Brooch pendant of mokume gane, Maube pearl and diamond by Fullerton-Bahr

John Bahr and Lynda Fullerton like to learn new things. Having designed jewelry together since 1990, they had the basics down a while ago. But they get bored easily so they developed an annual tradition. As each year draws to a close, they put their heads together and come up with something both want to learn.

For creative spark, they invite artist friends over for a Christmas gathering at their home in San Gregorio, CA, and ask them to bring something they’re working on. “Everybody is exploring new stuff,” Fullerton says. “You get inspiration from your friends.”

Once they agree on the next challenge, the couple sets about mastering it. Over the years they’ve tried roller printing, press forming, stone cutting, colored patinas and enameling.

At the end of 1999, they decided to try mokume gane. They had no idea what they were getting into. In retrospect, that was probably a blessing.

Mokume gane (pronounced “mukoomay gahnay”), the Japanese technique of stacking and fusing different metals, is far more complicated than it appears. As many as 20-40 layers are fused into a solid sheet in a kiln, then cooled, hammered to a quarter-inch sheet, and sliced. The process is repeated to get the desired patterns, which range from stripes to a swirling wood grain, depending how you slice it. (Cutting straight down produces stripes; diagonal cuts produce a wood grain; and drilling holes creates circular patterns.)

The trickiest step, they discovered, is the firing. Every metal has a different melting temperature and the Fullerton-Bahrs use several, including green and white gold, palladium and shakudo (a gold-copper alloy).

“When you use as many different metals as we do, the problem is that a eutectic alloy can form,” Fullerton says. “Two metals come together and form a new alloy that may melt at a lower temperature than either of the two original metals. We’ve ruined a few pieces that way.”

A year after they took it on, they had made considerable progress and mokume gane had become an integral part of their jewelry, but they were a long way from mastery. So they decided to put the annual tradition on hold for a while. They had found, for them, the ultimate challenge and an endless source of fascination.

“We will probably study this to our graves,” Fullerton says, laughing. “We got addicted to it. We’re still developing the technique, and probably always will be.”

To see more of their mokume gane creations, visit the Fullerton-Bahr Jewelry site.

                          

Gloria Lieberman, director of fine jewelry at Skinners in Boston, had not seen the jewelry Picasso made for Dora Maar when we spoke before the 1998 auction, though she has sold plenty of the jewelry he designed with François Hugo in the ’50s and ’60s. “I don’t consider Picasso a jewelry maker,” she said. “The body of his work with Hugo is small elements of his larger works, executed as jewelry by someone else. This jewelry sounds similar but more personal. I think it will interest an art collector looking for something personal.”

“If a collector comes in with a wife and fails to get a painting, these are cheaper. It will be a way to compensate,” Blondeau told me with a laugh some time before the auction.

Their predictions proved correct. Buyers tended to be art collectors who “followed Modern Art into the domain of jewelry,” Serret said. “Most weren’t especially interested in the jewelry market but were buying Picasso’s work in the form of jewelry.”

Dora Maar with Green Fingernails, oil on canvas, by Pablo Picasso, 1936

Serret did not believe the success of the sale would affect the value of the jewelry Picasso designed later with Hugo. The latter “was produced as limited editions; it was not created by the hand of the artist,” Serret said. “I consider it totally separate from the jewelry made for Dora Maar.”

Most of that jewelry dates from 1936 to 1939, the first three years of the affair between Picasso and Maar. The only written reference to the jewelry that the Paris experts could find appears in the biography Picasso and Dora, written by James Lord, an American who lived in Paris after World War II and became friends of both.

According to Lord, the first piece of jewelry Picasso made for Maar was a compensation for a lost gold and agate ring with a cabochon ruby for which she had persuaded him to trade a watercolor. During a stroll along the Pont Neuf, the couple got into an argument. “He reproached her for having prevailed on him to give a work of art in exchange for a bauble,” Lord writes, “where upon Dora took the ring from her finger and threw it into the Seine, silencing her lover. She later regretted having been so impulsive. A few months afterwards, the riverbed at that spot was being dredged, and for several days Dora haunted the spot, in hopes of recovering her ring. But it was lost for good. And through Picasso’s fault. . . . So she kept at him until he created a ring of his own design for her.”

