I have found Instagram the best social media site for promoting your jewelry sales, and their algorithm has changed for the better for us
Before, Instagram would show new posts to 1% of your followers first and, depending on the response, share further.
This favored accounts with a large following, such as influencers or jewelry designers with especially large followings, since their 1% is a lot more than the 1% of a small account.
Now, every new post will be shown to a random group of users, usually ones with a shared interest in the kind of posts you create. Think: followers of your followers who don’t yet follow you will get prioritized. Aggregators accounts, like influencers, will get diminished a bit. In a similar vein, co-occurring is this situation: If you post an image on your own feed as well as with an influencer’s feed, that image will only appear on your own feed, not on the influencer’s. Instagram’s goal is to reward originality and the creator.
This is great news for smaller accounts: it widens the funnel of potential engagement with each post.
Reels are still important, but they’re no longer the only ones.
Focus on posting a mix of Reels, still images, and carousels. Should NOT be all reels all the time. The important factor is that you are giving your followers value. Make them feel like you are giving them something.
Give people something to read (in the post or the caption)
Provide an insider point of view to your jewelry-making process
Choose an eye-catching cover image for all posts (hook them)
Better lighting often solves many issues of gaining and keeping attention. Also bring people in close to the elements in the image. Focus on a a section of the piece. Show them your hands at work. Don’t pull back for that wide shot of everything necessarily.
Bring people in close, show them what you’re doing.
Give viewers a reason to watch your entire Reel.
NO’s: Instead of simply showing your work, using captions such as:
❌ “Here’s my latest piece of jewelry…”
❌ “I have an event coming…”
❌ “My website is now live…”
YES’s: Capture their attention first, and then make your announcement:
✅ “Here’s how I turned this run-of-the-mill necklace into an exciting one..” finishing with “This piece is now available”
✅ “You won’t believe how this piece turned out…” followed by “Come see this piece live at my next show.”
WARNINGs: Less time-lapse of showing each step after it has been completed, and more showing something actionable, like implementing each step.
Come up with something that will make people hang out until the interesting part. Come up with things to make people stick around. Bring them close-in to the action. Be sure they see you sometime in the images. Be sure, at the end or towards the end, they see the outcome, such as the finished piece or section of the piece, or completed step.
End with a CALL TO ACTION. Such as, direct them to your website where they can purchase the finished piece, or to your website where they can sign up for your newletters.
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SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form
So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer reinterprets how to apply techniques and modify art theories from the Jewelry Designer’s perspective. To go beyond craft, the jewelry designer needs to become literate in this discipline called Jewelry Design. Literacy means understanding how to answer the question: Why do some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not? How to develop the authentic, creative self, someone who is fluent, flexible and original. How to gain the necessary design skills and be able to apply them, whether the situation is familiar or not.
There are so many different kinds of things you can do business-wise to promote your jewelry designs. Post on every social media site. Conduct several email campaigns. Take out ads. Create websites. However, all these can get overwhelming and begin to impede on your time and energy for creating jewelry. To prevent this, it is important to be organized. It is important to rely on more limited, predictable, easily accessible, repeatable systems of things you need to do to sustain both your jewelry designing and your business.
Some key business-related goals involve:
(1) Impression management
(2) Mentoring
(3) Audience recruitment and retention
(4) Networking and Partnering
(5) Selling
Some caveats:
(a) To create that manageability’ you want to do as much as you can from your computer
(b) In reality, selling actual pieces of jewelry, on average, only covers about 1/3 of your sustainability needs. You may have to take on additional work, and it makes the most sense that the work relate to jewelry designing.
(c) You are in the trust-creating business. You must be able to establish instant trust about the value of your work and the desirability of your work for your core buying audience.
Impression management
What impression does someone get from interacting with you, either online or in-person or through some other point-of-sale? To what degree can you influence and control this impression? Key things to consider:
o Website
o Email Etiquette
o Cold Calling
o Follow Through
Website. You want a professional website. This website will showcase your products. It will be home to lots of well-organized and accessible information, including: your bio, your art statement, your portfolio, testimonials, links to articles you have written, perhaps a creative-focused resume, and images of your work.
It might showcase shorter videos showing you at work, or delving into a particular work.
It will have links to your various social media pages. The layout, design and information presentation across social media sites needs to be very consistent across all your platforms. You should maintain separate pages for each social media for business vs. personal. You do not want anything personal to come up in your business page feed.
It may or may not have a shopping cart system attached. If not, then you need to make clear other alternatives for how people can buy your products from you.
