from his catalog of designs. He was a very active designer with an enormous collection of renderings. His pieces are still being made, and there's a consistency to how he liked to design his jewelry. His jewelry designs were always very big and bold. They were colorful, or they were very black and white chromatic. He had a way of signing his jewelry. He had certain influences that informed how he designed that jewelry. There was a consistency in all of that.
David Webb always liked to work in yellow gold and platinum. You don't typically see jewelry by David Webb that is white gold and platinum or white gold and yellow gold. It's platinum and yellow gold. That was his choice of metals. So, if you see something that's white gold and yellow gold, already, that's a red flag. But you wouldn't know to look for that unless you're handling a lot of pieces by that particular designer. Cartier, for example, their jewelry was manufactured in Paris, but also some of the jewelry is manufactured in the US. They sign their jewelry in a particular way. They have certain collections that they designed over the decades. Until you start handling more and more pieces by that jewelry house, you would not know how to recognize it unless you're reading the books and cross-referencing. Sharon, I am giving you very long answers to these questions. I hope that it's helping.
Sharon: No, it's interesting. It's making me think of other questions. For instance, you talked about the replicas from David Webb. They're still doing things from the catalog. Would that be worth as much as an original David Webb, as when he was alive, if you had a replica?
Gina: Well, when you say replica, you mean a newer David Webb piece versus an older David Webb piece, right? Because a replica means somebody who is not David Webb has replicated it, has copied it, and that's a different thing. I'm just clarifying for the audience.
Sharon: No, please. Gina: We're talking about a newer David Webb piece made from the back catalog. I guess it depends on the piece. There are collectors of David Webb jewelry who like to think that they're buying an earlier piece of David Webb jewelry when David Webb was active. But newer David Webb jewelry is still collectible and still very desirable.
Sharon: That's interesting.
We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 163 Part 2: Unusual Path, Unusual Materials: How 2Roses’ Unique Art Jewelry Came About | 21 Jul 2022 | 00:25:17 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Rose and Corliss Rose 2Roses is a collaboration of t Corliss Rose and John Lemieux Rose. The studio, located in Southern California, is focused on producing one-of-a-kind and limited-edition adornment and objects d’art, and is well known for its use of a wide range of highly unorthodox materials. The studio output is eclectic by design and often blended with an irreverent sense of humor. 2Roses designs are sold in 42 countries worldwide and are exhibited in major art institutions in the US, Europe, and China. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: For John and Corliss Rose, business and artistic expression don’t have to be in conflict. Entering the art world through apprenticeships, they learned early on that with a little business sense, they didn’t need to be starving artists. Now as the collaborators behind the design studio 2Roses (one of several creative businesses they share), John and Corliss produce one-of-a-kind art jewelry made of polymer clay, computer chips, and other odd material. They joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about their efforts to get business classes included in art school curriculum; why polymer clay jewelry has grown in popularity; and how they balance business with their artistic vision. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guests are designers John and Corliss of the eclectic design firm 2Roses. Located in Southern California, they sell worldwide. 2Roses in an award-winning design recognized for their use of unusual materials. Welcome back.
When you look at these things, do you have visions right away? Does something jump out at you that says, “Oh, there’s a pair of earrings,” or “There’s a pendant. I can do something with this”?
John: Sometimes.
Corliss: Sometimes. With the way I personally work, I have a table full of all sorts of things. I’ll take a certain amount of time and just look and pick and group and put this away. It’s almost like a cat playing with a couple of little toys. You put it over here and you scoot it over there. Then we’ll have dialogue about it, and we’ll talk about things. Then it’ll rest, and it’ll come back. Sometimes the decision is immediate; sometimes it takes a little while. It’s just the process. It’s the same thing when John works. He’s a little more direct than I am. I’ve learned from a couple of other peers that it’s very helpful to have many, many things at the table at the time, because you can look at a variety of things and the mind just flows. It’s like automatic writing. But John’s very direct. He’ll go through a process and then say, “Come here. Let’s talk about this,” and we’ll talk about something.
Sharon: What’s the division of responsibility between the two of you? Does one person do the back-office stuff and the other person makes? Do both of you do the creative aspect? How does that work?
John: We’re very collaborative. It’s a very fluid process. I always refer it to as improvisational jewelry design. We don’t set out with a plan to make a series of things, although themes and series have evolved organically through the process. We see these themes—moral themes, humor, political or social statements—just keep cropping up on their own to our particular point of view. But within the jewelry production design, it’s really—
Corliss: It’s fluid. Depending on the task that needs to be done, some things I will be better at soldering. There are some things that John does. He does a lot of—
John: Welding.
Corliss: Machinery and welding and things of that sort, engraving. That’s where things maybe get a little compartmentalized. Not in the creative thinking process, but in the actual, physical production stages. “O.K., I’ll take this stage. You do that better, so you do that and we’ll talk about it.” That’s what happens.
John: We don’t want to get too far away from our business sides, like, “O.K., who’s more efficient for the task?” But we do have certain divisions of tasks. On the back end, when it comes to the hard business stuff, Corliss tends to be the accountant. I’m the sales and marketing guy. She does all the web work. I do social media. I’ll do photography and she’ll do inventory. We do have certain tasks we fall into, but it tends to be more business operations than the creative work or production.
Sharon: Interesting. How many other businesses do you have? John, you have a multi-media empire it seems. What do you have here?
John: The main corporation is called Mindsparq. That’s really an umbrella corporation. Underneath that, we have a variety of different business entities. There’s the marketing company. There’s 2Roses Jewelry. We have an education arm, a publishing arm, photography. I do a lot of restoration work.
Sharon: Restoration? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.
John: Of jewelry antiquities.
Sharon: Oh, really. Interesting, O.K.
John: We’re working with a lot of museums, auction houses, things like that, movie studios. That’s turned into a whole thing unto itself. Then we do light manufacturing. There are a lot of different business entities. Some are intertwined with the jewelry; some are not.
Sharon: Corliss, you’re doing the teaching on the educational videos or the educational aspect. How does that work?
Corliss: Yes, a lot more video now. I found that Zoom has opened up a whole wonderful world for expanding education, where I used to have to rely on being someplace in person, and the students had to rely on airfare, hotel rooms, that sort of thing. I have a very international following with online instruction in all different variants. It has proven to be not only lucrative, but very rewarding personally. John has been very instrumental in helping get the lighting and the connectivity set up and teaching me about different cameras and how to adjust them while I’m doing my instruction, that sort of thing. It’s worked out very well.
John: I keep her on her marks.
Corliss: Oh, yes.
Sharon: It’s so meticulous when you’re trying to demonstrate something like jewelry making, metalsmithing, how to weld something, how to incorporate metal into this or that, because you’re so close. It’s like a cooking class in a sense. How do you show how to do it?
John: Yeah. Actually, the things we were doing with cooking demonstrations when Corliss was more involved in that helped us a lot when we started doing jewelry demonstrations and workshops. Basically, the videography and the whole setup is very, very similar.
Sharon: So, you were ready when Covid came around. When everybody was on lockdown, you were already up and running.
John: We were.
Corliss: Yeah.
John: Actually, what you’re seeing behind us, we’re in our broadcast studio now.
Corliss: With some of the equipment behind us.
John: Yeah, when Covid hit, we made the investment to set up a complete streaming broadcast studio because it was obvious that this was going to be the transitional network. It wasn’t going to just be for the next six months.
Corliss: We’ve always been very pragmatic about trends and where everything is going. During the pandemic, we saw Zoom as something that was going to outlast the pandemic. It was going to cause a shift in education and a lot of other things, business meetings. So, we took the time to invest in learning the software and watching all the how-to videos and getting questions answered. We wanted to be able to hit the ground running with a certain amount of knowledge and have things work correctly, have that person’s first impression be a good one, whether it was a student or I was doing a board meeting or whatever. We just saw that as the right thing to do.
Sharon: Do you see trends both with jewelry and with this? Zoom will continue, but do you see more polymer clay? Maybe it’s me. It seems to have subsided. Maybe it was a big thing when it came out. I heard more about it, and now it’s—not run of the mill; that’s too much—but it’s more widespread, so people aren’t talking about it as much. What are your thoughts about that?
Corliss: You’re talking about the polymer clay, correct?
Sharon: Yes.
Corliss: There have been advancements made within the community, but I actually see the most innovative work coming out of Eastern Europe. There’s a design aesthetic there that is very traditional and very guild-oriented. There’s a different appreciation of fine art over there, where in America this is a craft media; it’s something to introduce young children to. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but it’s just a different perspective on it.
John: I was just going to add that what you see in Europe is more professional artists.
Corliss: Yes.
John: Mature, professional studio practices incorporating very sophisticated raw material. Right now, the more innovative stuff is coming out of Europe. How that plays out, that’s not to say there’s nobody in America. I mean, obviously there are.
Corliss: There’s more happening now. We’re seeing more and more of our contemporaries getting into the large exhibitions, the large shows with very wonderful work. It’s very satisfying to see that, but it’s been a slow growth, mainly because this particular medium was introduced as something crafty and not something to really be explored as an art form. That came from within when polymer clay was first manufactured from a very small group of people who saw the potential of it. They set the foundation of pursuing polymer clay as an art form. It’s taken a while to grow, but it is starting to get a little bit sweet now.
John: And that’s not really different from other mediums. Look at it: it’s just a medium. If you look at the introduction of acrylic paints into the painting world, it took 75 years for those to eclipse other things. Polymers are on that path.
Corliss: They were first invented, I think, in the 70s and 80s as a—
John: Well, they were invented of course.
Corliss: Yes, that is absolutely correct, but as an art supply. They were made in the 1980s. That’s when they started being discovered.
John: Do you know how polymer clay was invented? Do you know the story?
Sharon: No.
John: It was invented by the Nazis.
Sharon: Was it? For what?
John: During World War II, for the leadup to World War II, it was an industrial material that was invented as a substitute for hard-to-find steel and things like that. It was used in manufacturing leading up to the war. It’s an incredibly versatile and really durable product, and it’s very plastic. It can be used for a lot of different things. So consequently, it was sitting on the shelf for many years, many decades, until around the 1980s when somebody somewhere discovered this stuff and said, “Hey, look at this. We can throw some color into it and do all sorts of crazy, artistic stuff with it.” That’s where it took off.
Corliss: That was the start of Premo, and now you have countless brands of polymer clay that are being manufactured. Just about every country on earth has its own brand of polymer clay, including Russia and Japan. Polymer clay is very big in Japan.
Sharon: That’s interesting.
John: Including us. We have it as well.
Sharon: You are early adopters, then. It sounds like very early adopters.
Corliss: Back in that particular time, the internet was just getting started. There wasn’t a big outlet like there is today with social media for polymer clay enthusiasts or groups or fellow artists to get together. I learned everything online. There were one or two websites that acted as portals with links to different tutorials and other web pages with information about products, manufacturers’ pages, that sort of thing. I learned polymer clay online.
Sharon: Wow, online.
John: There were no instructions.
Corliss: No, there was nothing.
Sharon: Wow! I give you a lot of credit, the stick-to-itiveness and determination to say, “I’m going to learn this.” Polymer clay, I took a class decades ago where they used some—is it baked?
Corliss: Yes, we prefer to call it cured.
Sharon: Cured, O.K.
Corliss: And some of the terminology that’s been developed recently is to give a little more sophistication to the product so it isn’t so crafty. So yes, it’s cured. Most of it is cured around 275º Fahrenheit. There are brands that are cured a little bit higher and maybe slightly lower, but a lot of the brands are interchangeable, intermixable. You can have polymer clay look like a gemstone. You can have it look like old, weathered wood. It’s very adaptable. It’s a perfect mimic. It supplants the use of other materials in different jewelry compositions. It’s a very interesting material to work with.
Sharon: It sounds like it.
Corliss: You can paint it. You can rough it up. You can use alcohol on it, just about anything.
Sharon: Recently you mentioned competition. You enter your work into competitions—I call them competitions. I don’t know what you call them, where they give an award for best—
John: Yeah, exhibitions. That’s something we do. It’s part of the promotion of your work. It’s about getting your name and your work out there in front of as large an audience as possible. It’s one way to approach it. We’ve used that in a lot of cases, and these things are building blocks to how you build a sustainable practice. Being in an exhibition—for example, we’ve been in the Beijing Biennial for three years running. We’ve won numerous prizes for that, and we’re representing the United States. We’re one of six artists that have been chosen to represent the U.S. and one of the only clay artists outside the U.K. That’ll pick up a lot of opportunities for us and allow us to make connections in China, particularly within the arts community in China. Just that one event has caromed off into, I don’t how many years now it’s been playing out, and it has continued to provide opportunities for us to do different things. So, yeah, they can be very, very useful, but you have to also recognize that the opportunities are there only if you recognize them and then take action.
Sharon: Would you recommend it to people in earlier stages of their careers, just for validation, to be able to say, “I won this”? Or would you say don’t do it until you’re ready? What’s your advice?
John: I don’t think we advocate one way or another. All I can speak to is this is what works for us. Results can vary. It depends on how you approach it. We had a discussion about this in one of the arts groups recently, and I was surprised that one of themes that emerged out of that was a lot of artists’ discomfort with competition. If that’s the case, then that’s probably not going to be good advice for you. When you do exhibitions and competitions, you’d better have a thick skin because you need to be able to say, “It’s not personal; they didn’t like my jewelry.”
Corliss: I think one area where we have been a bit instrumental is with younger people who want to enter that first competition for the first time. It’s more of an instructional thing. The technology no longer does slides; you do images. It’s little things like making sure your images all have pretty much the same backdrop, that they’re easy for the jury to look at. Out of the 12 or 15 things that we made, we pick the five or three strongest that we feel would be looked at in front of the jury. When you fill out your questionnaire, if it’s anything you have to hand write, please print legibly. It’s surprising how careless people can be. Just things like that. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get in. You go through the experience of having a binder three inches thick of, “Thank you very much, but no thank you,” before someone comes in saying, “Congratulations.” Then that new little binder starts growing and growing and growing. It’s more of a basic instruction, hand-holding, a little bit of counseling and, “Here, go on your way. Just give it a try.”
John: For a long time, we confronted ourselves with that kind of thing. We have what we call the “wall of shame.” We post all our rejection letters and say, “O.K., we really suck. Look at this is a massive array of rejection letters.” But I think most professional artists that do exhibitions and things will tell you it’s a numbers game. You just keep submitting and eventually you’ll get into some, and you won’t get into others; that’s all there is to it.
Sharon: Yeah, I can see how thick skin comes in handy.
Corliss: I was just going to say I run to the bathroom and cry.
Sharon: No, but you have to have thick skin to do what you do in terms of putting your work out there. You see people looking at it. They walk to the next table. They walk to the next booth. I was talking to a jeweler about this the other day. It’s challenging right there.
Corliss: I go back again to the early days of the apprenticeship. Speaking for myself, I had some hard masters. I remember one class—I will never forget this guy, Salvatore Solomon. He was a fabulous artist, a very good, well-respected artist, and I’m in class and he comes around. He didn’t say a word, just took the piece I was working on, ripped it up. He said, “Start over.” Oh no, that didn’t sit well with me, but that was his technique. He was very hard on his students, but he was teaching you a number of things. One, thick skin. Two, perseverance. The experience I came out of that with has benefitted me for the rest of my life. Now, I understand what he was trying to do.
Sharon: That would be hard thing to go through. John and Corliss, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. I give you a lot of credit for everything you’ve built, not just the jewelry, but everything around it. Thank you so much for taking the time.
John: Sharon, thank you very much for the opportunity and for taking the time to do this. It’s been a real honor and a pleasure.
Corliss: Yes, it’s been nice. Thank you so much.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 163 Part 1: Unusual Path, Unusual Materials: How 2Roses’ Unique Art Jewelry Came About | 19 Jul 2022 | 00:27:19 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Rose and Corliss Rose 2Roses is a collaboration of t Corliss Rose and John Lemieux Rose. The studio, located in Southern California, is focused on producing one-of-a-kind and limited-edition adornment and objects d’art, and is well known for its use of a wide range of highly unorthodox materials. The studio output is eclectic by design and often blended with an irreverent sense of humor. 2Roses designs are sold in 42 countries worldwide and are exhibited in major art institutions in the US, Europe, and China. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: Transcript: For John and Corliss Rose, business and artistic expression don’t have to be in conflict. Entering the art world through apprenticeships, they learned early on that with a little business sense, they didn’t need to be starving artists. Now as the collaborators behind the design studio 2Roses (one of several creative businesses they share), John and Corliss produce one-of-a-kind art jewelry made of polymer clay, computer chips, and other odd material. They joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about their efforts to get business classes included in art school curriculum; why polymer clay jewelry has grown in popularity; and how they balance business with their artistic vision. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today my guests are designers John and Corliss Rose of the eclectic design firm 2Roses, located in Southern California. They sell worldwide. 2Roses is an award-winning design firm recognized for their use of unusual materials. Today we’ll hear more about their jewelry journey. Corliss and John, welcome to the program.
John: Thank you. It’s a delight to be here. Thank you very much.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you designers first? How did that work?
John: Actually, we both started rather early in life. Corliss started as an apprentice in her father’s floral store when she was 10, and I was apprenticed into design and graphic arts at age 12. We both came up in the old-school apprentice system and were working professionally by our early teen. It wasn’t until later, in our late teens, that we both started professional or, I should say, a traditional academic trend. So, we’ve always been in the arts, both of us, very early.
Sharon: Were you both attracted to jewelry early as part of this? Where did that come in?
Corliss: We met at art school, and our backgrounds and our career focus on developing a creative career were almost identical, so we hit it off right from the get-go. For the first 10 years of our relationship, we focused on our own individual creative paths, but we kept intersecting with each other. Eventually we made the decision to work together full time collaboratively for a creative endeavor. Jewelry, at that moment in time, was the highlight of where we wanted to focus our energies.
Sharon: Is that when you met, when you were both part of the apprenticeship, or when you were in college? Where did you meet?
Corliss: We met in art school in Chicago.
John: Prior to that, we had quite a bit of time to develop different practices and careers. So, we met midway, I suppose, in our journey.
Sharon: When you say you were apprenticed, was the idea that you would learn how to be a designer, how to be a florist, and that’s what you were going to do?
Corliss: At that time, I was being groomed to take over my father’s business. I learned not only the design aspect, but at a very early age, I learned cost accounting. I was learning the business aspect of it. I was pretty much indoctrinated from the very beginning that you’re going to be an artist, but you’re not going to be a starving artist. You need to make a profit out of this so you can flourish. Later on in my career, I had one gallery owner tell me that the work was wonderful, but price it this way because it’s one thing to make your bread; it’s another thing to put butter on it. So, it was something that I had gotten all along.
Sharon: Wow! Most people don’t get that so early, so that’s great.
John: All of the apprenticeships I did, it was all about how this is a business first, and we do creative things like manufacturing a product. So by the time we hit formal arts school, when we first met, we very quickly realized that we had a mutual experience of understanding of the art world and our career path. That’s what was a very strong attraction; that we both looked at this as a business career. This isn’t about abstract ideas of, “Let’s be creative,” and all the mythologies that artists are inculcated with. We didn’t seem to have that kind of thinking.
Sharon: Were you ahead of your peers in that respect? Were you ahead of your peers because you recognized the business aspect?
John: Oh my god, yes. Yeah, it was really like that. By the time we hit college, most of our peers were just starting out. They were just starting to learn their career paths and trying to figure out what they were doing. We already had several businesses going. For us, the academic training was more of a cherry on the cake and polishing skills. By that time, we were working professionals and had been for quite some time.
Sharon: Wow! Tell us about the jewelry you make. We’ll have pictures when we post the podcast, but it’s so unusual.
Corliss: We’ve always been driven by exploration and experimentation with what we call odd media. This is what drew us to art jewelry in the early days. It was like the wild west. Anything went, and we just threw out all the rules of traditional jewelry. Fashion and adornment were being challenged at that time. It was almost like a golden age, where there was a lot of free-flowing ideas, a lot of collaboration with John and me, and a lot of fluid dialogue creatively between the both of us.
John: You asked about jewelry, and one of the things is we didn’t start out as jewelers. Both of us came to it through a lot of other mediums. Myself, I started out as a painter, illustrator, furniture maker, gem cutter, sign maker, designer of one thing or another, machinery. Corliss went through all sorts of other endeavors herself.
Corliss: It was basically when we had been together for 10 years, plus doing all of these interesting things, that we made the decision, “Jewelry would be a great direction to go into.” And just to pull the curtain back a little bit and give a peak, I think one of the nicest things that happened to me at that time was that as an anniversary gift, I received lessons for metalsmithing. I learned how to solder, and that was the beginning of it. What I learned, I taught John. We experimented with a lot of different processes and a lot of different materials, and it just started to take off from there.
Sharon: When you say metalsmithing, I would think you would go in the traditional direction, whereas you took the metalsmithing and combined it with polymer clay, it seems, which people don’t do. I’m looking at what your website has, and that’s unusual. How did you reverse course in a sense?
Corliss: We were very much interested in color. At that time, we were following the traditional path of experimenting with color and its relationship to metals: patinas,P Prismacolor pencils, enamels and things like that. Polymer clay was such a versatile material. It could mimic just about anything. At the time, the product was being developed in Europe, where it was originally manufactured, and there was a small group of people using the product and doing some pretty innovative things with it. I latched onto that train very, very quickly and took myself through the learning curve of how to work with it, and I got involved with that particular community for quite a while to absorb everything I could, like a big, old sponge. To this day, it plays a very vital role in a lot of work we do. Because we have been metalsmiths and I teach, I have been able to actually teach the incorporation of some of the simpler metalsmithing techniques with polymer to people who have only worked with polymer and opened up that door to them. It’s been very rewarding in that respect.
John: You made a good observation about that crossover because as Corliss mentions, it’s really a two-way street. What we recognized after a while is that introducing polymer clay to the metal world was one side of the sword, and then it was basically introducing metals into the polymer world. Corliss has developed a whole range of courses, workshops, if you will, going in both directions, and that’s become a business unto itself.
Sharon: You seem very entrepreneurial. You seem to go on and on.
Corliss: As John would say, there are many paths to the artist’s income.
John: Yeah, entrepreneurialism is really baked into the DNA. I have to go back to the apprenticeships that we both did that gave us a foundation in—I always express it as art as a business and business as an art.
Corliss: It was a work ethic, too.
John: Yeah. So, we tend to always look at what the business opportunities are, how to make money doing this. That’s always an issue for anybody in the arts, and that’s also part of what we have advocated for for the last 40 years. I have worked with the California University system for decades trying to introduce a business curriculum into the arts, and it’s taken 40 years to actually get that message across. It’s only been in the last 10 years that we’ve started getting any kind of acceptance. We’ve developed many programs for various universities to teach the business side of art, and it’s been an obstacle course to get that through. It runs counter—or at least it used to run much more counter to the academic approach to teaching arts, which focuses more on technique than actually earning a living.
Corliss: I’ve had quite a few experiences with individuals who were poised for graduation in the next six months or so. We would have conversations about, “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I’m going to graduate, but I don’t know how to start a business. I was never taught how to make this a practice.” That’s where everything started. It started by recognizing that there is a need for it within the education system. It led to developing more and more sophisticated ways of instructing people and getting them a little more prepared for what comes after graduation.
John: The thing we found, though, is that this is a uniquely American perspective. We’ve developed programs for Canada, for Mexico, South America, and they embraced them. To them it’s a no-brainer. It’s only America where we’ve encountered any resistance to it.
Sharon: Interesting. Why do you think that is?
John: I think a lot of it is the mythology of art. I want to be specific about this. We are focusing on metals programs and jewelry design programs for this kind of thing. When I was involved in SNAG, we got into this quite in-depth. One of the biggest impediments is that the instructor basically had never operated a business himself, so to them, they were being asked to teach something they had no experience in. Basically, they got their master’s degree, and they went from being students to teachers. That’s it. The idea that there was another world out there, they would say, “Yeah, that’s great. That would be wonderful, but that’s not something I have any experience with.”
Sharon: That’s interesting, the idea that art should be pure and sell itself.
John: That’s one of the mythologies, so Puritan. It’s your labor, I guess. One of the things that occurs to me: many people in the arts define themselves by what they do with their hands, and we have never done that. We conceive the opportunities of who we are by what we do with our minds and how we harness our creativity and create opportunities for ourselves to express that creativity. Jewelry is just one of those things. We have a long history in developing businesses, which goes back to the apprenticeships. From our perspective, it’s all creative endeavor.