It seems Lord was unaware of the many other pieces of jewelry Picasso made for Maar. At one point she showed Lord a silver cigarette lighter engraved with her portrait, one of the double-profiles typical of Picasso in the late ’30s. Dora called it “one of her most treasured possessions.” When he replied that it was beautiful, she said: “That’s not it’s only value.”

“Picasso had never been a great giver of gifts,” Lord writes. “Of paintings and drawings, yes, but those, though precious, were things that poured inevitably from his fingers and required no demonstrative consideration of the . . . recipient.”

Pablo and Dora sitting in front of one of her paintings, 1940s

“I never asked him for anything,” Maar asserted. “And I prize the cigarette lighter because it cost him at least a visit to the Place Vendome.” Apparently, the framed-portrait jewelry required at least that much trouble, since Picasso used premade jewelry.

Lord describes a mahogany bookcase with glass doors that Maar called her “private museum.” In it were objects made by Picasso, including a bronze hand and bust of Dora, matchboxes with drawings on them, several large books (illustrated by Picasso) and a “Picassian menagerie of animals and birds made of wood, paper, plaster, metal” – no doubt among the objects auctioned that year.

“He doesn’t know how to stop making things,” she told Lord when he first saw this collection in 1953. “It must be terrible for him. Of course, it’s terrible for us as well.”

Amulets carved in beach stones by Picasso, c. 1936-1939

When Picasso left her for Françoise Gilot, Maar was distraught and suffered what some biographers describe as a nervous breakdown. Gilot  bore Picasso two children, including Paloma, who became a jewelry designer herself. Yet some of the jewelry found in Maar’s apartment proves she and Picasso remained in contact long after their breakup. A couple pieces were presented by Picasso on her birthday in the 1950s, containing portraits made of her in the ’30s.

Picasso had many lovers, but most have died. If any more of his handmade jewelry exists, it’s probably in the possession of Gilot, who is still living in France. In 1964, she published My Life with Picasso, an account of her years with the artist, which inspired the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso. No mention was made of jewelry made for her by the artist.

Sans Titre by Dora Maar, 1934 (Photo: Jacques Faujour/Centre Georges Pompidou)

Judging from the contents of the estate and from Lord’s biography, there was a lot more to Maar than the discarded “weeping woman” of the famous portraits who is often portrayed as pining away for decades in a shrine to her ex-lover. The striking photographs in her estate prove how she earned her reputation as a talented photographer among the Surrealists. When she met Picasso, she was running with the likes of André Breton and Man Ray. Picasso influenced her to begin painting, which she continued to do in her studio/apartment until her death – but it was her connection to her celebrity lover that made her famous.

Despite the mass of Picassos in her possession when she died, Maar sold several of his works over the years and was known as a shrewd negotiator. In the 1950s, Lord recalls her asking: “How much do you think they’re worth, the Picassos on my walls?”

“Half a million dollars,” he guessed. “Maybe more.”

“Much more,” she said, gesturing emphatically with her cigarette holder, scattering ash. “And I’ll tell you why. Because they’re mine. On the walls of a gallery maybe, they’re worth only half a million. On the walls of Picasso’s mistress, they’re worth a premium, the premium of history.”

No one is arguing that point now. Five hundred people crowded into a room in Paris in 1998, a few months after Maar’s death, hoping to capture a little of that history. The art, mementos, and surprising cache of jewelry brought $37 million.

Dora and the Minotaur, painted by Picasso not long after they met in 1936

And if there were any doubts as to the depth and complexity of Picasso’s feelings for Maar, her estate did much to dispel them. “The whole lesson of this sale was that the image we had of Dora as the tortured one Picasso dumped – it just can’t be true,” said Amy Sloane-Pinel who helped promote the sale from her Paris office. “The image of Dora and the Minotaur was monumental and incredibly heated sexually,” she adds, referring to a colored drawing in the sale of a nude Maar being overwhelmed by a man with the head of a bull, an image Picasso often used to depict himself. “Just to look at it, it’s hard to believe she didn’t count for him. That this was a two-way relationship is obvious and has become clear in this body of work.

