All the jewelry designers listed on this page are members of SilverForum

Mary Lee Hu is a Department chair and professor of metalwork at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is an internationally recognized award-winning artist-jeweler exhibited world-wide in museums and galleries. She is a researcher and historian of Body adornment.

(taken from "Center for Jewelry Studies" brochure, Christie Romero)

Mary Lee Hu has marked her pieces (since the mid '70s)with a stamp of small letters "Hu" and no quality mark.  She says that "occasionally she has not marked a piece when she forgets, or there is not a space of metal large enough to stamp".

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You can reach Susanne  by email at susanne@forma.nuVisit Susanne's site at http://www.forma.nu

Susanne Karlsson marks her pieces: "SUS", a mark for the year the piece was made, and "925"  (on every piece made of silver).

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Georgie Stanford marks his pieces with his initials "GKS" and his name "GKSTANFORD"

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Victoria Post Tillotson has been an avid collector of ethnic and vintage jewelry since her childhood, but only began designing jewelry in 1998.

She is a published scholar, a doctoral candidate in the program in Comparative Literature at the university of Buffalo, full time writer and autograph expert.  In addition, she is a jewelry and metalwork teaching assistant at the School of Visual Arts in New York.  

She resides in New York.

You can email Victoria at victoria@modvictoria.com.

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Cathy Ruland is a studio jeweler living in Waveland, Mississippi. She studied studio art and jewelry design at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. She finds inspirations for her designs everywhere "from something as simple as a fish skeleton, or the way different shapes work to compliment or balance each other". Cathy says that "jewelry has the ability to lift the human spirit.....it gives enjoyment and pleasure and is a statement about who we are and what are interests are. " Her goal as a jeweler is to always create to the best of her ability something that appeases her need to create, but, at the same time, gives pleasure to others.

You can email Cathy through her husband at: areed@conv1.nrlssc.navy.mil

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Richard Whitehouse  was trained at the famous Victoria Jewellery School in Birmingham, England. He now has a workshop in East Anglia.

He finds great satisfaction in making small and complex items such as jewellery using pierced, fabricated and decorative effects cut and formed from silver as well as large and impressive pieces. He likes working in silver because of it's wonderful working qualities, and can be fashioned so that it's highly reflective surface can be made to catch light in all kinds of different ways.

He makes jewellery and silverware to order. There is also usually a selection of work to look at.

He comes from a family with artistic links. His father was a metalworker and his grandfather was a silversmith and well known Scottish painter. His wife is also an artist. He has three children. They now live in the countryside in Constable County

.Richard Whitehouse

Hallmarks are from left to right: Richard's makers mark  "RMW" (Each one of these is unique as the Assay Office will not allow copies or duplication of marks by different makers), the quality mark which is the lion passant (This is a voluntary mark), the fineness mark (in this case "925" silver), the town mark (the Leopards head for London) the date letter, and finally the Millennium mark ( this is voluntary and only available from 1st January this year until 31st December next year).

visit Richard's site at http://home.clara.net/rw

 student jewelers

Patrick Kapty has been in the business of selling vintage jewelry for about 10 years, and a collector for almost 25.  He is the owner of MAD JEWELRY, a collection of American studio, Mexican modernist, Scandinavian modern, and others from around the world.  Mad Jewelry also features whimsical and wonderful vintage plastic jewelry, and unusual antique jewelry from as far back as the early Victorian/late Georgian eras. Patrick lives in Garden Grove, California, and is the co-moderator of SilverForum. He is a certified gemologist through Santiago Canyon College in Orange, California.

For the past eight months he has been attending jewelry-making classes at Santa Ana College studying underunder Frank Molnar, a multi-talented/multimedia artist/sculptor/jeweler and part-time instructor. Patrick decided to take jewelry making to better understand the construction processes involved, to have a better appreciation for hand made pieces, and to be able to differentiate construction methods.