Moving the Blog

In the last month, I have launched a new site for my jewelry. After all these years of blogging on blogspot, I realized that blogging on a seperate site is not helpful for search engine traffic to my website. If you have clicked on the "home" button on the top, you may have discovered this new site already. So, please check it out, and hope to see you on the new blog!

Romantic Projects

Claire and Georg, celebrating their engagement

I am often incredibly touched by the stories that accompany the gifts of jewelry that I make. Sometimes, the jewelry is a physical aspect of the most beautiful aspects of being human. It was my honor to be part of one of those very special stories this spring.

Claire is a friend from way back. In fact my parents have been friends with her parents since we were infants. Claire and I became close in high school, when a year in between grades becomes a little bit less significant. We often spent time together watching movies followed by eating diner sundaes. After I moved to New York, I was delighted when Claire followed a few years later, becoming a teacher in the NYC school district. We now live a ten minute walk from each other in Brooklyn.

Besides being a very dedicated teacher, Claire is also a very talented photographer, with a specialty in street photography. Her portfolio is on flickr, and she has some amazing photos there. Really, check out her photos.

Through the photography community, Claire had the good fortune to meet Georg, another talented photographer. After admiring each others' photos, it came to be that Claire and Georg met, when he visited NY from Germany, and they also fell in love with each other! This is such a wonderful turn of events, that I get watery-eyed even writing about it.

I was so honored and delighted when I received a message that they had become engaged, with a request for me to make a suitable engagement ring. I immediately thought of the ring shown above, mostly due to a ring that Claire loves to wear, passed down to her by her mother, and this ring leads to yet another layer of this family story.

Claire's mother, Paula is from Portugal, and her father is from Germany. They met while studying English in London. After meeting, Paula left to work in Mozambique, and Claire's ring is a memento of her mother's time in Africa. While she was in Africa, she was writing to Paul, and they had their own long-distance love story. Eventually, they were reunited, married and moved to my hometown of Racine, WI.

Paula is possession of gold British imperial coins, which were passed down to her by her relatives, so I was requested to make the ring the ring out of this gold and I readily agreed. As the coins very high karat gold, when I made the recipe for the gold for Claire's ring, I had the choice to make a redder color of gold, matching the color of the ring from Mozambique.

With all of these various strands coming together, as they do for all couples, making wedding bands is a wonderful things indeed!

Next Stop, Laguna Beach

Turquoise Ring with Filigree,
Blackened silver and Persian Turquoise

Next week, I am heading to S. California to show off some of my latest pieces. Nearly a year ago, my friend and jeweler colleague Karin Wordin opened her gallery in Laguna Beach, CA. Fortunately, I was in L.A. at the time and was able to join her for the opening party. This year, she is hosting me for an exclusive trunk show. I will have a big collection of work with me, including the ring above and the earrings below, that I have just finished.

Rutilated Drop Earrings
Rutilated quartz and blackened silver

In the gallery, we will also have a really fantastic selection of colored gems. Visitors to the gallery can spend some time with me, designing a custom piece with one of these delicious gems. A sampling of these gems can be seen in the photo below.

Here are the details for the show:
Thursday April 7th 6-9pm-reception during Artwalk
Saturday April 9th 4-7pm-jewelry and cocktails!
Appointments are available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday

Silver, Blue and Gold Gallery
1492 S. Coast Hwy.
Laguna Beach, CA

949-715-3000

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Laguna Beach!

In Sarasota

Yesterday I arrived in Sarasota Florida and I am going to spend the weekend showing my work at the two beautiful galleries owned by Nikki Sedacca. During the day, I will be at the Palm Avenue location, shown above. In the evenings, I will be at the 530 Burns Gallery. Here are the addresses:

Nikki Sedacca-the Art of Jewelry
49 South Palm Ave.
Sarasota

530 Burns Gallery
530 Burns Court
Sarasota

There are a lot of things going on this weekend, so I am excited to be the guest artist of Nikki and her wonderful team!