“The big surprise of this collection was the level of intimacy and affection and intellectual respect he obviously had for her which he didn’t have with his other muses. The perpetual question is: was he meanest to the one he loved most? And the answer is theirs. It will go to the grave with them.”

Related posts:

Alexander Calder’s jewelry: going mobile

Salvador Dali: bejeweled surrealism

Jewelry by famous artists

Related product: (Purchasing through links on this site does not cost you more, but it does put a few pennies toward the continuation of this blog.)

                          

Portrait of Dora Maar in ink and color pencil by Picasso set in carved yellow gold ring and polychrome enamel band, c. 1936-1939

At the auction, a chrome-metal watch with a brass plaque engraved with a portrait of Maar sold for about $63,000 – 19 times its estimated value of $3,300. A portrait ring in a metal frame of lattice flower work, estimated at about $16,500, sold for almost $108,000. An oval brooch with a colored pencil portrait of Maar fetched nearly $70,000. Not bad for quick sketches set in existing mounts.

“The sentimental value was what drove the prices up,” said jewelry expert Philippe Serret, who valued the jewelry for auction. He insists the estimates were not low, but that there were no precedents for mementos made by Picasso for a lover.

It was Maar’s face, with her intense dark eyes, regal nose, and rounded chin, that the artist was painting obsessively when he began distorting images, a style now considered his trademark. Her face appeared over and over during his prolific War years, looking increasingly tortured as the romance progressed. “Dora has always been a weeping woman for me,” Picasso would say, according to Pierre Cabanne in Pablo Picasso: His Life and times, 1977.”For years I painted her in tortured forms, not out of sadism or pleasure. . . . It was Dora’s profound reality.”

"Dora Maar au foulard" pencil drawing on board by Pablo Picasso, set in large open-worked steel brooch with simulated marcasite border, c. 1936-1939

Most of the jewelry Picasso made for Maar features miniature versions of this distorted portrait, mostly sketched in color pencil and mounted in metal brooches and rings. Picasso did not do any metalwork, merely inserted his drawings into existing jewelry that ranged from gold and enamel to steel with simulated marcasite.

“This was a woman who would not accept conventional jewelry,” says Serret, who cataloged the collection in addition to valuing the jewelry. “These were the only kinds of jewels she would accept.”

It was the more primitive carved amulets that I found most charming. During vacations with Maar along the French Mediterranean, Picasso would collect stones and pottery shards on the beach and engrave images into them with his pocket knife. These engravings were more commonly known among his friends than the miniature framed portraits.

“Ever since the Boisgeloup period, when a new inspiration gave birth to a rich production, he contented himself with making little sculptures, often inspired by lucky finds of bones or pebbles on which he carved classic profiles, heads of horned gods or monsters,” wrote Roland Penrose in Portrait de Picasso, 1956. (“Boisgeloup” was the country estate Picasso bought in 1932, 40 miles from Paris, whose vast grounds and open spaces allowed him to begin seriously exploring sculpture.)

Tête de Faune pendant amulet of engraved soft stone and Femme Qui Pleure engraved terra cotta amulet made by Pablo Picasso for Dora Maar, c. 1937

“I make things on the beach,” Picasso told Penrose. “The pebbles are so beautiful that I feel like carving them all . . . and the sea sculpts them so beautifully, gives them such pure and full shapes, that only a little effort is needed for us to make them into works of art. . . . Some of them suggest heads of women or fauns. . . .” And, of course, Picasso considered himself the true authority on the sea’s artistic intentions.  Two young boys once brought him a pebble, he said. “They claimed it was the head of a dog until I showed them that in reality it was a typewriter.”

Though a few were actually stone, among the engraved “beach pebbles” in Maar’s stash, most were of terra cotta, some with holes at the top so that she could wear them as amulets. A few were engraved with her portraits or the head of a satyr. Estimated between $1,000 and $8,300, they sold for eight times that on average. A portrait of Maar engraved on a bone amulet sold for $53,000 (estimated at $6,600) and a fawn engraved on terra cotta, estimated at $4,140, brought $34,770….

