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Gerald Laing (British, born 1936)
Gerald Laing began his career as a British Pop artist in the 1960s and has worked in many media, including paint and sculpture, in both abstract and figural styles. During the 1960′s, Laing was mainly producing shaped abstract paintings which relied on techniques used in car manufacture, including lacquering and electroplating. Three of his works from this period were included in the Jewish Museum of Art’s exhibition entitled “Primary [...] Click here to continue reading.
Sam Kramer (1913-1964)
Now considered the most important post-war Modernist jeweler, Kramer was a Surrealist artist who worked in the biomorphic style. Among the first of the Greenwich Village studio jewelers (est. 1940), Kramer advertised his work as “Fantastic Jewelry for People Who are Slightly Mad”. A self-described rockhound, Kramer studied gemology and developed a fondness for precious stones as well as exotic materials, from Burmese rubies to glass eyes. Kramer’s work emphasizes the [...] Click here to continue reading.
Georg Jensen – Silversmith (Danish, 1866 to 1935)
Georg Jensen was born on August 31, 1866 (the seventh of eight children) in Radvaad, Denmark, north of Copenhagen in the countryside. His father worked as a grinder at a knife factory, where Jensen also worked at a young age.
His family recognized and encouraged young Georg’s artistic instincts, and when he was 14 the family moved to Copenhagen so he could be apprenticed to [...] Click here to continue reading.
Gutta Percha
Gutta percha is defined as a tough plastic substance made from the latex of several Malaysian trees (generally Payena and Palaquium) of the sapodilla family that resembles rubber but contains more resin, and is used especially as insulation and in dentistry.
Margaret De Patta (1903 to 1964)
Margaret De Patta was a modernist studio jeweler from San Francisco and a prominent figure in the mid-century art jewelry movement. She adhered to Constructivist principles of form and structure in her work, which consists of rectangular planes, interplay of light and shadow, and moving elements. De Patta’s jewelry was selected for the 1946 show at the Museum of Modern Art “Modern Handmade Jewlery”, which also included [...] Click here to continue reading.
Alexander (Sandy) Calder (1898-1976)
Alexander Calder was born in Pennsylvania to a family of famous artists, his grandfather being Alexander Milne Calder (1846 to 1923), a sculptor, his father was Alexander Stirling Calder (1870 to 1945), also a sculptor, and his mother Nanette Lederer Calder was a painter.
He began his studies in 1914 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, then he studied and worked in Paris for several years [...] Click here to continue reading.
Pol Bury (Belgian/French, 1922 to 2005)
Pol Bury began his career in the Surrealist movement, and participated with his countryman Magritte in the 1945 International Surrealism exhibition. In 1953, however, he discovered the work of Alexander Calder, and this altered the course of his career. He become a leading sculptor of the kinetic movement, uniting his creative genius with his technical and mathematical expertise. Bury was considered the master of slow movement and meditation. [...] Click here to continue reading.
Sven Boltenstern (Austrian, active 1954 to present)
The son of a Viennese architect, Boltenstern studied sculpture in Oskar Kokoschka’s Salzburg Art Academy and goldsmithing in Vienna and Paris. The artist’s work as a sculptor and jeweler is represented in the Vienna Museum of Applied Art. For further reference, see Sven Boltenstern:Goldsmith of Vienna, by Graham Hughes.
Information courtesy of Skinner Inc., September 2006.
The Arts & Crafts Movement
The principles of the Arts and Crafts movement were initially frontiered in England through the efforts of John Ruskin and William Morris. Ruskin was not a craftsman but an academic scholar at Oxford. He believed passionately that the Industrial Revolution would erode the English countryside by turning it into factory fields while relegating the skilled English craftsman to the status of a laborer. The battle cry of his movement, [...] Click here to continue reading.
Boucheron – French Jewelers
Maison Boucheron (est. 1853) grew in a relatively short period from a small workshop in the Rue Royale to a prestigious firm enjoying royal patronage and occupying a mansion on the Place Vendome. Henri Vever said that from early on, Frederic Boucheron was daring, and, with the finest materials, created jewels which “very few of his colleagues would have dared to make at the time … Yet despite their high [...] Click here to continue reading.
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