NY Jewelry Shows

Set in Style: the Jewelry of Van Cleef and Arpels
at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum
until June 5th

Jewelry from one of the great European jewelry houses. I love to see the ingenious way that the jewelry is put together. I saw the Cartier exhibit last year in San Francisco, and while I did get overwhelmed by the diamonds at times, the jewelry always displayed the highest level of craftsmanship. My only wish...as a jeweler, I have such a strong desire to check out the back, which I couldn't always do!

Celestial Gold- Fine Jewelry from the Himalayas
at Tibet House, opens March 17th

I lived in Nepal for two years, and Himalayan jewelry is a love of mine. The Tibetan amulet boxes, called gau, were the starting point for me when I began making lockets. When travelling in remote Himalayan villages, it is very common to see women wearing their gold and turquiose jewelry, or oxblood coral, which can scarcely be found nowadays.

I looks like with the coming of spring, I have good reason to get out of the studio and see some amazing jewelry pieces.

Fresh Off the Bench

Yesterday, I finished a couple of new pieces. I am excited to start adding color back into my collection. For a couple of years, I have been very focused on the black silver with just gold accents and some orange sapphires sprinkled in. Now, I have some rainbow moonstones (with mostly blue flashes), and some tourmalines to work with.

Early indications are that thee rings are going to be very popular. I made them in the late fall as new samples, and I have had quite a lot of interest already. I tend to test out a new direction with a one or a few pieces in that theme. I wear it myself and see how I feel about the piece day to day. If I get a strong response, I go forward and make a collection around that theme.

I haven't done anything "branchy", in a long time, but I have a had a wire mockup of a branchy ring on my bench for a long time. Finally, the idea was ripe after I put this rosecut tourmaline on my bench next to the mockup.

Stay tuned for more!

Giving Myself Permission

A view of my street in Brooklyn today

Since 2004, I have been attending craft-oriented trade shows in February. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, and for a few years, both of them, back to back. At first, it was great, giving me really great exposure and lots of orders. There was even one year that I ran out of pages in my order book.

However, times change, and even though I and many others have had great success at these shows, it seems like the time for me to try something new came a while ago. Even so, I was on the verge of doing another show this winter. When it came time to pay off the rest of the booth fee, I realized, I just didn't want to go this year. I want to stay home, avoid driving a truck in a blizzard, make new work, finish some commissions, make a new website, and the list goes on.

Even though I catch myself getting nervous about how I am going to generate new business, I know that even if I had shown up, I am probably not going to miss out on a full order book. Instead, I am going to keep traveling to new places where my work is not represented, and make sure that all of my fabulous stores and galleries have the very best possible work from me. If that strategy leads me to Puerto Rico or Florida in March, so be it!

That being said, I have some jewelry-oriented shows later in the year, but that just gives all the more time to make sure that I have some really wonderful new things to show.

New Year, Looking Back

I am now looking forward to 2011, but I do want to look back briefly to the year that has passed. For my business, this year has brought so many new opportunities. My store line-up has changed considerably, with many new galleries and jewelry stores featuring my work.

For example, at the beginning of the year, I had no California galleries or stores representing me! What a difference a year makes. Now my work is available at:

Manika Jewelry, San Francisco

DeNovo, Palo Alto

Silver, Blue and Gold, Laguna Beach

Stuart Benjamin, San Diego

In Colorado, I have new galleries as well:

Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride

J. Cotter Gallery, Beaver Creek and Vail

On the Emerald Coast in Florida:

Fusion Art Glass, Seaside

In Georgia:

Pia, Atlanta

In Pennsylvania

Aurum, State College

I have been included in the re-launch of the legendary NY retailer, Fortunoff's. Now online only, they will be launching stores in the near future:

Fortunoff Jewelry

Last but not least, I am now represented by a store in my hometown of Racine, WI:

Art Metals Studio, Racine

I have so much gratitude to all of these stores and galleries for deciding to represent me. I look forward to what the next year will bring.