Continued: Jewelry by Picasso: the secret stash of Dora Maar, part 3

Related posts:

Alexander Calder’s jewelry: going mobile

Salvador Dali: bejeweled surrealism

Jewelry by famous artists

Related product: (Purchasing through links on this site does not cost you more, but it does put a few pennies toward the continuation of this blog.)

                          

Among the 135 pieces of jewelry by famous 20th century artists, you’ll find five by Pablo Picasso, all produced in high-karat gold by François Hugo. Here is one:

Le Grand Faune pendant designed by Pablo Picasso, 1973 (private collection, on display in Picasso to Koons: Artist as Jeweler)

All are recognizably Picasso. None will knock your socks off like Calder Jewelry did a few years ago or Salvador Dali’s jewelry if you visit the Dali Museum in Figueras, Spain. But they do add significantly to the theme of this display: that just about everybody who made famous art in the past century appears to have dabbled in the wearable variety.

There is a less-told story about jewelry by Pablo Picasso, but you won’t find any of it at MAD. It’s the story of the jewelry Picasso made much earlier, in the 1930s, for his lover Dora Maar.

Ady, Marie Cuttoli, her husband, Man Ray, Picasso and Dora Maar, photographed by Man Ray in the South of France, 1937

Maar stashed away the evidence a good thirty years before Picasso collaborated on those limited-edition gold pieces with Hugo. It wasn’t until her death in 1997 that the surprising cache came to light.

Ink and color pencil drawing by Picasso set in frame-shaped pendant for Dora Maar, c. 1936-1939

You might remember the media storm surrounding the auction that followed her death. When appraisers came to Maar’s Paris apartment, they discovered a virtual Picasso museum: nearly 60 drawings, 10 paintings worth millions, a number of photographs Maar made of her lover, his work, and their famous friends, and a slew of mementos.

Among them were a number of brooches, rings, and carved amulets that Picasso made for her during their tumultuous war-time affair. “The jewelry [and mementos] were all over the place, under beds, in old shoeboxes. She kept it up very zealously as a memorial to Picasso,” said Marc Blondeau at the time. Blondeau was founding director of Sotheby’s Paris and helped catalog the items in Maar’s apartment on Rue de Savoie, where she lived during and after her liaison with Picasso.

The auction of Maar’s estate sent Paris into a frenzy, attracting bidding from all over the world. Streets were jammed with traffic as people crowded into Paris. Some 20,000 showed up at the Maison de la Chime where the auction was held. Most people simply wanted a peek at the items for sale, most of which had never been displayed publicly and were likely to disappear into private collections.

Portrait of Dora Maar engraved on brass plate of Juvénia watch inserted in chromium-plated metal ring, c. 1936-1939

Few, if anyone, knew of the extent of this treasure trove, though the portraits and most of the mementos were probably in Maar’s home since she and Picasso were a couple, from 1936 to about 1942. (Picasso’s relationships are difficult to date since he was famous for overlapping them. During his affair with Maar, for example, he was simultaneously involved with Marie-Therese Walter, who had borne him a daughter a few years before he met Maar. Though Maar and Walters rarely crossed paths, they often appear together in Picasso’s art.)

Among the mementos were a brooch, four pendants, and a watch-ring, pre-made jewelry into which Picasso inserted miniature portraits, mostly of Maar. Even experts in Modernist jewelry were unaware until this find that Picasso made jewelry long before his commercial collaborations with jewelry designer François Hugo in the late ’50s and ’60s.

“Many artists – even some of great stature – made jewelry for loved ones, and they were not particularly interesting as jewelry, just interesting historically,” said Toni Greenbaum, an expert in Modernist jewelry. “But just the fact that he made it and that he made it for Dora Maar is very exciting – regardless of what it is and whether it holds together stylistically and aesthetically. Any new discovery like this is a watershed event. There’s no question.”

Among Picasso aficionados, Dora Maar is most famous as the tortured subject of the Weeping Woman portraits, a version of which appears in his masterwork Guernica. Predictably, the media storm touched off  by the sale skimmed over the tiny objects and centered on full-scale works like Crying Woman, a study for Guernica, and Dora Maar Straight On With Green Nails. Those works and the many other fascinating depictions of Maar went for prices close to the estimates, which were in the millions.

