The Bead Stringer and The Clients

It remains a curious fact that necklaces were once believed to protect the wearer against getting hypnotized.

Yes, hypnotized.   This made sense in that the inherent beauty of the necklace was thought to distract the gaze of the ill-intended hypnotizer away from the lady’s eyes.

Thus, this piece of jewelry protected its wearer from the unwanted advances and influences of undesirable gentlemen, who spent their days and nights maliciously trying to hypnotize her.    And it followed that women, (and their protective parents), wanted the very best, most spectacular, and most distracting necklaces from the very best artisans.   They believed the more elaborate the necklace, and the more expensive its components, the more powerful it was in this regard.   With more powerful necklaces, the parents were less likely to lose their wealth through an ill-spent dowry.    And the more likely to retain the honor of the lady.

Such a purpose puts an awesome responsibility upon the shoulders of the jewelry designer.

When I began making jewelry, I strung beads on fishing line and cable wire and dental floss, and occasionally on leather.    This wasn’t an awesome responsibility for me.  It wasn’t a calling.   I didn’t feel any need to dress or dress up the world.    It seemed, at the time, an easy way to make some money.   I made necklaces and bracelets, mostly, but also anklets and bangles, eyeglass leashes, lariats, vestments, watch bands, purse handles, and curtain tiebacks.   Anything where you put beads on string.

I rarely wear jewelry, myself.   It’s a bit uncomfortable – especially bracelets.   And I don’t like to call attention to myself.     I more like to blend into the walls and scene around me.   But I loved making jewelry for other people, making them stand out and making them the lovely center of attention and affection.

While my purpose, at that point in my life, was somewhat narrow and pedestrian, I had a lot of questions.   Some about construction.  Some about how people wear jewelry.   Some about why people wear jewelry.    Lots about materials.   Some about tools.

Not exactly sure what “hooked” me.    How did my passion evolve?   I remember right off the bat I was very attracted to gemstones – rough rocks and polished pieces.    I loved the feel of gemstones in my hands.   I loved the natural look.   I loved combining gemstone beads with other beads to enhance their energy and power and presentation.   I had bought some Lapis beads at market.   These were a beautiful rich royal blue with specks of pyrite throughout.    They were so beautiful that I assumed they were the best Lapis anyone could find.   But my customers asked me lots of questions about them, questions related to value, and, while I didn’t know the answers then, I was intrigued.    And I realized that, while a good quality, my Lapis was still far from the best quality.   My investigations and research into stones, at that point, felt like peeling back the layers of an onion.   Some advice I was finding was very clear, but much of it somewhat contradictory and not at all clear, and was more meaningful only when digging deeper and deeper.   Lapis, as well as the other gemstones, each posed a mystery I felt impelled to solve.

My interest also perked up when I made things that didn’t fall apart.     When I began stringing beads, things broke.   The string broke.  The wire broke.  The clasp broke.   I was so determined to find the “cure”, but this didn’t come to me in any easy way.    I began repairing broken jewelry that people had brought to me.    This began a series of Ah-ha! moments.    I saw patterns in what broke and where the breaks were.   I was able to ask my customers questions about the history of their wearing these pieces.    I was able to see how well I fixed these things, lest pieces come back to me again.

And one more thing, as I remember, peaked my interest and got me hooked.   I loved the expressions people had when they tried on the custom bracelets and necklaces I made.    Not quite as good as facial expressions after great sex, but on the same track.    I made people happy.  Very happy.    When the pieces I made didn’t quite hit the mark, I saw this as a challenge.     At first, I used to start from scratch and design a whole new piece.   But over time, I was able to see that some simple tweaking – some modifications in color, proportion, or size, or brightness or darkness – was all that it took to turn that frown into a smile.

So, looking back, I guess I felt some kind of responsibility in enhancing the hypnotic effects of jewelry.   I just didn’t know it.