Corliss: I was a pastry chef.
Sharon: Wow!
John: A television pastry chef, no less
Corliss: Yes.
John: And she basically made formulations for a lot of very famous restaurants and product lines that you would know of.
Corliss: Making the croissants for Marie Callender’s. Looked up the recipe for that.
Sharon: Wow!
John: That’s Marie right there.
Sharon: How did all this meld into jewelry? I know you through Art Jewelry Forum. I know you do art jewelry, but how did everything you’re talking about meld, at one point, into art jewelry? I know you do a lot of other different things, but in terms of the product, let’s say.
John: We were both active artists in various spheres. One of the things we were doing a lot was running mining and prospecting operations. We were accumulating massive amounts of gem material, and it came to the point where we had to make a decision of what the hell we were going to do with all this stuff. That’s when we came upon jewelry. We could either sell the material wholesale, which we were doing, but really the profitability in jewelry is that we had to finish the faceted stone and polish the rough material. You get the material by the pound, but you sell it by the carat.
Corliss: It was lapidary skills that was the predecessor to this. We were making cabochons. John was faceting and we were also carving. We were carving a lot of natural materials, like bone and wood. The jewelry morphed from that, and it started selling. I was actually schlepping things in a big case, and we found that our work was being very well received. It grew and built from that. Soon enough, we were incorporating precious metal into our pieces.
John: We started doing more of what I would call conventional jewelry, and we had quite a success doing that. Early on, we got contracts with Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom and some larger chains, and very quickly we found out that doing that kind of work is not what we wanted to do.
Corliss: Yes, multiples.
John: Like doing 5,000 of something. You can make money, but the toll that takes on your body—I know a lot of people that do that, and all of them have wrist problems. It leads to health problems. So, that kind of jewelry was when we were getting started and taking off.
When we discovered art jewelry, we lost our minds. It was the wild west. It was all of our art training, all of the things we thought of ourselves as, what we wanted to do in terms of unfettered creativity and experimentation, pushing the boundaries and the edge. That’s what was happening in art jewelry. So, we said, “Yeah, that’s where we want to go. If we’re going to do jewelry, that’s the kind of stuff we’re going to do.” That’s basically how we backed into this world.
Corliss: That’s how it opened us up to a lot of different materials. We were in the frame of mind of purposely going out and looking for materials in a lot of different places, everything from upcycling to computer boards and things of that sort, a whole variety of things. We had friends who would tease us and bring us little offerings we could use in the studio and comment, “You two can make something out of anything.” We took that as a wonderful compliment and put ourselves in a position to receive a lot of very interesting material we could use.
John: Well, we had good circumstances and still do because of all these other businesses we were involved with. We had connections within the military, NASA, foreign governments, lights and heavy manufacturing, the medical industry. We were getting access to this insane array of stuff and materials. I’ve got stuff from someone’s space capsule, a jet fighter, fossils of every kind, medical devices you wouldn’t normally get your hands on. All of this became fodder for “Let’s make jewelry out of it.” One example: I have what we call the world’s most expensive pair of earrings. One of my contacts ran a medical manufacturing business, and they spent something like $35 million developing these little—
Corliss: Chips.
John: Yeah, for CAT scanners, and they failed. They didn’t work as intended. So we stocked six of these prototypes, which literally cost $35 million, and they were like, “Well, we can’t use them. Here, make some jewelry out of them,” which we did. We made earrings out of them, and I love that particular piece. It has a story because they went from being extravagantly expensive to being completely worthless, and now they’re a pair of earrings. Somebody put some sort of value on it, I guess.
Sharon: It sounds like people who know you just ship you boxes and bones and screws and whatever they have.
John: We receive regular offerings from friends, which is a delight; it really is. Over the years, we’ve developed a solid foundation of collectors. We get a steady stream of commissions, and it’s very typical to hear, “I have this thing. Can it be—” I mean, we’ve gotten everything from antiquities—
Corliss: We have Roman coins and special pottery shards.
John: And crazy stuff that people say. “Here, use this as the starting point and make me something.” We actually got a guy’s pacemaker one time. “I’ve had this inside of me for the last six years, and now I’m going to wear it on the outside.”
Sharon: That’s an interesting idea.
John: It was quite an interesting piece. | |||
| Episode 162 Part 2: Why Fair Trade Is the Gold Standard for Ethical Jewelry | 15 Jul 2022 | 00:28:06 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Ute Decker Ute Decker, born 1969, Germany, lives and works in London, UK. The jewels of Ute Decker are described as “a powerful statement” that “sets a shining ethical example” (Financial Times). The Economist 1843 compares her “avant-garde sculptural pieces” to “swirling sculptures” while Christie’s simply calls them “wearable works of art”. Ute’s pieces are exhibited internationally and have won prestigious awards including Gold Awards from The Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council, UK. Public collections include the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; the Crafts Council, UK; the Goldsmiths’ Company, UK; the Spencer Museum, USA; Musée Barbier-Mueller, Switzerland; and the Swiss National Museum. As a political economist-turned-journalist-turned-artist jeweler, Ute Decker is a pioneer of the international ethical jewelery movement. She works predominately in recycled silver and was one of the first worldwide to work in Fairtrade Gold. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: When it comes to ethical jewelry, artist-jeweler Ute Decker is the real deal. She was one of the first people to use fair-trade gold when it became available in the U.K., and she has spent her career advocating for the use of truly ethically sourced materials in the jewelry industry. Above all, she’s proven that ethical can be beautiful: her sculptural works have won several awards and are in the collection of museums worldwide. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what fair trade means; how she approaches the creative process; and what makes an artist-jeweler. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today my guest is Ute Decker, talking with us from London. Ute is an artist-jeweler who’s known for her innovative method of sculpting, bending and twisting metal into three-dimensional, wearable sculptures. She works in fair-trade gold and recycled silver and is considered a pioneer in the international ethical jewelry movement. Welcome back.
So how did all of this lead you into recycled material? Was that something you decided you wanted to do, and that was it? How did it happen?
Ute: As we talked about at the beginning, as a teenager, I wanted to change the world. I was always quite environmentally mindful. Then studying political economics, working as a journalist, you think that is very far removed from being a creative, and at the time it certainly felt like a big break, but in hindsight I think it was an important apprenticeship I needed to take to become the jeweler I am today. As in political economics, you don’t just look at the piece and take it as art for art’s sake or design for design’s sake. You want to know the meaning, the context, the economic, the social, the political, the gender.
All those different histories and intersectionalities, that’s my training to look at those. As a journalist, your training is to ask questions, so when I started out making jewelry, I did ask questions. Like many people, I’ve seen the film “Blood Diamonds,” and I thought, “Oh well, thank god I don’t work with diamonds. I work with metals.” Then I started to look into gold, and the story is very similar to “Blood Diamonds” with gold. Of course, my reaction was, “I can’t possibly work with this kind of material. I can’t be part of the status quo. I’d have blood on my hands. It’s discretionary. It's something I’m making. There’s absolutely no need for those horrible stories.” So, I researched quite a bit and asked many questions about ethics.
In 2009, when I started, there was no information out there whatsoever. In fact, I was met with a lot of hostility. Once you start asking about the ethics of jewelry, you’re tainting the story because jewelry is sold as that beautiful, luxurious love, but it’s such a tainted story. So, in the jewelry industry, those questions were certainly not welcome. I was met with either belittlement, “Don’t you worry. Everything is fine,” or outright hostility. I think as a journalist that meant, O.K., if people avoid your questions, that means you’re asking the right questions.
I searched high and low and found a like-minded person who’s been very active in that field. I was one of the very first to work with fair-trade gold when it was launched in the U.K. It was together with Fair Trade and Fair Mined Gold. Those two organizations have now separated. I know in America more jewelers work with Fair Mined; in Europe, more work with Fair Trade, but it’s very similar standards. The main thing is it’s fully traceable. We know exactly where it comes from. I know from which mine in the highlands of Peru my gold is coming from. I know it’s not smuggled out from the Congo, supporting atrocities there. I know it’s not smuggled out of Russia or somewhere else. It’s fully traceable, every single gram. I’m registered with the Fair Trade Foundation in the U.K. The mine is registered as well as the importer, and the refiner is registered. We all have a number and we all declare how much we buy, and it’s fully traceable. As a smaller maker, I’m audited every two to three years. I have to be able to show every single invoice; every single gram, I have to account for. It’s being checked. It is quite bureaucratic, but that is the guarantee. The whole fair-trade ethos is trade not aid. It is about paying a fair price rather than the small-scale miner selling to middlemen, middlemen exploitation. It’s very much about dignity: avoiding child labor, more gender equality, environmental standards of not burning down the Amazon. Fair-trade gold and fair-mined gold is a little more expensive, but in the great scheme of things, it is worth it.
It’s also quite interesting that we started with just 20 jewelers. In 2009, we launched jewelry. All the other jewelers were also very small, individual jewelers. The entire industry said, “Traceability is not possible. Our gold is clean.” Well, where does it come from? “It’s clean.” But where? Traceability is impossible, we were told by the industry. Gold comes from all over the world, it’s then refined mostly in hubs like Switzerland or Dubai. The gold from all over the world comes through those hubs and then is distributed again all over the world. Gold has no identity, and they said it is absolutely impossible to have traceability. So, as 20 tiny, little jewelers, and unimportant jewelers in the great scheme of things, we gave the proof of concept that it was something that is possible. The entire industry no longer could deny that this was a possibility. Sometimes you get so disheartened thinking, “Whatever I do as an individual, what difference could it possibly make? It couldn’t be more than a drop in the ocean.” But the ocean is nothing but an accumulation of drops. We can change the waves. We can change. So, we have more power than we think we do.
Sharon: First, let me ask you: What is Fair Trade and Fair Mined? What is fair-trade gold?
Ute: I’ll answer both of them together because they started out together. It was called Fair Trade and Fair Mined gold. Later those two organizations separated, but they wrote the standards together, so they’re still very similar. When I say Fair Trade, you could almost consider it Fair Mined as well. They’re almost interchangeable. I think I did once read the standard. It’s pages and pages and pages of small print standards of environmental guidelines, of engaging with gender equality. It is about the minimum payments.
Quite often with small-scale miners, it’s not a job you do for fun. Artisanal sounds romantic, but it’s not. It’s a dollar-a-day, often horrible job, sometimes bonded labor, sometimes involving an awful lot of child labor. All of that is why the Fair Trade Foundation or Fair Mined works with the mine for a long time to come up to standard with certain environmental standards. They have to form a cooperative. We pay a premium that is then invested into community development. Women have a voice. Child labor is not allowed. Those mines are audited, and for their efforts they receive more money. It’s really enabling those miners to have more dignity, to live in a cleaner environment, to help protect the environment for all of us, and hopefully earn enough money for those children not to go down the shaft, but to go to school.
The question is, “Well, let’s just not use any gold at all,” which I also heartily agree with. But as we said, these miners almost subsist on a dollar a day, quite a few of those small-scale miners around the world. 100 million depend on that income, and it’s a poverty-stricken income. For us in the West to say, “Well, it would better if you didn’t do that,” is not going to work. It is helping those communities to work more environmentally friendly but also to earn more money to eventually get out of mining. It is a slower process. It’s not that we have all the answers. It’s a process of empowerment.
Sharon: How about the recycled silver you use? Do you only use recycled silver? How did Fair Mined lead you into only working with recycled silver?
Ute: Fair Trade and Fair Mines initially were only gold mines. When you mine gold, in the ore there is some silver, but it’s a much smaller percentage. So, there was availability of fair-trade gold, but very, very little of fair-trade silver. Of course, it’s much cheaper to work with silver, so there would be a much higher demand. I would occasionally get a few grams of silver. I think now the availability of fair-mined silver is a little bit better. In fact, I’ve been told that it’s quite good now, so I need to look into that again. It is a continuous journey, but at the time and until recently, there was not just enough availability of fair-trade silver. Otherwise, I would prefer to work in fair-trade silver.
Recycled silver—now we call it recycled because we’re all so green; we used to call it scrapping. So, we’ve always done that. We’ve never thrown away precious metals. For me, it is not necessarily an ethical proposition to work in recycled. It is a little bit better than nothing, but I wouldn’t say I’m working ethical because I’m using recycled materials. I think that’s almost the bare minimum we should be using.
But then we come back to your earlier questions about art jewelry, artist jewelry, ethical jewelry. I don’t like the term ethical at all, ethical jewelry. It seems to be a standard term now. Sustainable jewelry, it definitely isn’t sustainable. We’re using finite resources. Responsible is probably a better term. I quite like mindful, but then mindful is so occupied with other things, so you can’t use that term. So, I use ethical jewelry as a term because I think we all know what we mean by that, but I don’t particularly like the term.
Sharon: Do your clients care? When you’re having a showing or people call about your jewelry and you mention it, does it make a difference to them how you’re working, whatever you want to call it? Do they care?
Ute: Not as much as I would have thought. Not as much as I do. It is not what people call a unique selling point; it’s not. If you do make small wedding bands, I think young couples, especially younger people, are much more engaged in that sustainable question. For them it’s much more important. People find their way first and foremost because there is something that speaks to you about the forms I make. It’s only afterwards, when they look closer and they see the materials I use. I think it is a certain appreciation of individually made, sculpted pieces that are unique even when I make a series, because they’re all hand sculpted. I will never be able to make the same piece again, so even with a series, pieces are unique.
If that somebody goes to the trouble and cares to choose the best material possible, I think that is appreciated, but nobody comes to me to buy a ring because it’s made in fair trade. I would love to stop talking about this subject because I would love it to be normal, nothing special anymore, but after being met with so much hostility all those years ago in 2011, if you look at any website of jewelers now—especially high street—they all proclaim to have responsible sourcing, conflict-free diamonds. As a consumer, if you look, you think, “Oh, thank god all of it has been sorted.” I think our biggest problem now—because there are more and more responsible and ethical options available—is greenwash.
Sharon: Greenwash, did you say?
Ute: Yeah, greenwash. Greenwash means painting the status quo green, changing nothing, just making it sound green. Unless you have fully traceable, unless you know 100% where your materials come from, you can’t make those claims. For me, using recycled is not necessarily ethical because there are huge issues with recycled. I’m always asked about that. I put a whole section on my website with several articles: “Is recycled or fair mined better?” because a lot of jewelers want to do the best. Rather than answering that question each time, I put quite a few articles on my website.
Sharon: May I ask you this about your jewelry, about something you said before? It’s always seemed to me that if you’re doing a show, you’re putting your work out there for people to judge. “Yes, I want a ring like that,” or “No, it doesn’t appeal to me,” and they move onto the next thing. It must take thick skin.
Ute: Interesting question. You would think so. Before I outed myself, I made jewelry for myself for nearly 20 years. I made what I wanted to wear, what I enjoyed. For me, it was totally unimportant if anybody else liked it.
Sharon: Are the pieces you make for the shows pieces you like or pieces you want to make?
Ute: When I started out only making jewelry for myself, I didn’t show it to anybody. I made it for myself. It was out of interest and the creative joy of it. I wore the pieces, and it didn’t matter whether somebody liked it. Then I accidentally showed my work for the first time, and I thought, “Who else is going to like this? I love it and some of my friends do, but maybe they’re just being nice.” I did win a prize and things happened. It’s quite amazing, to my greatest surprise, that several of my pieces are now in several museums including the V&A. I would have never, ever thought so. I think as any creative, to be authentic, you can’t try to please everybody. You don’t want to please everybody. It’s wonderful that there are several people out there in the world who think that what I do speaks to them, but I’m quite happy for many people to just walk past.
Sharon: It doesn’t matter.
Ute: Yes, it doesn’t matter. There are some lovely older ladies who come. They giggle and say, “Oh, you couldn’t do the gardening with that one.” I love that comment. It’s still engaging, and they’re interested in the shapes. It’s so obvious it’s not for them, but they still engage in a way. Jewelry, for me, is a way of making connections. You can’t connect with absolutely everybody, but when it makes those connections, it's beautiful. So no, I don’t have thick skin, because I guess enough sparkling eyes gives me joy as well. I see artwork that others are enthused about, and it doesn’t speak to me. Maybe a few years later it does. So no, I’m not trying to please anybody. It’s a joy that there are many people I can share the work with.
Sharon: Your work is unusual, but if your work is not for gardening, as these women say, who is it for? Is it for younger people? Is it for people who appreciate the art and when they go garden, they’ll put it aside? Who is it for?
Ute: Every piece I make is a piece I want to wear. Maybe in a way it’s firstly for me, so I can keep making them. I sell my work to support my habit. Mostly the people who are drawn to my work are mature, mostly women, but also men. Mature people who are confident that come in all shapes, sizes, ages, everything, but who feel quite confident wearing a piece like the ring I’m wearing or the beautiful ring you’re wearing.
Jewelry can also be very empowering. You put on a piece, and here I am talking nonstop, but I can be quite shy. Being in a gathering of people, especially for me to go up to somebody, yeah, I dread being in groups of people. When you wear a piece, it allows other people to approach you. It gives that invitation to speak to you. It doesn’t say, “Hey, look what a cool piece I’m wearing.” It says, “Yes, I’m open to have a conversation.” It’s amazing how many doors wearing my jewelry has opened. Then you start a conversation, and it naturally flows. Coming back to the question, it is for confident people, but it’s also for non-confident people like myself. It’s both.
Sharon: I can see how it would be for confident people. I invite everybody to take a look at our website. We’ll have picture. It’s very unusual jewelry. I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much.
Ute: Thank you. That time passed very quickly, Sharon. Thank you.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 162 Part 1: Why Fair Trade Is the Gold Standard for Ethical Jewelry | 13 Jul 2022 | 00:21:00 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Ute Decker Ute Decker, born 1969, Germany, lives and works in London, UK. The jewels of Ute Decker are described as “a powerful statement” that “sets a shining ethical example” (Financial Times). The Economist 1843 compares her “avant-garde sculptural pieces” to “swirling sculptures” while Christie’s simply calls them “wearable works of art”. Ute’s pieces are exhibited internationally and have won prestigious awards including Gold Awards from The Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council, UK. Public collections include the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; the Crafts Council, UK; the Goldsmiths’ Company, UK; the Spencer Museum, USA; Musée Barbier-Mueller, Switzerland; and the Swiss National Museum. As a political economist-turned-journalist-turned-artist jeweler, Ute Decker is a pioneer of the international ethical jewelery movement. She works predominately in recycled silver and was one of the first worldwide to work in Fairtrade Gold. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: When it comes to ethical jewelry, artist-jeweler Ute Decker is the real deal. She was one of the first people to use fair-trade gold when it became available in the U.K., and she has spent her career advocating for the use of truly ethically sourced materials in the jewelry industry. Above all, she’s proven that ethical can be beautiful: her sculptural works have won several awards and are in the collection of museums worldwide. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what fair trade means; how she approaches the creative process; and what makes an artist-jeweler. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today my guest is Ute Decker, talking with us from London. Ute is an artist-jeweler who’s known for an innovative method of sculpting, bending and twisting metal into three-dimensional, wearable sculptures. She works in fair-trade gold and recycled silver and is considered a pioneer in the international ethical jewelry movement. We’ll hear more about her jewelry journey today. Ute, welcome to the program.
Ute: Sharon, thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. How did you end up doing what you’re doing?
Ute: Yes, it was rather unplanned. I’m the daughter of winemakers, several generations of winemakers. As a child, I thought that’s what I wanted to be, making wine. So, I grew up in beautiful nature. As I grew up, I was more and more interested in politics, history, philosophy, and I ended up in political economics, because already as a teenager, I wanted to change the world. I thought it was best to have some understanding of how things work. During university, I did a six-month internship at the United Nations. It was also a real eye opener on how slow progress is made and lobbying, so I was quite disheartened after that internship. Then I worked as a journalist for a while, doing news, current affairs. I probably failed in that because I’m not a good storyteller. Words are not my medium.
I was a little bit lost for a while as to what I really wanted to do. When I grew up, in primary and secondary school, art classes were all about figurative drawing and making. I admired it in other people when they can do it, but that’s not my interest, and certainly I can’t draw a stickperson to save my life. So, I left school thinking I’m actually not very creative or artistic because I failed in what was required. It was probably not until my mid-30s or maybe late 20s when friends said when I made something, “Oh, that’s interesting.” For years I was a closet creator. I went to evening classes and all kinds of workshops, whether it’s large-scale sculptures, textiles—I love ceramics—several photography workshops. It really was doing workshops that I kept going back.
Nearly for 20 years before offering myself as a jeweler, friends said, “You should do something with your jewelry,” and I said, “Absolutely not.” I loved it so much. There’s no way I would like to make it something professional, to have that kind of pressure. I enjoyed it far too much, but then I was invited to take part in a group show. I thought, “It’s fine; I’ll add a few pieces and just see.” That was quite amazing. That was in 2009. I won a prize and tons of press, and a couple of major collectors bought my pieces. I thought, “Wow, that’s nice! I’ll maybe do that one more time.” Soon afterwards, I got a proper, full-time studio. The rest is history, really.
Sharon: I don’t know if it’s still in progress or you just finished up a solo exhibition at the Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery. Tell us about that. Did you feel it was fulfilling, the adulation?
Ute: Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery is absolutely wonderful. We met, I think, in 2013 at Design Basel where they gave me a spotlight showcase, and we’ve been working together ever since. As you know—you’ve done an interview with Elisabetta—Elisabetta primarily represents jewelry by artists. Probably the best known is Rebecca Horn. She does collaborations with fine artists, and I was the first one that was more of an art jeweler than a fine artist making jewelry. Now she works with a few more art jewelers. Elisabetta is Italian and it’s always “bella.” What a joy to work with somebody who has a really keen eye, interesting observations, does some wonderful projects, is incredibly supportive and is just a joy to be with.
For that exhibition, it’s been in discussion for years. I maybe procrastinated a bit because it feels like—it’s the same with how I never wanted to show my jewelry. It feels like you’re offering it for others to judge. For me, it’s a private thing in a way; it’s my way of expressing. A solo show is similar. Here is me at this time. I didn’t quite like the idea, but of course it’s crazy to postpone an offer of a solo show. Then I finally said to Elisabetta, “Look, I will never be ready. Let’s just set a date.” So, we did, and then Covid happened, so it was delayed even more. But I created a new body of work for that show called “Creating Waves.” If you have a chance to see it on Elisabetta’s or my website—
Sharon: Which we’ll list afterwards with show images.
Ute: Yeah. I’ve also worked with some system of loops because, for me, jewelry is about making connections. It’s making personal connections, but it’s making broader connections. Coming from that political/economic background in journalism, it’s connections of materiality; it’s connections where the material comes from. For me, the interlinking loops—and quite a few of those loops are open, so you can change which connections you would like to make and configure the piece. That’s another strand that I developed for the solo show, yeah.
Sharon: I can see. We’ll hopefully have a picture of it posted with the podcast. You’re wearing one of your rings. Were the loops something you saw in front of you when the metal is flat? Was that something that came to you when you were playing around with it? How did that happen?
Ute: For me, making is very much an exploration. I might have certain ideas when I go into the studio and sit, but I’m very fascinated by Japanese Zen philosophy. That philosophy talks a lot about emptiness as well as empty mind. We in the West see emptiness as a void of something we absolutely, quickly need to fill, as something missing, while in that philosophy, emptiness is the vast openness for potential. For me, I don’t want to come to the studio with a fixed idea of what I’d like to do, because then I’ve already determined it as if I know. I don’t need to explore anymore if I feel I know. So, I always kind of know what I’d like to do, but then I usually do something completely different. It’s that almost empty mind of exploring metal, shapes.
Quite often it’s the sculptural form that I explore. As I said, I can’t draw, so I make maquettes in garden wire or in brass and explore the shape for its sculptural form. It’s quite often only later that I decide for which part of the body that sculpture form would work best. Then it’s weeks of tweaking the brass maquettes. I’m quite often seen wearing the maquettes, because when you create such large sculptural forms, they really need to balance and sit well on the body. It’s important that I work that out while wearing them, how they engage with the body. It’s only then, when I’m happy, I make the final pieces. It’s only then, once the pieces are in front of me, that there’s another thought process and those pieces remind me of something, remind me of the loops, how they’re interconnected, how we can change our connections, other waves.