The big surprise of the sale was not the paintings, but the smaller items: mementos like postcards, napkin doodles, animals made from tin bottle caps, and especially the jewelry and amulets that were, in many cases, the most intimate expressions of Picasso’s affection. All the jewelry went for prices several times higher than the estimates…

Continued: Jewelry of Picasso, the secret stash of Dora Maar, part 2

Related posts:

Alexander Calder’s jewelry: going mobile

Salvador Dali: bejeweled surrealism

Jewelry by famous artists

Related product: (Purchasing through links on this site does not cost you more, but it does put a few pennies toward the continuation of this blog.)

                          

What do you do when silver (or even recycled aluminum) is all you or your customers can afford? You get creative, of course! Here’s a sample of the silver jewels on offer at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver for the 3-day 4th of July weekend. (Check out the full schedule of my favorite craft shows in the U.S.)

Top to bottom:

All Fall Down necklace of sterling silver by Roné Prinz (roneprinz.com)

Stacked Saucer pendant of sterling silver and 18kt gold by Melle Finelli (mellefinellijewelry.com)

Square Swirl necklace and earrings of layered aluminum squares set into resin (with just a touch of silver) by Melissa Stiles (stubbornworks.com)

Necklace of sterling and copper by Steff Korsage (steffkjewelry.com)

Avocado necklace of sterling silver by Hilary Hachey (hilaryhachey.com)

Enigma bracelet of oxidized and polished sterling, 14k, 18k, white sapphire and pearls by Carol Fugmann.

Related posts:

Best craft shows in the U.S. (2011 calendar with links)

Hilary Hachey: random patterns in sterling

Jewelry for a blue moon

NICHE award winning jewelry

Enamel jewelry: palette of glass

Click on “jewelry maker” above and you’ll find plenty more!

                          

Silver lacquer box, 2011, of silver, gold powder and wood by Shinya Yamamura (ippodogallery.com)

I admit it. I’m obsessed with jewelry boxes. This is partly because my own jewelry is overflowing my current jewelry box, stashed in various velvet boxes and satin bags and getting harder and harder to find.

But I also love the idea of beautiful containers for beautiful ornaments. In a perfect world, I would have a whole collection of jewelry boxes and each would hold the jewelry that belongs in it.

In this century, wood became the standard material for jewelry boxes – and there are many stunning examples. But wood is only one option. Asprey & Garrard sell suede-lined portable jewelry cases of stamped calfskin. Bronze and carved stone containers have been around since antiquity.

What would you guess this jewelry box was made from?

Always Blooming copper jewelry box, 2008, by Ryu-Hee Kim with separate containers for each season

I bet “copper” wasn’t your first guess. Ryu-Hee Kim was an art student at Indiana University when she created this wonderful box from copper, with separate containers designed to represent all four seasons. It was intended to hold “special jewelry relating to each season.”

Gemstone has a rich history as jewelry containers go. Master lapidaries during the Renaissance carved vessels called Prunkgefasse— literally, pride- or magnificence-containers—from rare crystals from the Alps. In the 1920s, Cartier made Egyptian- and Chinese-inspired vanity cases embellished with coral, lapis, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires.

Containers carved of translucent alabaster date to antiquity. The bible even mentions them. Here’s a more recent example:

Alabaster containers designed and carved by Susan Zalkind (alabaster.net)

Can you think of a better place to store floral-theme jewelry – or a more luscious gift box to present a special piece? No one can capture the delicate beauty of a rose like Susan Zalkind, and she does it in alabaster, of all things. The containers she carves with husband Paul Hawkins come from stone they mine themselves, and range from sleek containers inlaid with fossil fish to Susan’s specialty: milky white, semi-translucent containers adorned with hand-carved flowers.

Each flower takes hundreds of hours to carve and their delicate petals look so real, the couple keeps them under glass at craftshows. “People try to smell them,” Susan says. “Old ladies come up and pinch them.”

