Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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28 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 " Yvonne is a jewel herself, and becoming curator has given her her setting—like you'd set a stone in a ring. It really brought out her extraordinary qualities." —Malcom Rogers Yvonne A Rare Gem at the MFA Ellen Howards I n 1987, Yvonne Markowitz was working toward a doctorate in Egyptology at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She took a course in Egyptian Archaeology at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, taught by Peter Lacovara, then assistant curator of Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art. She never left. Markowitz became the Rita J. and Susan B. Kaplan Curator of Jewelry in 2006, the first dedicated curator of jewelry in a United States fine arts museum. The new jewelry gallery opened in July 2011. Of the eleven thousand pieces of jewelry in its collection, she has looked at each one; and has cataloged, measured and researched thousands; published her findings in scholarly journals, books and exhibition catalogs; and illustrated hundreds of others, from the ancient Nubian to American studio jewelry of the past few decades. A small woman with curly light-brown hair and hazel eyes, she often dresses simply in grays and blacks, accented by red shoes, and one unusual piece of jewelry––often one that she made herself. Both scientist and artist, she loves getting to the bottom of things, like an archaeologist, sifting for treasure, analyzing the materials. For her, part of the fun has been learning how things are made, and so she learned to make jewelry, a continuation of her lifelong study of studio art. She uses precious and semiprecious gems, vintage elements, unusual materials, and precious metals to create pieces that reflect many facets of her life. During the jewelry gallery opening, Markowitz wore a brooch she made with a twenty-carat emerald-cut Kunzite at its center, radiating a starburst of white gold wires set with moissanites. Sometimes she wears an agate brooch set with a diamond, resembling the full moon over a landscape. She once constructed an Egyptian broadcollar out of little metal MFA entrance buttons. Her humor is subtle. The museum has an employee artmaking contest each year, and one year Markowitz won for a piece of jewelry whose main material was derived from hairballs from her departed and beloved Himalayan cat. The use of hair in jewelry was popular in the Victorian era. CASKET IN THE RITA J. AND STANLEY H. KAPLAN FAMILY FOUNDATION GALLERY, designed by Fritz von Miller, of ebony, ivory, silver, gilded metal, lapis lazuli, amber; nineteenth century, circa 1880–85. Bequest of William Arnold Buffum. All Photographs reproduced with permission by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "You know that's all I have left of that cat," says Markowitz. "It's memorial jewelry. Memorial jewelry goes back a long time. It's just extremely meaningful—the idea of keepsakes and mementos. A lot of people who don't know the history fail to understand this. The fashion for memorial jewelry today is sending the cremains to a company that makes synthetic diamonds. People do it for their loved ones, humans and pets. But it's different from the kinds of meanings you would get in, say, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jewelry." With Markowitz, nearly every topic of conversation leads back to detailed stories of the history of jewelry—the origins, meanings, materials, cultural significance, and use—and one leads