What The Bead Stringer Needs To Know…

Bead stringing seemed so simple, at least on the surface.   Put beads on string.

But which string?   Which beads?   Clasp or not?  Pattern or not?   Single strand or multiple strands?   Let some of the stringing material show?   String things on  or dangle them from?    How to attach the dangles?   How to secure the ends?

Initially, all these kinds of choices I needed to make paralyzed me.    I was unable to begin.    Or continue.   Let alone finish off.
To complicate things, the people I made things for had their own set of understandings,  requirements, expectations and contingencies.    Length.  Fullness.  Proportion.  Color.  Ease of use.  Situation.  What their friends were wearing.   What their friends were not wearing.   Materials.  Clasps.   Wearing daytime or nighttime.    Way too many things to deal with.      All I wanted to do was put beads on string, set a price, sell the darn piece, and get the money.

I would ask my clients to describe in three words what they wanted from their jewelry.   And they said things like,

“perfect for me”
“mine to treasure”
“different, statement, texture”
“chunky, textured, different”
“beautiful, elegant, unique”
“movement, texture, clean”
“classic, timeless, beautiful”
“bold statement piece”

“quality, quality, quality”
“southwestern, unusual, textured”
“fun, interesting, colorful”
“chic, minimal, texture”
“innovative, customized, iconic”
“unique, show-stopping, colorful”
“well-made, edgy, elegant”

A lot of different ideas.    Full of generalities.   Specific yet open-ended.    And not particularly helpful in easing my anxieties about getting their pieces right.    Their responses didn’t necessarily get me any closer to finding the answers I sought.    After all, What makes a good necklace? How should I begin in making a good necklace for them?

Jewelry

The word “Jewelry” comes from the Latin word “jocale”, meaning plaything.    Jewelry is some of the oldest forms of body adornment, going back at least 100,000 years.   They started back then with shells (not my thing) and stones hung from sinew or leather strips or woven jute.    Jewelry wasn’t really used to make people look good or fit in fashion-wise.   In fact, people didn’t really look that good back then, nor had much sense of fashion.    Instead, people wore jewelry to show wealth or status, or to convey some magical power, or simply to hold their clothes together and keep them from falling off.

As a person who makes jewelry, even calling yourself a Designer, you have to know a lot about how people use jewelry, how they wear it, how it is made, and the quality of the pieces you use and what happens to them over time.   You need to understand that jewelry functions on many levels – the physical, the psychological, the social, the cultural, the situational.    You also need to be able to understand and differentiate between the purposes jewelry serves for the wearer from those of the viewer.

Lots to learn.  Lots to know.   Lots to apply.

So when that Status-seeking person grabs up all your pieces with diamonds…

And that Functional person demands that your pieces have purpose….

And that Symbolic person keeps pestering you about what each stone means, and what each color means, and what that pattern means…

Not least, that wary person in search of Protection from evil spirits and Machiavellian co-workers…

Or still yet that Artistic person so willing to wear whatever beautiful and, sometimes, over-the-top thing you can piece together…

And we can’t leave out that Clue-less person so wanting to buy a piece of your jewelry, but so unable to make a choice about what…

The word “Jewelry” may derive from the word for plaything, but it’s anything but playful for the Jewelry Designer.    Making jewelry is work.   Part science.  Part art.  Part physics.  Part mechanics.  Part psychology.   With a sense of stasis.  And a sense of movement.   An understanding of fashion and style.   An understanding of what is desirable and permissible in society.  Sometimes fun.    Othertimes anxiety-producing.   A good place to begin to learn what we need to learn as jewelry designers is to recognize how people use jewelry.

Jewelry is used for a number of reasons.

First, jewelry can be used as a display of wealth, or even as a vehicle for storage of a person’s wealth, that is, cash converted into gemstones and precious metals.      As such, it is very much tied into a person’s sense of status, as well as a group’s or society’s ways of recognizing status.    Status-seekers seek status.   You definitely don’t want to get this wrong.   So, don’t make any assumptions that you think you know how to measure and display wealth and status.

