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From time to time, we are able to offer special collections of museum
quality jewelry. These are pieces that meet certain specifications
of design, rarity and quality. To use this page, please click on the "descriptions" link for descriptions and more photographs. Each row of five pieces has it's own page. For inquiries, please email marbeth1@aol.com If you wish to see only gold jewelry, please visit moderngoldjewelry.html |
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| M A R Y K R E T S I N G E R (1915 - 2001) | |||||
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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. |
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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. By the 1950s, she was already an established member of the American modernist crafts movement. She exhibited in 1955 in the Walker Art Center's Contemporary Jewelry Exhibit on Paper. Throughout her career she continued to exhibit, winning many awards and receiving invitations to exhibit in over eighty museum and gallery shows. 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) _______________________________________________________________________
(You can click on the pictures below to enlarge
and please see further photographs and descriptions on the descriptions
pages) |
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C A R O L Y
N M O R R I S B A C H Below, are photographs of a collection of stunning, hand fabricated pieces by contemporary artist/jeweler Carolyn Morris Bach. Her work is at once ancient, modern, and whimsical and, at the same time, perfectly designed and crafted in precious gold and fine silver with hand carved stone, ivory, and bone. Her stones are carefully and powerfully integrated into her designs. Bach's pieces seem to whisper secrets about the spiritual mysteries of the natural world. When you own a piece created by Carolyn Morris Bach, you have a treasure to forever feel, wear, and ponder. Carolyn Morris
Bach is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and her work is
in prestigious museums including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Massachusetts; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
; the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts; and the Racine Art
Museum, Racine, Wisconsin |
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W I N F I E L D F I N E
A R T I N J E W E L R Y I'm very pleased to present a collection of rare jewelry by Winfield Fine Art in Jewelry, a gallery/workshop located in Greenwich Village during the 1940s. Winfield Fine Art in Jewelry was the brainchild of Armand Winfield (1919 - 2009), who developed one of the first commercial, mass production embedding processes using crystal clear acrylics. All the pieces in the collection were made between 1946-1948. Art students from New York City's prestigious Cooper Union were brought together to produce original signed miniature works of art which were encased in plastics and sold as jewelry. The jewelry became very popular and feature stories about Winfield Fine Art appeared in a 1947 issue of Cosmopolitan, the New Yorker, Plastics Magazine, the Newark Evening News, the Village Chatter, and the European and Australian press. Bert Parks interviewed Armand Winfield on radio and an article about the jewelry appeared in Vogue Magazine. The business began in 1946 and closed in 1948.
Twenty-one pieces of Mr.
Winfield's work were archived into the Smithsonian Institution's
National Design Museum in 2000 and his jewelry and a photograph of him
are displayed at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. See:
"Winfield Fine
Art in Jewelry, a fusion of art and scientific discovery," MODERN
SILVER magazine, February/March, 2003.
www.modernsilver.com/winfieldfineart.htm
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W I N F R E D C L A R K S H A W (1921 - 1994) All the pieces below were handmade by Winifred Clark Shaw and are from one single collection. Winifred Clark Shaw attended Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where, in 1953, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree with a major in metalsmithing and a minor in weaving. Her large body of work demonstrates her refined sense of color and material in both linear and three-dimensional design. Of particular interest are her pieces that combine original weavings with metals. Shaw participated in many important national mid-20th century exhibits including Midwest Designer Craftsmen (1954), The Chicago Art Institute; American Jewelry Today (1963), Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania; Craftsmen of the Eastern States (1963), Worcester, Massachusetts; Jewelry 64 (1964), State University College, Plattsburgh, New York; Decorative Arts Exhibition (1964), Wichita, Kansas; as well as many juried exhibitions in New Hampshire and a retrospective exhibit at the University of New Hampshire in 1987. Her work was also included in the League of New Hampshire exhibit at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Winifred Clark Shaw taught jewelry making and weaving at the University of New Hampshire for thirty-three years beginning in 1954. Source: Win's Best: The Jewelry and Weaving of Winifred Clark Shaw, The University of New Hampshire, 1987 |
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G E OR G E