I think if you gave me a commission to make a piece about waves, I would fail. It is rather I make a piece, and then it reminds me of waves when I see them. It’s kind of arresting time of that kind of movement. I’m very happy with some of the pieces that have become quite special to me. Maybe if we can add a particular armpiece for your listeners to see, it is very much a large wave, but when you put the several maquettes next to each other and you don’t have any idea of scale, some people who saw the maquettes said, “Oh, that looks like a Richard Serra that you could walk into.” I think that’s also why I give my pieces relatively open titles, because I don’t want to pre-determine people’s associations, just like I don’t want to predetermine what reaction I might have to it. We all come with our own backgrounds, with our own thoughts to a piece, and it’s the same. Any great artwork will elicit different reactions depending on what state of life we’re in and recent experiences. I like to give pieces very open titles for the viewer and wearer to make it their own.
Sharon: So, you say you’re an artist-jeweler. What is the difference between that and an artist alone or a jeweler alone? What is an artist-jeweler to you?
Ute: That is the eternal question, isn’t it? That is the eternal question, and I still don’t know how to answer that. When I’m asked what I do, if we’re face-to-face it’s very easy, because I usually wear one of my pieces. I hold it up and say, “This is what I do,” and then you decide what that means to you. The other times when you say you’re a jeweler, very few people know about the art jewelry world, really surprisingly. So, most people think you’re designing little hearts for the high street shops. I think that’s why an artist-jeweler will then elicit another question where you can go deeper into it, but it’s all just words. This is what I’m doing.
Sharon: No, it is. It’s a very difficult question to answer. I usually ask people what they consider a collector, which also is a very difficult question. When you find the answer, give me a call.
You tried textiles. You tried photography. You tried sculpture. What is it about the kind of jewelry you do; why did it attract you? Why did it stand out?
Ute: I guess jewelry is not called the most intimate of art forms for nothing. I love that you can disappear in your studio and quietly work. I create everything myself with my two hands. I sculpt everything myself. With large-scale sculpture, there’s much more immediacy with jewelry because I can bend the shapes with my own hands. In fact, my jewelry studio has very few tools, has no nasty chemicals. It’s really my hands, a few pliers, a few mallets, mandrels. I like being able to have a spark and immediately translate that into a shape. That’s also why I love ceramics. I think in my next life I’ll try ceramics as well, explore that.
After setting up as a jeweler, I was commissioned to make some large-scale sculptures, and I thought, “That’s amazing. That’s what you wanted to do, of course.” But they’re so large I had to work with a fabricator. It was a fantastic fabricator who had done it for very well-known artists, the YBAs, the Young British Artists, and did a fantastic job. But for me, it felt unfinished. I handed over the maquette. The fabricator did a wonderful job making a large piece, but usually when I finish a piece of jewelry, I then go and tweak it. It sits there for weeks, and I continue working on it. Here, I was handed over something finished. I don’t want something finished. You can’t bend it any more with your hands. So, it was surprisingly unsatisfying to make very large sculptures, but I’ll do table-size sculptures where I can still be fully hands on. That is something I enjoy doing.
Sharon: Do you do that now, make table-size sculptures similar to jewelry that you bend?
Ute: Yeah, quite a few pieces. In fact, that is one of my favorite reactions when I show my work. People say, “Oh, this is a sculpture. I’m sure you can’t wear it,” and then I put it on my hand and the person’s hand, and I say, “But surely you can’t wear that piece,” and it’s wearable. Quite a few pieces look like they only could possibly be sculptures and there’s no way to wear them. That’s what I really enjoy. Many pieces have been purchased purely for the sole purpose of displaying them rather than wearing them. It’s the liminal space between sculpture and wearable sculpture, and again, it’s your choice. | |||
| Episode 161 Part 2: Modern Marvels: Why Collectors Are Connecting with Modernist Jewelry | 07 Jul 2022 | 00:23:08 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Toni Greenbaum Toni Greenbaum is a New York-based art historian specializing in twentieth and twenty-first century jewelry and metalwork. She wrote Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry 1940-1960 (Montréal: Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Flammarion, 1996), Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2019) and “Jewelers in Wonderland,” an essay on Sam Kramer and Karl Fritsch for Jewelry Stories: Highlights from the Collection 1947-2019 (New York: Museum of Arts and Design and Arnoldsche, 2021), along with numerous book chapters, exhibition catalogues, and essays for arts publications. Greenbaum has lectured internationally at institutions such as the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah. She has worked on exhibitions for several museums, including the Victoria and Albert in London, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Once misunderstood as an illegitimate art form, modernist jewelry has come into its own, now fetching five and six-figure prices at auction. Modernist jewelry likely wouldn’t have come this far without the work of Toni Greenbaum, an art historian, professor and author of “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history of modernist jewelry; why it sets the women who wear it apart; and where collectors should start if they want to add modernist pieces to their collections. Read the episode transcript here.
Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today my guest is art historian, professor and author Toni Greenbaum. She is the author of the iconic tome, “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960,” which analyzes the output of America’s modernist jewelers. Welcome back.
Do you think that if you had looked up and seen Sam Kramer’s shop, would you have been attracted?
Toni: Oh, my god, I would have been up in a shot. Are you kidding? I would have tumbled up those stairs had I known it was there. I never even knew what it was, but I was always seeking out that aesthetic, that kind of thing. Like I said, my mother would buy handmade jewelry, silver jewelry, and I loved what she bought. I would go to galleries with her. When I say gallery, they were more like shops; they were like shop-galleries, multimedia boutiques, not specifically jewelry, that would carry handmade jewelry. I loved it. Had I seen Sam Kramer’s shop, I would have been up like a shot. The same thing with Art Smith. I would have been down those steps like a shot, but I didn’t know they were there, and I was too busy running after boys and going to the coffee shops in Greenwich Village to look carefully.
Sharon: Out here, I don’t know if you would have had those influences.
Toni: You had a few shops. You’re in the Los Angeles area?
Sharon: Yeah.
Toni: There were a few shops in L.A., not so much in Northern California. There was Nanny’s in San Francisco, which was a craft gallery that carried a lot of jewelers. In Southern California there were a few studio shops, but I don’t know how prominent they were. I don’t know how obvious they were. I don’t think that they were as much on people’s radar as the ones in New York.
Sharon: When you say studio jewelers, was everything one-off, handmade?
Toni: Yes—well, not necessarily one-off. Generally, what these jewelers would do—this is the best generalization—for the larger, more expensive, more involved pieces, they would make one. When they sold it, they’d make another one, and when they sold that, they’d make another one. If the style was popular, they would also have what they would think of as production lines—earrings, cuff links, tie bars that they would replicate, but they were not cast usually. At that time, very little of it was cast. It was hand-wrought, so there were minor differences in each of the examples. But unless we get into the business records of these jewelers, we don’t really know exactly how many they made of each design.
Sharon: Why is it, do you think, that modernist jewelry has been so popular today?
Toni: Oh, that’s a good question. That’s a very good question. I think a lot has to do with Fifty/50 Gallery’s promotion. Fifty/50 was on Broadway at 12th Street, and it was a multimedia gallery that specialized in mid-20th century material. There were three very smart, very savvy, very charismatic owners who truly loved the material like I love it, and when you love something so much, when you have a passion, it’s very easy to make other people love it also. I think a lot of the answer to that question is Fifty/50’s promotion. They were also a very educative gallery. They were smart, and they knew how to give people the information they needed to know they were buying something special. I think it appeals to a certain kind of person.
Blanche Brown was an art historian in the midcentury who was married to Arthur Danto, who was a philosopher who taught art history at Columbia. His wife, Blanche Brown, was also an art historian. She did a lot of writing, and she would talk about the modernist jewelry, which she loved. It was a badge that she and her cohort would wear with pride because it showed them to be aesthetically aware, politically progressive. It made them stand apart from women who were wearing diamonds and precious jewelry just to show how wealthy their husbands were, which was in the 1940s and 1950s, the women who would wear this jewelry. So, for women like Blanche Brown and women through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and even now—well, now it’s different because we have all the contemporary jewelers—but I think it set these women apart. It made them special in a way. It set them apart from the women who were wearing the Cartier and the Van Cleef and Arpels.
You dress for your peers. You dress to make your peers admire you, if not be envious. Within the Bohemian subculture of the 1950s, within the Beat Generation of the 1950s and through the 1960s and the hippies in the 1970s, it set apart that kind of woman. Remember, also, feminism was starting to become a very important aspect of lifestyle. I think when “The Feminine Mystique” came out around 1963—I would have to check it—women were starting to feel empowered. They wanted to show themselves to be intelligent and secure and powerful, and I think modernist jewelry imparted that message when one wore it. It’s not that different than people who wear the contemporary jewelry we love so much now. Art Jewelry Forum says it’s jewelry that makes you think, and that is what I think a lot of us relate to in that jewelry. It’s jewelry with a real concept behind it.
Sharon: That leads me to the next question. I know the biographies repeat themselves. When I was looking up information about you, they said you’re an expert in modernist and contemporary jewelry. Contemporary can mean anything. Would you agree with the contemporary aspect?
Toni: I don’t view myself as an expert in contemporary. I think I know more than a lot of people about it only because I study it. It’s very hard to keep up because there are so many new jewelers popping up all the time. The name of my course that I teach at Pratt is Theory and Criticism of Contemporary Jewelry. Because of that, I do have to keep up to the day because it’s a required course for the juniors majoring in jewelry studies, and I feel a responsibility to make them aware of what’s happening right at that point I’m teaching it. Things are changing so much in our field, but I don’t view myself as an expert. I just think I know a lot about it. It’s not my field of expertise, and there’s so much. You’ve got German jewelers, and you’ve got Chinese jewelers, and you’ve got Australian and New Zealand jewelers, and you’ve got Swedish jewelers. All over the world. You’ve got Estonia, a little, small country, as these major jewelers. They are each individual disciplines in and of themselves.
Sharon: How is it that you wrote the catalogue that became “Messengers of Modernism”? Were you asked to write the catalogue?
Toni: Yeah, I was hired by David Hanks and Associates, which was and still is the curatorial firm. They’re American, but they work for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. At that time, there was a separate Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts, and that’s really where Messengers of Modernism—it came under the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts. Now, it has been absorbed into the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It’s just one building. It was a separate building. Basically I was hired by the museum to write the catalogue.
Sharon: And how did it become a book?
Toni: It is a book.
Sharon: Yes, but how did it become—it was a catalogue.
Toni: It’s a book, but it functions as the catalogue in the next edition.
Sharon: Right, but I was saying that you wrote the catalogue, and then you said it was published by Flammarion in Paris. Did they say, “Oh, let’s take it and make it a book?” How did it transform?
Toni: It was always a book, but it functioned as the catalogue for a particular collection, which is their collection of modernist jewelry. Many exhibitions, even painting exhibitions, when you go to a museum and view a painting exhibition and you buy the accompanying text, it’s the catalogue of the exhibition.
Sharon: Yes, but a lot of those don’t become books per se. That’s why I was wondering, did somebody at the publishers see your catalogue and say, “This would make a great book?” I have never seen the exhibition, but I have the book.
Toni: I think this is a semantic conversation more than anything else. It has become, as I said, the standard text, mostly because nothing else really exists, except I believe Marbeth Schon wrote a book on the modernist jewelers which is more encyclopedic. This book, “Messengers of Modernism,” first of all, it puts the collection in the context of studio craft from the turn of the century up until then, which was then the present. The book was published in 1996. I think what you’re saying is it’s more important than what we think of as a museum catalogue and it’s become a standard text.
Sharon: Yeah.
Toni: It was always conceived as a book about modernist jewelry; it was just focusing on this one collection. What I’m saying is people would say, “Well, why isn’t this one in the book? Why did you leave this one out?” and I said, “Well, I didn’t leave this one out. This is a book about a finite collection that’s in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.” If I were writing a book about modernist jewelry, of course I would have included Claire Falkenstein, but she wasn’t in their collection, so it’s not in that book. That was basically what I meant.
Sharon: Is there a volume two that’s going to be coming out with the ones that weren’t in the collection that you think should be in the book?
Toni: That book was published in 1996. We’re already in 2022. People are always asking me, but one never knows.
Sharon: I guess you don’t need an exhibition to write a catalogue.
Toni: No, to write a book, of course you don’t.
Sharon: To write a book. What’s on your radar? What do you think you have next? Is it in the realm of modernism that you would be writing about?
Toni: That’s really what I write about. I lecture about contemporary jewelry to my students and occasionally to the public, but my area of expertise is modernism. There are cardiologists that have a part of their practice in general medicine, but if somebody has a gastrointestinal problem, they’re going to send them to a gastroenterologist. I can deal with the broad strokes, which I do, but unless it’s one specific jeweler that I would write about, I would not attempt a book about contemporary jewelry. I would stick with modernism, what I feel very confident and comfortable with.
Sharon: If somebody who’s passionate about jewelry but not wealthy said they want to start building a modernist collection, where would they start?
Toni: That is another good question. First of all, they would really have to comb the auctions. If they were very serious about collecting important works, I would send them to Mark McDonald, who’s the premier dealer in this material. He was one of the partners of Fifty/50.
Sharon: Right, does he still work in that area? Didn’t they close the store? Yeah, they closed the store.
Toni: Yeah, two of the partners tragically died. Mark had Gansevoort Gallery after. That was on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District here in New York, which was a wonderful gallery also specializing in modernist material, multimedia. Then he had a shop up in Hudson, New York, for many years, right opposite Ornamentum Gallery. That closed, but he still deals privately. He is the most knowledgeable dealer in the period that I know of. If anybody was really serious about starting to collect modernist jewelry, he would be the person I recommend they go to.
Sharon: It sounds like somebody to collaborate with if you’re writing your next book.
Toni: We always collaborate. We’re good friends and we always collaborate.
Sharon: Where do you see the market for modernist jewelry? Do you see it continuing to grow? Is it flat? Is it growing?
Toni: Yes, the best of it will continue to grow. There was an auction right before the pandemic hit. I think it was February of 2020, right before we got slammed. It was an auction that was organized by David Rago Auction in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and Wright, which is also an auction gallery specializing in modern and modernism from Chicago. Mark McDonald curated the collection, and the idea behind that exhibition was it was going to go from modernist jewelry from the mid-20th century up to the present and show the lineage and the inheritance from the modernist jewelers. It also included Europeans, and there was some wonderful modernist jewelry in that exhibition that sold very well—the move star pieces, the big pieces.
Then there was—I guess a year ago, no more than that—there was an auction at Bonhams auction house which was one couple’s collection of modernist jewelry, artist jewelry—and by artists, I mean Picasso and Max Ernst, modernist artists. They collected a lot of Mexican jewelry and two of Art Smith’s most major bracelets, his modern cuff and his lava cuff. I always forget which sold for what, but these were copper and brass cuffs. One sold for $18,000 and one sold for $13,000. I think the modern cuff was $18,000 and the lava cuff was $13,000. If anybody comes to my lecture tomorrow for GemEx, I talk about both of them in detail. This is big money. Five figures is very big money for these items, but these are the best of the best, the majors of the major by Art Smith. Art Smith is currently very, very coveted.
Sharon: Who’s your favorite of the modernist jewelers? Who would you say?
Toni: Well, I have two favorites. There are three that are the most important, so let’s say three favorites. One is Art Smith, and the reason is because the designs are just brilliant. They really take the body into consideration, negative space into consideration, and they’re just spectacularly designed and beautiful to wear. Sam Kramer, the best of his work, the really weird, crazy, surrealist pieces like the one that’s on the cover and the back of the Sam Kramer book. Margaret de Patta, who was from the San Francisco Bay area, and she was diametrically opposite to these two because her work was based upon constructivism. She had studied under Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian constructivist painter, sculptor, photographer. Her work is architectural based upon these eccentrically cut stones. She would be inspired by the rutilations, which are the inclusions within quartz, and she would design her structures around them. I would say those are my three favorites.
Sharon: That’s interesting. I wouldn’t have thought of Margaret de Patta. I guess I think of her in a different category. I don’t know why.
Toni: She’s one of the most important modernist jewelers. She founded that whole San Francisco Bay Area MAG, the Metal Arts Guild. She was their guru.
Sharon: When I think of San Francisco at that time, I think of all the jewelry I bought when I was 16 and then I said, “What did I want this for?” Now I see it in the flea markets for 14 times the price I paid for it.
Toni: Right.
Sharon: But who knew. Anyway, Toni, thank you so much. It’s been so great to have you. We really learned a lot. It’s a real treat. Thank you.
Toni: I had a great time also. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 161 Part 2: Modern Marvels: Why Collectors Are Connecting with Modernist Jewelry | 05 Jul 2022 | 00:26:42 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Toni Greenbaum Toni Greenbaum is a New York-based art historian specializing in twentieth and twenty-first century jewelry and metalwork. She wrote Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry 1940-1960 (Montréal: Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Flammarion, 1996), Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2019) and “Jewelers in Wonderland,” an essay on Sam Kramer and Karl Fritsch for Jewelry Stories: Highlights from the Collection 1947-2019 (New York: Museum of Arts and Design and Arnoldsche, 2021), along with numerous book chapters, exhibition catalogues, and essays for arts publications. Greenbaum has lectured internationally at institutions such as the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah. She has worked on exhibitions for several museums, including the Victoria and Albert in London, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York. Additional Resources: Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Once misunderstood as an illegitimate art form, modernist jewelry has come into its own, now fetching five and six-figure prices at auction. Modernist jewelry likely wouldn’t have come this far without the work of Toni Greenbaum, an art historian, professor and author of “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history of modernist jewelry; why it sets the women who wear it apart; and where collectors should start if they want to add modernist pieces to their collections. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today my guest is art historian, professor and author Toni Greenbaum. She is the author of the iconic tome, “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960,” which analyzes the output of America’s modernist jewelers. Most recently, she authored “Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge,” a biography of the jeweler Sam Kramer. Every time I say jeweler I think I’m using the world a little loosely, but we’re so glad to have you here today. Thank you so much.
Toni: I am so glad to be here, Sharon. Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s been many years coming.
Sharon: I’m glad we connected. Tell me about your jewelry journey. It sounds very interesting.
Toni: Well, there’s a lot you don’t know about my jewelry journey. My jewelry journey began when I was a preteen. I just became fascinated with Native American, particularly Navajo, jewelry that I would see in museum gift shops. I started to buy it when I was a teenager, what I could afford. In those days, I have to say museum gift shops were fabulous, particularly the Museum of Natural History gift shop, the Brooklyn Museum gift shop. They had a lot of ethnographic material of very high quality. So, I continued to buy Native American jewelry. My mother used to love handcrafted jewelry, and she would buy it in whatever craft shops or galleries she could find.
Then eventually in my 20s and 30s, I got outpriced. Native American jewelry was becoming very, very fashionable, particularly in the late 60s, 1970s. I started to see something that looked, to me, very much like Native American jewelry, but it was signed. It had names on it, and some of them sounded kind of Mexican—in fact, they were Mexican. So, I started to buy Mexican jewelry because I could afford it. Then that became very popular when names like William Spratling and Los Castillo and Hector Aguilar became known. I saw something that looked like Mexican jewelry and Navajo jewelry, but it wasn’t; it was made by Americans. In fact, it would come to be known as modernist jewelry. Then I got outpriced with that, but that’s the start of my jewelry journey.
Sharon: So, you liked jewelry from when you were a youth.
Toni: Oh, from when I was a child. I was one of these little three, four-year-olds that was all decked out. My mother loved jewelry. I was an only child, and I was, at that time, the only grandchild. My grandparents spoiled me, and my parents spoiled me, and I loved jewelry, so I got a lot of jewelry. That and Frankie Avalon records.
Sharon: Do you still collect modernist? You said you were getting outpriced. You write about it. Do you still collect it?
Toni: Not really. The best of the modernist jewelry is extraordinarily expensive, and unfortunately, I want the best. If I see something when my husband and I are antiquing or at a flea market or at a show that has style and that’s affordable, occasionally I’ll buy it, but I would not say that I can buy the kind of jewelry I want in the modernist category any longer. I did buy several pieces in the early 1980s from Fifty/50 Gallery, when they were first putting modernist jewelry on the map in the commercial aspect. I was writing about it; they were selling it. They were always and still are. Mark McDonald still is so generous with me as far as getting images and aiding my research immeasurably. Back then, the modernist jewelry was affordable, and luckily I did buy some major pieces for a tenth of what they would get today.
Sharon: Wow! When you say the best of modernist jewelry today, Calder was just astronomical. We’ll put that aside.
Toni: Even more astronomical: there’s a Harry Bertoia necklace that somebody called my attention to that is coming up at an auction at Christie’s. If they don’t put that in their jewelry auctions, they’ll put it in their design auctions. I think it’s coming up at the end of June; I forget the exact day. The estimate on the Harry Bertoia necklace is $200,000 to $300,000—and this is a Harry Bertoia necklace. I’m just chomping at the bit to find out what it, in fact, is going to bring, but that’s the estimate they put, at $200,000 to $300,000.
Sharon: That’s a lot of money. What holds your interest in modernist jewelry?
Toni: The incredible but very subtle design aspect of it. Actually, tomorrow I’m going to be giving a talk on Art Smith for GemEx. Because my background is art history, one of the things I always do when I talk about these objects is to show how they were inspired by the modern art movements. This is, I think, what sets modernist jewelry apart from other categories of modern and contemporary jewelry. There are many inspirations, but it is that they are very much inspired by Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Biomorphism, etc., depending on the artist. Some are influenced by all of the above, and I think I saw that. I saw it implicitly before I began to analyze it in the jewelry.
This jewelry is extraordinarily well-conceived. A lot of the craftsmanship is not pristine, but I have never been one for pristine craftsmanship. I love rough surfaces, and I love the process to show in the jewelry. Much of the modernist jewelry is irreverent—I use the word irreverent instead of sloppy—as far as the process is concerned. It was that hands-on, very direct approach, in addition to this wonderful design sense, which, again, came from the modern art movements. Most of the jewelers—not all of them, but most of them—lived either in New York or in Northern or Southern California and had access to museums, and these people were aesthetes. They would go to museums. They would see Miro’s work; they would see Picasso’s work, and they would definitely infuse their designs with that sensibility.
Sharon: Do you think that jumped out at you, the fact that they were inspired by different art movements, because you studied art history? You teach it, or you did teach it at one time?
Toni: No, just history of jewelry. I majored in art history, but I’ve never taught art history. I’ve taught history of jewelry. We can argue about whether jewelry is art or not, but history of jewelry is what I’ve taught.
Sharon: I’ve taken basic art history, but I couldn’t tell you some of the movements you’re talking about. I can’t identify the different movements. Do you think it jumped out at you because you’re knowledgeable?
Toni: Yes, definitely, because I would look at Art Smith and I would say, “That’s Biomorphism.” I would see it. It was obvious. I would look at Sam Kramer and I would say, “This is Surrealism.” He was called a surrealist jeweler back in his day, when he was practicing and when he had his shop on 8th Street. I would look at Rebajes and I would see Cubism. Of course, it was because I was well-versed in those movements, because what I was always most interested in when I was studying art history were the more modern movements.
Sharon: Did you think you would segue to jewelry in general? Was that something on your radar?
Toni: That’s a very interesting question because when I was in college, I had a nucleus of professors who happened to have come from Cranbrook.
Sharon: I’m sorry, from where?
Toni: Cranbrook School of Art.
Sharon: O.K., Cranbrook.
Toni: I actually took a metalsmithing class as an elective, just to see what it was because I was so interested in jewelry, although I was studying what I call legitimate art history. I was so interested in jewelry that I wanted to see what the process was. I probably was the worst jeweler that ever tried to make jewelry, but I learned what it is to make. I will tell you something else, Sharon, it is what has given me such respect for the jewelers, because when you try to do it yourself and you see how challenging it is, you really respect the people who do it miraculously even more.
So, I took this class just to see what it was, and the teacher—I still remember his name. His name was Cunningham; I don’t remember his first name. He was from Cranbrook, and he sent the class to a retail store in New York on 53rd Street, right opposite MOMA, called America House.
Sharon: Called American House?