For example, for one client, the colors, not the materials, were the determining factor.    She bred horses.  Her top horses wore particular colors in bridle, blanket and saddle.    The colors were associated with historical events in British Royal History, such as the color of a rose received by Queen Victoria at a critical ceremony marking who knows what.     The colors of her jewelry had to match exactly – a navy, a pink and a white.      Now navy, pink and white, in combination, can actually look cheap.    So, this created an additional challenge here.

I found that customers who buy and wear jewelry primarily as a display of wealth can be very difficult to deal with.    They tend to prefer to buy what I call a Department-Store look, something you might see in a mass market magazine, or buy on a cruise ship or some duty-free port of call, something that not everyone has, but only because they can’t afford it.   The look has a machine, mass market feel to it.    It gets cache from the name of the store where it was bought.    Sometimes, even the jeweled stones and diamonds come with brand names.    Brand names.   These people equate brand names with status.   They tend to be conservative, because they always worry about how other people will define them.   They are often totally unconcerned about quality, or equate the brand name with quality, no matter what.    If they don’t view you the artist as a “brand”, they may never listen to you or be comfortable with  anything you make for them.

These people are very resistant and shy, when it comes to Art Jewelry or jewelry with more of a designer’s edge.     Unless, of course, they purchase it in New York.   At the recommendation of someone prominent.   At a prominent gallery, preferably on Madison Avenue or in Soho.   From an artist someone has heard of, perhaps seen an ad in some magazine.    And that isn’t too outlandish, except, naturally, if you live in New York and can pull off something outlandish.   And you can call yourself Hip.   Hip-ness is status, too.

A second use for jewelry is purely functional.   Functional jewelry is worn for a purpose.  Sometimes the purpose is literal, for example, an embellished buckle, or clasp, or pin, belt, or hair comb.      In several Asian countries before the 1800’s, including Japan, decorative jewelry, jewelry primarily used for adornment with no other function, was outlawed.    Only jewelry that had a clear and specific function could be worn.   The famous Netsuke were belt buckles, for instance.    Now, of significant note here, and a great clue and learning point for the budding jewelry designer, is that Rome also banned jewelry for a while.   The Roman emperors allowed the wearing of only one piece of jewelry at a time.    What is important to note, is that, while the Japanese people abided by their jewelry prohibition laws, the Romans did not.   The Romans, as a whole, you see, were not particularly functional-oriented people.   They loved décor and they loved decorating themselves too much.

Othertimes, the purpose is more figurative or metaphorical.   The jewelry serves a purpose, but the purpose represents or is emblematic of something else.     Examples include bridal jewelry that must be appropriate for a wedding.    Or a red necklace to match a red dress.   Or a pink awareness ribbon bracelet worn to get attention at a fund raiser for breast cancer research.   In these and similar cases, the over-riding concern of the user-type is that the jewelry must serve a purpose.    Other concerns are immaterial.

People who choose to focus primarily on function, whether literal or figurative, do so for different reasons.   One type of customer – the Functional-Minor — who puts function over adornment often seeks to blend in with the crowd.   A successful functional match reduces their social anxiety.    This match reduces their concerns about their abilities to mechanically manipulate the world around them.   These customers don’t want to call attention to themselves.     Their jewelry must have a practical purpose, and be able to be used practically.    Very boring, at least for me.   But I know many artists who find thrills and challenges in creating eyeglass leashes, name badge holders, belt buckles, hat pins and the like.    For me, I gravitate more towards clients who want to put a piece of art around their wrist or across their chest.

