Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them onto a thread or thin wire with a sewing or beading needle or sewing them to cloth. Beads are produced in a diverse range of materials, shapes, and sizes, and vary by the kind of art produced. Most often, beadwork is a form of personal adornment, but it also commonly makes up other artworks.
Jewellery consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western perspective, the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal such as gold often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as glass, shells and other plant materials may be used.
An adornment is generally an accessory or ornament worn to enhance the beauty or status of the wearer. They are often worn to embellish, enhance, or distinguish the wearer, and to define cultural, social, or religious status within a specific community. When worn to show economic status, the items are often either rare or prohibitively expensive to others. Adornments are usually colourful, and worn to attract attention.
A necklace is an article of jewellery that is worn around the neck. Necklaces may have been one of the earliest types of adornment worn by humans. They often serve ceremonial, religious, magical, or funerary purposes and are also used as symbols of wealth and status, given that they are commonly made of precious metals and stones.
Albert Paley is an American modernist metal sculptor. Initially starting out as a jeweler, Paley has become one of the most distinguished and influential metalsmiths in the world. Within each of his works, three foundational elements stay true: the natural environment, the built environment, and the human presence. Paley is the first metal sculptor to have received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects. He lives and works in Rochester, New York with his wife, Frances.
Arline Fisch is an American artist and educator. She is known for her work as a metalsmith and jeweler, pioneering the use of textile processes from crochet, knitting, plaiting, and weaving in her work in metal. She developed groundbreaking techniques for incorporating metal wire and other materials into her jewelry.
Kiff Slemmons is a contemporary American metalsmith. She received her B.A. in Art and French at the University of Iowa, but is primarily known for her career in jewelry and metals. Slemmons currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Her work is collected by many notable museums and personalities, including the late Robin Williams.
Linda MacNeil is an American abstract artist, sculptor, and jeweler. She works with glass and metal specializing in contemporary jewelry that combines metalwork with glass to create wearable sculpture. Her focus since 1975 has been sculptural objets d’art and jewelry, and she works in series. MacNeil’s jewelry is considered wearable sculpture and has been her main focus since 1996.
Nancy Lee Worden was an American artist and metalsmith. Her jewelry art is known for weaving together personal narratives with current politics. She received many awards and honors. Worden exhibited internationally, and her work is represented in collections around the world, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Donald Paul Tompkins (1933–1982) is an American jewelry artist known for his witty and satirical works based on objects, photo etchings, cast elements, and gemstones. He is most closely associated with the Pacific Northwest and the metalsmithing community that coalesced around Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, where he taught for many years. His most famous series Commemorative Metals keenly reflected Pop Art and the artistic concerns of New York City-based artists in the 1950s and 60s.
Susie Ganch is a first generation American artist of Hungarian heritage. She is a sculptor, jeweler, educator, and founder and director of Radical Jewelry Makeover. Ganch received her Bachelors in Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Geology in 1994 and her Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997.
Linda Threadgill is an American artist whose primary emphasis is metalsmithing. Her metal work is inspired by forms of nature and the interpretations she gleans from the intricate patterns it presents. She explores the foundation of nature to allude to nature and transform it into re-imagined, stylized plants forms.
Marjorie Schick was an innovative American jewelry artist and academic who taught art for 50 years. Approaching sculptural creations, her avant-garde pieces have been widely collected. Her works form part of the permanent collections of many of the world's leading art museums, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; and the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.
Miye Matsukata, sometimes written as Miyé Matsukata, was a Japanese-born American jewelry designer based in Boston, Massachusetts. She was one of the founders of Atelier Janiye and later became the sole owner.
Melanie Bilenker is an American craft artist from New York City who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work is primarily in contemporary hair jewelry. In 2010 she received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Bilenker uses her own hair to "draw" images of contemporary life and self-portraits. The use of hair is an attempt at showing the person, and the moments left or shed behind.
Jan Yager is an American artist who makes mixed media jewelry. She draws inspiration from both the natural world and the lived-in human environment of her neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, emphasizing that art is a reflection of both time and place. She has incorporated rocks, bullet casings, and crack cocaine vials into her works, and finds beauty in the resilience of urban plants that some would consider weeds.
Sharon Church was an American studio jeweler, metalsmith, and educator. She is a professor emerita of the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2012, Church was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council (ACC). In 2018, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of North American Goldsmiths.
The Wayne Art Center is a non-profit art center in Wayne, Pennsylvania that has offered classes, lectures, events and exhibitions for more than 90 years. The Wayne Art Center was organized in 1931 and incorporated in 1932 during the Great Depression. Its mission was to share joy in beauty and art among the broader community.
The Society of Bead Researchers is a scholarly association for those studying beads and beadmaking in the context of history, ethnology and archaeology worldwide. The society was founded in 1981 by Peter Francis, Jr., director of the Center for Bead Research in Lake Placid, New York, Elizabeth J. Harris and Jamey D. Allen. The Society of Bead Researchers was officially incorporated as a tax-exempt, non-profit corporation in 1999.
Marcia Lewis is an American jewelry designer and metalsmith. She attended San Diego State University and Long Beach State University. Her work was featured in the January 1987 issue of Ornament magazine. She is the author of the book Chasing: Ancient metalworking technique with modern applications] published in 1994. She is professor emeritus at Long Beach State University.
Ornament Magazine, Preview from the JEWELRY episode, Nov 4, 2021 on PBS