Learn To Bead

Margaret De Patta Jewelry
(1903 – 1964)

From about 1939, Margaret De Patta was a major designer in American Contemporary Jewelry history, perhaps one of the major influential forces during her time. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Metal Arts Guild.  She is often credited as starting the modern jewelry studio movement.

Her pieces epitomize her use of simple lines and structure. There is a strong architectural sense.   You can see clear connections to the cubist and modern art and bauhaus and modernist architecturer prominent at the time.

She characterized her pieces as miniature wearable sculptures, and in reaction to the prevailing view of  jewelry merely as body ornament.   Her use of line demarcates boundaries, creates a sense of dimensional space, frames elements within her pieces.

De Patta envisioned a piece of jewelry as a dynamic object capable of changing perceptions of space and movement by creating reflections, optical illusions, and unexpected alterations of light.

It is interesting to look at her jewelry designs, and think about contemporary design today, the similarities and differences.