Another type of customer – the Functional-Major — who puts function over adornment, sees “function” in power terms.    The more clever, the more elaborate, the more showy, the more appropriate the piece of jewelry is at achieving its functional purpose, the more power the wearer has.    So the hat pin is no longer just to hold the hat in place.   It signals that the wearer has been especially great at achieving this end.   And so too, with the belt.   Or the hair ornament.   Or the brooch.    The jewelry signals that “I can achieve this functional purpose better than you can!”    I design a lot for clients like this; however, they either have me making the same type of thing over and over again, or have me make nothing else at all.   They are very resistant to wearing any piece of jewelry that does not perform a specific function.    On the occasional rare moment, I can confuse them a bit, and trick them into wearing that art-necklace or bracelet.    I make these out of functional parts, steampunk style jewelry, such as with clock parts and gears and keys, or Victorian styles made from vintage buttons and old brooches converted into pendants.

The Status-Seeker and the Functional-Purpose-Seeker are only two of several kinds of people who use jewelry.  Yet a third way jewelry is used is symbolic.   Different materials have different meanings.  Different colors.  Different patterns.    The symbols, whatever they are, are used to show some shared belief or communication system.    You can picture people wearing a Christian cross or a Jewish Star of David, or a wedding ring.     You can picture Vanderbilt students wearing gold and black at a football game, University of Tennessee students wearing UT-orange, and North Carolina students wearing Carolina Blue.

The Symbol-Seeker is very concerned with showing the outside world that they fit in.    Many high school and college students, and people in their early twenties are particularly concerned with meanings.  They see potential meanings in everything.   Stones.  Colors.   Shapes.  Arrangements.   Timing.  Lengths of necklaces.   Numbers of strands and parts.   They look for ancient symbols, and religious symbols, and mystical symbols, and power symbols, and lady luck symbols.    They often obsess on their fears of wearing the wrong symbols, or too many symbols, or an inappropriate combination of symbols.  As they become more secure with themselves in life as they grow older, there is a more narrow search for meanings.   They tend to focus on a few  religious symbols, like crosses, and perhaps representations of the letters in their names.   Sometimes, jewelry must conform to a type of numerology – odds or evens or multiples of some number, like the number 3 – related to the numbers of beads or the numbers of strands or the numbers of drops.

The Jewelry Designer here becomes a conveyor of meanings.    This is serious stuff, and the Jewelry Designer needs to remain serious throughout the design, marketing and selling processes, lest she disturb the symbol seeker.     Never questioning.   Always believing.   And always in tune about what can/should/will go together in a piece, and what won’t.    And it is important, whatever they are, that the symbols take center stage in your piece.   Moreover, these symbols must be named.    Names preserve meanings.   As such, names have power.  I also give names to all my Jewelry pieces, and names to any special components within a piece that need to be imbued

Collectors are another type of Symbol-Seeker.    For many, many reasons, people collect things like horses and elephants and pigs, music notes and hearts, fairies and dragons, native American and hillbilly, cats and dogs, sports and hobbies, and the list can go on and on and on.   Collectors can never have too many symbolic representations of what is a good thing for them.    As a designer, it is, on the one hand, very easy to create jewelry for these people.    Just add a lot of what they collect to your pieces – charms, beads in special shapes, beads with images painted on or etched into them, pendants in special shapes.     On the other hand, however, collectors often do not know at what point enough is enough.    It is too easy, when working with Collectors, for the jewelry designer to over-embellish and over-create.    The pieces become ugly or monotonous or clownish (which only works for people who collect clowns) or way too costume’y.    Not a good thing.

A fourth type of jewelry user is a variant on our Symbol-Seeker.   This fourth type seeks protection, which only the jewelry can provide.   The Protection-Seeker wants to ward off evil in all its evil incantations.   They believe they can use jewelry to control the world around them.   Jewelry, to them, has certain magical or quasi-magical-religious powers.    For example, people afraid of vampires, wear crosses around their neck, or wear a necklace made from recently harvested garlic cloves.   People wear worry beads necklaces made from evil-eye beads.     Sometimes these people want their jewelry blessed by an additional person beyond the jewelry designer – a shaman, a priest, a wicca.    Sometimes the client wants a whole ritual set up, cleansing the jewelry of all its pre-wearing deformities, soaking it in some solution, praying over it, wearing it for 1 hour the first day and 2 hours the next and so forth.    Sometimes the client wants you to use strange materials, like animal bones and teeth and claws.