Happy New Year!

Lark Books

I just found out that the new Lark Books publication, 500 Silver Jewelry Designs, will feature two pieces, both bracelets. This will be the third book that I have been featured in!

JCK

Let me blow the cobwebs out of here for a moment...
In one month, I took two trips to the west, both of which brought new partners to work with, mostly in California. I will be announcing some exciting news about stores that I will be working with soon.

I had my first trip to Vegas during the annual gathering called "Jewelry Week". There is a huge show, called JCK, which has every stripe of jewelry vendor you can imagine. Another show, called Couture, is where you will find the most established designer collections, mostly high end. I opted to show my work with a new show, NICHE: the show, produced by the same people that I exhibit with in Philadelphia every year.

As the upstart show, we were uncertain how the attendence will be, and also whether the attendees are the appropriate audience. Well, the first day of the show, there was a tidal wave of people coming down the aisle. That day, I was constantly talking to people that were interested in my work. Over the course of three days, the number of people at the show came in waves, but I was pretty consistently talking to buyers that were seriously considering representing my work. As a show that was representing only N. American handmade jewelry and other crafts, this was a good place for me to make my Vegas debut.



Recently, some of my jewelry was also featured in the JCK magazine, in a fashion shoot put together by Jennifer Heebner. My bracelet and rings can be seen on the model in this photo.

NYC Event

Since hosting an open studio last year in the spring, I haven't had an event in NYC. This weekend, I will be participating in a show with four other jewelers at a loft on 24th street. I am looking forward to re-connecting with the New York audience!
Here are the details:

Gemstone Jewels

I recently received a copy of the book 500 Gemstone Jewels, by Lark Books, which includes two of my pieces. The book, juried by Cindy Edelstein, presents an amazing array of what is being done with gems today. It ranges from very dazzling pieces with rare gemstones by well-known designers, to very experimental pieces which combine gems with non-traditional materials. I found that this book brings together high-end jewelry design and art jewelry in a way that that rarely happens.

Here are the pages featuring my work:

Traditional Asian Jewelry

Natasha Wozniak with Akim Funk Buddha at BAM in November

I love traditional jewelry from many places in Asia, including India, Nepal, Tibet, Thailand and Indonesia. Before I became proficient in metalsmithing, the intricacy of these pieces seemed magical and mysterious to me. Since then, I have used my fascination with these styles of jewelry to drive me to master techniques like filigree and repousse. I have always had the urge to make a reproduction of an antique piece for myself, but never had a specific reason to do so. With so many things to do all of the time, I never fit it into the schedule.

Some readers of my blog may know that in addition to being a jeweler and metalsmith, I am a dancer. One of the dance styles that I am regularly asked to perform is traditional Balinese dance. Most of the costume pieces from Bali are made of leather with gold paint or gold leaf, which is pierced. I have most of the costume pieces that I purchased in Bali, but I lacked a neck piece. When my friend Akim Funk Buddha, asked me to perform with him at his show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, last November, I decided that this was the occasion for which I would make a piece of traditional jewelry from Asia, in this case, Bali.

preliminary sketches for my Balinese collar

In a previous blog, I mentioned that I was using a book called Jewelry of Southeast Asia and a starting point for the design. I then made sketches that combined some elements of the 19th century Balinese pieces pictured in the book.
Top: metal being worked from the back
Below: metal being worked from the front

I decided to use copper with gold leaf applied to the surface with lacquer. Copper has the best working qualities for the predominant process of repousse that I used. The vines and leaves are worked from the back with shaped and rounded tools and then the everything is defined from the front with sharper liner tools.