Toni: America House. America House was the retail enterprise of the American Craft Council. They had the museum, which was then called the Museum of Contemporary Crafts; now it’s called MAD, Museum of Arts and Design. They had the museum, and they had a magazine, Craft Horizons, which then became American Craft, and then they had this retail store. I went into America House—and this was the late 1960s—and I knew I had found my calling. I looked at this jewelry, which was really fine studio jewelry. It was done by Ronald Pearson; it was done by Jack Kripp. These were the people that America House carried. I couldn’t afford to buy it. I did buy some of the jewelry when they went out of business and had a big sale in the early 1970s. At that time I couldn’t, but I looked at the jewelry and the holloware, and I had never seen anything like it. Yes, I had seen Native American that I loved, and I had seen Mexican that I loved. I hadn’t yet seen modernist; that wasn’t going to come until the early 1980s. But here I saw this second generation of studio jewelers, and I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with this professionally, but I know I’ve got to do something with it because this is who I am. This is what I love.”
Back in the late 1960s, it was called applied arts. Anything that was not painting and sculpture was applied art. Ceramics was applied art; furniture was applied art; textiles, jewelry, any kind of metalwork was applied art. Nobody took it seriously as an academic discipline in America, here in this country. Then I went on to graduate school, still in art history. I was specializing in what was then contemporary art, particularly color field painting, but I just loved what was called the crafts, particularly the metalwork. I started to go to the library and research books on jewelry. I found books on jewelry, but they were all published in Europe, mostly England. There were things in other languages other than French, which I could read with a dictionary. There were books on jewelry history, but they were not written in America; everything was in Europe. So, I started to read voraciously about the history of jewelry, mostly the books that came out of the Victoria & Albert Museum. I read all about ancient jewelry and medieval jewelry and Renaissance jewelry. Graham Hughes, who was then the director of the V&A, had written a book, “Modern Jewelry,” and it had jewelry by artists, designed by Picasso and Max Ernst and Brach, including things that were handmade in England and all over Europe. I think even some of the early jewelers in our discipline were in that book. If I remember correctly, I think Friedrich Becker, for example, might have been in Graham Hughes’ “Modern Jewelry,” because that was published, I believe, in the late 1960s.
So, I saw there was a literature in studio jewelry; it just wasn’t in America. Then I found a book on William Spratling, this Mexican jeweler whose work I had collected. It was not a book about his jewelry; it was an autobiography about himself that obviously he had written, but it was so rich in talking about the metalsmithing community in Taxco, Mexico, which is where he, as an American, went to study the colonial architecture. He wound up staying and renovating the silver mines that had been dormant since the 18th century. It was such a great story, and I said, “There’s something here,” but no graduate advisor at that time, in the early 70s, was going to support you in wanting to do a thesis on applied art, no matter what the medium. But in the back of my mind, I always said, “I’m going to do something with this at some point.”
Honestly, Sharon, I never thought I would live to see the day that this discipline is as rich as it is, with so much literature, with our publishers publishing all of these fantastic jewelry books, and other publishers, like Flammarion in Paris, which published “Messengers of Modernism.” Then there’s the interest in Montreal at the Museum of Fine Arts, which is the museum that has the “Messengers of Modernism” collection. It has filtered into the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, obviously MAD. So many museums are welcoming. I never thought I would live to see the day. It really is so heartening. I don’t have words to express how important this is, but I just started to do it. In the early 1970s or mid-1970s—I don’t think my daughter was born yet. My son was a toddler. I would sit in my free moments and write an article about William Spratling, because he was American. He went to Mexico, but he was American. He was the only American I knew of that I could write about. Not that that article was published at that time, but I was doing the research and I was writing it.
Sharon: That’s interesting. If there had been a discipline of jewelry history or something in the applied arts, if an advisor had said, “Yes, I’ll support you,” or “Why don’t you go ahead and get your doctorate or your master’s,” that’s something you would have done?
Toni: Totally, without even a thought, yes. Because when I was studying art history, I would look at Hans Holbein’s paintings of Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More, and all I would do was look at the jewelry they were wearing, the chains and the badges on their berets. I said, “Oh my god, that is so spectacular.” Then I learned that Holbein actually designed the jewelry, which a lot of people don’t know. I said, “There is something to this.” I would look at 18th century paintings with women, with their pearls and rings and bracelets, and all I would do was look at the jewelry. I would have in a heartbeat. If I could have had a graduate advisor, I would have definitely pursued that.
Sharon: When you say you never thought you’d live to see the day when modernist jewelry is so popular—not that it’s so surprising, but you are one of the leaders of the movement. When I mentioned to somebody, “Oh, I like modernist jewelry,” the first thing they said was, “Well, have you read ‘Messengers of Modernism?’” As soon as I came home—I was on a trip—I got it. So, you are one of the leaders.
Toni: Well, it is interesting. It is sort of the standard text, but people will say, “Well, why isn’t Claire Falkenstein in the book? She’s so important,” and I say, “It’s looked upon as a standard text, but the fact is it’s a catalogue to an exhibition. That was the collection.” Fifty/50 Gallery had a private collection. As I said before, they were at the forefront of promoting and selling modernist jewelry, but they did have a private collection. That collection went to Montreal in the 1990s because at that time, there wasn’t an American museum that was interested in taking that collection. That book is the catalogue of that finite collection. So, there are people who are major modernist jewelers—Claire Falkenstein is one that comes to mind—that are not in that collection, so they’re not in the book. There’s a lot more to be said and written about that movement.
Sharon: I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times: What’s the difference between modern and modernist jewelry?
Toni: Modern is something that’s up to date at a point in time, but modernist jewelry is—this is a word we adopted. The word existed, but we adopted it to define the mid-20th century studio jewelry, the post-war jewelry. It really goes from 1940 to the 1960s. That’s it; that’s the time limit of modernist jewelry. Again, it’s a word we appropriated. We took that word and said, “We’re going to call this category modernist jewelry because we have to call it something, so that’s the term.” Modern means up to date. That’s just a general word.
Sharon: When you go to a show and see things that are in the modernist style, it’s not truly modernist if it was done today, it wasn’t done before 1960.
Toni: Right, no. Modernist jewelry is work that’s done in that particular timeframe and that also subscribes to what I was saying, this appropriation of motifs from the modern art movement. There was plenty of costume jewelry and fine jewelry being done post-war, and that is jewelry that is mid-20th century. You can call it mid-20th century modern, which confuses the issue even more, but it’s not modernist jewelry. Modernist jewelry is jewelry that was done in the studio by a silversmith and was inspired by the great movements in modern art and some other inspirations. Art Smith was extremely motivated by African motifs, but also by Calder and by Biomorphism. It’s not religious. There are certainly gray areas, but in general, that’s modernist jewelry.
Sharon: I feel envious when you talk about everything that was going in on New York. I have a passion, but there’s no place on the West Coast that I would go to look at some of this stuff.
Toni: I’ll tell you one of the ironies, Sharon. Post-war, definitely through the 1950s and early 1960s, there must have been 13 to 15 studio shops by modernist jewelers. You had Sam Kramer on 8th Street and Art Smith on 4th Street and Polo Bell, who was on 4th Street and then he was on 8th Street, and Bill Tendler, and you had Jules Brenner, and Henry Steig was Uptown. Ed Wiener was all over the place. There were so many jewelers in New York, and I never knew about them. I never went to any of their shops. I used to hang out in the Village when I was a young teenager, walked on 4th Street; never saw Art Smith’s shop. He was there from 1949 until 1977. I used to walk on 8th Street, and Sam Kramer was on the second floor. I never looked up, and I didn’t know this kind of jewelry existed. In those days, like I said, I was still collecting Navajo. | |||
| Episode 160 Part 2: The Intangible Beauty of Gemstones: Why Stones Draw Us In | 22 Jun 2022 | 00:19:17 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Caroline Morrissey Caroline Morrissey is Director and Head of Jewelry at Bonhams in New York. Her areas of expertise span diamonds and colored gemstones to 20th century jewelry. She has a particular interest in large white and colored diamonds. Since joining Bonhams in 2014, Caroline's exceptional sales include a diamond riviere necklace, which sold for $1,205,000 in June 2015; a diamond solitaire ring which sold for $1,807,500 in September 2017; and an unmounted Kashmir sapphire which sold for $1,244,075 in July 2020. Caroline discovered her passion for the jewelry business more than two decades ago, in a charming jewelry store in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she worked on weekends during high school. Her career started in the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, and she has also held positions at the prominent luxury retailers Cartier and Leviev. Caroline studied a double major in Economics and Politics from the University of York, England. Photos: New York–Bonhams will present more than 200 jewels from the Estate of George and Charlotte Shultzon May 23, 2022, including more than 70 pieces from Tiffany & Co. Charlotte wore her jewels to receive Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II, and countless world leaders as San Francisco’s chief of protocol for more than fifty years, serving ten mayors. She found her perfect match in George Shultz, a great American statesman who served as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and held four different cabinet positions under three presidents. Their personal collection will be featured in a dedicated sale at Bonhams New York that will celebrate their life of philanthropy and elegance. Below are a few photos of auction items.Additional Resources:
Transcript: What makes a gemstone stand out from the rest? You can talk about color, shape and cut, but sometimes a stone inexplicably draws you in. That’s the experience Caroline Morrissey has had many times as Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams in New York. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the most memorable jewelry she’s sold; why collectors shouldn’t be too rigid about maintaining a specific theme for their collection; and what qualities make a gemstone special. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my Guest is Caroline Morrissey, Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams. Welcome back. What are you normally attracted to? Why would it surprise you? Caroline: Well, I’m very boring. I like my jewelry to be simple. I have no problem with it being bold, but I don’t want it to be complicated and bold. I find myself in a situation where I have a great appreciation for many gemstones, but that does not mean I would wear them myself—but doesn’t mean I don’t like them. There are all sorts of 1935-40’s jewels that are slightly out of character, but at the same time I’m completely embracing them. This is, by the way, mostly in most dreams. I unfortunately do not have a fabulous jewelry box at home full of these jewels. But I mostly lean towards simple designs. If it can be a hundred years old, all the better. Sharon: Do you think they select jewelry because—what’s the word they use? It is classic, like you’re talking about, but 40, 50 years from now they’ll still love it as much. Do you think people look at that, or do they go more with trends? Caroline: I think a lot of people go with trends and then they regret it. When I work with clients—I mean, it depends what the piece of jewelry is for. If they’re adding to a collection and they’re looking for a specific period, that’s completely different. But if you’ve got somebody who’s looking for an engagement ring or bridal or that type of jewelry, I do believe a lot of people fall into whatever is in vogue right now, and they don’t realize, “O.K., everyone’s different.” Like you say, in 40, 50 years’ time, it will just be a style from the period. I always try and advise that there are very, very small changes you can make to many styles that will transform that piece of jewelry into a timeless and elegant piece. It can be a combination of modern yet traditional. You look at some of the pieces from a long time ago and transplant them to today, and many of them are still in fashion. They’re timeless; they will never cease to be so. I think as soon as you point that out to somebody, it becomes so obvious, but I don’t think that’s necessarily what people always want going into it. It’s hard not to want what is in style now. Sharon: Yes. It sounds like you have a secondary career with restyling jewelry, though. Caroline: Well, the design element of it is really fun. I don’t think I’m that great at it, but I’m definitely going to offer you my ideas, just in case. Sharon: You’ve used the words collectors, collections. When you say a collector comes to you, is a collector like me, somebody who has a box full of jewelry? Or is it something where they have an emerald; they have a ruby; they have sapphires? What’s a collection to you? Caroline: A collection, to me, is a group of jewelry. I feel that a collection has a different meaning to each individual. It could be a combination of pieces that you have inherited and pieces that have been given to you, perhaps pieces you’ve bought yourself. Then you could have a collector who has a collection within a specific genre. I will say that as hard as it may be, most people who collect for specific collections, whatever the time period, color, style might be, usually have a few pieces or more that fall out of the parameters for that collection, because usually they are drawn to something they can’t say no to. So, a collection to me is literally whatever is in that jewelry box, and it doesn’t need to match. Some pieces could be broken. There could be elements of one piece and a complete matching set of another piece, but what we can do? I very much enjoy going through that collection and sorting out what needs to be done, how it should be sold, what will work for the owner, because everyone has different needs. On top of that, everyone’s jewelry, if you’re on the selling side, is different, and it usually requires a little bit of work to be done. We’ve got to do some sleuthing, finding out what particular pieces are, if they started off life together, if they were married together at a later stage in their jewelry life. That’s a really fun thing to do, and it can also help people find out more about where their jewelry has come from. It can be a really interesting road to go down. Sharon: That sounds very interesting. Tell us about some of your most memorable sales. Caroline: How about some memorable auction pieces within the sale? Sharon: O.K., great. Caroline: I’ve got some great stories for you. Sharon: Please, O.K. Caroline: I’m going to start off with the first one. It was a sapphire and diamond ring. This lady had bought the ring from an antique store, and she had been told the sapphire was synthetic but the mounting was a Tiffany mounting. It was a Deco, very beautiful yet simple Tiffany mounting. She bought it for $800, which was basically the cost of the mounting and the synthetic stone. She enjoyed it. Things happened with her life, and at some point, she had been told by someone that it might not be synthetic, this sapphire. That prompted her to call us. Long story short, we managed to lay eyes on the piece. We sent it to a lab, and it came back as an 8-carat Burma origin, no heat, no enhancements. Long story short, it went into a sale. They flew here and sat in the front row of the auction. It hammered for $200,000. Afterwards she came up—she was with a friend and was in tears—and thanked us so much, because her husband had medical problems, and this was going to make everything O.K. for them so that she didn’t have to sell her house. That’s a really special moment to be a part of, and she was so thankful. We didn’t actually know the full story of how much all of this meant until the very end, but these things really do happen. Sharon: Wow! Caroline: I have another story for you. We had this brooch that was sent in to us. I’m going to try to be diplomatic here, but I don’t think it had been cleaned in a very, very long time. It had been bought from a garage sale for $8. Anyway, long story short, it had a diamond, an emerald and a ruby under a carat, but it was really fine quality once it was all cleaned up. We had the diamond certified, and it came back as a VS1, so the highest color, completely clean, and an old stone. The emeralds came back Colombian with minor or insignificant inclusions. Again, very, very high quality. The ruby came back Burma, no heat. This tiny, little brooch sold for $35,000. Sharon: Wow! Caroline: It does not happen often, but it does happen, these stories. I suppose that’s one of the amazing parts of being at auction, that you can be part of somebody’s journey, whether it’s from a garage sale and is a big surprise, or something that comes in and is an angel at a time of need. Sharon: Wow! The stories you’re telling are the reason I like antiques, I suppose. Caroline: Oh, absolutely. I have more. It really does happen, and it’s amazing. Sharon: It is amazing, and it makes you want to go out to every flea market and garage sale. I just don’t have any kind of patience for that. Do you have people who say, “Only call me if you have an unset stone that you think is worth me looking at”? Or do they say, “I don’t care what the stone is set in, give me a call”? Do you have collectors who just want the stone? Caroline: The thing is, in most cases, people need a stone to be set in a piece of jewelry to visualize it. Even if they don’t expect to wear it or it’s not their intention to wear it, just to view it as a piece of jewelry, it needs to be in some type of setting. It doesn’t even need to be a nice setting. It just needs to be a vehicle to make that stone or stones into a piece of jewelry. I have clients who say to me, “If you have important colored stones, please call me,” and they will not care what those colored stones are set in. In many cases, they probably won’t care how old the stone is. They are just looking for beautiful colored stones. I suppose based on what I have, they’ll work out whether it’s interesting to them, but in most cases in that scenario, the mounting is neither here nor there. They’re looking at the stone. They don’t care if it’s in a ring or a piece of jewelry. Sharon: Do think they want to have the stone set themselves? Do you think they take it and have it put in a piece of jewelry themselves, or do they take the stone and put it in their safe and say, “That’s nice.” What do they do? Caroline: Some people definitely do that. If they’re going to put it in a safe, they’re probably just going to leave it in the mounting it came in and put it in the safe and close the door. I suppose it depends on what the purchase is for, but auction is a secondary market, so you’re not necessarily going to walk in and find your perfect stone in the perfect mounting, especially with diamonds. Most of our clients will first and foremost, if they’re looking for stones, look for that stone. If they need to make any changes to the mounting or style, they will do that afterwards. Those people looking for jewelry, they’re in a completely different category. The stones become insignificant to them because they’re looking for a piece of jewelry, and they will oftentimes have a time period or a designer or a style in mind. If it does have stones in it, those stones will enhance the piece of jewelry, but the purchase will be about the jewelry versus the stones, if that makes sense. Sharon: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. What do you see as the market for stones for jewelry, or stones in general? You hear so much about changes with younger buyers. What’s the market? Is it the same as always? Caroline: The market is strong at the moment; that’s for sure. I will tell you the number of very, very fine quality, unenhanced, colored gemstones, there are not so many around, and those that are around are incredibly expensive. You can see that, in many cases, the younger generation can very easily be priced out. They want a Burmese ruby, but to get a nice one, they have to have incredibly deep pockets. So, what we’re seeing now is—and I’ll carry on with rubies as an example—they’re going to make concessions. They might say they want a Burmese ruby, but in order to afford one, they’re going to take a heated Burmese ruby. So, they’re getting a few of the things they want, but not everything. On the flip side of that, there’s this wonderful source of rubies in Mozambique. People are now saying, “O.K., I can still have a beautiful ruby, but instead of it being from Burma, I’m going to get an equally beautiful one from Mozambique and it's going to cost me less.” It might not have the cachet of a Burmese ruby, but that’s the direction they want to go in. We’re seeing people look for alternatives in quite a saturated market. We’re seeing that spinels are coming up now, and more people are really interested in spinels. They’re realizing what fabulous colors they come in and what bright stones they are. I see that really taking off in the next five to 10 years. Already in the last five years, spinels have made big tracks into the market, and I see that continuing. I think the new generation of buyers is a little more open to different sources and different gemstones than perhaps the previous generation was. Sharon: I think open is a good word. I think it’s broadened. It’s not just emerald, sapphire, ruby, but spinels and padparadscha seem like the big ones. Caroline: Padparadschas are sapphires. They are stones that have a very specific combination of pink and yellow for a padparadscha. A beautifully colored padparadscha that is clean and unheated with an ideal origin is very desirable, as we say, very, very desirable. Sharon: Yes, so I hear. That’s one I happen to hear about. The spinels have broadened the market. It seems that now people are more open. Caroline: I think they’re much more open now. They’re willing to look at different styles and different colors and different minerals and realizing it can be fun. It’s a good alternative; it’s not a bad alternative. Sharon: Right, and it may be the only viable alternative, in a sense. Caroline: I think many people are realizing that. Because, like I said, to get a high-quality, Burma, no-heat ruby, first you’ve got to find it and then you’ve got to acquire it. I would say that the vast majority of people—and this is a very small stone—they’re going to find that to be difficult. Sharon: Yes, you’re the one who would know. Thank you so much for talking with us today. It’s very, very interesting. I appreciate it, and I hope you have everything you want come across your desk. Caroline: Thank you very much. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Yes, I can’t wait to do it again. Sharon: Thanks a lot, Caroline. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 160 Part 1: The Intangible Beauty of Gemstones: Why Stones Draw Us In | 20 Jun 2022 | 00:25:28 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Caroline Morrissey Caroline Morrissey is Director and Head of Jewelry at Bonhams in New York. Her areas of expertise span diamonds and colored gemstones to 20th century jewelry. She has a particular interest in large white and colored diamonds. Since joining Bonhams in 2014, Caroline's exceptional sales include a diamond riviere necklace, which sold for $1,205,000 in June 2015; a diamond solitaire ring which sold for $1,807,500 in September 2017; and an unmounted Kashmir sapphire which sold for $1,244,075 in July 2020. Caroline discovered her passion for the jewelry business more than two decades ago, in a charming jewelry store in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she worked on weekends during high school. Her career started in the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, and she has also held positions at the prominent luxury retailers Cartier and Leviev. Caroline studied a double major in Economics and Politics from the University of York, England. Photos: New York–Bonhams will present more than 200 jewels from the Estate of George and Charlotte Shultzon May 23, 2022, including more than 70 pieces from Tiffany & Co. Charlotte wore her jewels to receive Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II, and countless world leaders as San Francisco’s chief of protocol for more than fifty years, serving ten mayors. She found her perfect match in George Shultz, a great American statesman who served as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and held four different cabinet positions under three presidents. Their personal collection will be featured in a dedicated sale at Bonhams New York that will celebrate their life of philanthropy and elegance. Below are a few photos of auction items.Additional Resources:
Transcript: What makes a gemstone stand out from the rest? You can talk about color, shape and cut, but sometimes a stone inexplicably draws you in. That’s the experience Caroline Morrissey has had many times as Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams in New York. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the most memorable jewelry she’s sold; why collectors shouldn’t be too rigid about maintaining a specific theme for their collection; and what qualities make a gemstone special. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Caroline Morrissey, Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams, located in New York and around the world. Caroline’s area of expertise spans diamonds and colored gemstones through 20th century jewelry, but her passion is large, white diamonds—she has a lot of company there—and colored diamonds. She’s had a wide and varied jewelry career, which we’ll hear about today. Caroline, welcome to the program. Caroline: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you attracted to diamonds and gems when you were young—well, you’re still young, but when you were a youth? Caroline: Yes, I was. I always enjoyed, probably more than the average child, my grandmother’s jewelry. I was interested in it, but the big change for me came when a friend of mine—I grew up in Edinburgh in Scotland—his parents had a couple of jewelry stores. When I was 16, they asked if I would be able to help over the holiday period in December, just with small bits of jewelry and to run any errands and so on. I did, and I loved it. I wanted to learn more, so I ended up staying as a Saturday girl and working through my summers until I graduated high school. It was during this that I realized there was more to a diamond engagement ring; there was more to a piece of jewelry. It meant something to the buyers. There was more than the just the stone behind it. Where did it come from? What was its journey? What was its quality compared to others? That never left me, and that experience put me on my journey to where I am now. It was wonderful. Sharon: When you were talking about the story behind the stone, were you starting to differentiate the stone from the entire piece of jewelry? Caroline: At that age, I realized that not all old diamonds were the same. To sell an engagement ring was a learning curve. It was about the piece of jewelry, but it was also about the clients. In many cases, it was actually about the client’s person who they loved. You didn’t necessarily meet that person, but it was going to be a specific piece of jewelry that was bought for this person. It really brought to light how personal it was. Pieces of art that are not jewelry, they might sit above your mantlepiece, but you don’t wear them. I think that is the difference for me with jewelry. It’s so very, very personal. Sharon: Would you say the personal aspect applies to jewelry in general as opposed to anything else? Caroline: I would, because people acquire jewelry in different ways. Any jewelry that has been passed down from a member of their family is personal for reasons that are different. But that piece of jewelry that you’ve bought for yourself, there’s a reason why you’ve bought it. The same again if somebody close, whether it’s a partner or a child or a friend, gives you a piece of jewelry. All of these different ways of acquiring jewelry are very personal. It goes to other people, but the journey is like a charm bracelet. The charms can be very personal to one person, but the next person might still be interested in that charm bracelet for different reasons. That continuing, varying personal connection with jewelry, for me, is quite unique in the collecting field. Unlike other pieces of art, you actually wear it, and you have to like it to wear it. It sometimes needs to mean something to you to wear it as well. Sharon: You must find a lot of that personal aspect at Bonhams, being able to tie one piece to a person to sell it. I mean that in a nice way, in terms of how to draw out what their story is and then be able to connect it. Caroline: Absolutely. Everyone has their own story, whether it’s from a selling point of view or a buying point of view. It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to connect with those people and understand what is behind them wanting to do a certain thing, whether it’s to sell or to buy, and to understand what is important to them. We can say, “You should be interested in this piece of jewelry or this stone for this particular reason,” and that may well be true in the grand scheme of things, but people personally can have different reasons. There’s nothing wrong with that. We are all attracted to different colors, different textures, for our own reasons. I think jewelry really shows different personalities and different trends, and it can also change. I’m always surprised by bits of jewelry that I like that might not necessarily be a standard for me, but it’s O.K. to deviate from that. Something is appearing that’s not necessarily something I can explain, if that makes sense. Sharon: Yes. How does all this tie to Bonhams? How does it tie to the auction market? As pieces come across your desk, do they talk to you? Caroline: Some talk really loudly in negative ways and positive ways, but mostly positive. I think one of the reasons I enjoy auction is that it’s a real opportunity to see the best of the best. I say that with honesty because I don’t think one can really appreciate the most spectacular pieces of jewelry and gemstones without fully comprehending that not every piece is of that same caliber, and that there are ones that really stand out. It affords me the ability to see pieces made yesterday and pieces made 150-200 years ago. You can see what was in vogue 70 years ago versus what is now, what colors, what gemstones, what shapes, what styles. Together with the variety in jewelry comes the huge variety in people that have owned them or bough the jewelry. I’m a people person, and it’s amazing to hear people’s stories, people’s situations, people’s