At one point, we were designing a necklace for some very pagan-Christian country music stars.    They wanted all crosses, — 16 crosses to be exact –, all of them different shapes and sizes, but all black.    This actually took several tries to get it right.    While they couldn’t articulate everything exactly the way they wanted it up front, it turned out that the length of the piece was critical, and it had to be just the right black.    You would think black would be easy.   But black crosses have different finishes on them.   Some are bezeled, some are plain, some are incised.    These all catch the light differently.    You have to hang these crosses off some kind of stringing material.    Our first try involved cable wire (which is not black) covered with black beads, dangling the crosses every so often.    No good.   The final piece used chain, which we had to blacken with a black varnish.   There were actually seven versions of the necklace.    With each version, the country music star, her designer, and six other people in the entourage had to wear the  piece for a day.    They each were testing its protective powers.   They wanted to feel protected against negative spirits – spirits which negated the feminine God – the wiccan female version of Jesus.    That was a lot for us to get our heads around, but the seventh version worked for them.    Hallelujah!

Let’s move on.   Our fifth type of jewelry user fancies herself as an Artist or as a person with strong artistic sensibilities.   Beauty is paramount.  Jewelry is adornment.   Ornamentation.  Decoration.   Jewelry is power emerging from beauty.    Evoking emotions, romantic or raw.   Of course, for the jewelry maker into Design, this is one of the easiest clients to work for.   They celebrate creativity and are willing to wear creativity in public.    Your creativity.   In public.    Maybe you should be paying them.    Especially when you consider all the other kinds of clients you might have ended up with.

Sometimes they leave you to your own devices.   Othertimes, Artistic-Types want to participate with you in the design process.   Things can sometimes get a bit esoteric.   A bit over the top.  Pretentious.   Taking you in a few directions you may not want to go in.    The Artist-Type talks a big game about fashion and style, as if these were the goals, and they can only be attained by YOU, perhaps in consultation with THEM.    Your ego gets caught up in the orgasmic properties of color and pattern and texture.   You feel your powers intensify as you get more connected to the style-setters around you.    But everything is ephemeral.   Fashions change and styles change.   Rapidly.   Fashion signals and style signals are loopy, often contradictory.   It takes you three months to make a piece, and when it’s done, everything has changed.   You are left deflated.    Hoping the client still wants her piece.

The Jewelry Designer always needs to be careful of not mis-labeling a non-Artist-Type as an Artist.    You see, many people pose as Artists, but are really some other user-type dressing up in Artist’s clothing.    These Artist-Posers talk a lot  about colors and color combinations, tapping into your natural color addictions, causing you to misread what will turn out to be an unsatisfying situation into one that looks very promising and exciting indeed.    Color is a powerful aphrodisiac for Jewelry Designers.   These artist-posers, however, are looking for the equivalent in jewelry of that “blue painting to go over the blue couch”, which you hear about so often in interior design.    And thus, they reveal, as in this example, a Functional-Type nature.   This Functional-Type / Artist-Poser is only interested in jewelry the color of which will function with a particular item of clothing.

Most problems, when working with Artistic-Type clients, usually come when you have finished the piece and are hoping to collect your money.    To this customer, art takes precedence over functionally.    So frequently there are still some issues of fit or drapery or positioning of a dangle, some questions about the choice of clasp or materials, some issues of movement.    As a Designer, you are very motivated to correct any functional issues, but usually such corrections force you to compromise on beauty, and this client will have none of that.    The result is that these very beautiful pieces may not look as beautiful when worn.    And there goes your reputation.

