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35 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 played with the polarities of light and dark, transparency and opacity, positive and negative, textural and smooth, and kinetic and static. Other advancements included De Patta's use of nontraditional materials such as stainless steel mesh screen, plastics and beach pebbles and new techniques in gem-cutting and stone-setting. Characteristic of other artists who have achieved success in their lifetime, De Patta was deeply rooted in expressing contemporary culture and issues in her art. She rejected out-of- hand jewelry designs that were uninspired and did not represent their time or place. "Contemporary jewelry," De Patta believed, "must characterize our times with its emphasis on space and structure, strong light, open forms, cantilever, floating structures and movements," she stated in her writings. This philosophy De Patta had, no doubt, developed over time, but it was a similar belief system that prompted her to design her own wedding ring in 1929 for her impending marriage to Samuel De Patta. What she saw in the marketplace at the time was a "lack of creativity in traditional wedding rings" and she could not find one that suited her contemporary taste. So with purposeful resolve, she apprenticed herself to the jeweler Armin PIN of sterling silver, beach pebbles; 8.9 x 4.1 x 1.6 centimeters, circa 1964. The positioning of the beach pebbles—held in place without any visible encasement—illustrates Moholy-Nagy's advice to De Patta: "Catch your stones in the air. Make them float in space." Collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, Gift of Eugene Bielawski, The Margaret De Patta Bequest, through the American Craft Council, 1976. Photograph by Eva Heyd. PIN of sterling silver, moss agate, onyx; 2.5 x 3.2 x 0.6 centimeters, 1941. Like any well-executed sculpture, this pin is a composition comprised of rhythms of intersecting lines, and plays on the drama of opposites: positive and negative spaces, and opaque and transparent stones. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Eugene Bielawski, The Margaret De Patta Memorial Collection; photographs by Lee Fatherree, except where noted. Hairenian at his San Francisco Art Copper Shop to learn the necessary metalsmithing skills to fabricate her own ring. Thus began De Patta's revolt against dull interpretations of conventional jewelry, a rebellion that would last a lifetime and would shape a career of intense exploration in metalsmithing and jewelry design. This is the fork in the road where De Patta veered off the path of becoming a painter/sculptor, as she had studied the fine arts up to this point, and chose instead to chart a career in the metal arts. She abandoned the pursuit of being a painter and declared herself a jewelry designer. Having mastered basic metalworking skills from Hairenian, De Patta went forward and sought further training in enameling and engraving, and by her own admission read every book on jewelry in the public library, reading many of them twice. Self-directed, determined, dedicated, and impassioned, De Patta became a technically adept jeweler by 1935 and started working professionally from a small studio space in her San Francisco home. Some of her work of this period was inflected with references to ancient Turkish, Egyptian, Etruscan, Colombian, and Mayan jewelry, but some of it began to show an authentic voice that demonstrated modern constructs that had never been seen. The Amberg-Hirth Gallery in San Francisco showed this work and De Patta began to build a following. Several milestone events occurred in the next six years— through 1941 as America prepared to enter World War II—that determined the evolutionary path De Patta's career would travel. In 1939-1940, De Patta began a creative collaboration with the San Francisco lapidary Francis Sperisen. Together, De Patta and Sperisen worked out a new, innovative method of cutting gemstones to take advantage of their refractive properties by studying the optical principles of light transmission. These "opticuts," as De Patta called them, were