Ornament Magazine

VOL38.1 2015

Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.

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25 ORNAMENT 38.1.2015 Glen R. Brown WITH THE G we did instruments for a bit too. I knew that if I wanted to make something big but lightweight, then creating a hollow form was the way to do it." Another crucial step in the maturation of DiCaprio's distinctive wooden jewelry came in 2007, when he served as Robert Ebendorf's assistant for a workshop at the Penland School of Crafts. Running concurrently with that workshop was another led by Susan Chin, who demonstrated her techniques of inlaying sterling wire and bezeled stones into carved bone and ebony. "Bob Ebendorf knew about my attraction to working with wood," DiCaprio relates, "so he pushed me to go down to the other studio, saying, 'You need to spend some time with her to see what you can pick up.' She taught a few variations of the wire inlay technique, and I found the one that worked best for me. I generally use the same gauge wire and the same drill bit: as small as I can get without breaking it. I like the hairlike quality of the wire and the fact that I can use the ebony to make pieces that are light and wearable." The hollow, frequently ovoid, forms characterizing much of DiCaprio's wearable art were initially a consequence of the raising and forming techniques that he employed to create vessels in metal. Noting the similarity between these and certain elements of the natural world, however, he began drawing inspiration from plant structures and animal anatomy to produce shapes more obviously biomorphic. "I've been interested in science all my life," he says. "At home I have a collection of weird plants: orchids, pitcher plants and other carnivorous types. They've always been something that I've looked to. But shapes in the plant world are a bit limited, so I expanded my view to include animals like whales. I've done a lot of things that resemble organs—stomachs, bowels, things like that— and tried to modify them to look like they've evolved out of the body and are moving on." Early in his exploration of wood as a medium for jewelry DiCaprio experimented with rings, completing about twenty examples, but he eventually abandoned ORIFICE RING 17 of dyed holly, topaz, silver, 5.1 centimeters, carved wood with inlaid tube set stones, 2009. All photographs by Daniel DiCaprio except where noted. Opposite page: WHOM BLOOM BROOCH of holly, paint, gold leaf, twenty-two karat gold, fourteen karat gold, 8.9 centimeters, carved wood with metal wire inlay, fabricated pinback, 2009.

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