A final jewelry user is the Clueless one.   They want you to make them some jewelry, but can’t tell you what they want.   They are uncertain about color.   Or length.   Or materials.   Or what to string things on.   They cannot tell you specifically enough why they want something, why they need something, what they plan to do with it or wear with it.   You wonder why they even want a piece of jewelry in the first place.  You offer suggestion after suggestion to try to get a clue, but to no avail.  They hedge, they back-track, they contradict, they change their mind.   They are a Designer’s nightmare.   They make a lot of extra work for you.    And you may get somewhere but nowhere at the same time.

Clueless-Types need to pay very, very, very close attention to what you say, but never do.   When you relate quality issues to them, it goes over their heads.  When you express concerns about color choices, it zips right past them.   When you talk about things like drape, ease and movement – bam!, around their sides and out the door.    Clueless people can be very pushy, and keep pushing you in directions that don’t make sense.   So when you wonder why someone who will be spending $500.00 on a necklace, wants to use metalized plastic beads.   Or when you question why someone wants to use a 2” wide toggle clasp with a strand of 2mm sized seed beads.    You become somewhat clueless yourself.    Clueless how to steer the client in a good direction.

Jewelry Users – clients and customers – come in every form.    The more prominent magazines and schools would lead you to believe that, since the late 1900’s, the artist type predominates.   Fashion and style are kings.    From my experiences, however, I don’t believe that is the case.    No matter what the current fashions, colors and styles, most people tend to have their own personal favorites which they buy and wear year after year after year.   In jewelry design, you end up with an even mix of user-types, and frequently have to adapt your style and business strategies accordingly.

Occasionally, you end up working with more than one person at a time, with each person representing a different user-type.   In our shop, this frequently occurs when mothers shop with and for their daughters.   Not long ago, one such mother-daughter team tried to collaborate on designing wedding party jewelry for the daughter’s wedding.    The mother suggested a color palette; the daughter rejected it.   The mother suggested a necklace and bracelet design scheme; the daughter rejected it.   The mother suggested a cable wire and a clasp; the daughter wanted to use elastic string and no clasp.  The mother suggested 3-strands for the bracelet; the daughter insisted on 2-strands.  The mother was very concerned with art and functionality issues.  The daughter was very concerned with symbols and was very much an Artist-Poser, not a true Artist-Type.  While both tried to bring me into their heated discussions, I kept my distance.   Luckily for me, Mom caved.    But unfortunately, I thought Mom had the better ideas and approach.

I find it most useful, as a Designer, before beginning the design process, before sketching out an image, or selecting materials, or strategizing about how I want to work with the client, to determine which kind of jewelry user-type I think my client is.    In my dream-of-all-dreams, my client would be “Design-Oriented”.   Here, the client would look both for beauty and function, concerned about look, but also durability, moveability and context.    My job would be easy, with a synergistic partnership with my client.   But the Design-Oriented client rarely exists, so I only mention this in passing.

The Design Orientation is what you or I would bring to the table, not often the client.   It defines our professionalism.   It underscores our approach.  And it fills in all the missing blanks, overcomes roadblocks, and resolves contradictions with that which the other types of jewelry users bring to the situation.   So, I size them up.   Then I go to work.   And focus on good design.

Land of Odds(www.landofodds.com) – Beads, Jewelry Findings, Jewelry Making Supplies

Land of Odds provides bead and jewelry making artists with virtually all their beads, supplies,
books and jewelry findings needs, with over 30,000 products.
Home of The Ugly Necklace Contest-A Jewelry Design Competition With A Twist, The Illustrative Beader: Beaded TapestryCompetition, and of All Dolled Up: Beaded Art Doll Competition.
Retail/Discounts/Wholesale.

Warren Feld Jewelry (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com)

Jewelry Design Camp

**Receive The Designers Gazette quarterly newsletter, and
Announcements about Special Sales at Land of Odds http://groups.yahoo.com/group/landofodds/join/