Balinese Collar, copper, gold leaf, tourmaline, chrysoprase, moonstone
by Natasha Wozniak, modeled after antique Balinese jewelry

As with many jewelers, I have a stash of stones in my studio and from those, I picked out these carved tourmalines, chrysoprase, and moonstone to add color to the piece.

It was a really nice moment when I got into my costume and put on my handmade collar, which is actually nicer than the neck pieces currently used in Bali. As with most things, I am sure this project will work itself into something in my regular jewelry collection. Moreover, I thought it was a great way to bring together my dance and my jewelry careers.

Hammering

Lotus Lamp by Natasha Wozniak
silver, brass, cast glass

Before I started my jewelry business in 2001, most of the work I made was holloware. There were lotus sculptures, Japanese-inspired vases with delicate piercing, simple bowls of hammered metal. I also taught holloware at the now-defunct Craft Students League in midtown Manhattan. I really loved the contrast between the people in their corporate offices across the airshaft, and the studio in which I was practicing a craft that originated thousands of years ago. My students would come in from their high-stress jobs, and after 3 hours of meditatively hammering copper, would feel calm and rejuventated.

Before I began the craft business, I thought that there might be a chance to create holloware and make a living by selling it. Unfortunately, in the US, there is very little interest in holloware. This, coupled with the lack of support for young artists while developing a body of work, in terms of equipment, space and time, led me away from this aspiration.

Silver vessel by Hiroshi Suzuki

With all of this personal experience in mind, I was delighted to see, in The Economist, of all places, an article about a Japanese-British artist that has had success in holloware. His name is Hiroshi Suzuki and he is having a retrospective in London of his work. I had seen his work at the annual Sofa show in New York, and was always drawn to it, because of the beauty of his style, but also because it is so unusual to see silver vessels anywhere in the high-end craft world.

Silver sculpture by Junko Mori

He is represented By Adrian Sassoon gallery in London, also representing another Japanese-British artist, Junko Mori. She makes elaborate sculptures out of silver, and I remember seeing her work for the first time. I kneeled on the floor in the aisle of the show with another silversmith friend in order to see all of the pieces that were tucked away on a bottom shelf. I later found out that her early work was sponsored by a silver supplier in the UK. That is when the lightbulb went off and I realized once again that a little support for a young artist can lead to really sublime things.

Remember while admiring a beautifully crafted object the next time, that the concept of patronage should be a prominent thought in the decision to buy. The artist will be able to make something even more extraordinary the next time!

ACC Baltimore

I am not in Baltimore right now, but some very cutting edge and innovative artists are there right now for the American Craft Council show. Aside from the Sofa shows, The ACC Baltimore show has the highest number of artists making one-of-a-kind jewelry, using both traditional and unusual materials. Here are a few colleagues that will be there showing some great work:
Christine Simpson-Forni uses sterling silver, a variety of stones, and enamel.. In the pin above, she has created a representation of coral using metal with enamel. I had the chance to visit her studio in Chicago last year and wanted to take a number of photos, only to find my camera battery was dead. The feeling I get from her work, is inspiration from nature, but in a dark, almost gothic way. She focuses on the things that are less-admired, things hidden in a dark tidepool. I wish I could see her work at the show, as I know she always makes great efforts to make many special pieces for this show.
Joanna Gollberg has been making work from a combination of stones and glass. She uses an array of materials to create a variety of colors and textures in her pieces. There are uncut stones, as well as stones that she cuts in her studio. Her work has always had a lot of movement, and while the current work has less actual moving parts, it has a great movement through the combination of 3-dimentional structures and vivid color.

Andrea Janosik has become a specialist in working with leather. Using a variety of leathers, including cords and flat pieces, she created very sculptural pieces. Many pieces are made rolling the leather into shapes, such as the cones in the necklace above, or other techniques of folding or bunching the leather. Her work is very laborious as she spends hours precisely cutting and shaping the leather pieces.

