page_title: Art jewelry
section_title: Arts and crafts jewelry
hierarchical_section_title: Art jewelry / Arts and crafts jewelry
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Collier René Jules Lalique, Paris c 1898-1900. Exposé au musée des arts décoratifs de Budapest, exposition temporaire "Les maîtres de l'Art nouveau" Mai 2013-fév 2014
context_page_description: Art jewelry is one of the names given to jewelry created by studio craftspeople. As the name suggests, art jewelry emphasizes creative expression and design, and is characterized by the use of a variety of materials, often commonplace or of low economic value. In this sense, it forms a counterbalance to the use of "precious materials" in conventional or fine jewelry, where the value of the object is tied to the value of the materials from which it is made. Art jewelry is related to studio craft in other media such as glass, wood, plastics and clay; it shares beliefs and values, education and training, circumstances of production, and networks of distribution and publicity with the wider field of studio craft. Art jewelry also has links to fine art and design.
  While the history of art jewelry usually begins with modernist jewelry in the United States in the 1940s, followed by the artistic experiments of German goldsmiths in the 1950s, a number of the values and beliefs that inform art jewelry can be found in the arts and crafts movement of the late nineteenth century.
context_section_description: The art jewelry that emerged in the first years of the twentieth century was a reaction to Victorian taste, and the heavy and ornate jewelry, often machine manufactured, that was popular in the nineteenth century. According to Elyse Zorn Karlin, "For most jewelers, art jewelry was a personal artistic quest as well as a search for a new national identity. Based on a combination of historical references, reactions to regional and world events, newly available materials and other factors, art jewelry reflected a country's identity while at the same time being part of a larger international movement of design reform." Initially art jewelry appealed to a select group of clients with artistic taste, but it was quickly picked up by commercial firms, making it widely available.
  There are many different movements that contributed to the category of art jewelry as we know it today. As part of the English Arts and Crafts movement, flourishing between 1860 and 1920, Charles Robert Ashbee and his Guild and School of Handicraft produced the earliest arts and crafts jewelry in a guild setting. Presenting their work as an antidote to industrial production, the first generation of arts and crafts jewelers believed that an object should be designed and made by the same person, although their lack of specialist training meant that much of this jewelry has an appealing handmade quality. Responding to changes in fashion, as well as the Victorian taste for wearing sets, arts and crafts jewelers made pendants, necklaces, brooches, belt buckles, cloak clasps and hair combs that were worn solo. Arts and crafts jewelry also tended to favor materials with little intrinsic value that could be used for their artistic effects. Base metals, semi-precious stones like opals, moonstones and turquoise, misshapen pearls, glass and shell, and the plentiful use of Vitreous enamel, allowed jewelers to be creative and to produce affordable objects.
  Art nouveau jewelry from France and Belgium was also an important contributor to art jewelry. Worn by wealthy and artistically-literate clients, including courtesans of the Paris demimonde, art nouveau jewelry by Rene Lalique and Alphonse Mucha was inspired by symbolist art, literature and music, and a revival of the curvilinear and dramatic forms of the rococo period. As Elyse Zorn Karlin suggests, "The result was jewels of staggering beauty and imagination, sensual, sexual and beguiling, and at times even frightening. These jewels were a far cry from the symmetrical and somewhat placid designs of Arts and Crafts jewelry, which more closely resembled Renaissance jewels." Lalique and other art nouveau jewelers quite often mixed precious metals and gemstones with inexpensive materials, and favored plique-a-jour and cabochon enamel techniques.
  Other important centers of art jewelry production included the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna, where the architects Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser designed jewelry in silver and semi-precious stones, sometimes to be worn with clothing also created by the workshop. The Danish Skønvirke (aesthetic work) movement, of which Georg Jensen is the most famous example, favored silver and native Scandinavian stones and an aesthetic that falls somewhere between the tenets of art nouveau and arts and crafts. Art jewelry in Finland was characterized by a Viking revival, coinciding with its political freedom on Sweden in 1905, while modernisme in Spain followed the lead of art nouveau jewelers. Art jewelry was also practiced in Italy, Russia and the Netherlands.
  In the United States, arts and crafts jewelry was popular with amateurs, since unlike ceramics, furniture or textiles, it required only a modest investment in tools, and could be made in the kitchen. One of the first American arts and crafts jewelers, Madeline Yale Wynne, was self-taught and approached her jewelry as form and composition with the emphasis on aesthetic qualities rather than skill, stating that "I consider each effort by itself as regards color and form much as I would paint a picture." Brainerd Bliss Thresher, another A
caption: Necklace René Jules Lalique
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