Hexagonal intarsia box by Nicolai Medvedev of malachite, quartz, sugilite, turquoise, fossilized dinosaur bone, and cuprite. Interior of purpleheart, walnut, cherry wood, picture agate and 18kt gold (northamericangemcarvers.com)

Like the finest Fabergé objects, Nicolai Medvedev’s intarsia boxes are painstakingly handcrafted from high-karat gold, opal, amethyst, and what the Victorians referred to as hardstone: sugilite, malachite, lapis and azurite. Each 18kt gold hinge and clasp is hand-fabricated, each stone carefully shaped. Open a lid, and a jasper landscape appears beneath.

But the fascination of these boxes are their mosaic surfaces. Raised in Russia and trained at the Art Institute of Moscow, Medvedev is a master of intarsia, the labor-intensive lapidary art that flourished in western Europe during the 18th century. The geometric patterns he favors were inspired by the carpets of his homeland, Ashkhabad, Turkmenia, a Russian city near Iran, by the inlay in Middle Asian jewelry, and by the Fabergé he first saw at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Related posts:

Handcrafted wood jewelry boxes

Antique Chinese hair ornaments

More work by featured artists:

Shinya Yamamura

Susan Zalkind

Nicolai Medvedev

                          

She uses a combination of techniques and eco-friendly materials, with an emphasis on texture and movement. She also donates a percentage of all sales to charities such as the Komen Foundation.

How did you get involved in Reiki and how do you apply it to your jewelry designs?

When the sister of a friend found out she had leukemia, she asked for one of my necklaces and I decided to research healing stones to help her. I began cleansing my art jewelry, using sound (bells) and smudging – burning herbs and placing the stone or metal in direct contact with the smoke.

Reiki is more a process that I use after the piece is made. But being an artist opens me up to the Universe through the sheer act of creating. So in a sense, I apply a type of cleansing while I’m working. Applying Reiki after the piece is completed solidifies the healing process, at least for me.

Can you give me an example of a piece designed  with healing stones?

Waterfall (left), a collaborative piece I designed with wood turner Ed Kelle, combining his gorgeous textured, reclaimed walnut with a number of healing stones. Blue topaz helps with clarity and concentration. Labradorite protects one’s aura. Blue quartz produces a naturally balanced energy field. Apatite helps with healing, communicating and balancing energy. Smoky quartz disperses negative patterns. Aquamarine encourages the innate ability to always be prepared. And silver attracts and retains the qualities of the gemstones.

How do the other art forms and materials you work with affect your jewelry?

Sometimes a stone will spark a design – its matrix, color or shape. Sometimes it’s a material I want to work with – cement, wood or metal tubing – that brings forth the design. I prefer to use textures and materials that work with and against one another: dry wood against a shiny, “wet” stone, against cold metal. I enjoy juxtapositions.

My jewelry is formed from play and experimentation.  Each new piece becomes a bit more complex as I explore and learn.

How important is sustainability and eco-friendly material to your brand?

Extremely.  I can’t very well offer healing jewelry if collecting the materials I use causes harm to our environment or others. I make sure the wood is sustainable (re-used). I mainly purchase metals that have been recycled and I’m always dipping into my metal clippings. With the price of metal these days, I’m sure that more jewelers are re-using their scraps.

Fair Trade and “conscious” gems are harder to come by. There are few companies who can state that their gems come from mines they monitor. I buy opals from a family who owns a mine in Ethiopia and cabochons from either the mines themselves or people who cut the stones and have extensive knowledge of their origins.

If you walk into a bead store or buy online, you have no idea where the stones came from and who is mining them, how the miners are being treated or how well they’re paid. I try to be as knowledgeable as possible about the materials I use.

How does your background in fashion merchandising impact your jewelry?

I have the unusual ability to not only design but also merchandise my line. When I create a piece I take into account the amount of materials used, material prices, number of pieces in a vignette,  length of time to create, and current retail jewelry pricing.

But it really comes down to creating. If I’m feeling a particular way about the design of a piece, sometimes I throw my merchandising hat out the window and just enjoy myself.  There is a balance between the free flow of design and the merchandiser in me and I try to allow them to live together peacefully.

I recently launched Open Studio, Creative Mentoring so that I can guide other artists who want to better understand the wholesale market and how to cross into that business territory.

