Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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SOLDERING WEDDING CROWN 1969. "Memory" watercolor painting of Merry Renk creating her iconic wedding crown design that is based on a system of interlocking patterns cut from gold sheets and formed in a circlet. Like her memory paintings, she has left us with imprints of ways to remember her. There is her lovely and heartfelt "Say Goodbye" on YouTube; her website, where one can watch a video of her making her crowns, and listen to narration of poems she wrote to elucidate each crown's title; and the oral history interview conducted by distinguished jeweler Arline Fisch for the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art, and which can be accessed online. We can wave goodbye to Merry in her black convertible. I imagine her racing upward, riding atop the clouds as in her memory painting, "Jeweler's Heaven," where the jeweler's hand tools—the needle nose, the round nose and bird nose pliers, all ascend to the most sacred of heights, floating among the fluffy cumulus, leaving behind the gravity of earth. So, this is how it should be. Merry Renk has been reunited with her tools. SUGGESTED READING Goldstein, Doris. "Sculpture For Wearing," Modern Magazine, Winter 2012: 98-103. Greenbaum, Toni. "Constructivism and American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to the Present." Studies in Decorative Arts, Bard Graduate Center, 1998/1999 FallWinter, Vol. VI, No. 1: 68-79. Watkins, Joan Pearson. "Opulent And Organic, The Jewelry of Merry Renk." American Craft Magazine, April/May 1981: 32-35. Archives of American Art: aaa.si.edu. craftinamerica.org for information on Merry Renk and other craft artists. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/california-design-lacma/ for a free download to iTunes that will include the documentary on Merry Renk. 55 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 Stylistically, her jewelry now had a signature look of organic abstraction, and generally, the design incorporated some element of movement. Renk's legacy as a pioneer studio jeweler and a contemporary artist of her time was further validated when in 1981 the California Crafts Museum in Palo Alto, California, organized the exhibition, "Merry Renk, Jeweler: Visual Biography and Retrospective." This retrospective showcased over one hundred jewelry and decorative arts objects, and also included examples of her graphics and watercolors. Renk's career momentum of the 1980s raced forward into the next decade, and her jewelry began to be collected by major museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Arts and Design, (New York), Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.), Chicago Art Institute, Oakland Museum of California, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. She also began to be identified as the designer of beautiful fantasy crowns, and both her daughters walked down the aisle wearing exquisite Renk custom-designed gold and gem wedding crowns. In her long career as a professional goldsmith, Renk had placed a few other crowns with jewelry collectors. I think Merry would be pleased if ever the idea of the wedding crown could usher in a style-revival in nuptial headpieces.