B R O O K S Born in 1925 in Brno, the Czech Republic, George Brooks spent his first five years in that small village before moving to Montreal, Canada where, in 1948, he began his remarkable career with a five year apprenticeship at the well-known Canadian jewelers, Henry Birks & Sons. He became a master platinum worker and goldsmith, apprenticing later with Georges Delrue, a contemporary jewelry designer of that time. In 1957 he opened his own store in Montreal and was one of the first trained professional jewelers to break away from the then-popular Art Deco style to experiment with what would later be called the "modernist style." He was also innovative in techniques of hammering and doming metal, with which he achieved fluid, three-dimensional effects in 18k gold and platinum. Over the following 30 or more years, Brooks opened two successful jewelry stores in Santa Barbara, California, selling exclusively his own completely hand-forged jewelry. Brooks became one of the world's foremost authorities on opal, purchasing opals and gemstones during semiannual buying trips to Sri Lanka, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Zimbabwe. George's customers know him for his excellent craftsmanship and unique designs. His work has been accepted into many permanent museum collections around the world, including the Smithsonian Institute's Renwick Gallery, located in Washington D.C. This biography comes from http://www.georgebrooksjewelry.com/about.html |
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| M A R Y R E N K (b. 1921) | |||||
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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. |
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| S A M P A T A N I A | |||||
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Sam Patania, as the third generation of
Patania artisans, has followed very much in the footsteps of his father
and grandfather before him. In 1969, at the age of ten, he began his
apprenticeship at the Tucson Thunderbird Shop. For the next decade, his
after-school training would be a major part of his daily routine. But
Sam followed his own path, too, having sought instruction outside the
traditions of the shop. In his 1977-78 school year, Sam enrolled in a
jewelry-making course at Catalina High School where he....explored new
approaches to his craft. In 1979, he became a full-time employee of the
Thunderbird Shop. Feeding his need for knowledge he
would attend the University of Arizona in 1988-89, where he met jewelry
instructor Michael Croft. Sam tries to keep within the traditions with which he was raised, honoring his father and grandfather, and other artisans as well, including well-known silver designer William Spratling. Sam’s personal philosophy as a jewelry artist reflects this aesthetic: “A desire to learn drives my work,” he says. “New techniques, symmetry, asymmetry, materials—all are areas which continue to drive my designs. Color captures my eye and the thought of the beautiful women who will wear my work keeps me inspired.” Sam’s talents shine like his one-of-a-kind
creations, such as the one which is currently in the permanent jewelry
collection of the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.. And his work is
also on display at the old Thunderbird Shop—now renamed “Patania
Sterling Silver Originals,” to honor the creative spirit that has
earmarked this family’s heritage for three generations. The
strength and character of the Patania name and tradition show no sign of
weakening—doubtlessly, this is a family whose standard of excellence
will survive and thrive well into both the future and history alike.
(taken directly from "Patania:
70 Years of Excellence, Part II" by Shari Watson Miller,
MODERN SILVER magazine, April - May, 2001)
(See also,
"An Interview with Sam Patania" by Marbeth Schon, MODERN SILVER
magazine, Fall/Winter 2009) and read Sam's blog at
http://patania-jewelry.ganoksin.com/blogs/ |
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| A N T O N I O P I N E D A ( 1919 - 2009 | |||||
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Antonio Pineda was a master silversmith--one of the finest to emerge from
the Mexican Silver Renaissance of the 20th Century. The best way
to tell his story is through these fine interviews at MODERN SILVER
magazine:
http://www.modernsilver.com/antoniointerview.html |
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| _______________________________________________________________________ | |||||
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W I L L I A M
S P R A T L I N G
(1900 - 1967)
"William Spratling has been called by many 'a Renaissance Man.' Throughout Mexico he is acknowledged as "The Father of Mexican Silver." Certainly the town of Taxco and its economy would be vastly different without the initiative and creativity of this man. He complemented its valuable historic past with a new vitality and spirit which recognized the importance of the indigenous culture. The artistic and economic foundation he established continues to flourish today." (This is taken from a biography of William Spratling by Phyllis Goddard. Please see the whole biography at http://www.spratlingsilver.com/spratling.htm) Also read: http://www.modernsilver.com/Williamspratlinghallmarks.htm |
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B O B
W I N S T O N (1915 - 2003) Bob Winston was one of the first jewelers to experiment with the lost-wax method of casting by centrifuge. In 1942 he began teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland where the process became an integral part of his program, influencing jewelers such as Irena Brynner, Robert Dhaemers and others. In 1959 Winston left the California College of Arts and Crafts and moved to Arizona in order to concentrate on his own career as a designer/craftsmen, though he did teach in the Extended Education Department at one of Arizona's three universities. In 1970 he wrote a text book on the lost wax casting technique titled Castaway. Winston's cast "jewelry designs are fluid, highly sculptural and textured forms that appear to carved and molded directly in metal. Each piece is unique; he never cast in multiples." As well as exhibiting at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1948 and 1955, his work was exhibited at the Seligman Gallery in New York City and the Raymond and Raymond Gallery in San Francisco. (taken from my book, Form & Function, American Modernist Jewelry, 1940 - 1970, p.225) His work is an integral part of the best collections of American modernist jewelry from the mid 20th century and has been shown in major jewelry exhibits. |
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