For more of Andrea’s creations, visit Andrea Rosenfeld Designs.

                          

Two Pod pendant of oxidized sterling and pearl by Barbara Bayne (ArtfulHome.com)

Barbara Bayne’s jewelry is often dark and organic, like something dug from the earth. Perhaps this has something to do with her years of living and designing in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, where she got her inspiration on daily strolls through the woods with her yellow Lab.

Bayne relocated to Havre de Grace, Maryland, not long ago, and the brighter look of satin-finished sterling and gold has reappeared in her jewelry, But it still has the distinct flavor of pods picked up along a woodland trail.

Bayne has been practicing die forming since she was an art student two decades ago. She worked for a jeweler who specialized in die forming, then did her undergraduate thesis on the technique.

“I’ve tried other fabrication methods over the years, but I always come back to die forming,” says Bayne. “It’s the easiest thing to sell, to tell you the truth.”

Her forms have become more organic over the years, and she has picked up a couple Niche awards for her necklaces of stacked and textured sterling forms that resemble the stones you find washed up on a riverbank.

Triple Crecsent Moon sterling die-formed pendant by Barbara Bayne ($275, artfulhome.com)

Bayne often cuts her forms in half in order to piece them together in different ways. “They’re hollow and very light,” she says, “and they feel smooth, like you want to pick them up and put them in your pocket.”

18k gold and sterling die-formed pendant with pearl by Barbara Bayne ($460, ArtfulHome.com)

If you look closely, her forms have textured patterns, are often pierced and sometimes embellished with pearls and bits of gold. To achieve the patterned surfaces, Bayne textures the metal sheet first, using a hammer or roller printing, before placing rubber over it and compressing it in a hydraulic press. The rubber pushes the silver in to create what she calls “a puff.” In some cases, she creates double-sided beads by soldering two half puffs that look the same on both sides.

“Working with die-formed pieces is like doing small-scale sculpture,” Bayne says. “Somehow I’m better able to design with these rounded forms. I’ve tried more conventional methods of making jewelry but it never feels like a good design to me. I end up changing it back, making new shapes and moving forward with the die forming instead.”

Die-forming tip for jewelry makers: “When you cut a piece from a metal sheet to be die formed, always cut it a quarter inch larger than the hole in the die.”

You can find more of Barbara’s jewelry on Artful Home and, in July, at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair. Contact her directly at baynemetal[at]hotmail.com.

                          

Platinum and diamond open-work ring by Alex Sepkus (alexsepkus.com)

Not all designers work individually with couples to customize wedding rings, but sometimes galleries that represent those designers will serve as liaison. This allows designers who prefer to work independently to benefit from the demand for customized wedding rings and for couples to end up with a favorite designer’s work as a wedding ring, possibly tweaked slightly to taste or even using supplied stones.

My own ring was made with four diamonds from an eternity band my husband’s grandmother wore. I love the fact that my sisters-in-law all wear rings set with stones from that same ring. It seems to me that in the best world, marriage is about more than just the union of two people, it’s also about a union of families. We wrote our vows to reflect that. Why shouldn’t our wedding rings?

I also like that even though the diamonds match, each of our rings is unique. I had mine channel-set in a simple, modern setting. One of my sisters-in-law had hers designed by a jeweler who owns a gallery on Cape Cod. Hers is delicate and feminine, which suits her.

Queen Ring of iron, platinum, 18k gold and purple sapphire by Pat Flynn (PatFlynnInc.com)

If you spot a wedding ring you like in a gallery that specializes in studio jewelry, it’s worth asking if the designer makes custom rings. Even designers like Todd Reed and Alex Sepkus will often design around supplied stones.

Not all designers and studio jewelers are open to custom work, however. If you really love Pat Flynn’s jewelry, for example, you’ll probably have to settle for a ring he’s already made. You can rest assured it will be unique.

Flynn prefers to let galleries handle his ring orders. Because his rings often combine diamonds and precious metals with wrought iron, they appeal to men as well as women, and many buy them as wedding bands.