New Work and other things

Pictured above is a new piece I made this year in advance of my trade show. It is always a good motivation for making new work. I decided to try out a material called bi-metal, which is a laminate of 18K gold on top of silver. It allows me to do the reverse the silver with gold accent look, without a huge hike in the price of the materials.

I wanted to call attention to a campaign that the sponsor of this trade show is doing. She is willing to go to jail for us! Wow, that is some commitment. I know that she has been to the halls of congress already, but has failed to get attention paid to the fact that all of us craft artists are employing ourselves as well as, in many cases, assistants. From the side of the client, true value lies in artisan wares made in the US, rather than "luxury" goods that are well-marketed, but were made in China just the knock-offs on Canal Street!

Show Preparation

I am in the midst of designing new work, which will be shown for the first time at the Buyer's Market of American Craft in February. In between making new pieces, I also made a postcard to let stores know where to find me. Here is my postcard image, with a few favorites from my ring collection ,mixed in with a few brand new designs.

Wall Piece #2

The next wall piece that I want to share has a motif from my brocade jewelry collection rendered large and in color. I have been using a design that is inspired by chinese textiles, with a very extravagant version of the curls that exist throughout my work. Here is a sample of the jewelry inspired by this design motif:
Brocade Panel Pendant
18K and blackened silver

Here is the piece in which I enlarged the pattern, made it red and added branches with buds.

Wall Pieces

copper with patina, gold leaf, enamel paint, turquoise, silk

I want to share some new work that I have done recently. I decided to take the techniques I use in my jewelry and apply them to sculptures that hang on the wall. The result is almost like three-dimensional paintings. Here is one piece from the series. It is on view at Perlow-Stevens Gallery in Columbia, MO.

The size is 8"x 10"
This pendant is direct inspiration for the wall piece. In this case, the pendant is made of blackened silver and 18K gold, and also can be worn as a pin. This pendant/pin is also on view at the Perlow-Stevens Gallery in Columbia, MO.

Another current project is allowing me to combine my tow passions of jewelry/ metalsmithing, and dance. I am going to be performing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Nov. 27th and I am making myself a collar for my costume that is based on piece from Bali, dating from the 19th century. I combined the designs of a dancer necklace with the design of a necklace worn by the royal family of Klungkung in the same era. It is made of the same materials as the original dance necklace, copper with gold leaf and gems. The modern collars are made or gold-painted leather, but I figures that since I have th skills, I might as well go for the real thing.

The inspiration comes from photos from this book:

The District

photo Jennifer 8. Lee New York Times

I have been hearing news lately about the Garment District in Manhattan. In the jewelry field, when we say "going to the district", we mean the area around 47th St. between 5th and 6th Aves. However, when my friends in the clothing business talk about their district, they are headed 10 blocks south and a few blocks west.

It seems that the Garment District is being eyed as the next underdeveloped part of Manhattan. Designers and workers are fighting to keep the district zoned for the garment industry. I agree that it is worth fighting for a district in the center of Manhattan dedicated to the making of things, in this case clothing and accessories. When I read Nanette Lepore's comments about how having all the businesses on the same block makes for an efficient business operation, I couldn't agree more.

I think that the jewelry industry has been so far spared, because we deal with high priced materials and the diamond dealers really don't worry too much about being priced out of the neighborhood. But what is lost, when the middle-priced jewelry is removed from the equation, shipped to faraway lands? I think that the spark that can happen between designer, supplier and maker is lost. When one can go have a few face to face conversations on the same block, the faintest outline of an idea can turn into achievable reality in a short time.

As a studio jeweler, making my own work, and sourcing my own materials, I can still enjoy that spark. I just imagine how much more inventive and interesting the mainstream jewelry design would be if it didn't involve so much FedEx and many international phone calls. And what about quality, when the designer can go and see if the stones being set in to the metal are really the color they should be?

I think the jewelers should get together with the garment makers and put forward the idea of buying less things, really well made and designed, conceived and manufactered in New York.