needs, and tie that all together with jewelry. You get a greater level of understanding of what will make them happy and what jewelry is doing in their lives right now. Sharon: As a professional, how does Bonhams fit into all this? How does it fit into the whole auction market, as opposed a Doyle, a Christie’s, a Sotheby’s, that sort of thing? Where does Bonhams fit into all that? Caroline: First of all, at Bonhams we have more than 50 jewelry auctions a year throughout the world, which is a lot. One of the great things is that we offer pieces at almost every single price point, so there are no barriers to buy jewelry at Bonhams. There’s going to be something for everybody. For somebody who’s looking to sell, we have the ability to take an entire estate or an entire collection. We’re not going to come in and just take the top lots; it’s going to be a one-source solution for the entire collection, and that can be really helpful. On the other side of that, it affords the buyer a huge variety within a collection to browse through and see what works for them at Bonhams. I like to view Bonhams as being a boutique auction house. We have the ability to work with clients from the beginning to the end of their journey and put together something for them that is unique and custom and will work with their situation. It’s not cookie cutter. In some ways that could create a little more work, but it’s the end result that matters. There’s something wonderfully satisfying to meet clients on the first day of their inquiry and to shake their hands at the end of a successful sale. Being there to answer all of the questions and travel down the road together is very, very satisfying, and it’s a privilege. Sharon: Is that your role there? Are you called in when somebody says, “I need the big guns on this”? How does that work? Caroline: Yes, sometimes. It’s very collaborative here, so we work together. But, sure, I have a level of expertise where sometimes I can come in and give my opinion with other members of staff. It depends on the situation. There are some people where their situation is very straightforward and other people where it’s not straightforward at all. Some people can make decisions quickly; some people need extra time. There’s no right or wrong. I can’t say I do it with everybody, but I have a lot of clients that I deal with directly myself, and it is a true pleasure to go from the beginning to the end. Most people who deal with jewelry in New York at Bonhams will come across my place at some point in their journey here. Sharon: It must be satisfying to have pieces of jewelry come across your desk and then call a client you’ve worked with in the past and say, “You have got to see this piece.” Caroline: Absolutely. Sharon: Do you find that’s something you end up doing quite a bit? How does that work? Caroline: We’ve got a sale coming up next week, and we have some very interesting pieces in it. This doesn’t happen every day with every sale, but certainly with the pieces in this particular one. We have a beautiful emerald bracelet. It’s an amazing opportunity for me to call some of my clients and say, “You have to see this. I know you’re going to be interested in it. Whether or not you end up as the final buyer, even if you don’t bid, it is fabulous enough for you to make the effort to come see it with your own eyes. If you’re interested in jewelry, this is something you have to see.” I don’t always have that opportunity, but that’s what I’ve been doing this week and last week with this particular piece. It’s nice to see everybody come together and to hear their opinions. At the end of the day, everyone has their own opinions, but in most cases we agree. It’s nice to get people to come out of the woodwork for something special. Sharon: Coming out of the woodwork, that must be very satisfying. In reading about you and from what I’ve been told about your background, it sounds like your expertise is jewelry, but especially gems themselves, the colored diamonds, the diamonds. Is that the case? Caroline: Yes, I have to just admit to it and say yes. I started off my career proper in Antwerp, Belgium in the diamond business. I looked at so many diamonds in my training there that I think there would have been something wrong if I hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with diamonds. There’s something to me that’s special about stones, and not just diamonds, but colored stones. To me, they all have a personality; they all have a charm. I love how the different facets, the different colors, the different shapes all can combine to produce something absolutely wonderful. In many cases, it combines to make something not so wonderful, or they’re close to being perfect but not quite. Then it requires you to think, “Who can help get this stone to the next level?” because there might be a buyer out there who could make something a bit more perfect or a bit more desirable. That’s not to say I don’t love jewelry. I truly do, but if I had to choose, holding a really special gemstone in my hands without a mounting is always going to be a thrill for me. Sharon: When you say a really special gemstone, what’s making it special? The cut, the color, everything? Caroline: Where do I begin? It’s going to be a little bit of everything. Obviously, it depends on exactly what gemstone we’re talking about, but to keep things relatively simple, the shape and the cut of the stone is one of the most important things because that is what your eye sees the moment it lays eyes on the stone. The next thing is going to be color. If you think of a ruby, you think of red. So, you want the overall appearance of any ruby you see to be red. That sounds like a very simple request, for lack of a better word, but not all rubies are as red as you want them to be. That doesn’t make them inferior in the grand scheme of things, but it does alter how your brain processes that. Then within that color, how soft is the color, how clean is the stone when you’re taking a closer look, how old is the stone? In many cases, some of the most charming stones were cut 100 or 150 years ago. I have this joke in my head that the lack of technology when it comes to cutting stones can sometimes result in a superior stone. I think today we have all these wonderful techniques and technology to make everything perfect, but sometimes what they did with their bare hands and their eyes a hundred years ago can make a stone even more perfect than you can make today. Maybe perfect is the wrong word; maybe charming. But so many old stones are full of character that is rare to see today. Sharon: It takes somebody who really appreciates the stone to see what you’re saying. I look at a stone and I see a stone, unless it’s really—for example, this weekend somebody showed me a ring from the 40s with citrine. It was not a good citrine; it was too light. I knew it was way too light, but I’m looking at something from a real simplistic perspective. If it was an emerald, I’d say, “Oh, it’s green to me.” Do you see green in a ruby? Is that what you were saying? Caroline: Oh no, I’m just saying that a ruby is technically red, but there’s pinkish red; there’s purplish red. I have to say that even for somebody whose profession isn’t looking at gemstones in the way I do, I do think that somebody who is interested in gemstones and jewelry—for example, my father is an architect, so he’s got an eye for design and details. You would be surprised at how much the naked eye just looking at something will tell you. I reckon that if I lined up some stones, probably a lot of laymen could look at them and point out the best stone because in many ways, you’re just drawn to it. You might not be able to articulate exactly why you’re drawn to it, but you will just be drawn to it. That’s another reason why I love these stones. You can’t always get to the nuts and bolts of exactly why. There’s just something that is appealing to you. Sharon: You used the word charming a couple of times. What makes a stone charming? Caroline: Oh, wow! What makes a stone charming to me? Well, the old style of cutting, which is—and I don’t want to get too technical—but big facets, a big, open stone. Usually, they have soft edges versus straight edges, soft corners. If it’s in a piece of jewelry, the mounting is most likely going to be something simple which brings your eyes to the center of the stone, versus so much detail or clunkiness that you sometimes see in today’s mountings. Also, a lot of modern mountings try very hard. Old mountings don’t try as hard. They let the stone sing for itself, and I think it’s that perfect balance that can make a stone on a piece of jewelry charming. Sharon: Do you have collectors who collect jewelry because of the stone? Do you have stone collectors? Caroline: Sure, I suppose people who buy at auction appear in all shapes and forms. You never know exactly why they’re buying something, but I think you have your jewelry collectors, and you have your stone people. Those guys are fairly easy to differentiate between, but then you have a pool of collectors for whom the stones and the jewelry belong together. Both of them need to be correct, if that makes sense. You could have this fabulous old diamond, but it’s only fabulous if it’s in the original mounting. Even if it’s not a particularly exquisite mounting, it is in its original mounting, so the two work together as a piece. For those people, it might be a big collection they’re working towards, or it might not be. It might be something they’re going to wear occasionally, and they have statement pieces of jewelry that appeal to them. I always like to try and work out why people are buying certain things and what their end goal is, but as long as they’re enthusiastic about the piece and it talks to them, then I’m not sure anything else matters. Sharon: Don’t you at least have to have a sense of why it’s talking to them so you can identify other things? So you can talk to them about what’s talking to them, basically? Caroline: Sure, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily always specific. If somebody is interested in important colored stones, I will make sure to keep them on my radar for important pieces that come in. But they might turn around and say, “I’m not really interested in emeralds unless they are such and such.” I think you can get a lot of information from people to help them with furthering their collection or help them with what they want to do with an existing collection, but with the jewelry world certainly—and I can’t speak to any other field—I do like to think that if something special comes along, be it a piece of jewelry or a gemstone or a combination of both, it doesn’t necessarily need to fit into what they have or what they think they want. It’s like a wild card or a curve ball. It might just be the right thing at the right time, and they might have been in the industry long enough to know that some things are really rare, and this is an opportunity. I guess it is my role to keep those doors open. I don’t necessarily need to know too specifically what somebody is interested in because I don’t not want to contact them about something just because it falls slightly outside those parameters. If somebody has a level of understanding and a passion, they might be open to all sorts of options, and some jewelry items don’t come around that often. Like I said before, even if it’s just, “Come and look and touch and handle and see that color with your own eyes,” it can be worth it. That can allow somebody to follow their own jewelry journey, even if they’re not adding it specifically to their own personal collection. Sharon: That’s a really good point. As long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve never ascertained what I collect. I just collect things I like. Caroline: Absolutely, and it’s hard to articulate that. Also, just like styles and fashions, things come in sets. You might like something in one period of your life and change to something else. I currently have a little bit of a love affair with the late Deco, early retro jewelry period. This took me by storm a couple of years ago. It was a couple of pieces of jewelry that came in and landed on my desk, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. It was very out of character from what I normally like. I don’t know if it will last, but that’s why I never want to impose too many parameters because you never know what might take your fancy. | |||
| Episode 159 Part 2: Gold in America: A New Exhibit Will Make You Question Your Beliefs About Gold | 16 Jun 2022 | 00:20:51 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Stuart Gordon
John Stuart Gordon is the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. He grew up among the redwoods of Northern California before venturing East and receiving a B.A. from Vassar College, an M.A. from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, and a PH.D. from Boston University. He works on all aspects of American design and has written on glass, American modernism, studio ceramics, and postmodernism. His exhibition projects have explored postwar American architecture, turned wood, and industrial design. In addition, he supervises the Furniture Study, the Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript:
Perhaps more than any other metal or gem, gold brings out strong reactions in people (and has for all of recorded history). That’s what curator John Stuart Gordon wanted to explore with “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power,” a featured exhibition now on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why people have always been enchanted by gold; what he discovered while creating the exhibit; and why curation is more that just selecting a group of objects. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. Welcome back.
I’m curious; I know you recently had a group from Christie’s studying jewelry that came to visit your exhibit. I’m curious if they asked different questions, or if there’s something that stood out in what they were asking that might have been different from a group studying something else.
John: Every group is different. I love them all, and I learn so much from taking groups of visitors through because you start looking at objects through their lens. Recently a group of makers came through and, wow, that was a wonderful experience, because I could make a reference to, “Oh, look at the decoration on this,” and then, “Is it chaste or is it gadroon?” “What kind of anvil are they working with?” We have to answer these questions. There are some things I can’t answer but a maker can identify easily, so I’m learning things.
Maybe someone who’s a collector or an appraiser is thinking about objects in a very different way, wanting to know how rare it is, if there are only a handful, where they are, how many are still in private collections, what’s in the museum collection. One of my favorite tours was with a small group of young children who had a completely different set of preconceived notions. I had to explain what an 18th century whistle and bells would have been used for because they’d never seen one before. I had to talk about what kinds of child’s toys they remembered from when they were kids, trying to relate. Every group has a slightly different lens, and you can never anticipate the questions they’re going to ask.
Sharon: Yes, they’re coming at you from the weirdest angles. In putting this together, what surprised you most about gold in America? What surprised you most about putting this exhibit together? What made you say, “Gosh, I never knew that,” or “I never thought about that”? There’s a lot, but what’s the overriding question, let’s say.
John: It’s such a nerdy answer, and I apologize for being such a nerd, but what surprised me the most was an archival discovery. Mind you, this all takes place against the background of lockdown and having way too much time on our hands and looking for distractions. I pulled a historical newspaper database that the library subscribes to, and I typed in the word “gold” and pushed enter. There were about three million responses that came back, and I just started reading my way through. Not all of them were interesting, but I was struck by the frequency with which people were discussing gold, and I was struck by the global knowledge at a very early period. I would find articles written in the 1720s in colonial Boston talking about the Spanish fleets leaving Havana Harbor with amounts of silver and gold onboard. They would describe how much gold, how much silver, was it coins, was it bars, was it unrefined. There was a newspaper report coming out of New York in the 1750s talking about a new gold strike at a mine in Central Europe. That was truly unexpected: to realize that this material was of such importance that people were talking about it on a daily basis, and that it was newsworthy on this global scale. People weren’t just talking about what was going on in colonial Boston or colonial Philadelphia. They were talking about what was going on in Prussia and Bogota. I think we often think of early history as very insular, and we think of our present day as global. History has always been global, and it was a lovely reminder of how global our culture always has been.
Sharon: That’s interesting, especially talking about global. I just reread Hamilton. They’re talking about Jefferson and Madison and everybody going over to France and coming back. I think about the boats, and I think, “Oh, my god.” I think of everybody as staying in place. You couldn’t get me on one of those boats. What a voyage. But that was global. Everybody was communicating with everybody else. So, yes, it always has been that way, but it’s very surprising, the movement that has been there for so long. We could go on and on about that.
Let me ask you this: Yale Art Gallery just received a donation from Susan Grant Lewin of modern jewelry, art jewelry, on the cutting edge. At the museum and gallery, is the emphasis more on jewelry as part of material culture and decorative arts? Not every museum or art gallery would have been open to it. What’s the philosophy there?
John: Yes, we just received a gift of about two dozen pieces of contemporary jewelry from Susan Grant Lewin, who is a collector and scholar. We’ve also received a gift from the Enamel Arts Foundation, which is a foundation that collects and promotes enamel objects and jewelry. We have a long history of collecting jewelry, and it’s based on historic collections. The core of the American decorative arts collection is the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection. It started coming to the art gallery in 1930. It’s this rather storied collection. It covers everything you can imagine: furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, you name it.
It was assembled by a man named Francis P. Garvan, who was a Yalee. He graduated in the late 19th century and he gave it in honor of his wife. His main love, after his wife and his family, was silver, and the collection at Yale is probably the most important collection of early American silver in any museum. Silversmiths and goldsmiths, the names are interchangeable, and it is mostly men at that period who were making silver objects and gold objects. They’re also making jewelry. As you take the story forward, it doesn’t change a lot. People who are trained as metalsmiths often will make holloware and/or jewelry. The fields are very closely allied, and the techniques are very closely allied. So for us, it makes complete sense to have this very important historical collection of metalwork go all the way up to the present.
We have a lot of 20th century jewelry, now 21st century jewelry. We also have contemporary holloware because we like being able to tell a story in a very long arc. The way someone like Paul Revere is thinking about making an object and thinking about marketing himself is related to how someone graduating from SUNY New Paltz or RISD are thinking about how to make an object and how to market themselves. Often it’s the same material, the same hammers, the same anvils. So, it’s nice to show those continuities and then to bring in how every generation treats this material slightly differently. They have their own ideas and their own technologies.
So, the Susan Grant Lewis Collection is a very experimental work. She has said she doesn’t like stones, so you’re not going to see a lot of gem setting and a lot of diamonds and rubies set in gold. There’s nothing wrong with them, but she’s more interested in people who are more out there, thinking about how you turn 3D printing into art or how you use found materials and construct narratives and make things that are more unexpected.
Sharon: I just want to interrupt you a minute. SUNY New Paltz is the New York State University at New Paltz?
John: State University of New York at New Paltz. Sorry, I gave you the shorthand.
Sharon: I know RISD is the Rhode Island Institute—
John: We’re going to have to submit an index on how to understand all my acronyms. Yes, RISD is the Rhode Island School of Design. There are a handful of institutions that have really strong jewelry departments and really strong metalworking departments, among them Rhode Island School of Design, State University of New York at New Paltz. You can add Cranbrook, which is outside of Detroit. There’s a whole group of them that are producing wonderful things.
Sharon: So, you studied decorative arts. What was your master’s in?
John: I was an art historian. I was very lucky in college to have a professor who believed in material culture, and I asked, “Do I have to write about paintings?” and she said, “No, you don’t.” I was very lucky to find that in college. Then I went to the Bard Graduate Center in New York. It was a much longer title, the Graduate Center for Material Culture and Design. It changes its name every two years. My master’s was in kind of a history of design and material culture. Then to get a Ph.D., there are very few programs that allow people to focus on material culture. Luckily, there are more with every passing year. When I was going to school, Yale is one that’s always focused on decorative arts and material culture. Boston University, their American studies program is a historically strong program that allows you to look at anything in the world as long as you can justify it. So, that’s where I went.
Sharon: Was jewelry like, “Oh yeah, and there’s jewelry also,” or was jewelry part of the story, part of the material culture, the material objects that you might look at? Was it part of any of this?
John: It was. I am at core a metals person. My master’s thesis was written on the 1939 New York World’s Fair, looking at one pavilion where Tiffany, Cartier and a few others had their big exhibition of silver, gold and, of course, jewelry. My entry into it was silver, but I had to learn all the jewelry as well. So, jewelry has always been part of my intellectual DNA, but it didn’t really flourish until I got to Yale, and that would be because of my colleague, Patricia Kane. She has a deep knowledge and interest in jewelry. We have done a few jewelry exhibitions in the past, and she has seen it as part of the collection that should grow. I arrived at Yale as a scrappy, young curator seeing what was going on in the landscape, and the jewelry is amazing. One of my first conferences I went to was a craft conference. I met jewelers and metalsmiths, and it’s a really approachable group. They’re very friendly. They like talking about their ideas. They like talking about their work, which is really rewarding.
Sharon: What were your ideas when you started as a curator? Did you have the idea, “Oh, I’d love to do exhibition work”? Curate has become such a word today. Everybody is curating something.
John: Yes, my head is in my hands right now. One of my pet peeves is that people talk about curating their lunches. The word curate actually means to care for, so I think about the religious role of a curate. It’s the same role. Our job is really to care for collections. If you care for your lunch, you can curate it, but if you’re just selecting it, please use a different word.
That idea of caring for objects, that’s what really excited me as a curator; the idea that so much of what we do is getting to know a collection, to research it, to make sure it’s being treated well, that things are stable when they go on loan, that when things need treatment, you work with a conservator or a scientist. I was really excited by that.
Over the course of my career, I’ve become much broader in my thinking. When you come out of graduate school, you’ve spent years focusing down deeper and deeper on one small, little subject. I was still very focused on a very narrow subject when I became a curator. That was early 20th century design. I love it dearly, but over the years my blinders have come off. I love American modernism. I also love 17th century metalwork. I love 21st century glass. You realize you love everything in the world around you.
Sharon: Would you say your definition of curate is still to care for? I’m thinking about when I polish my silver. I guess it’s part of curating in a sense, taking care of things.
John: Polishing your silver or your jewelry is actually one of the best ways to get to know it. We’re one of the few collections where it’s the curators who polish the silver. We hold onto that task because we don’t do it very often, because it’s better to leave things unpolished if you don’t have to. But when it comes time to polish something, the opportunity to pick something up, to turn it over, to feel the weight of it, to look closely at the marks and the details, that’s a really special thing, to get to know your objects so well by doing it. I give a hearty endorsement of silver polishing. It’s also a great emotional therapy if you’ve had a tough day. But to your question, I even more strongly believe that the role of a curator is someone to care for their collections.
Sharon: I really like that. It gives me a different perspective.
John: Yeah, because what we’re doing is not just physical care; it’s emotional care. In today’s culture we talk so much about self-care and these kinds of tropes, but that’s a lot of what we’re doing. We’re understanding history through our objects. We’re understanding the objects better to have something preserved for posterity, so it can tell future generations stories.
Sharon: That’s interesting. John, thank you so much. By the way, the exhibit ends in July, but the Susan Grant Lewin Collection is open through September. You’ll be busy, it sounds like.
John: “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power” closes July 10. The Susan Grant Lewin Collection of American Jewelry will be up through the fall. If you miss both of those or you’re in a place where you can’t get to New Haven, our collections are all online. All you have to do is go to our website, and you can just click through and spend a day looking at objects from the comfort of your living room.
Sharon: Yes, and very nice photos. As I said, I was looking at them before we started. I was very interested. What was that used for? Where did it come from? I guess being in Los Angeles, I’ll have to do that. I’ll be doing that from my living room. John, thank you so much. This is very, very interesting. I learned a lot and you have given me a lot to think about, so thank you so much.
John: Thank you for having me.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. | |||
| Episode 159 Part 1: Gold in America: A New Exhibit Will Make You Question Your Beliefs About Gold | 14 Jun 2022 | 00:24:37 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About John Stuart Gordon
John Stuart Gordon is the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. He grew up among the redwoods of Northern California before venturing East and receiving a B.A. from Vassar College, an M.A. from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, and a PH.D. from Boston University. He works on all aspects of American design and has written on glass, American modernism, studio ceramics, and postmodernism. His exhibition projects have explored postwar American architecture, turned wood, and industrial design. In addition, he supervises the Furniture Study, the Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects. Additional Resources:
Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com
Transcript:
Perhaps more than any other metal or gem, gold brings out strong reactions in people (and has for all of recorded history). That’s what curator John Stuart Gordon wanted to explore with “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power,” a featured exhibition now on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about why people have always been enchanted by gold; what he discovered while creating the exhibit; and why curation is more that just selecting a group of objects. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.
Today, my guest is John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. The Yale University Museum and Gallery is the oldest art museum in the western hemisphere associated with the university. John is going to be telling us today about one of the gallery’s current feature exhibitions, “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power.” We’ll hear all about the exhibit and John’s journey today. John, welcome to the program.
John: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I apologize; my endowed title is a total mouthful.
Sharon: No, no. Who is Benjamin Attmore Hewitt?
John: Benjamin Attmore Hewitt was a clinical psychologist who helped bring the idea of statistical study to psychology, and he was also a collector. He was an avid collector of federal furniture, and he was associated with the art gallery. He, in the early 80s, was a guest curator on an exhibit on card tables that we did called “The Work of Many Hands.” In the incredibly small world department, I’m joining you from my living room, where if I turn and look out my window, I’m looking at the house that he used to live in across the street from me.
Sharon: Wow! Was that an old house that was built on federal plans or is it a modern house, the one he built or that that he has?
John: It is a beautiful, Georgian-style house. It’s quite gorgeous, and you can imagine it was perfect for his federal period collection.
Sharon: It sounds gorgeous.
John: It’s just one of those small-world things, right? I ended up moving across the street from person who endowed my job.
Sharon: Sounds gorgeous. So, tell us about your career path. Tell us how you ended up at the Yale University Art Gallery.
John: Yes, it was a dream job for me. I grew up in San Francisco. I grew up in a household that loved art, so I’m one of those lucky people that grew up from childhood thinking art isn’t scary; art isn’t strange; art is something to be enjoyed. I always knew I wanted to be in the art world somehow. I went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie for the history of art program. When I graduated, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but my first job was at Christie’s auction house, and that was an amazing experience. You see everything when you work in an auction house. It’s the fabulous things that get the headlines in the paper, but it’s everything else that gives you an education. That was an incredible training for my eye.
I’m a slow thinker. I like taking my time. I like spending time with objects. The constant hustle and bustle of the auction world was a little too much for me, so I went to grad school. I went to the Bard Graduate Center in New York and got my master’s. Then I had an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my colleagues there, the curator Amelia Peck, once said that if you would like a job at one of the great collections, you need a Ph.D. So, I said, “O.K.,” and I went to Boston University for a Ph.D. in American Studies.
The whole time I was thinking, “I want to get a Ph.D. so I can get a job at a place like the Yale University Art Gallery,” because its collection is legendary. It was the collection that so many of my professors used when they were teaching their survey courses. It was a collection I knew, and it was my aspirational job. One day while I was studying for my orals, my college professor called me and said, “A job has opened up at the Yale University Art Gallery. You need to apply for it.” Being a grad student, I was like, “Oh, I’m a little busy right now. Maybe next week,” and she was like, “John, don’t be stupid. These jobs don’t come up very often. You really need to apply.” I was very lucky. I got the job. That was 15 years ago, and I have been there ever since.
