Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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80 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 postscript OUR THIRTY-EIGHTH YEAR from the editors Dear Ornament Reader, Amy Nguyen is this issue's cover feature. This thoughtful article embraces the creative experience as a critical means of shaping a more humane world. "I am beginning to see more and more that the 'slow textile' movement is imperative to our society's survival," she says. "Fast is not always better. By endeavoring to handmake what we produce as local small business owners, we are able to positively impact our communities in sincere and personal ways. People connect with one another in a more meaningful way, are more present with each other, and inevitably this leads to a deeper sense of respect and appreciation." The dedication that jewelry curator Yvonne Markowitz brings to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is charmingly phrased by its museum director, Malcolm Rogers. "Yvonne is a jewel herself," he points out, "and becoming a curator has given her her setting—like you'd set a stone in a ring. It really brought out her extraordinary qualities." 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. Jo Lauria writes a penetrating study of one of the pioneers of modern studio jewelry, Margaret De Patta. She writes: "Some of the strategies De Patta used that helped forge this new direction and growth in the field were the deployment of modern design rationales based on art/design theories that resulted in complex jewelry constructions often rooted in constructivist principles. Typical would be compositions that played with the polarities of light and dark, transparency and opacity, positive and negative, textural and smooth, and kinetic and static." The portrait of Debra Lynn Gold is nicely drawn and detailed by author Ashley Callahan. For example, Callahan creates a luscious description of the jeweler's work—"Gold's aluminum brooches, which she began making in 1983, often are three-dimensional constructions suggesting skewed architectural settings through their use of flat planes of color, column-like rods, and angled sheets with hand-engraved patterns. Her earrings from this period combine sterling zigzags, colored aluminum tubes and rods, whimsical spirals, silver balls, rubber tubing, and flat planes of solid colors and engraved patterns." In her feature on Mary Donald, Jill DeDominicis describes how environmental activism was a large part of the artist's reality where she lived in Northern California, with friends who were involved in various ecological organizations and efforts. One friend worked in waste management. Donald reflects: "There were always conversations about how much waste we produce. I was really, really aware of it; so I was going back and forth, between making jewelry out of leaves and twigs and things I would find in the woods on my walks and so forth, to making work out of garbage and waste materials. Plastics are just ubiquitous in our culture and are so cheap that we just throw them away. We treat them, well, like garbage." Yet jeweler Donald's triumph is in translating those throwaway materials into new incarnations of delicacy and beauty. The Last Empress in Qipao, From Manchu to China Chic is both a fascinating and enlightening read about the powerful influence and evolution of one style of dress. Fashions throughout history are as quirky and unstable as the political times and cultures in which they take place. These six features are just part of the wonderful mix of articles in this issue; there is much, much more. So, jump in and enjoy. Thank you for being part of our world—one that is globally inspired and crafted in America, Ornament Magazine.