Pioneering crafts collector Sandy Grotta died in September 2021 at the age of 87. She and her husband, Lou, began collecting in 1957. Gijs Bakker remembers his friendship with her. A shy lady, of short stature, touched my arm and asked me to make something for her. It happened in 1989 during my retrospective at the […]
Sadly, on May 1, 2021, Valeria Vallarta Siemelink passed away. She was a dedicated champion for awareness of Latin American jewelry and design internationally. She died too young at age 49 in Portugal. She was born in 1971 in Mexico City. There, she studied architecture and museography. Later, she acquired her MA in museography in
Valeria Vallarta Siemelink Read More »
Now that a red line has been drawn and crossed with the death of Seattle metals artist and sculptor Nancy Worden (1954–2021), it’s possible to take stock of a lifetime dedicated to transforming materials into ideas that in the process flowered into social and institutional critique and humor of the highest order. Setting aside for
It took about 10 years from her first encounter with our field for this Dutch collector to give in and start acquiring work. A passion had been ignited that turned her into an important art jewelry collector in her native land. Her death now serves to belatedly give her international attention. Greetings from JewelryLand postcard
Claartje Keur, February 6, 1938–March 19, 2021 Read More »
During the last days of annus horribilis 2020, Lucy Sarneel died silently in her house in Amsterdam, too young at the age of 59. Lucy Sarneel in her studio, cover for her catalog Lucy Sarneel: Private Territory in Public, Amsterdam 2017, photo courtesy of CODA Since I visited her last exhibition, PLUS (at Galerie Marzee),
Boundless Energy and Joie de Vivre Read More »
Maria Cristina Bergesio passed away on March 30, 2020, in Figline Valdarno, Italy. She was a well-known art historian who specialized in contemporary jewelry and had worked as a curator since 1999. She liked her friends to address her by her nickname, MC. Maria Cristina Bergesio during the opening ceremony of Preziosa 2009—Timetales, photo: Noumeda
MC: A Passionate Life Read More »
I met Ken Trapp at a luncheon during SOFA Chicago, just after he had left the Oakland Museum as the curator of decorative arts to take the position of curator-in charge of the Renwick Gallery, in Washington, DC. We had been invited, along with a few other contemporary studio jewelry enthusiasts, by Susan Cummins to
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“I believe that my actions are searching for signs to be able to grow, to become more humane and free, to bear witness with art to man as the being that can wrest something from the “panta rhei” (“flowing of everything,” Heraclitus), from coming into being, something that cannot expire, something with which heaven becomes
Bruno Martinazzi, 1923–2018 Read More »
Marjan Unger wearing Sketch for Sleeping Beauty II necklace, by Robert Smit, photo: Michael Ferron, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1991 On June 27, 2018, Marianne Unger-de Boer passed away at home in Bussum, the Netherlands, after a rich, yet too-short life. Marjan was 72 years old. As she liked to remind her audiences in lectures, she was
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Born June 10, 1918, Denver, Colorado Died August 2, 2015, Sausalito, California June Schwarcz, Vessel 593, 1971, electroformed copper foil with plique-à-jour enamel, height 127 x 236 mm, photo M. Lee Fatherree June Schwarcz, one of the masters of contemporary craft, has passed away at the age of 97. June’s enamel work and sculptural copper
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Manfred Bischoff, 1995, photo: Rike Bartels Died March 30, 2015, Siena, Italy “Beauty belongs to everyone” I like to share it with my friends. Manfred Bischoff passed away during the Holy Week. No one can visit him in Tuscany anymore, in his home in an orchard deserted by the Capuchin Friars, with its the exterior
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Born February 4, 1934, Evergreen, Illinois Died April 2, 2015, Deer Isle, Maine Today we make jewelry and wearable art from any material that we choose, but it was J. Fred Woell who in the 1960s broke the rules and paved the way for art jewelers. Fred pioneered the concept of using found objects and
In Memory of J. Fred Woell Read More »
