|
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
HOME |
MID
20TH CENTURY |
CONTEMPORARY |
MEXICAN |
NATIVE |
SCANDINAVIAN |
CHER FOX |
GREAT |
ART DECO |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BAKELITE |
MODERN |
20TH & 21ST |
MODERN |
SPECIAL
|
MODERN |
JEWELRY |
LINKS |
SEARCH |
SECURE |
|
Visit
us on facebook
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
Though I've collected and sold mostly silver jewelry over the years, there are some
incredibly beautiful pieces in gold that have recently been added to my
web site. I hope you will enjoy viewing this special collection of
gold jewelry. To use this page, please click on the "descriptions" link for descriptions and more photographs. For inquiries, please email marbeth1@aol.com |
|||||||||
| T I F F A N Y | |||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
G O L D, P L A T I N U
M, D I A M O N D S, P R E C I O U S,
S T O N E S From a Wichita, Kansas estate, these exquisite, superbly crafted pins are fit for a princess. They come with detailed appraisals. |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
| A beautiful handmade 14K gold ring with turquoise, diamonds and ruby. | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||
| The 14K gold and diamond piece below is artist-made, but not signed. | |||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
| E D W I E N E R (1918-1991) | |||||||||
|
Ed Wiener was one of the most well-loved and respected modernist jewelers of his day. Though almost entirely self-taught, he possessed a magnificent appreciation of form, line, and color together with an amazing ability to uniquely apply the ideas and principles of modernism to his life's work. His work is featured in every
major book on American mid 20th century studio jewelry. Biographies of Paul Lobel and
photographs of his work can be found in both of my books,
Modernist Jewelry, 1930-1960, The Wearable Art Movement and Form &
Function, American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970 and his work
was included in the exhibit "American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 -
1970" at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, 2008. Please see
MODERN SILVER magazine archives: |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
| M A R Y K R E T S I N G E R (1915 - 2001) | |||||||||
|
This collection was created by Mary Kretsinger over a period of forty
years for her dear friend and mentor, Josephine Wallace. The
two women corresponded about the process often, and challenged each other
with the kind of creative energy that produces great art. The collection was exhibited at The Wichita Center for the Arts from November 12, 2008 to January 4, 2009. This collection has never before been offered for sale. It consists of over twenty handmade pieces of jewelry by Mary Kretsinger in gold, silver, brass, ivory, and enamels. Each ingeniously designed piece is a one-of-a-kind work of art. The excellent quality and magnificent craftsmanship of this jewelry rivals anything I've seen before. Kansas native, Mary Kretsinger (1915-2001) was on one of the most
respected, experimental enamellists of her generation. She
received a master's degree in art history and design at the State
University of Iowa and then continued her art studies at Columbia
University in New York and at the Craft Student's League with Adda
Husted-Andersen. After teaching art in elementary schools, intermediate schools and colleges in Arizona, Iowa, and Kansas, she became an Associate Professor of crafts and design at Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University). In the 1960s she became a full time artist and became successful through gallery representation, patrons, and commissioned work. "Her earliest jewelry was primarily done in brass, formatted in ribbons of metal in maze-like configurations with jagged edges, or flat metal pieces that were hammered, gouged and fused, creating rugged moonscape-like surfaces. Later she tamed some of the wildness with more subtle nuances, preferring to work in fine silver and 18k or 24k gold." She was a master enamellist, especially in the technique of cloisonné. "Her colors are rich and powerful....She used jewel-toned enamels in small irregular shapes, floating independently in luminous backgrounds of silver-gray, gold or pearl white....." Kretsinger's jewelry "reflects a playful wit, containing surprise elements in the design; pendants, bracelet and rings may have double and triple hinges, often hiding some clever treatment on the back surface or may have convertible parts and removable pieces that serve dual purposes. " (From Form & Function, American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970 by Marbeth Schon, biography of Mary Kretsinger by Sheila Pamfiloff) |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
| M A R Y R E N K (1921 - 2012) | |||||||||
|
This piece by merry renk is a rare and exquisite 14k yellow gold wedding crown with thirty-five Australian opals titled "James Love Peacock" merry renk (one of my very favorite American studio jewelers) has played a very important role in the American studio jewelry movement since the 1950s. In the late 1940s, she studied with Laszlo Maholy-Nagy in Chicago, where she opened a gallery called "750 Studio." She began working with wire, forming simple shapes into designs for jewelry. In 1948, she moved to California where she worked full time making jewelry. She is well-known for work in enamels and interlocking forms. In 1974, renk received a National Endowment of the Arts Craftsmen Award for her work with plique-a-jour enameling. She had solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1954, The M.H. De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in 1971, The Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of History and Technology, Washington D.C. in 1971, and a retrospective at the California Crafts Museum in Palo Alto in 1981. More information about merry renk and photographs of her work can be found in both of my books, Modernist Jewelry,1930-1960, The Wearable Art Movement and Form & Function, American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970 and her work was included in the exhibit "American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970" at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, 2008. |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
