At first glance, this necklace catches the light and each individual bead shimmers like a mirror. Upon closer inspection, however, it is discovered that instead of beads, it is made up of small square pieces of medical pill blister packages, each loosely woven on thin, metal wire. This necklace was designed by Verena Sieber-Fuchs, a...
René Lalique was one of the most versatile jewelry artists working in the twentieth century, in that he was equally successful in two periods of design history. Lalique created both luxurious one-off pieces for fashionable ladies during the art nouveau period and also successfully created mass-produced glass pieces in the style moderne. Lauded during the...
This bracelet by British jewelry designer Peter Chang is wholly entertaining, as much fun to look at as to wear. The bright green wheel features ten evenly distributed projections or terminals, each of which ends in a differently shaped and colored finial. The bright green body is punctuated with blue dots of varying sizes and...
This brooch, designed by artist Carol Summers, is a three-dimensional representation of the big, bold wood-cut prints for which he was famous. Summers, who passed away on October 27th, 2016, trained at Bard College and the Art Students League in New York City, where he studied painting and printmaking. This brooch is unique in that...
Lea Stein’s laminated celluloid jewelry designs joyously celebrate the materiality of plastic. Fusing together thin sheets of brightly colored acetate to create elaborately layered designs—seen here in this bracelet from 1970—Stein and her husband, Ferdinand Steinberger, developed this process in the late 1960s. Steinberger was a chemist who invented this new chemical process, which allowed...
Talk by Amy Peterson, cofounder and CEO, and Patricia Caldwell, production manager, of the Detroit-based jewelry design studio Rebel Nell. Conversation to follow with Cynthia E. Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design and curator of the exhibition By the People: Designing a Better America.
Amy Peterson, a Detroit lawyer, envisioned Rebel Nell—an enterprise that creates unique jewelry from scrap pieces of graffiti—after moving next to one of Detroit’s shelters. While walking her dog, she began talking to women she met, and after listening to their stories and challenges, Peterson started a social enterprise with a vision to help women...
Ever wonder what your jewelry does when you aren’t wearing it? This brooch by the British art jeweler and goldsmith Kevin Coates demonstrates Coates grappling with this question. When Coates creates a piece of jewelry he often also designs an elaborate and beautiful housing for it to live in when not being worn, allowing the...
Founded in 1837, Tiffany & Co. by the late 19th century had become one of the leading manufacturers and retailers in America of fine jewelry and luxury items. This small catalog lists items on display from Tiffany & Co. in the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building at the Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. The...