It will have a FAQ page detailing contact information, purchasing and return policies, payment methods, any privacy concerns.
It will have a clear way for people to add their names to your mailing list.
Email Etiquette. It is critical to generate an email list of customers/potential customers. You want them to very formally and visibly opt-in to the list. You can generate sign-up sheets, online forms, and the like towards this end. You can also segment your list into smaller, targeted groups.
Email will be your best, primary and most powerful networking tool.
You can run your own email campaigns, or use an email client like MAILCHIMP (https://mailchimp.com) or CONSTANT CONTACT (https://www.constantcontact.com). I would suggest using an email client. This will prevent your own email address from getting blocked by the internet-powers-that-be as spam.
Each time you get someone’s email address to add to your list, send them a special email, thanking them. Also direct them to your website or online presence, such as on social media, with an active link.
A monthly contact is reasonable.
Caution: many anti-spam programs reject email addresses that begin with Info, Contact, Shop, Store, Help and other very generic terms.
In writing and tone, be professional. Don’t use the kind of quick texts or posts you might use on social media.
You do not want your email to appear that it is wasting anyone’s time. Use a polite greeting and closing. In your first sentence or two be very clear in conveying why you are writing this email specifically to them. Don’t ramble. Get to your points quickly. Don’t use long blocks of texts. Segment/section things and use subheadings throughout. You want the email to be scannable. Don’t use any or many images. None to two images would be more than enough. Wait to share images until after someone requests to see them. Do, however, include an active link to where they might find images of your works online.
To the best you can, personalize things as much as possible. Direct the email to a named person. Make things sound as if you are not sending out the same email to a long list of contacts.
Some examples of personalized phrasing:
o I visited your shop recently, and
o So and so suggested I contact you,
o I visited your website,
o I read about you in such-and-such magazine,
Cold Calling. With cold calling, you have two basic strategies: (a) Shoehorn, or (b) Direct. Whatever approach you use, be sure to have done some research about your target store/gallery, the designers they represent, a sense of preferred style and looks, and the characteristics of their primary customer audience.
With a shoehorn strategy, you begin to ease yourself into the world and universe of a particular store or gallery. You visit as a customer and ask questions. You contact and talk with other artists represented in the store. You participate in open houses and other events. You add your name to their emailing list. You begin to have more and longer conversations with the owner. Gradually you introduce the idea of having your jewelry represented in their venue. Always wear one or more pieces of your jewelry.
With a direct approach, you come into the store unannounced. Hopefully the owner is there then; otherwise, ask the staff when the best time to return is. Always wear one or more pieces of your jewelry. Be prepared with about 20 pieces, nicely organized and displayed in trays, that, if you are making headway, you can bring into the venue with you. It is also OK, if you have the inventory, to have even more pieces in your car that you can bring in, if it seems the owner is interested in purchasing some things.
If you are unable to visit in person, then send a letter. Don’t phone first. It is too easy for the store to ignore you. In your letter, keep it short and to the point. Establish your credibility as a designer, and clearly identify the fit between your work and their customer base. Sound authentic, not sales’y. Write about,
o Who you are
o Your style and design sense
o Why you think your jewelry would be a good fit for their customer base
o The materials and techniques you typically use
o Your previous experience selling your pieces
o Some sheets showing inventory, description, pricing
o End with a phrase like, “I’d like to get together with you to show my work in person. I will call you to set up an appointment, if interested.”
o Add links to your website of places which show your jewelry.
Follow Through. Be very clear about this: You are not an information-sharer. Rather, you are a relationship builder. Sending out emails, posting on line, targeting letters, cold calling are all tools you use to build relationships. Relationships are built up by sharing understandings, not necessarily tid-bits of information. These understandings have to do with values, desires, assumptions, expectations, and perceptions. The more you establish shared understandings — and that does not mean having to have the same opinions — the tighter and more productive these relationships get.
If you are wanting a response to something from someone, and it’s not forthcoming in a reasonable time, follow up with that person.
If you have visited a store/gallery and had some conversation with someone there, follow up with a thank you note or some note that continues something about your conversation.
If someone sends you a comment about you or your work, send them a thank you note.
In your follow-ups, repeat the name of the person you are following up with.
Provide additional valuable information in your follow-up conversations.
Mentoring
Share your art/designer skills for a fee. You can teach classes or one-on-one. You can create instructional projects or tutorials. You can write articles. You can curate shows. You can become a coach. You can conduct online webinars.
