Studio Jewelry vs. Art Jewelry vs. Costume Jewelry
The terms overlap, and collectors often use them interchangeably. Studio jewelry describes the process: an independent maker designing and fabricating work by hand. Art jewelry, in the definition jewelry historian Toni Greenbaum uses, describes intent, meaning the piece is made to express an idea and not only to decorate. Costume jewelry is mass-produced fashion jewelry made in factories from inexpensive materials. A piece can be both studio jewelry and art jewelry at once, which is true of most work by the artists in this post.
How American Studio Jewelry Began
American studio jewelry grew out of the 1940s. During World War II, metal was scarce, and jewelers experimented with plastics, aluminum and even paper. After the war, artists from Europe who settled in the United States began teaching at craft schools and universities, and their training helped turn a mostly self-taught field into a serious discipline.
A turning point came in 1946, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened Modern Handmade Jewelry, which ran from September 18 to November 10. The exhibition showed work by twenty-five artists and craftsmen, including the sculptor Alexander Calder, Harry Bertoia, Anni Albers, Paul Lobel and Margaret De Patta. Their materials ranged from silver and brass to plastic, pebbles, marbles and safety pins. The museum’s announcement described the show as a celebration of “the individual craftsman or artist, less restricted by commercial standards, who makes new contributions to the art.”
New York Studio Jewelry in Greenwich Village
From the 1940s on, Greenwich Village became the hub of New York studio jewelry. Small shops where artists made and sold their own work lined the neighborhood’s streets alongside the galleries, jazz clubs and avant-garde artists who made the Village famous. Studio jewelry fit the Village because it offered something original, made by hand and priced below fine jewelry, to customers who wanted their jewelry to say something about who they were.
Mid-Century Studio Jewelry Artists
Art Smith is one of the best-known names of mid-century studio jewelry. The Smithsonian American Art Museum describes him as an African American pioneer of the studio jewelry movement. He opened his first shop in 1946 in Little Italy and moved to Greenwich Village soon after. He worked largely in brass and copper, made bold asymmetrical forms, and created stage jewelry for dance companies including those of Pearl Primus and Talley Beatty. The Peekskill, New York, chapter of the NAACP commissioned him to make a brooch for Eleanor Roosevelt, and coverage in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the early 1950s carried his work to boutiques across the country.
Sam Kramer, another Village jeweler, became known for surreal designs and for promoting his shop by sending models wearing his pieces around the neighborhood on mopeds. Ed Wiener, Frank Rebajes and Else Freund were among the other artists who defined the period, and Margaret De Patta brought modernist ideas from her studies with László Moholy-Nagy in Chicago into her work on the West Coast.
Where to See American Studio Jewelry in New York
The Museum of Arts and Design at 2 Columbus Circle is the best place to see studio jewelry in New York. It was founded in 1956 by craft patron Aileen Osborn Webb as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, reopened as the American Craft Museum in 1979, and took its current name in 2002. It began collecting jewelry soon after it opened and now holds more than 950 pieces. Its Tiffany & Co. Foundation Jewelry Gallery is the only gallery in an American museum dedicated to modern and contemporary studio and art jewelry.
Marian Fay Levitt and the New York Studio Jewelry Tradition
Marian Fay Levitt carried the New York studio jewelry tradition into the decades that followed. She designed and handcrafted every piece herself, combining bead stringing, wirework, metalsmithing and enamel work with silver, stones, porcelain, glass and vintage beads gathered across more than 60 countries. The Bead Society at the American Craft Museum, now the Museum of Arts and Design, featured her work in six of its annual juried exhibitions. For nearly 20 years she taught jewelry design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, passing her approach to thousands of students.
Her pieces share the qualities that have defined studio jewelry since the 1940s: each is one of a kind, made by the hand that designed it, and built from materials chosen for what they could express. Read Marian’s biography, explore the collection, or shop select pieces.
Sources
- Damian Skinner, “Defining Art Jewelry,” Art Jewelry Forum: https://artjewelryforum.org/hidden-from-homepage/defining-art-jewelry/
- Museum of Modern Art press release for Modern Handmade Jewelry, September 16, 1946: https://www.moma.org/docs/press_archives/1064/releases/MOMA_1946-1947_0047_1946-09-16_46916-45.pdf
- Alexandra Moreno and Abigail Ellen Pontefract, “Contemplation and Conversation About 45 Stories in Jewelry: 1947 to Now,” Art Jewelry Forum: https://artjewelryforum.org/?p=26564
- “Art Smith,” Smithsonian American Art Museum: https://americanart.si.edu/node/6907
- “From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Copper Artist Art Smith,” Copper Development Association: https://copper.org/consumers/arts/2014/august/modernist-jewelry.php
- “Museum History,” Museum of Arts and Design: https://madmuseum.org/about/museum-history