The collection is extraordinary. The museum was founded in 1832. It was one of the oldest museums in the country. Its American decorative arts collection formed very early on but really got going in 1930, so it’s also a very old collection. In the 1970s, one of the former curators, Charles Montgomery, felt it needed to go clear up to the present. So, our collection really spans centuries, and with that kind of span, you never get tired.
Sharon: It does. I was looking at your exhibit of gold online and I’m going, “Oh my god, this is going back.” I was looking at the gold collar you have and I thought, “This is really old.” What was that? The 3rd or 5th century or something like that? I can’t even remember.
John: The museum’s collections are encyclopedic. It goes from ancient Babylon up to the present day. Luckily, my slice of it is just the American, which is enough of a handful. There are two of us in our department, Patricia Kane and myself, and between the two of us, we need to cover pre-contact to the present in every medium. So, it’s enough to make your head spin some days.
Sharon: What is it about the decorative arts that attracted you as opposed to another area of history that you could also go into museums for?
John: That’s a great question. I loved the idea that decorative arts are like a lens into our world. Everything we make and own is a lens, but decorative arts have a way of telling you stories about the way we used the technology that went into making them, what a particular culture or a time period found important, as you make objects to fulfill needs and to fulfill aspirations. I loved the idea that you could take anything from a necklace or a teapot or a chair, and if you look at it enough ways, you could know a lot about the goals and dreams and technologies and resources of a given time period. I loved that idea, reverse-engineering culture through objects.
Sharon: That’s interesting, yes. How did the gold exhibit come about? Was that something you and Patricia had been thinking about, or was that a directive from on high? How did that come about?
John: The gold exhibition came about because of the pandemic, to be completely honest. Two years ago, the museum closed down, like many museums did at the beginning of the pandemic, and our exhibition calendar went out the window. Loans were cancelled, exhibitions were cancelled, and the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, Stephanie Wiles, put out a call for in-house exhibitions, exhibitions we could work on in our spare time. We didn’t know how long this was going to last. We thought we were going be home for a few weeks, and she wanted exhibitions that would be easy to slot into the calendar when the museum reopened and that would really shine a light on our collections, because those would be easier for the curators to research.
When I arrived at Yale in 2006, sitting on the shelf above my desk was a slim, little catalogue to an exhibition called “American Gold” that was done in 1963. I loved that little catalogue. I read it many times. I loved the material. Much of the material was drawn from Yale’s collections because Yale has one of the strongest collections of early American gold. I thought, “Someday, maybe I’ll revisit this.” It seemed amazing that no one had revisited this idea of gold since the 1960s because so much had changed about we think about the world, how we think about objects, what kind of theoretical models we use, and I thought I would do that exhibition at some point in the distant future. Then when our director said, “Are there are any ideas out there?” I said, “O.K., maybe I could do this now.” I suggested it, and it was a real treat. So, it was something that grew out of a spontaneous need but became a wonderful, wonderful research project.
Sharon: So, the objects for the most part are taken from your collection as opposed to loans, O.K. Tell us about the exhibit “Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power.” Tell us more about the whole exhibit. What do you want people to learn from it?
John: I was fascinated by the idea that gold is so compelling and so entrancing. There is something about this material that has been fascinating to humans for millennia. You think about the Egyptian pharaohs with their coffins covered in gold. Gold is the reason for so many wars and invasions, and all this is a sign of status. What is it about this material that has so much weight? I started talking to many of my colleagues, asking about the gold in their department, and we realized we could do a global show. It could be gigantic. It started getting away from me, and I realized, “O.K., let’s just focus on one very narrow portion of this global story. We’ll just focus on colonial American experience.”
As I started looking at those objects, I was struck by something rather uncanny. In the history of decorative arts, most objects are anonymous. We don’t know who made them. We don’t know who owned them. We don’t know how they traveled through time. With metalwork, we do tend to know a bit more because there are makers’ marks. There’s a whole history of guild systems that are looking at the purity of metals, and with gold we know even more information. I think probably more than almost any other material, we know who made gold objects and who owned them, and it’s because they often are inscribed or engraved somehow, or family histories come down with them. I found that so fascinating. That became the structure for the show, really thinking about these objects that have histories and why they were owned, why they were made, why they were cherished, thinking about this important material and how it intersects with human life over the span of a few centuries. That’s what I want visitors to take away.
Most people think—well, we can actually do this right now. Sharon and everyone listening, just to yourself, think of three words that come to mind immediately when I say gold. Free associate. What are those words that come to mind? Sharon, I’m going to put you on the spot. What three words come to mind?
Sharon: It’s like a blue elephant. What do I think? Shiny, valuable and decorative. In terms of jewelry, I think decorative. Those are the words that come to mind.
John: Shiny, valuable, decorative. I asked this question of a lot of people. Everyone I met for a while got that question, and value came up a lot. Then there were a lot of judgment terms, things like beauty or tacky. They were either positive or negative terms. People have an emotional, visceral reaction to gold. What I want people who visit the show to do is to move beyond those initial associations. We’re drawn to it because it’s valuable and we think it’s beautiful, or we’re skeptical of it because we think it might be gaudy. But I want them to really look at the objects and learn why someone might own something or why someone might want an object made out of this material. It’s to move beyond those initial words into words about legacy and heritage or patriotism or pride, to get to that second layer. It’s to let people know O.K., I’m going to think twice about what a gold ring might symbolize because I’ve looked at a gold ring that was all about mourning and commemorating the dead, or I’ve looked at something like a gold spoon that seemed a little flashy, but we know it was made by a Huguenot craftsman escaping religious persecution in New York, yet it was owned by someone who made their money selling slaves. Ideas of freedom and persecution are wrapped up in this material. There are so many stories that, once you start asking the objects, the stories come back to you in a way that I hope makes people pause when they leave the museum and see something else in their life. “Oh, that’s an interesting idea.”
Sharon: I think what strikes me is the fact that when you’re talking about gold, artistry, memory and power over the years, the wars that have been fought, I think of the Aztecs and Incas, where it was so cherished. We talked a little about this. Material culture, material studies. You’ll have to explain the difference. That sounds like something I didn’t grow up hearing. Maybe because you’re in that world, it’s something you’ve heard about for a long time. But what is material culture and material studies, and how does it relate to this?
John: That is such a big question. I’ll try to do some honor to it. The idea of material culture as an academic field—and I’m sorry; I have to put on my dorky academic for a second—but the idea of material culture really came out in the 1960s and 1970s with this larger idea of a new history, a way of looking at the reinterpretation of historical sources, historical stories, questioning who has the right to tell history. It was a way to get away from just looking at the histories of wars and rulers, documenting dead white men written by more dead white men. Material culture is a way of looking holistically at the objects that are produced by a civilization and thinking about the everyday person or the person not on the throne. What can be learned from the things that are not just the dates of rules and wars? That field really transformed art history, history, American studies, anthropology, archaeology. It opened up various fields of study so that you could write an entire book about the development of the Coke bottle and have a valid historical discussion about everyday objects.
What’s been fascinating—I grew up in this world. To me, material culture is my language. I grew up being taught by people who were on the front wave of this, so I’m totally indoctrinated. In recent years, I’ve seen a subfield emerge just called material studies. It makes chuckle a bit because it’s like material culture with the culture taken out, which is probably not true, but it’s really just going into the actual “thinginess” of objects: thinking about the marble that a statue was carved from, or thinking about the wood used to make a chair and diving deep into this elemental level of what the material of our world is, where it comes from and what stories it tells.
In terms of gold, your mentioning the Incas is, I think, a rather important reference, because where was the gold coming from? If we take an Inca material studies approach to this, we think about how, for many years, the Mediterranean in Europe, they weren’t reusing and melting down and recycling the gold that was coming out of a very limited number of mines. Then suddenly, the Spanish discover or stumble across the New World, and they see these cities with temples filled with gold and palaces filled with gold, and they start looting them. As the conquistadors are conquering Central and South America, they’re stripping the gold out, and then that gold is being melted down and being sent back to Europe. What does it mean to have this material that’s so inherently fraught with conflict?
What does it mean for a silversmith in Boston in the 18th century? He’s sitting on the edge of an empire working a small amount of gold that’s incredibly valuable because he has to get it from London. He’s aware that the Spanish have all this access to gold through the New World, and it’s circulating around him. Then how does all of this change when gold is discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California in 1849, and suddenly there’s a whole new and incredibly large source of gold? It’s augmented by further strikes in Colorado, and the West begins creating more gold. Think about this material, how its rarity is tied to conquest and imperial control.
There are some scientists who have been thinking, “Can we do tests on material to find out if there are little isotopes in the metal that can tell you whether the ring you’re wearing today is gold that was from Northern California or from Afghanistan? Can we begin to map out the world and map out trade routes all based on scientific inquiry and matching scientific testing with archival research?” Your very quick dive into material culture versus material studies, it’s endlessly fascinating.
Sharon: I know people get their doctorates in material studies around things like that. I should have asked you this at the beginning. Did you consider yourself an artist when you grew up with all this art? Before art history, were you creative? Were your parents in the creative end of the arts or were they teaching?
John: Being an artist was option number one, and I pursued that. Making art was a really important part of my childhood and developing a sense of identity. Then I learned about art history. I just loved art history, and I had to make that decision: would I go to art school or would I go to a liberal arts college? For me, art history won. I loved being able to parse out these stories and to look at objects and paintings and sculptures and think about all the different references. But having that history of making, I think, is very important. I have a lot of empathy for the skill and the creativity that goes into making. | |||
| Episode 217 Part 2: Cara Croninger’s Creativity Lives on in Her Daughter, Musician Saudia Young | 01 Mar 2024 | 00:23:45 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Saudia Young Saudia Young is a New York City-born actress/singer and storyteller in theater and film. Born on the Lower East Side and brought up between Tribeca and LA, Young explores the notion of home, love, justice, and identity through her art.
The recently repatriated artist lived in Berlin, Germany, for a long chapter of performing, writing, and producing. The Ameripolitan Awards 2023 Female Rockabilly Singer nominee released her 7" single ‘Noir Rockabilly Blues,’ produced by Lars Vegas-DE and featuring 'The Wobble' on the A and Iggy Pop’s 'Lust for Life' on the B side, in 2017, followed up by her 12” debut ‘Unlovable’ in 2018. The LP was recorded live at Berlin, Germany’s legendary Lightning Recorders.
Young founded a Dark Kabarett and a Rockabilly Noir Blues band in Berlin, co-created the Lost Cabaret and the Schwarze Liste Kabarett theater projects and wrote and produced the award-winning short film The Gallery. While in Berlin, she was cast in the lead voice-over role of Oskar in School for Vampires (the English version of the Hahn Film cartoon series).
Young co-wrote and performed the solo show Sneaker Revolution and is currently writing a theater/film piece about her actor father, Otis Young, and sculptor/designer mom Cara Croninger. Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources:
Transcript:
To jewelry lovers, Cara Croninger was a groundbreaking artist whose work was shown at iconic galleries Artwear and Sculpture to Wear. To musician and actress Saudia Young, she was just mom. Today, Saudia is working to preserve her mother’s legacy and secure her place in art jewelry history. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how Cara made her pioneering resin jewelry; how Cara’s work evolved with the times; and why Saudia thinks of her mom every time she performs. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven’t heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.
Today, we’re speaking to my guest, Saudia Young, who is located in Philadelphia. She has an interesting background. Her mother was a very well-known jeweler, and her father was an actor. She was born in New York and grew up between New York and Los Angeles. Welcome back.
Were you aware she was doing this? Were you aware that she went to different galleries, that she didn’t have a sales rep when you were growing up? Were you aware of this?
Saudia: Yeah, of course. There was one point in the 90s where she had a showroom. Tony Goldman and Janet Goldman had a showroom called Fragments, and she was in the showroom for some years. She had different reps throughout her life. Ten Thousand Things was a store. They still exist, and they have incredibly beautiful work. For a while in the Meatpacking District, they had a nice cadre of artists, and my mom was one of the artists. They also did wholesale for her. So, they represented her work to other people.
Sharon: I have a few pieces, just a smattering, but do you have a lot of her work? Do you have an archive of her work?
Saudia: Oh, yeah. That’s part of what I’ve been dealing with. My sister and I have our own personal collections. Throughout the years, my mom collected the best pieces of each group and gave us our personal collections. Then I have basically all the work she left behind when she passed away. I’ve been trying to organize that. There was a big section of it shown at the Aspen Art Museum two years ago for about a year. Jonathan Burger had a show called The Store. My mom’s jewelry and sculptures were in one show. That was really exciting, to have both together. Actually, 14 small sculptures sold during that show and, fingers crossed, about seven pieces will be donated to an institution. I’m not going to say which one. That takes a long time.
Right now, there are pieces that are actively being sold. Lisa Berman—not a family member, just the same last name—from Sculpture to Wear sold some of my mom’s work at her first gallery. She also helped sell some pieces when I came out and was trying to figure out what to do and how to secure the legacy, meaning literally a storage space to hold everything. It's a big responsibility.
Sharon: You’re referring to Lisa Berman.
Saudia: Yeah, who is not your blood relation but of the same name. Obviously, she introduced us and was part of the first interview. She’s consulted with me. She’s another one of the angels. There’s a whole host of people who are still in awe of my mom’s work and in support and cheerleading. It includes Robert Lee Morris.
I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the work to secure the legacy. It is being sold at Studio Hop in Providence, Rhode Island. That’s introducing the work to some people who have not seen it before. It's introducing it to a new audience, which is really nice. Jussara Lee, who used to sell it in Manhattan and is now in Connecticut, has been selling it. Other than that, I have an Artwork Archive website for her so people can see the work. I’m not selling it from that website, but there is a section of it that’s still being sold. Then there’s a section I’m holding in case I can get it accepted into an institution.
Sharon: I remember a few years ago, I fell in love with a bracelet and I didn’t end up getting it. I think it was the first time I ever heard of her, and I thought it was so neat.
Saudia: Yeah, it sold a lot of work. They stopped selling after she passed away. They also had a hard time. Everybody is just recovering now from Covid. A lot of people had a very hard time in the past few years. Some stores closed and sales went down. There were several stores who were carrying her work who have closed since Covid.
Sharon: What did you do to make it through Covid and to have money come in?
Saudia: I cried. I don’t know. I did whatever I could. I was going back and forth between Germany and here. There was a grant in Germany—actually, it wasn’t a grant; it was a loan—but there was a Covid loan they were giving to artists in Germany. Here, I went on unemployment for a while and then I went off it, whatever I could. We all did what we could to survive.
Sharon: That’s very true. I know there were different things we had to do. I agree with you that people are just coming out of it now.
Saudia: And now we have two wars, so it’s like, “Great, thank you.” Can’t catch a break.
Sharon: Which is worse? I don’t know. I guess if you’re in the field over there, it’s worse.
Saudia: Yeah.
Sharon: A lot worse. How does it feel to have a mother who’s mentioned by people you don’t know? You say you’re the daughter and all of a sudden, they say, “Oh, I love your mom,” or “I love her jewelry.”
Saudia: What do you mean? How does it feel?
Sharon: Yeah. If I said, “Oh, I have a really neat bracelet,” and the person says, “I’ve not heard of that person,” how does it feel?
Saudia: First of all, a young man—he’s probably my age. It’s so funny I still think of myself as a teenager. Timothy Reukauf is a stylist. He’s another angel who introduced me to the manager and owner of Screaming Mimis Vintage clothing and jewelry store in New York. When I brought the work, because they brought the work to a vintage show, and they’re showing the work and trying to sell it, she was so enthusiastic and happy and excited. It was nice because it’s an extension of my mom, and I miss my mom. I feel like it’s that, as opposed to anything ego-based. It’s more emotional—now you’re going to get me emotional. But it’s nice to know because I really miss her, and when I hear people loving her work, it’s heartening. It’s heart filling.
Sharon: That’s a good word, heart-filling. I’ve heard different things. It’s Croninger with a hard g. I’ve heard that as Croninger with a soft g. Which one is it?
Saudia: Oh lord, that’s a good one. It’s Cara Croninger with a hard g, but people have called her Croninger with a soft g. People have called her Cara. She’s even called herself Cara, but it’s Cara Lee. Her Michigan name was Cara Lee Croninger, but it depends on who you are. Are you Dutch? Are you German? Are you from New Jersey?
Sharon: Did she support your career as an artist?
Saudia: Do you mean my dreaming? Yeah, she supported me being a dreaming, silly person, definitely. She put me in dance school. She always thought I should be a painter, actually. She’d say, “You should be a painter,” because I had a natural ability to draw and to work with my hands. After being a child laborer with her, I could make things. But all jokes aside, she was very supportive of me being an artist or whatever it was that I wanted to be, political activist or artist. My sister was an architect. She was very supportive of that. She was beloved by a lot of the young artists who were around Dumbo, our friends, our extended family. She was a positive influence, a positive auntie, elder, second mom, to a lot of people.
Sharon: It sounds like it.
Saudia: Yeah. I shared her as a mom figure with a lot of people.
Sharon: Tell us more about your singing. Do you think of her when you sing?
Saudia: Yeah, I think of her with whatever I do, for sure. There’s one song—I think you wrote it down on the question list—It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing), doo wop, doo wop, doo wop, doo wop. I think it was Louis Armstrong. She was working on some kind of saying or branding because she was really into the earrings having a nice swing. She coined it when I was helping her make them. The holes had to be big enough so the lyre could be comfortable enough so the earrings could swing. She incorporated that into some of her branding.
But yeah, I listened to a lot of music growing up. She was very into Judy Collins and Kurt Weill, a wild range. She dated one of the Clancy Brothers—they were very into folk music in the 60s—and my dad and her were into soul and Otis Redding and Taj Mahal and Bonnie Raitt. I’m wandering, but yes.
Sharon: What years was she most popular? It seems like she had a real high.
Saudia: I think the 80s. The minute she started doing the resin stuff, she went into Sculpture to Wear, which was a very prestigious gallery. I’d say the early 70s through the 80s. Then Artwear closed and she was on her own. She did really well in the 90s as well. She was pretty prolific, but I think the 80s were the time when there were tons and tons of fashion articles and fashion shoots with all the supermodels of that time.
Sharon: Talk about wandering, because I’m looking at my list of questions. Tell us how you were involved in making her jewelry. You told us a little bit, but did you ever cut the hearts?
Saudia: The hearts were made in molds. She created molds and poured, and then we would open the rubber molds. I would help sand. I would help drill holes. I can drill a hole. I would help with polishing. Like I said, I would help with finishing work and stringing cords on the hearts. Trying to influence her businesswise, she was not having it.
Sharon: Would she say, “That color doesn’t look better in the green. It looks better in the purple,” or something that?
Saudia: No, not really because once something is poured, it’s a done deal. That would be like, after you’ve made 500 brownies, saying, “I wish we had blueberry muffins.” It’s too late now.
Sharon: She could say, “Well, you can have it then, and I’ll try and sell the purple one,” or something.
Saudia: No, the work was too labor-intensive. Once things were made, you really needed to get them out there. They were like donuts in a way. You need to get them out so they don’t go stale. Keep the energy, keep them moving. The only thing she was conflicted about was pricing. There was a point in jewelry where everything—remember when the Y necklaces came out? Everything was really tiny. There was a point where it was trendy to have really tiny jewelry, and that freaked her out because her work was so big and sculptural. She would get freaked out about that kind of stuff. The editors loved her work because it was big and you could see it. It went incredibly with beautiful clothes like Issey Miyake and these avant garde designers. The tiny stuff, you can’t see it in an editorial. It’s so funny; you’ll have a cover article and it’ll be like, “Earrings by whomever,” and I’m like, “Where are they? What earrings?”
Sharon: That’s interesting. Miyake or Yohji Yamamoto, they’re high-end, but they’ve become very—they’re not that valued anymore.
Saudia: Now they’re mainstream, yeah.
Sharon: Do you think your mother’s jewelry would be considered avant garde today?
Saudia: Yeah, it still is in a way because of the designs and the fact that it was really handmade. She was making her own work. Maybe Lisa would call that studio jewelry. She was in her studio making it herself. She did have a short relationship with a company in Japan where they were making work that would only be sold there. It was fine, but you could really see the difference and feel the difference. It wasn’t Cara. It wasn’t special, unfortunately. We’re grateful that they did it, that she had that relationship and that we could go to Japan and travel there. That was awesome.
So, I think she was avant garde as an artist. I don’t agree that Yohji is no longer avant garde. His designs are so beautiful. He’s really focused on craftsmanship, having amazing makers creating his work. In a way that is avant garde, as opposed to crap being made. You know what I mean?
Sharon: You’re right, 100%.
Saudia: In a factory.
Sharon: I can’t think of another one, but there are a lot of designers whose work you can’t afford—I’m talking about clothing—who have developed their own less expensive lines.
Saudia: Yeah. I remember when they would call it the junior line, and it would be for the younger kids. It would be lighter and cheaper and faster and funnier and all that. Now there are lots of layers of that, but you have these throwaway clothes being made by companies like H&M and so forth.
Sharon: Do you think she would fit in, like she’d make a smaller version of something that she made large?
Saudia: She did do some smaller things when she was working with the Japanese company. That led her into making some tiny silver hearts and medium-size silver. Then she had to do her big pieces. She could not let go of her love affair with big, sculptural pieces. I think she was conflicted about the McDonaldizing of fashion and accessories. Of course, she wanted to put food on the table, but she was really conscious of the environment. Even though she was working in plastics, she was very conscious of workers and workers’ rights. Where does something come from? How is it made, and what’s the impact of it being made?
Sharon: It sounds like she carried that through the 80s, into the 90s, into today.
Saudia: Definitely. She definitely had something to do with me being political, her and my father. She was very righteous.
Sharon: I know you do cabaret and rockabilly. What else do you do? What do you sing?
Saudia: My main focus is mental health. It’s a really hard time right now, I feel, but I think it’s actually a good time to continue to do the rockabilly, but to circle back to the dark cabaret I was doing before the rockabilly. So, I’m working on that. I’m working with a few musicians here in Philly, and I have some shows with musicians in other parts of the country. For Thanksgiving, I’m going to be in Illinois with Patrick Jones and 3 On The Tree. It’s a band. We’re going to do a rockabilly Thanksgiving tour. Then in March, I’ll be in California, in Orange County.
Sharon: Doing what?
Saudia: Doing rockabilly with The Hi-Jivers and Abby Girl. In Orange County, we’re going to do just a rockabilly R&B show. Then in April, I’ll be with Viva Las Vegas again, which is a rockabilly weekend. I’ll do an R&B show and rockabilly. In between, I’m just trying to stay sane, make a living, take care of my mom’s work, tell her story. I’m supposedly writing a story about my mom and my dad, sort of a solo show. I don’t know if it’s a solo show or a documentary, but it’s about their relationship as an interracial couple in the 60s and an interracial artist couple.
Sharon: That’ll be very interesting
Saudia: They were both known as being difficult people, but most artists are in a way. It takes a lot of energy to do that work, so you can ruffle a lot of feathers. So, that’s what I’m doing.
Sharon: I hope I’ll get to meet you then. Thank you so much. This was very interesting.
Saudia: Thank you so much. Sharon: Thank you. Well will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey. She would always think about, “What am I going to pour?” It might be a ruby red, which was really popular and beautiful. One of the most popular pours, I think I said in the last interview, was the black and white, where she would have black and white and it would come out in a striped formation. Then she would pour into her different molds, the bangles, the C cuffs, the earrings.
Just as important as the colors were the processes. For the slice earrings, she would pour the layers so it would be striped into a block like a loaf of bread, a small, little, long brownie. Then she would slice it on a bandsaw and you would get to see the stripes. Part of her process was the actual cutting, carving, sanding to get the shapes, and then making the decision whether she was going to have them polished or matte without polish.
Sharon: A mask?
Saudia: Matte, sorry. What the finish would be. If she had faceted bangles or hearts or whatever, she was very aware of not making anything perfect. She used the fact that it had scratches to show the layers of work and to show that it’s made by a human. It wasn’t something that needed to be absolutely perfect. She was very into wabi sabi, the Japanese art of the imperfect. She loved wavy shapes and asymmetry in her designs.
Sharon: Who did the selling for the first years, when you were getting it off the ground?
Saudia: I was a kid, so I wasn’t going to get it off the ground. I was just eating the food she was putting in the refrigerator. When she first started with the leatherwork, she was just going around to different boutiques in the Village or whatever and selling them, either having them buy it straight out or on consignment. I think one of the worker’s galleries was the original Sculpture to Wear. That was near where MAD Museum is right now. I’m forgetting the name of the hotel. That was one of her galleries. I’m sure there were other stores I don’t know about.