Occasionally, a fan will talk him into designing a custom ring, using supplied stones, but he often regrets taking those commissions. “Guiding clients in the right direction takes a certain skill and a certain confidence, the ability to tell people what you want to make and then convince them that’s what they want,” he says. “I’m not really good at that so I shy away. I prefer building work for myself, sending it to galleries and letting them put in out in the world.”

Ring fabricated from iron, 18k gold and moonstone by Pat Flynn (patflynninc.com)

He does occasionally give in to a request from friends, even though he usually sweats it out. “Frequently, the piece ends up being an amazing thing. I’m working with materials I don’t normally work with and that can turn into something quite remarkable, with a different scale and presence. It’s nice to push yourself sometimes, just give it a go and see what happens.”

He recently designed wedding rings for a friend and his wife that turned out beautifully, and everyone was happy. “It was a very pleasant experience,” Flynn says. “I have friends and clients who have worn my rings for a really long time and that’s a special thing.”

Best bet for couples who don’t happen to be close personal friends of the artist? Order rings through Twist, an online gallery that represents Flynn’s work, along with Cathy Waterman, Lisa Jenks, and a lot of other talented designers.

Related posts:

Weddings rings reinvented: hands-on collaborations

Wedding rings reinvented: customizing for couples (Jacob Albee)

Wedding rings reinvented: customized by Todd Reed

Wedding rings reinvented: recycling gold jewelry (Marne Ryan)

Pat Flynn: diamonds and nails

Todd Reed: reinventing diamond jewelry

                          

Bracelets of silver, 22k & 14k gold, drusy agate, moonstone and diamonds by Birgit Kupke-Peyla (courtesy of the artist)

“In order to get his attention, I told him I designed jewelry too—which was, at the time, a complete lie,” she says.

When he asked to see her designs, she scurried home and drew some up. She was studying art so knew how to draw and found it surprisingly easy to conjure up some intriguing jewelry.

Her new friend was impressed and invited her to work on her designs in his studio. He became her first teacher.

Kupke-Peyla’s jewelry combines antiqued sterling with 22kt gold bimetal, imprinting each with contrasting patterns. Her designs have a Japanese influence but also a distorted geometry that’s almost Dali-esque: diagonal bars tilting over warped circles and squares, decorated with stripes or polka dots of fused metal.

Brooch of silver, 22k & 14k gold, and aquamarine by Birgit Kupke-Peyla (courtesy of the artist)

She went on to study jewelry-making in college but rejected the apprenticeship program. “The heirarchy that exists between student and master was not for me,” she says. After working for a while in the trade, she emigrated in 1990 and set up shop in Monterrey, California.

For the next decade, she sold her jewelry at art shows while teaching jewelry-making as an adjunct professor. “I was going in two different directions with my work,” she recalls. “That sounds good theoretically but it meant that I didn’t do either one very well.”

About ten years ago, she was invited to enter a piece in an exhibition and dropped everything to work on one show-stopping necklace. “My pride kicked in,” she says. “I had always focused on making a profit on my jewelry but this had to be really special. I went at it with a reckless abandon of time and money.”

Bracelet of silver, 22k & 14k gold and Petersite by Birgit Kupke-Peyla (courtesy of the artist)

That necklace became the lynch pin for the distinctive jewelry she makes today: a repetition of bars soldered onto mixed metals with contrasting stripes—sterling overlaid on gold and gold on sterling—layer upon layer of pattern and geometric form.

Necklace of sterling, 22k & 14k gold, moonstone and diamond by Birgit Kupke-Peyla (courtesy of the artist)

“I’ve always been very grid-oriented,” she says. “And very shape-oriented. I tend to connect to strong, quiet shapes.”

Her impressive technique can be traced back to Germany but Kupke-Peyla credits an American wholesale rep for guiding her path as an artist. “She warned me to avoid copying anything else out there. She said it was crucial that I find my own signature,” says Kupke-Peyla.

“That was very good advice. There are a lot of people out there who lean too heavily on the work of others. We all see and absorb things and it filters into our work, but attempting to have your own signature is very important.”

One day someone mentioned seeing something that looked like her work. “I knew then that I’d achieved my goal,” she says. “I had a recognizable signature.”

You can find more of Birgit’s jewelry on her website and Facebook fan page.