Lois Boardman entered eternity in Pasadena, CA, on April 21, 2025. There is little doubt that she planned to accompany Pope Francis, wearing her Gold Nose, cast by Gerd Rothmann, and adorned by Nancy Worden’s necklace titled Gilding the Past. Like the dinner gatherings of historical persons in Van Loon’s Lives, her presence would have enticed individuals like Emily Dickinson, Madame Curie, and Queen Elizabeth into the Boardman world of ornamentation.
Lois was born to parents Ernie Meyer and Gertrude Degginger on August 18, 1931, in Chicago, IL. In 1953, while studying anthropology in Lausanne, Switzerland, she met Robert Boardman, a medical student (eventually known to all as Dr. Bob). They married in Lausanne shortly afterwards on June 3, 1953, and remained a devoted couple for 66 years until Bob’s death in 2019 in South Pasadena, where they had been permanently settled since 1958 with their daughter and son, Andrue and Peter.
Within a short period of time, Lois became part of a group of creative women involved in the California Design Movement. While serving as Director of Exhibitions with Eudorah Moore, she helped found the Pasadena Art Alliance. I remember over two decades ago Lois collating those archives, which were stored in her garage, packing them in her car, and driving them north to an official repository in Oakland, CA.
A passionate collector of ceramics and folk art, Lois’s appetite and interest in jewelry was born when we met as members of the National Crafts Planning Project task force launched by Eudorah Moore in 1980 under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts. Lois and I were assigned as roommates—the East and West were brought together. I adorned myself daily with Skoogfors, Lechtzin, Paley, and Moty—a visual invitation for inquiries, as Lois introduced me to Southern California ceramicists Ralph Bacerra, Jun Kaneko, Mineo Mizuno, and Peter Shire.
After traveling together for one year, we had bonded. Visually and aesthetically seduced by my daily ornamentation, Lois informed me that she wanted to create a collection of contemporary jewelry. In the beginning, long before fax machines, I was Lois’s mentor and introduced her to artists Gijs Bakker, Claus Bury, Stanley Lechtzin, Bruno Martinazzi, Albert Paley, Wendy Ramshaw, Bernhard Schobinger, and Olaf Skoogfors through telegrams and handwritten notes. In 1984, after frequent telephone conversations, typed invoices began to record the formation of the Boardman Collection. Faxes would soon replace the verbal dialogue. Written passages about artists and drawings of objects began to flood loose-leaf pages. A unique exchange was under way. A peripatetic traveler, Lois sent me postcards from Canada, Bhutan, China, Jordan, and Turkey. Often images appeared of Lois wearing ethnic jewelry she had obviously acquired from an encounter with an indigenous person. I sent FedEx packages with jewels to South Pasadena for approval or return.
A decade later, the faxes ebbed and email messages—shorter, more direct, and almost impersonal—dominated our communications. Lois would ask, “What have you seen lately that has caught your eye?” The internet had become Lois’s mentor and playmate, and sated her curiosity with instant images and information from around the world. She stated, “I slowly learned and developed my eye… I bought pieces solely on the basis of how they looked to me ‘online.’ It was great to wander the world in search of objects. From the Western Hemisphere, Europe to Australia to Thailand, I let my fingers do the walking.”[i]
During the 1990s, the professional umbilical cord was really being severed. New technologies were allowing Lois to pursue her interest in jewelry, and she began to seek information from various sources. She had graduated “college,” earned her visual collector’s “master’s degree,” and now ventured forth independently, making bold choices as her personal aesthetic expanded. She forged her own relationships with national and international galleries—Gallery Funaki in Melbourne; Gallery S.O. in London; Gallery Spektrum in Munich; Ornamentum Gallery in Hudson, New York; Sienna Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts; Gallery Marzee in Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Fingers Contemporary Jewellery in Auckland—sometimes secretly and occasionally with choices that were alien to my aesthetic. The collection, while rooted in my guidance, increasingly began to reflect Lois Boardman herself.
Lois Boardman’s portrait for Breon O’Casey’s 70th birthday in 1998 reveals a collector who shares my aesthetic wearing a classic silver necklace. Years later, a 2015 portrait by Miriam Kunzli for Art Aurea captures Lois demonstrating the expanding scope of her independent vision in a neckpiece by Afke Golsteijn made of taxidermied parakeet wings mounted on fabric.
A 34-year epistolary friendship evolved into one of long telephone calls and meetings in New York, Pasadena, Philadelphia, Dublin, Amsterdam, and Munich. Passion for the field and an exchange of serious dialogue mixed with laughter strengthened both our shared and separate paths in the pursuit of work. In Lois’s own words, handwritten to me in a letter from January 30, 1995:
Why I started buying into adornment and metals…
1st I had been around crafts for many years thru the Pasadena Museum exhibition program, California Design—
2nd I was thrown into a situation where I was Helen Drutt’s roommate for a year, thanks to the federal government—
3rd, or maybe 1st, I am a woman & love to adorn, even though I don’t look the part—a closet adorner—
4th Live in earthquake country—
5th Have granddaughters and daughters that could enjoy these objects as well, give them interest—as it gave me an interest—outside of the normal humdrum—
6th Not the least—love the material.
•
Lois and Bob’s decision to give the collection to Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2013 would come from their great sense of philanthropy and love of the crafts. It would also be inspired by the gift’s potential to reinforce the importance of the field, providing the artists with greater visibility. In 2016 LACMA exhibited and published the mature collection under the title Beyond Bling.
Donations in her name can be made to the Lois Boardman Endowed Scholarship at the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA. Mary Coquillard, a close friend of Lois, stated that her death was, indeed, “the end of an era.”
This tribute has been adapted from the essay Between Friends, by Helen W. Drutt English, published in pages 198–207 of the catalog Beyond Bling: Contemporary Jewelry from the Lois Boardman Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2016.
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[i] Lois Boardman, Beyond Bling: Contemporary Jewelry from the Lois Boardman Collection, 2016, page 177.