That was in 1971 or something like that. That was very close to when she started working in plastic. She got taken in and accepted really quickly. At that time, Robert Lee Morris was also selling at Sculpture to Wear. He was a wunderkind. He was opening up his own gallery, Artwear, and brought my mother into that gallery. During that time, that also gave the artists recognition and amplified their voices. They were able to have their work in stores in Boston and in California because of being in Artwear.
Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
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| Episode 130: How Icelandic Jewelry Brand Aurum Became a Leader in Sustainability with Guðbjörg Kristín Ingvarsdóttir, Award Winning Goldsmith | 07 Jun 2022 | 00:21:22 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Guðbjörg Kristín Ingvarsdóttir Guðbjörg Kristín Ingvarsdóttir is a goldsmith, jewelry designer and co-founder of the award-winning sustainable jewelry brand Aurum, Iceland's leading jewelry brand. Guðbjörg studied goldsmithing at Copenhagen Technical College, completing the journeyman’s examination in 1993. She then completed the master craftsman examination in goldsmithing at Reykjavík Technical College in 1994, subsequently returning to Copenhagen to study jewelry design at the Institute for Precious Metals. She ran the jewelry workshop Au-Art in Copenhagen from 1996 to 1999 in collaboration with others. In 1999, Guðbjörg returned to Iceland and founded the design and jewelry brand Aurum. Her designs have attracted much attention worldwide and she has taken part in many international design exhibitions, both as a solo designer and as part of a group. She was awarded first prize in the jewelry competition "Spirit of the North" in St. Petersburg in 2000; received the DV Cultural Award in Reykjavík for art design in 2002; and received the Icelandic Visual Arts Award for design in 2008. In 2011, Aurum received the Njarðarskjöldur award for Best Tourist Shop of the Year and in 2015 the Grapevine Shop of the Year award. Aurum has been recommended by several international publications such as Timeout, Conde Nast Traveler, Elle, GQ and Lonely Planet. Additional Resources: Photos: Erika 5: We launched the Erika collection to commemorate our 20th anniversary, Erika encapsulates the spirit of Aurum's origins. "Picture a picnic in the Icelandic countryside. A young girl fascinated by the delicate flowers, collecting them for her mother. And writing a fairy tale in her diary about her hopes and dreams. 20 years later, Guðbjörg has drawn on these indelible memories for inspiration in creating the very special Erika Collection." Swan 455 and Swan 456: Aurum by Guðbjörg's range of luxurious 14kt gold plated and 925 silver cufflinks and wedding bands in 14kt or solid 18kt gold, are perfect for a wedding day, civil partnership or to mark an anniversary or engagement. Landscape - LAX collection: Quoted from Gudbjörg: "I love living in Iceland; all my family lives here, and my design work is continually inspired by the natural environment of the country." Pakkningar: We have resolved to introduce eco-friendly thinking into every aspect of the AURUM brand. For example, we only use recycled precious metals. Our jewellery is made here in our workshop in Iceland, and we make our gift boxes to look like the stones found on the beaches of the Western Fjords, using paper from mulberry trees, which has little to no effect on the ecosystem because the trees are not cut down – the paper is made from the leaves.
Transcript: Coming from Iceland, a country known for its pristine environment, it’s no surprise that Guðbjörg Kristín Ingvarsdóttir founded her jewelry brand on the principle of sustainability. Growing up in the remote countryside, she still turns to nature for inspiration when designing award-winning pieces for her global brand Aurum. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what it was like growing up in Iceland; why Aurum uses only lab-grown diamonds and recycled metal; and what her advice is for young jewelers who want to start their own brands. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Guðbjörg, one of the most well-known jewelry designers in Iceland. She’s the founder and head of the jewelry enterprise Aurum. Her flagship store is in Reykjavík, but it sells in retail outlets throughout the world. Her firm is known and respected for its commitment to sustainability. We’ll hear more about her jewelry journey today. Guðbjörg, welcome to the program. Guðbjörg: Thank you. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your journey. It looks like a pretty impressive operation that you’re running. How did you come to that? Guðbjörg: I completed my German examination at Copenhagen Polytechnic in 1993. After that, I further studied jewelry design at Copenhagen Institute for Hermitage for precious materials in Copenhagen. After my study in plastics and doing some jewelry work in Copenhagen, together with four of my colleagues, I started to develop my jewelry further. The time I spent there, it gave me time to work on pieces for exhibitions. That start in Denmark gave me a lot of influence. It’s learning with precious metals as well as starting an account. The craft tradition is very strong and the design scene is very strong in Denmark, and they encouraged me to develop my ideas further, because I received a grant when I was over there. I got the time to develop the jewelry. In 1999, I returned to Iceland. The same year, I opened my design company where I could further develop my jewelry. My first collection started when I came back to Iceland. Sharon: When did you decide this is what you wanted to do, that you wanted to do jewelry? Were you doing it when you were a teenager? Were you making jewelry as a child? Guðbjörg: That’s kind of an interesting story, because I did not grow up in a typical artistic environment. I grew up in a lively house with two generations living together. My grandmother made a lot of things by hand, beautiful clothing with her sewing machine, and my mother owned her own clothing store, so I was always involved with fashion at the time. I enjoyed sewing, and I got my first sewing machine which I was 13 years old. When I was 17 or 18, I went on an exchange to the U.S., and I spent a year on Bainbridge Island in Washington. I took all the art classes I could take because I didn’t have any at home. I lived in a small town, so we didn’t have any art classes. I decided to take everything I could at the high school on Bainbridge Island. One of the classes was a jewelry class with a great teacher. After that, I found my passion, so I couldn’t think about anything else to do. When I came back to Iceland in 1998, I just wanted to be a goldsmith. That was the story to it. Sharon: Wow! First of all, what does Aurum mean? How did you come up with the name for your business? Guðbjörg: It’s a beautiful name. Aurum means gold in Latin. It’s also the most precious metal, so that was something I thought would work for my business. Aurum, for me, means ambition, understanding, responsibility, unity and mindfulness; that is what I think of when I run my business. It’s an equal opportunity company; everybody has worth in the company. Sharon: Wow! For those listening, I’d like to spell it. It’s A-u-r-u-m. Guðbjörg: Yes, it is. Sharon: Aurum. Guðbjörg: Yeah. Sharon: You’ve won several design awards, and your business has appeared on the list of top jewelry places in Iceland. How did that come about? Did you enter a contest? How did they get to know you? Guðbjörg: It was my first prize I got. It was a competition in South Petersburg. The name of it was Spirit of the North, and it was in the year 2000 when I was just starting off my business. That was a great honor for me, to get that award as a young jeweler starting off her own brand. Sharon: Yes, I’m sure it is. Guðbjörg: It helped a lot to get recognized in Iceland. Then I received a design award in Iceland in 2008 for five of my collections. Aurum itself has gotten some awards, for the best jewelry brand in 2000 and ethical brand of the year from the Eluxe awards in 2021. Through the years, we have got some nominations and awards. Sharon: How did you decide to start your emphasis on sustainability in everything you do with the jewelry? Can you tell us about that and how you came to it? Guðbjörg: First, having grown up in Iceland, it’s this sustainable country. From the start, I have only used recycled, refined precious metals. Recently, I thought I would go into lab-grown diamonds because I want to have responsibility in every step of the company. Sharon: So you use lab-grown diamonds? Guðbjörg: Yeah. Also, if you think about Iceland, our production is entirely based on Iceland. Iceland generates 100 percent of its energy from its resources, so there’s no place in Iceland to do that, to pick up things like the packaging. I’ve been using the same packaging from the start. It is a special packaging made from mulberry paper. This is the best paper from the mulberry tree because it does not interfere with the ecosystem, as not a single tree has to be cut down. All the leaves are used while the tree continues to grow. From the start, I wanted to use that. They are making it especially for me. I went to the company in Iceland and found the stone it was made after. The box is modeled after the stone. I picked it myself. Sharon: You have beautiful boxes. They look like rocks. Guðbjörg: Yeah, they look like rocks. Sharon: You can tell, yes. Guðbjörg: Yeah. They are made after the stone I picked myself. Sharon: Oh, wow. Tell us about your clients. Are they all from Iceland? You sell online, so I assume they’re all over the world. Guðbjörg: Yes, I’m selling all over the world. I’ve been lucky through the years; I have these great Icelandic customers that come again and again into the store. It’s an honor to be selling to the U.S. A lot of customers come from the U.S., from Australia. I’m getting more and more from Canada and Europe. We have clients all over the world, also from Asia. I think it’s because people connect with the story I want to tell. Usually when I start to develop my collection, I already have the story behind it, and then I develop the jewelry from there. People connect with it. When they come to us, when they see us and when they come into my store, they can feel it; the atmosphere is just there. Sharon: It seems like all of your jewelry is inspired by the Icelandic environment or things you see. Guðbjörg: Yes, it is. I have been inspired very much by Icelandic nature. You can really see it when you look at my jewelry. My most favorite part is the area where I grew up. I grew up where there is this very tall mountain. I spent my time on the mountain skiing when I was a child, and in the summertime, I spent my time in the countryside. I go there every summer and I get this peace. It’s a small house I’m staying at, with no energy, nothing. It’s just the sea and the mountain and we have a place there. There I get the peace to develop my ideas, and the energy there provides me with creative ideas and space. It’s also the space. It feels like you are alone there. For me, there’s nothing better than losing myself in this wilderness, sensing the beauty and experiencing the forms while lying there. It takes these fantastic shapes, and then I turn them into little treasures. This is mostly where I get my ideas. Of course, I have worked with some museums in Iceland and worked with some artists such as a sculptor. I have made jewelry after her glass sculptures. I have also worked on other ideas, but nature is the most inspiring for me. Sharon: It sounds like your head must be full of ideas because you’re surrounded by such beauty there. I can see how it would be an endless source of inspiration waking up in the countryside. I was just in Iceland and besides your store, I visited the place you mentioned. I will never be able to pronounce it. To somebody like me in Los Angeles, it’s beautiful, but it’s also in the middle of nowhere. Guðbjörg: Yeah, it’s all this nature. Later I noticed, when I started my studies, how influenced I was by my growing up in this place. It was quite isolated when I was living there; not so much now, but at that time it was. Sharon: It still seems fairly remote. That must have been a shock—when you came to Bainbridge Island to study, how was that coming from Iceland? Guðbjörg: That was special because I had gone once after Iceland. I didn’t speak much English, so it was a challenge, but I stayed with a wonderful family that helped me get in world with everything there. It’s a beautiful island so I was lucky. They were really artistic. He was an architect, and they were involved with acting. I went to a Shakespeare play and all that; I saw my first ballet in Seattle. I was excited with the new creative things over there. It was very special coming from such a small town. Sharon: How do you think people who visit, especially from the states, what’s their stereotype of Iceland? People have said to me, “Was there ice all over the ground?” How do people see Iceland? Are they surprised when they talk to you about Iceland when they’re visiting? Guðbjörg: When I went in 1988, 1989 to the U.S., people didn’t know anything about Iceland, but now people have the internet, so they know a lot. I think people know a lot today when they come into the store. Maybe they get surprised when they go out in the countryside to smaller towns and so on, but Reykjavík is very close to our city. Sharon: Yeah, it is. Guðbjörg: With fashion and all, we are really up to date with everything, I would say. Sharon: Iceland’s become the place to visit. Guðbjörg: Yes, it’s a beautiful country. I understand because I want to be in Iceland during the summertime. There’s almost nowhere else I would like to spend my summer because it’s such a beauty. We go fishing and hiking. We do a lot of things here. Sharon: It’s gorgeous. When I looked at it on the map, it was so small. What would your advice be to young jewelers, young designers? To me, it takes a lot of guts to come back to Iceland and say, “I’m going to start my jewelry company.” What would your advice be to people starting out? Guðbjörg: It’s a challenge to do, but when I came back from Denmark, I wanted to show new ideas because I have a lot of jewelry business in Iceland. It’s to believe in yourself. What I have been doing, I always push myself further and develop new ideas. I never stop, actually. I’m always working because I love what I’m doing. I think that’s a big part of it, to like what you are doing. It’s always exciting to my mind, developing a new collection. It takes time. It sometimes takes a year, sometimes two years. Sometimes it has to be sitting on my desk for more than two years, then I get the idea how to work on it further. Sometimes it’s just a short time. It has always been important for me to push myself, to not be stuck in older ideas, to work on new ideas. That’s always exciting. Sharon: I’m always impressed when I meet somebody who has a belief in themselves and the confidence to say, “O.K., I’m going to do this. I realize that are challenges and there are roadblocks, but this is what I want to do,” and push through it. Guðbjörg: Yeah, I enjoy this journey. It has to be amazing, I think, because I wouldn’t be doing anything else other than this. Knowing that when you are 80 years old, that’s special. I think today because people have so many choices, it’s difficult to find what you want. I have three daughters: one is 24, one is 18 and one is eight, and everything is changing. It’s difficult for people to find their passion. I think it’s most difficult to find your passion and work on it. It takes time. Just give it time. Sharon: That’s great advice. Thank you so much for sharing that. It’s been such a pleasure to talk with you. Guðbjörg: You, too. Sharon: I hope our paths will cross again soon. Guðbjörg: You’re always welcome. Sharon: Thank you so much. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for reading. Thank you again! Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 158 Part 2: Choosing the Best Pieces for Your Jewelry Wardrobe | 01 Jun 2022 | 00:26:14 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Nan Summerfield Nan Summerfield joined Doyle New York as Director of the California office in Beverly Hills in 2014. Ms. Summerfield, a GIA Graduate Gemologist, has been in the appraisal and auction business for forty-two years. Nan began her career at the Gemological Institute of America in New York as a Staff Gemologist in the GIA Laboratory and later as an Instructor in the Education Division, before spending thirteen years as a Vice President in the Jewelry Department at Sotheby’s, first in New York, then in Los Angeles. Nan continued to develop and direct Sotheby’s jewelry auctions in Beverly Hills for eight years. For twenty years before joining Doyle, she owned Summerfield’s, a successful firm in Beverly Hills that specialized in buying and selling estate jewelry. Additional Resources: Transcript: After more than four decades working in estate jewelry as a dealer and at auction houses, Nan Summerfield knows a thing or two about how to select the best jewelry. Now Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle, Nan joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the pros and cons of purchasing jewels from the major houses versus lesser-known jewelers; why the auction industry began to court private buyers in the 80s; and when it makes sense to take a risk on an unsigned piece. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Nan Summerfield, Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle. Welcome back.
I wanted to ask you about something you said earlier, when you said that Doyle had decided they wanted to get out there more and get more private clients.
Nan: It was Sotheby’s that wanted that.
Sharon: I’m sorry, Sotheby’s. That’s right. Was it by opening more offices?
Nan: No, at that point, when I had joined Sotheby’s, they’d already done a big expansion worldwide. They were well-established. That was in the early 80s. What they did, and what Bain & Company suggested doing, was to reach out to the private clients and start adding auctions in California again so their private clients could come in. They tried to demystify the process and be more transparent about how it worked and the commission structures, that sort of thing, and to really make a concerted effort. I think that may have been when we started advertising in Town & Country and magazines like that, that were geared toward bringing in the private clients. That’s when it started building, at that point in time.
Sharon: Why private clients? Were they bringing in pieces that were in their safe deposit boxes that you weren’t seeing?
Nan: No, we were actually looking for private clients as buyers. Up until that point, it had been almost exclusively dealers that bought at auction. That’s a whole other thing that was happening at that point. The dealers used to have what they called rings, and they would agree not to bid against each other in the auction. Then following the auction, they would have what they call the knockout, where they’d bid amongst each other and decide who gets what piece and that sort of thing. New York found out about that and outlawed it.
They clamped down on it, but we’d always gotten jewelry from private clients. Most typically, I would say, it had been the estates that had come in and been sold at auction. With the new private clients, we wanted to bring them in as buyers but also as sellers, which they had been, but on a quieter exposure. It was good, but I think it was geared toward bringing the private clients in as buyers.
Sharon: I love the word you used before, which was helping people decide what they wanted to have for their jewelry wardrobe, as opposed to their jewelry collection. I’m still trying to find that elusive definition of what collector is. When you talk about the jewelry wardrobe, can you talk about that? Is it that they have earrings, they have a ring? How do you look at the wardrobe?
Nan: I would say most people typically start with the basics, maybe their engagement ring. They might buy a pair of diamond-studded earrings and maybe get a diamond bracelet along the way. Then they go through life, and they’re making a little more money and have a more sophisticated lifestyle. They start building it as you have your basics in your wardrobe. For example, I had diamonds that go with everything. In my case, I started buying things that were color coordinated. I love blues and greens, so I bought things that with emeralds or sapphires. I love pinks and purples. I have a fabulous Raymond Yard bubblegum 20 carat pink tourmaline ring that I love. I bought that way back in New York a million years ago.
Anyway, with the wardrobe, it really is like getting dressed. What are you going to wear? You want earrings, a necklace, a brooch perhaps, a bracelet and rings. You want things that work together well. With necklaces, we can get a lot of variation with what’s in trend. Right now, we’ve seen a lot of long necklaces. The long Alhambra chains that are Van Cleef or long pendant necklaces have been the trend where we were. Back in the 80s, the collar necklaces were what everybody was wearing. I think we’re going to start moving back into that trend in the next few years, but it’s always changing. Then the trends also change from white metals to yellow metals, and the swing happens in 10 or 15-year cycles. In the jewelry wardrobe, it’s everything from color-coordinating and if gold is in or not.
I also personally have nighttime jewelry, so if I’m going out to an event or black-tie thing, I’ve got platinum and diamonds or colored stone jewelry that’s dressier. Then the daytime jewelry is a little more casual, but it also depends a lot on where you live. It’s building what you personally love and what you’re drawn to. It’s a piece-by-piece adventure, and it’s fun. It really is. It’s exciting when you’ve been looking for the perfect pair of earrings to go with the necklace and bracelet you have, and then you finally find it. It’s fun, and it’s always treasure hunting. If you’re a true collector, I think you never stop collecting.
Sharon: I’d say that’s probably true. It’s interesting, some of the things you said. Yes, your style changes; you become more sophisticated. You say, “Well, that was me 30 years ago, but that’s not me today.”
Nan: Exactly.
Sharon: It’s interesting to think about it more in a wardrobe sense, as opposed to, “I already have a Berlin iron, so I want to add that to my collection.” Actually, my Berlin iron sits in my drawer because I’m afraid to wear it.
Nan: That’s a very rare category too, the Berlin iron. It’s such an interesting segment of history.
Sharon: Yes, some people would probably die, but I don’t mind adjusting or modifying even a signed piece. I want to fit me. I want it to work for me. The next person can decide if they don’t want the soldering I had done. I feel like that’s fine. I don’t give a hell if other people feel that way. It has to fit you, right?
Nan: Absolutely, but if you have to alter a piece, hopefully you can do it in a way where it might be able to be put back together. If you have a necklace you want shorter that has some links come out of it, or rings, which so often need to be sized to be worn, yeah. If you have a good jeweler that does it, then it should be less detrimental.
Sharon: You talked about the fact that you left having your own business as a dealer, which you were in for 20 years.
Nan: 20 years. It was wonderful.
Sharon: Wow! And that things had changed, and that was one of the reasons you thought maybe it was time to go back into the auction house. What changed in that time?
Nan: It was very interesting, because as I mentioned earlier, probably the first 10 or 15 years I had my own business, it was so easy to find jewelry and beautiful things. I used to go to the flea markets, I’d hit all the tradeshows and I had private clients bringing me things all the time. What changed everything was the entrance of the internet right around 2000. In the beginning it was new, and people were still trying to figure out to how to navigate it. Then, probably in the last five to eight years I was in the jewelry business, we started seeing an increase in people doing things online.
You had different platforms. I think eBay was one of the first to start selling things, and then 1stDibs came along. There were various platforms like that, where people started selling their jewelry online as opposed to bringing it to the tradeshows or the antique shows to sell. I think that was when it really started shifting, because we started finding less. When we would travel and go looking for things, whether it was at the flea markets or at the Hillsboro in the Bay Area, the antique shows or the big Miami show, it was just harder to find.
It was an interesting period and I recognized that. Really, the way it happened with Doyle is that they reached out to me. They were interested in opening up a west coast division, and I had worked with the woman that is the head for jewelry for Doyle in New York. She and I had worked together at Sotheby’s, so we had known each other for a long time. They reached out to me to see if I would be interested in opening up the west coast for them. They felt a jewelry person was probably the best direction to go because jewelry has a very broad reach. Everybody has jewelry. Not everybody collects old master paintings or impressionists or antique furniture or silver or whatever, but jewelry tends to cast a pretty wide net with people. Everybody has a mother or a daughter, somebody that has jewelry or loves jewelry. It was very timely that they reached out to me because my business was fine, but I could sense the changes that were happening.
I loved the 13 years I had spent at Sotheby’s. The auction world is really fun and interesting. You have such a huge volume of property that goes through your hands, and you meet the most interesting people that are both buyers and consigners. I find, like what I said before about working for Sotheby’s, is that in the auction houses, generally the specialists are very generous with their knowledge and share it. In the trade, people are very close to the vest, because knowledge equates to money. If you know why something is special, you don’t want to tell somebody else because you might lose your advantage.
Anyway, for all these different reasons, the time was right, so we went back and forth, and I ended up going onboard with Doyle. It started in May or June, I think, and I ended up signing a contract with them in October and haven’t looked back. It’s so much fun, and we’ve had fabulous success on the west coast. It's interesting, because Doyle very much reminds me of the way Sotheby’s used to be. It was like a family. At that point, John Meriam was the Chairman of Sotheby’s, and he was such a wonderful man. Doyle has that same not-corporate feeling you have in so many companies these days, but more of a family that works there. It’s been a wonderful experience; it really has.
Sharon: It sounds like it. You mentioned the office is moving. Doyle’s office in Beverly Hills is moving from the upper floor to a ground floor.
Nan: Yes, we’re very excited. We originally took over my old office that I had in Beverly Hills, and our business has just grown. It was again where the stars aligned. We’d opened a street-front gallery in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York was interested in opening a west coast branch in Beverly Hills on the ground floor. The head of our company had been out looking at colleges with her daughters over Labor Day weekend. They walked around Beverly Hills and noticed that a jewelry store in Beverly Hills had a sign that he was moving, and the space was available. She asked me to take a look at the space, which I did. He was so nice and took me on a whole tour and showed me that it was an enormous, beautifully built-out space. It was a small fortune in rent, but I went back.
As I was walking up to look at his space, there was a space downstairs in our building on Camden Drive, and it was closed. It was a gentlemen’s clothing store, and they had a sign on the door that it was closed. I thought, “Well, let me go peek in the window and see what this space looks like, because this could be good for us.” As I was looking in the window with my hands up on either side of my eyes, one of my old neighbors from when I was on the penthouse floor in our building was walking by, and he said, “Hey, Nan, what’s going on?” I said, “Well, we’ve outgrown our space and we’re exploring options.” He said, “A friend of mine has this place. You need to call him,” and he gave me his telephone number. After I had gone to look at this other space and videotaped it and sent it to New York, I called him up. He was the nicest man, and he told me he wanted to open another store. He had a son that was in New England in a cute little town, and his wife told him that if he was going to open a new store, he would have to get rid of another one. He had been through the pandemic, which had been stressful for everybody, so the space wasn’t even on the market.
I had spoken to our real estate broker, and he had said, “Nan, I’m sorry. I know New York asked you to look. There’s nothing on the ground floor level in the triangle. You’re going to have to go south of Beverly,” which in mind is no go; we only want to be in the triangle. We ended up signing a lease on that space. Another thing that makes it really wonderful is that we are located on Camden Drive, and two doors up from us is Christie’s. There’s Mr. Chow’s, a restaurant, and Sotheby’s is on the other side. So, we’re on auction row for the entire west coast. We’re thrilled about that too, because the auction house is on New Bond Street in England, the way when you’re doing a road trip and all the fast food and gas stations are clustered together. It’s sort of one-stop shopping. It feels like the jewelry district in New York. When you have similar businesses together, it drives business for everybody. So, we’re very excited.