| A R T S M I T H | |||||||||
|
Art Smith (1917-1982) was a New York silversmith who's African American
heritage influenced his sculptural jewelry forms. More than any other
modernist jeweler of his day, Art Smith was concerned with ornamenting
the human form. His primitive-inspired, biomorphic constructions can
only be truly understood in relation to the body. "A piece of jewelry,
he said, "is a whatisit? until you relate it to the body...Like line,
form and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the
basic inspirations in creating form...(the question is) not how do
bracelets go, but what can be done with an arm?" Information from my book, Modernist Jewelry, The Wearable Art Movement. |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||
| B E T T Y C O O K E | |||||||||
|
Betty Cooke has been designing and creating her one-of-a-kind pieces since
the 1940s. She has been widely recognized and has won many prizes for
her work. She exhibited at the 1951 "Alumni Exhibition,Textiles,
Ceramics, Metalwork" at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1955 and 1959 at
the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and she was given a retrospective at
the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1995. I interviewed Betty
Cooke at her shop in Baltimore in 2001. You can read that interview at
http://www.modernsilver.com/BETTYCOOKE.htm She is also featured in my books, Modernist Jewelry 1930-1960, The Wearable Art Movement and Form & Function, American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970 and her work was included in the exhibit "American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970" at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, 2008. See American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970, MODERN SILVER magazine, Winter, 2008-2009. |
|||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
| I R E N A B R Y N N E R | |||||||||
|
Irena Brynner, (1917 - 2002) was a
skilled sculptor, painter,
musician and, most importantly, one of the most celebrated American
jewelers of the mid 20th century. She came to the United States in
1946, to San Francisco where she first made jeweler and began showing
her work at the San Francisco Open Air Art Festivals and nationally in
exhibits such as "Contemporary Jewelry" at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis in 1955. In 1957 Brynner set up a studio and gallery in New York City where she soon became recognized through articles in major craft magazines and a one-woman exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. When she died, in 2002 her work was in museums throughout the world including the Smithsonian, the Louvre and the Hermitage. These earrings are pictured in my books "Modernist Jewelry, 1930 - 1960, The Wearable Art Movement" and "Form and Function, American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970." |
|||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
| B J O R N W E C K S T R O M | |||||||||
|
Bjorn Weckstrom is an internationally recognized
sculptor/jeweler. He won the Lunning Prize in 1968. His "sculptural
cufflinks and rings play with volumes and surfaces, alternating the
light reflections on shiny and matt silver." One of his space series
pieces, a necklace titled "Planetary Valleys" was worn by Princess Leila
in the 1977 "Star Wars" movie. Weckstrom's work has been featured in
museum shows in many countries. (information from European Designer
Jewelry by Ginger Moro)
for more information on Bjorn Weckstrom go to http://www.modernsilver.com/weckstrom.html |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|||||
|
Y U M I U E N O |
|||||||||
|
Yumi Ueno attended Musahshino Art University in Tokyo and later studied
metalsmithing at Barnsdale Art Center in Los Angeles. Her work
has been on exhibition at several prestigious museums and
galleries around the country and is "sought-after by collectors with an
eye for the best in new and upcoming young artists. " Yumi is the recipient of several awards; most notably 'best of show' award at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art at the ACC show in San Francisco. Paul Klee was a big influence on Yumi's developing aesthetic sensibility, and Wendy Ramshaw is the jewelry-artist that she credits as having the most impact on her career and direction as an artist-jeweler. Yumi sees her work as an expression of the mysterious and primeval forces of nature, such as "light, wind, space, and time." In the future Yumi wants to concentrate more on sculpture, a direction to which her unique oeuvre is well suited. (taken from http://www.modernsilver.com/YumiUeno.htm, "Yumi Ueno, Jewelry Artist" by Patrick Kapty, MODERN SILVER magazine, June-July, 2002 . |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
| O T H E R A R T I S T - M A D E J E W E L R Y | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
| G E R M A N | |||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
| S W E D I S H | |||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
