Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
Issue link: http://ornamentmagazine.epubxp.com/i/104373
BRIGITTA SCHULTZ: Multistrand cable necklace with pearls, silver bayonet clasp. DONALD FRIEDLICH: Slate pendant, rubber cord, with sliding gold tubing clasps. MARY HICKLIN/VIRGO MOON: Bumblebee necklace, with clasp, attached extender and signature heart-shaped plaque. KATHLEEN DUSTIN: LEAVES PURPLE POD 2, with 16 gauge wire clasp for double stringing. Photograph: Charley Freiberg. HEATHER TRIMLETT: Glass Cone necklace, with silver clasp prototype fabricated by her collaborator Wendolyn Hammer. Note how cone-shaped beads interlock. LIV BLÅVARP: Large articulated wood neckpiece, with carved toggle clasp. FUMI UKAI: Antique belt hook as clasp for multistrand antique carnelian beads. 65 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 denoted as RKL in photographs) are so light that one hardly feels their presence on the neck (Liu 2012). Most necklaces use cord, braided or cable wires, fine chain/ foxtail chain, fancy knotting, and macramé, for both single and multiple strand neckware, like the spectacular Aldrich example. Whether you link with metal or fiber, strung necklaces offer the most design options, thus the greatest number of artists utilize this mode. Seemingly simple, strung necklaces involve integrating aspects of size, color, the architecture of the components, compatibility of the stringing material with the components; which can affect how the whole will drape, as well as potential problems of string wear and the all important closure or clasp. Designer clasps are usually of a size more compatible with the human hand/fingers and thus much easier to use, especially for an aging population. Despite the availability of well-made clasps, some craft jewelers working in various media want to make every part of their work, to insure compatibility of design, scale and quality. Many art jewelers design clasps to function as focal points or as their signature. Given the variety of necklace designs and materials used, custom-made solutions are almost inevitable, like the barely visible clasp used for Kathleen Dustin's large necklace Leaves Purple Pod 2, which ties together two parallel strands, to prevent twisting of the multiple polymer elements. Thus, polymer, glass, fiber, and bead artists have learned metal skills or worked with a collaborator to carry out this integration of their own media with metal clasps and related findings. Of course, metalsmithing jewelers already possessed this ability, enabling them to fabricate closures of greater complexity and sophistication. The addition of such skills has greatly improved the functionality and aesthetics of many craftspeople's work, benefiting both maker and client. A number of contemporary artists, like Pat Tseng, Judith Ubick and the late Fumi Ukai, use ethnographic components in their jewelry, often utilizing an antique item to act as the clasp, like Ukai's incorporation of a belt hook as a frontal clasp, with visual and material integration via the carnelian beads and cabochons. Others seamlessly integrate antique components in their strung designs, with complex or fancy knotting, or using fiber. Juxtaposing very different materials, like the softness of fiber with the hardness of a metal clasp, can yield stunning contrasts. The interplay of functionality and aesthetics struck home when I spent a week recently photographing a superb collection of Yemeni jewelry, for a forthcoming book on this subject. While Yemeni jewelers are the acknowledged masters of metalsmithing in the Middle East, these primarily antique necklaces employed very modest hook and eye closures, a very few with additional metal embellishments, or were strung on braided cords, which tied the frequently heavy necklaces onto the neck. From my contemporary viewpoint, there was a