Sharon: That’s great. It sounds exciting. Would a private client bring a piece to you and say, “What do you think about this? What can I get for it at auction?” and then go to Christie’s or Sotheby’s? It seems like people would be walking the street saying, “What does everybody think? How much can I get for it?” What do you think about that?
Nan: Yes, I think that is certainly a part of the equation. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s tend to be geared to try to get the very high-priced items. That leaves a lot of room in the mid-range and below where they won’t handle property. We handle everything, from soup to nuts. We feel like when we’re handling estates or clients, we don’t want to cherry pick their best things and tell them, “You’re on your own.” We try to accommodate our clients, so we have different levels of sale. I think a lot of times it’s about where you feel the most comfortable when you go and meet with different auction houses or specialists. I think it’s a very personal decision for people.
Sharon: How many times a year does Doyle have jewelry auctions on the west coast?
Nan: We were doing jewelry auctions up until the pandemic. When we went into the pandemic, everything changed. We’d already had our May sale put together, photographed and catalogued and everything, when we shut down. It happened so quickly that we were scrambling. We had to ship all the jewelry to New York. At that point, we implemented quite a few changes in how we did auctions going into the pandemic. We recognized that when people are locked in from the pandemic, their only way of communicating with the world was their telephone, their television or their computer. Gone were the days that people could go wandering into a store and buy what they wanted.
So, with that came a number of changes we made. We decided to make smaller sales. We typically had had about seven or eight jewelry auctions a year, and they would run maybe 500 lots for sale. We realized that people were looking at the sales on their phones and they would glaze over at 500 lots. So, we recalibrated it and started doing more auctions but smaller sales, about 200 lots per sale, which is more manageable.
We also implemented another change where we started photographing the jewelry being worn. I will tell you that in the 20 years I had my own business, one of the most frustrating things for me was when I bought at auction. I remember buying a pair of earrings, and when they arrived, they were enormous. I thought they would be the size of not even a quarter. Having a sense of scale when you’re buying online is very important, so we started having our shots photographed on some of our younger staff members—they’re more photogenic—so people would have a sense of scale and could see how big that pendant necklace is, or how the earrings look on the ear or the ring on the hand. That was also very helpful for people to bid online. They got more information and had a better sense of what they would be buying before they had to commit to it.
Now we’re doing auctions more than monthly. We usually run an auction pretty much every month. There are a number of months where we’ll have two or three auctions at different levels.
Sharon: Online or in person?
Nan: The way it’s structured, we have important sales, fine sales and online jewelry sales. The online sales are the less expensive things, group plots generally, things that are under $1,000. There will be some signed pieces. The online sales are handled only online. There’s no public auction that goes on. You can bid on your computer in real time. You can bid up to that time. If you bid on something just before it closes and somebody comes in and outbids you, it gives you another couple of minutes to go back and raise your bid, so it’s structured a little bit differently than our fine and our important sales. The online sales are virtually every month.
The fine and the important sales, now that we’ve come out of the pandemic, we’re doing public exhibitions. We’re doing previews in New York, and we try to do the previews in California as well. Once we open our gallery space, we should be getting all the fine and the important for previews for our California clients.
When people want to bid on the auctions, they have four different ways they can buy. They can come in person to the auction in New York and bid there. They can arrange to telephone bid. If they call us ahead of time, we’ll set it up. On the day of the auction, we’re all roped in on our computers, on Zoom calls, on the phone calling clients saying, “O.K., I’m going to be bidding with you on this lot that’s coming up in four lots,” and then we bidders sit there in the room. They can also leave an absentee written bid saying, “I like this bracelet. The estimate is $3,000-$4,000. I really love it. I’m going to bid up to $4,500.” Then we will bid on their behalf against the competition until there’s no competition, but if they get outbid, they won’t get it.
The last way, which has become so popular, is that people can actually bid on their computers in real time. Once the auction starts, if they go to Doyle.com, at the top there will be a banner that says, “Join the live auction now.” You click that. You can see the auctioneer. You can see the piece of jewelry. You can see the estimate and description, and then you can see if the bids are going. It’s a constantly scrolling thing. An auctioneer will be calling, “Yes, we have a bid at $8,500 from Nan in California. We’ve got a bid at $9,000 in the room” and so forth. So, people have four different ways they get on those sales.
One of the important things that’s good for people to remember when they’re bidding at auction is that, as is the standard in the entire auction business, there is a buyer’s premium. The buyer’s premium is on top of the hammer price it sells for, and it ranges from 25% to 30% depending on the auction house. At Doyle, it’s 26%. It’s really fun. It’s very easy. We also do condition reports on everything so people can see what the quality of the diamonds is, what the size of the ring is, how long the bracelet or the necklace is, how much it weighs. We give a lot of information on our auctions, which gives people more confidence in buying things. If they have extra questions, they can reach out to us and we will follow up with them and give them more detail.
Sharon: There are a lot of different ways, a lot of different perspectives. It is very interesting. Some of the reasons that seem to excite you make me say, “Forget it,” just because things are coming at you from so many different ways: online, in the room, on the phone, whatever.
Nan: I can see how it would seem overwhelming, but I would say choose the avenue that’s most comfortable for you. Just focus on that and let the rest of it fall away.
Sharon: That’s good advice. I know it’s the way of the world in terms of auctions, and the world has changed so much. Even as we’re talking, the jewelry world has changed so much.
Nan: Dramatically, it has.
Sharon: Thank you so much, Nan, for being with us today and telling us about it. I’ve learned a lot and it’s been really enjoyable. Thank you so much.
Nan: Sharon, thank you so much for inviting me. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.
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| Episode 158 Part 1: Choosing the Best Pieces for Your Jewelry Wardrobe | 30 May 2022 | 00:30:31 | |
What you’ll learn in this episode:
About Nan Summerfield Nan Summerfield joined Doyle New York as Director of the California office in Beverly Hills in 2014. Ms. Summerfield, a GIA Graduate Gemologist, has been in the appraisal and auction business for forty-two years. Nan began her career at the Gemological Institute of America in New York as a Staff Gemologist in the GIA Laboratory and later as an Instructor in the Education Division, before spending thirteen years as a Vice President in the Jewelry Department at Sotheby’s, first in New York, then in Los Angeles. Nan continued to develop and direct Sotheby’s jewelry auctions in Beverly Hills for eight years. For twenty years before joining Doyle, she owned Summerfield’s, a successful firm in Beverly Hills that specialized in buying and selling estate jewelry. Additional Resources: Transcript: After more than four decades working in estate jewelry as a dealer and at auction houses, Nan Summerfield knows a thing or two about how to select the best jewelry. Now Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle, Nan joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the pros and cons of purchasing jewels from the major houses versus lesser-known jewelers; why the auction industry began to court private buyers in the 80s; and when it makes sense to take a risk on an unsigned piece. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Nan Summerfield, Senior Vice President of California Operations for the auction house Doyle. Nan has extensive jewelry experience, having worked with several major auction houses. In addition, for 20 years she had her business as a jewelry dealer specializing in estate jewelry. We’ll hear all about her own jewelry journey today. Nan, welcome to the program. Nan: Thank you, Sharon. It’s great to be here. Sharon: So glad to connect with you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. You’ve covered a lot of ground. Were you a child when you started liking it? How did you get into the jewelry profession? Nan: I think I came out of the womb loving jewelry. When I was little girl, my favorite thing was to go through my grandmother’s jewelry and try things on and look at them. I was that child that when I would be out with my parents at a mall, I’d see a jewelry store and I’d put my fingerprints and nose print on the windows to look at all the jewelry. I think I was just born loving jewelry from the day I came out of the womb. Sharon: Did you know you were going to go into jewelry? Did you think about making it? Did you want to sell it? Did you just want to be around it? To have it? Nan: It’s so funny. I knew I always loved it, but I came back from a six-month backpack trip in Europe, and I had been invited to a Fourth of July party up at Lake Tahoe, where I was from. At that party, I was playing with a necklace my brother had given me with a small gold coin on it. This man that was at the party looked at me, and he said, “I sell jewelry like that. How would you like to work for me?” I thought, “Oh, my god, I love jewelry. I could actually work in it?” That’s how it all started. He turned out to be kind of flaky, but I credit him with giving me the introduction into the business. Sharon: Flakey is a word. It’s serendipitous. Nan: It certainly is. He veered off in other directions shortly after I got my introduction into the business, but I credit him with opening that door for me. Sharon: From there, how did you segue into auction houses? Nan: First, I had my own business for about a year. Through some people I met, I found out about the GIA. I applied and went to the GIA. When I finished, they offered me a job working for them in New York or Los Angeles. I thought, “Gosh, I’ve never been to New York. I’ve read all these books, like ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘The Great Gatsby.’” It sounded so romantic to me. I thought if I didn’t have a job, I wouldn’t move to New York, but if I had a job, why not? So, I moved back to New York, and I worked in the lab doing certificates on diamonds for a year. Then they asked me to be a permanent instructor in the education department. I switched over to education and taught the residence program, the one-week classes. I feel very lucky because these strange coincidences happened that have led me to where I am. I had a colleague I was working with. He was a friend of mine, and he had taught the new head of the jewelry department all of these things. He had taken a one-week course with him at the GIA. He really liked my friend, and he offered him a job to work for Sotheby’s. But my friend had fallen in love with this girl in California, so he was moving out there. He said to this gentleman, “I can’t, but I’ve got the girl for you,” and he gave him my name and number. Then it all started. I went for an interview, they hired me, and I ended up spending eight years in New York with Sotheby’s. Then I wanted to move back to California, so things finally worked out well. Part of what was happening at Sotheby’s at that time was that Al Taubman had hired Bain & Company, the consulting firm, to look at the jewelry department worldwide and see how they could develop it and bring in more private clients. That was very interesting point in auction, too, the shift from dealers to embracing private clients. One of the recommendations Bain had come back with was that we start doing jewelry auctions in California again. We had them before, in 1981. In the crash of 1981, they closed down the big gallery we had. Anyway, I spent eight years with Sotheby’s in California. It was a wonderful opportunity, and I had very generous people that I worked with. One of the things I found was that when I worked at the GIA, I had a number of friends that went out and worked for estate jewelry dealers in the business, but they were very close to the vest about the information they had. They didn’t share why something was special, what made it important, what to look for. I was extremely fortunate because the other specialists that I worked with in New York were very generous with their knowledge. This is when the first reproductions of Deco and Edwardian were coming out, and they taught me so much. I’ll be forever grateful for them being so generous with their knowledge. That’s a long answer to your question. Sharon: It’s an interesting answer. I’m still on the fact that you had your own business for a year before you started doing anything else. What were you doing? Were you buying and selling jewelry? Nan: Yeah, exactly. The gentleman that first brought me into the business, he took me to a sort of buying center of jewelry, a building that had multiple levels and booths of people selling. I would go down and choose the things I liked and then bring them back to Tahoe, and then I would sell them to my friends. Sharon: Wow! When you were talking about the auction houses, I never thought about the fact that some are selling to dealers, and some are more about developing private clients. Can you talk a little bit about that? Nan: Yes, absolutely. Initially, when I first started there, it was almost entirely dealers that bought at auction. Another thing I look back on now is that when we would have viewings and dealers would be looking at the jewelry, it didn’t matter to them if something was Cartier or Van Cleef or Bulgari or any of the big names. It was, “Oh, that’s nice,” but they never paid a premium or saw it in a substantially more valuable way. That’s something that has dramatically changed from when I started to where I am today. As you know, anything that’s signed by the big houses is going to bring a big premium today. During that period we had some private buyers, if I remember, but it was almost entirely dealers that were the buyers, and as I said, that started shifting. I think Al Taubman purchased Sotheby’s in the mid-80s, and that’s when he implemented these changes to make jewelry in the auction world more accessible to private clients and to demystify it. It was an interesting period. It was very transitional and very much a growth period in the auction world. Sharon: Was Al Taubman a catalyst in terms of moving everybody to look at signed pieces? Did he care? What happened there? Nan: No, that really wasn’t his thing. He was all about getting the auction world out to private clients worldwide, which is where we are today. It’s an enormous part of the auction market and the competition that we get. He was not focused on signed jewelry per se. I think that’s something that happened—really, I started seeing that more in the 90s and going into the 2000s. It’s been an upward trajectory since then with the really good names and the values they’re bringing. Sharon: What do you think changed? What propelled that? What are your thoughts about why names are more important today? Nan: I think it’s a combination of things. The really fine ones, Cartier, Van Cleef, Bulgari, Buccellati, David Webb, all of those have a level of quality you don’t always see in other jewelry companies. I will know, for example, if I get a pair of earrings that are Van Cleef, they will always sit beautifully on the ear. A lot of jewelry that’s not signed may look good, but it won’t lay as well on a woman when she wears it, whether it’s earrings or a necklace. It's that thoughtful design in the jewelry. What I really think happened was that over the last couple of decades, we’ve had a real push toward brand recognition. I even think back to Calvin Klein and “Back to the Future.” There was that scene where she said, “Oh, your name’s Calvin,” because he had underpants that had a Calvin logo on them. I think that’s when it really started, and it’s not just in jewelry that name brands have become important. It’s also in purses. You look at what Chanel purses sell for, or Birkin bags and how desirable they are. I think we’re much more focused on that these days, and that’s happened over the last couple of decades. With jewelry, there’s also the estate jewelry. When I first got into the business, it was kind of up-and-coming. I think there are two jewelers that are credited with making estate jewelry desirable, and that would be Fred Leighton in New York and Frances Klein in Beverly Hills. Both of those people have died, but they were really the early ones that brought estate jewelry into the realm of being desirable and not old-fashioned or your grandmother’s jewelry that you had to remake before you could wear it. You didn’t want to be dated in our parents’ day and age. Both of them also, I think, have a lot of signed jewelry. It’s part of educating the clients. As more people learned about jewelry and learned about how fine a piece of Cartier jewelry is when compared with one that’s not signed or made by an inferior jeweler, the appreciation for it and the desire for the signed pieces have grown exponentially. Sharon: That’s interesting. I think I’ll pay more attention to how a piece lays. There are lot of times when I’m on Instagram and a post will say, “I think it’s a Mauboussin. It’s not signed, but I can tell by the way it’s done.” Do you think there’s an amount of unsigned stuff out there that’s quality? Nan: What I will say is that over the years, I’ve had pieces of jewelry come through my hands from clients that were not signed but had been purchased from the house, whether it was a Cartier or Tiffany or Van Cleef. With almost every jeweler, at some point in time, there have been pieces that went through that were not signed. But I always encourage my clients, especially when they purchased it from that house, to go back and ask them to sign it. In general, most pieces are signed, but one of the things we have to be careful of these days is that as the value has gone up on the signed pieces, so have the fake signatures. For example, I remember this beautiful Art Deco bracelet that passed through my hands when I had my own business. It came back a year or two later signed Cartier, and I 100% know that bracelet was not signed Cartier when I saw it the first time. That’s one of the things we have to be very, very careful about. A lot of the big jewelry houses will do certificates of authentication that you have to pay for. That’s become something that is more desirable as well, because nobody wants to buy a fake or something that’s signed that’s not correct. Sharon: That’s upsetting, yes. In my early days I bought a beautiful tennis bracelet. I still love it. The cut of the stones is a little different; some were different shapes. I was told it was Art Deco, and I know that’s what they thought I wanted to hear. When I brought it in later to an appraiser, he said they never cut the stones this way until the 80s. So, I thought, “O.K.” Nan: I know. What I will say, to insert this on the signed pieces conversation, is that there are certain jewelers that don’t always have their pieces signed. One of them is Paul Flato, who was a wonderful designer who was big with the Hollywood crowd. Verdura actually worked with Paul Flato before he went off on his own. There are a lot of really wonderful Flato pieces out there that are not signed. In those situations, we try to check. For example, I’ll check with the woman who wrote the book on Paul Flato. I’ll send her a picture and say, “Do you think this is Flato?” They have references to the original drawings that Flato made on the pieces. So, there are times that happens. You can have a piece that’s by an important jeweler that is not signed. Sharon: Are there things in the jewelry you recognize that make you think it’s a Flato, even though it’s not signed? Nan: Yeah, Flato was a wonderful designer; he made fabulous things. He had certain types of things you’ll see a lot. He did things that were made with leaves that have wonderful curling edges, or very whimsical things he would do. He made a lot of custom things for people that had a great sense of humor to them. Probably the best place to get a sense of what his designs look like is the Paul Flato book that Elizabeth Irvine Bray wrote, so I would suggest that. He has a very distinctive style. His things were beautifully made and really dramatic. Years ago, I owned a big brooch and earrings that belonged to Ginger Rogers that were so wonderful. He was a creative genius. Sharon: That’s interesting, because the first thing I thought of when you said Flato was the leaf and very large, over-the-top things. Just gorgeous, but it was the leaf that came to mind first, as when you said Calvin Klein, the first thing that came to mind was Brooke Shields. Nan: Exactly, the beginning of the brand. I want my brand. Sharon: Exactly, yeah. I’m dating myself, but O.K. I’m impressed that you left the auction house when you had been there a long time, seven or eight years, and that you went out on your own. To me, it’s such a huge step. What was the catalyst for that? Nan: I actually ended up spending 13 years with Sotheby’s, five with them in New York and eight in Beverly Hills. I really felt like if I was going to go out and open my own business, I needed to do it when I was still young enough and had the energy to do it. I was very fortunate when I went on my own that I had so many clients that came and brought me jewelry they wanted to sell. They came to me for help buying things or finding things they wanted to build in their personal jewelry wardrobe. It was a really wonderful time. Also timing-wise, it was a fantastic time to enter as a dealer into the business. The big shows, the Las Vegas Show, which is typically in the beginning of June, end of May, and then the big Original Miami Beach Antique Jewelry and Watch Show, which is normally held in late January or early February every year, those two shows were fantastic in the day. They changed a lot, but I can remember when I first started doing the shows, there would be two days of setup at the Miami Show, and we would go and walk the show. We wouldn’t even set up our jewelry because on the setup days, a lot of the dealers would go and buy from each other. They would find out what new things had come in, and they would scoop them up before the private clients came in for the show. We would do that, canvas the whole show and buy these wonderful things. There were things where people didn’t understand how great they were, how important they were. They didn’t price them at their value. We would buy and sell so much on the setup days. Before setup even ended, we would make our expenses, our airfare, our hotel, our booth rent, the showcases, the safe. Everything would be paid for, and then we’d start the show, and we’d be selling more and meeting more clients. It was a really wonderful time to go off on my own. It was fantastic. Sharon: Is it because of the brands, whether it’s Cartier or whatever, that the dealers weren’t educated, that they just didn’t know? They didn’t have your background, so they didn’t recognize things? How did you get these things? How could you identify them when they didn’t know? Nan: I think part of it is that I was so fortunate to have seen so much jewelry over those 13 years at Sotheby’s and to have worked with people that were very generous with their knowledge. I can remember going to a show up in Hillsboro, which is south of San Francisco. They used to do that show three times a year. I remember I was up there with a colleague at the time, and I looked down into this tiny, little case at their booth. They had a lot of other things, but there was a Buccellati bracelet in there. I remember asking, “How much do you want for the bracelet?” They didn’t even know it was Buccellati. They wanted such a low price for it. I think that’s the thing; a lot of people did not know, and it was before the internet had really come into play. Unless people tracked auction catalogues, there wasn’t an easy way to know what prices were for things on the secondary market. I think we benefitted from the exposure I’d had in understanding what was good and how to look for signatures. Certain jewelers, when they sign things, their signatures are more obscure. Some are easily found and read, but others are like Van Cleef. A lot of their old things are so hard to see. Once you find them, you go, “Oh, it is Van Cleef. I knew it.” Sharon: I know when I’ve gone to some of the shows and expressed interest in a piece, the dealer would say, “Oh, I just bought that two days ago.” I was like, “Everybody’s supposed to come to the show and be able to look at things.” Nan: That’s exactly what happened. They probably bought it during setup day. They just bought it two days ago, and you were the next person to come along and find it. Sharon: Do you think knowledge had increased? I know dealers don’t have any interest in doing research, and then there are dealers that research every little thing. Do you think knowledge in general has increased, or just interest? Some like to research and some don’t. Nan: I would say in general that knowledge of jewelers has increased with the internet. I will say that probably the most helpful thing I’ve had, next to working with very knowledgeable people that shared their knowledge, was the library. I started buying books when I was working at the GIA and never stopped, and I used my library. I have library books, all jewelry-related, about all the different makers and periods. That in itself is a huge source of information, but a lot of information in the books in my library is not accessible online. So, it’s a combination of things. You can find fascinating articles that people have written on jewelers or periods or movements. The other way to develop your knowledge is by accessing the various books that have been written on whatever given topic you’re interested in. I think that knowledge is more readily accessible, and I think that that’s helped a lot as well. The more people know and understand, the more comfortable they are buying that piece of jewelry or being drawn to a certain period or knowing what to look for or why a piece is special. Sharon: What about European makers that aren’t as known here? Are there some that come to mind or that you recognize? Who would they be? Nan: There are a lot of wonderful makers that are not as known. The brands that everybody knows are the Cartier, Van Cleef, Tiffany, Bulgari, David Webb, Buccellati, those kinds of names. But there are a lot of fantastic, wonderfully talented makers that came out of Europe, and many of them were French. One of the things I was taught early on is that the French make—how would I put this? They put detail and time and thought into the pieces they make. For example, something in the United States might be made so you see all the beauty on the part that faces forward. With the French, they’ll think about the back side of it, too, or the edges. It’ll be as beautiful on the back as it is on the front, and it’s a more thoughtfully made piece. The French are wonderful workmen and artisans. That’s one of the things that’s a big plus. When I’m going over a piece of jewelry and doing all the work on it, I’m always happy to see a French mark. An interesting thing to know about France is that they will not allow anything that’s less than 18 karat to be sold. When you have marks on it—it’s the eagle’s head mark, which is a gold French mark—it guarantees it’s at least 18 karat or higher. Then they have the platinum marks. If somebody wants to import their jewelry from out of the country into France and sell it, they also have to be 18 karat. In those cases, they get the stamp we call the hibou, which is like an owl that says it was sold in France but it was imported into France. The French have always had a higher level of expectation with jewelers, and their pieces in general tend to be really wonderful. Anything that’s French is a plus in the jewelry world. Sharon: Today it seems like, when I’m looking Instagram, there are so many one-off jewelers. They’re not just one-off pieces, but they’re Danish or German or people you’ve never heard of. They can be American. Not to knock anybody, but is it the design that’s more known as opposed to whether the earrings sit on the ear? Nan: It’s a combination of those things. At that end of the day, we as women are the ones that are going to be wearing the jewelry, and if it doesn’t look good on them, that’s not going to carry it forward in a positive way. I would say the French designs are excellent. Generally, they’re designed to sit well, but honestly, quite often you’ll find that with the good but less-known jewelers, the ones that are not signed or the no-name jewelers, you still need to check. One thing I have noticed over the years is in the Art Deco period, for example in the United States, the jewelry was so beautiful, and there was so much money in the roaring twenties that no expense was spared in the workmanship and the quality of the stones that were used. But quite often over the years, I’ve seen these Art Deco and 1930s bracelets out of France that are set with very imperfect diamonds, old cuts, low-quality stones, often off-color, and it’s interesting. I think Europe must have been in a different economic place than the United States when these were manufactured. Sharon: That’s interesting. I was interested in Catalan Art Deco, and the dealers would emphasize to me that the stones weren’t of the highest quality. They were used in the piece, but they weren’t the highest quality. Nan: Yeah, there you go. Sharon: I’m interested in the overall piece. If the stone isn’t the highest caliber, all right, as long as it makes the piece. Nan: Exactly. If it speaks to you and you love it, that’s the most important thing. Sharon: Do you agree with the dealers or the people in the jewelry business who say, “It doesn’t matter if it’s signed if you love it”? What are your thoughts about that? Nan: I think good jewelry is good jewelry. I don’t think it has to be signed to be a fabulous piece. The signature certainly helps in the overall value, and people are more aware of that these days than they used to be, but there’s a lot of beautiful, beautifully made, beautifully designed pieces out there that are not signed. I’m a big believer in buying what you love. Don’t buy what you’re lukewarm about. Buy what you really love, and try everything on to make sure it sits the way you want and that you like it. If you really love it, I believe in paying more than you think it’s worth. In my opinion, the pieces I love the most I paid so much for, more than I wanted to. I’ve forgotten about many, but to this day I still love and cherish those pieces. | |||