February 2012

Gallery owners are always trying to think of ways to present the best and most imaginative shows and they are not always successful. But I think the San Francisco gallery Velvet da Vinci run by Mike Holmes and Elizabeth Shypertt came up with a really clever one. They found a way to work with a few carefully chosen contemporary jewelers in conjunction with an exhibition currently showing at the Oakland Museum called Space, Light and Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta.  De Patta was a mid-century jeweler well known both regionally and nationally for her innovative designs.

Susan Cummins: What inspired you to do this exhibit?

 Velvet da Vinci: The Oakland Museum of California is having a large exhibition of Margaret De Patta’s jewelry and we wanted a way to celebrate that show and find a connection to contemporary makers. We were able to purchase many of De Patta’s unused stones and beach pebbles from her estate (thanks Martha Bielawski!) including stones cut by her lapidary collaborator, Francis Sperisen. We were excited to find De Patta’s drawings of unexecuted designs in the folded papers containing some of the stones. This created an opportunity to change the nature of the show so that it became more of a collaborative project between today’s artists and Margaret’s ideas from 50 years ago.
more...

Museums collect lots of things and in the past 10 years or so a number of big jewelry collections have gone into museums in the United States. Helen Drutt contributed hers to MFA Houston, Daphne Farago added hers in the MFA Boston and Donna Schneier gave hers to the Metropolitan amongst others. Those big contributions to big museums set their collecting on a specific course depending on the original vision of the donated collection. There are a number of smaller museums building their collections from a smaller base of contributions who get to determine their own course. The Tacoma Art Museum in the state of Washington is doing just that. The decisions about what should be added and the ways in which the museum is able to acquire them is similar but different than those of the collector. However it seemed to go hand in hand with the Collector’s Choice so here is the first explanation of a Curator’s Choice.

Finding Favorites in the Collection

Thinking about which work in Tacoma Art Museum’s collection of studio art jewelry is my favorite brought back a flood of memories of my first few days at the museum a decade ago. To familiarize myself with the collection, I spent about two weeks looking at the works in the vaults. The art storage was literally kept in bank vaults at our former museum, a 1929 Beaux Arts bank building. One of the strongest memories of these early days was opening the case that contained Initiation Necklace (1977) by Nancy Worden. I was astonished by the visceral impact of this thing that looked like jewelry but that did not have anything in common with what I expected in the collection. more...

Someone had to do it and De Novo Fine Contemporary Jewelry  in Palo Alto California is the AJF member gallery who stepped forward. They host an annual Valentine’s Day exhibition every year, linking jewelry buying with an expression of love. How did jewelry come to signify love? For the answer we look to Wikipedia: ‘Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day is a holiday observed on February 14 honoring one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines").’ Hmm, no mention of jewelry. But reading further on: ‘In the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts in the United States. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.’ So we have the diamond industry to thank for this! I asked Cherry Lebrun if she could tell us some more about her exhibition.

Susan Cummins: How the relationship between Valentines Day and jewelry get established from your perspective?

Cherry Lebrun: Jewelry is often considered to be a romantic gift. Valentine’s Day is a romantic holiday. I think the two fit together very naturally in that Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romance and jewelry is often used a romantic gift. more...

As promised here is Kevin Murray’s response to Bruce Metcalf’s article. What do you think about this? Please respond to blogger@artjewelryforum.org

Beyond the occasional comment on a blog site, it’s rare for someone to put the effort into mounting a well-framed argument to express their disagreement. I’m naturally inclined to defend my point of view, but am grateful for the opportunity to continue an argument that will hopefully strengthen both positions.

Bruce Metcalf responded critically to an article I wrote for AJF about ethical jewelry which was recently reposted on this blog.  The kind of ethics I mentioned ranged from the democratic values involved in the critique of preciousness to Ethical Metalsmiths that recruit practice to environmental sustainability.

Ethics is a particularly sensitive subject for jewelry. Jewelry seems to be a medium we set aside from more weighty matters for the enjoyment of frivolity, irony and dazzlement. Expecting moral rectitude from jewelry can appear like throwing a wet blanket on a rare space of innocent play.

Yet we are aware also of monsters lurking in the woods. Jewelry has a profoundly undemocratic history, serving to prop up the aristocratic and military one percent. Stories about ‘blood diamonds’ suggest the trail human and environmental destruction that leads to breakfast at Tiffany’s. more...