Things have synergistic effects — they amplify other things you are doing. Mentoring will result in a larger, more targeted email list. Students will look for all the mentoring activities you do. Students often will buy your pieces. Mentoring will increase the number of topics you can talk about when networking.
Keep your initial goal simple: Aim to attract 5 students, interacting with them 1–4x each month, encouraging them to spend $50–250/student per month on your mentoring activities and product sales.
Audience recruitment and retention
What is most important about recruiting and retaining audience members is not the numbers of contacts, but the quality of your engagement with your contacts. Again, success is a matter of forming and sustaining one-on-one relationships. When you have relationships, it becomes much easier to ask for favors. On a regular basis, you can create content, for free, shared through emails, which helps you connect and form relationships with your core audience.
You don’t necessarily need 1000’s of people in your core audience. More likely, having 30–100 regular buyers of your work would suffice. This allows keeping connected and creating connections with your core audience much more attainable. Know what this limited group of buyers is looking for. Know where they hang out and where to find them. Offer them opportunities to interact with you and your jewelry, such as offering them a first look, or a time to watch you and learn a few design techniques as you work. Turn these buyers into true fans.
Think about:
o What does this core buyer care about?
o What does this buyer read?
o Where do you find this buyer?
o What resonates with this buyer?
Answers to these questions could help you shape your marketing message when explaining how your jewelry could elevate this buyer’s life. Inspiring your buyer. Building trust. Note: you are not creating jewelry for this buyer per se; rather, given the jewelry you are creating and want to create, this assists you in finding that audience who might share your values and understandings as expressed within your designs and by you as an authentic jewelry designer.
Networking and Partnering
When networking and partnering, you uncover more opportunities at less risk and cost to yourself, your creative energy, and your business fundamentals. There’s less effort to find opportunities. Less effort to put plans and projects into effect. Less effort to get visibility. Less effort to make a sale.
It might be useful to set a goal as making 3 networking contacts per week. Use your network to get help in creating these pitches. Make them shared pitches. Use the shared pitches to introduce yourself to their audiences, and conversely their products to your own audience.
Caveat: Always direct people to specific webpages relevant to any pitch. Do not direct them to your home page on your website.
Selling
As a jewelry designer, your self-concept is most likely one as an artist. But when you are in business, you need to expand this a bit and see yourself as both an artist and a salesperson. If this makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, it’s understandable, but you need to get over it. Jewelry doesn’t sell itself.
You want to always have on hand 15–20 coherent pieces available for sale. They need to feel as if they are part of a line of jewelry, with a similar emotional appeal to a defined target audience.
You want to have a list of about 50 places you could approach to carry your jewelry. Then you work the list, perhaps 3 contacts a week. Prioritize your contacts. Begin your process with your lower priority contacts so that you can gain some experience in presenting yourself and your products before approaching your most desired sites.
You do not close a sale. Keeping with a key theme of advice: You create a relationship. You are not selling a product. You are guiding someone, in a caring way, to come to understand how your jewelry might enhance and enrich their lives. You want them to make a buying decision that will be good for themselves. You are not trying to get something from them; rather, you are trying to give them something which will positively impact their lives. Your key skill here when selling is empathy.
Be bold and confident when introducing yourself.
Always ask the person you are talking with what their name is; repeat their name several times while speaking with them.
Ask a lot of questions; show interest in the client or customer. Get them talking about themselves. You should be talking about 25% of the time and your client/customer should be talking about 75% of the time.
A great story about your jewelry will sell it. They are especially interested in your inspiration, as well as your process for creating jewelry.
Don’t let your client/customer get away without at least asking them if they have any interested in purchasing your jewelry. Even if that person says No!, you would be in a better position than if you had not asked.
Final Words
Don’t let the business aspects of succeeding in jewelry design kill your creative spark. Instead, make each broad business goal into a set series of systematic, repeatable activities.
As you can see, much of all this effort can be done from your studio on your computer. This will save you vast amounts of time which you can devote to the creative side of your life. Less time jewelry marketing. More time jewelry making. The end results of these activities should be increased exposure, relationships and engagements.
The most successful designers have
o Step-by-step plans
o Associations with expertise
o Become a part of a peer audience and community
Make your jewelry design journey flourish. Take ownership over it — how you spend your time, energy and the use of resources around you. Put everything to best use to attain your own highest values.
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I was 4th place finalist, Swarovski jewelry competition
I highly recommend entering many art and jewelry design competitions each and every year. This is a good way to
· Raise your visibility
· Practice your self-promotion skills
· Get feedback on your work
· Gain more legitimacy and credibility
· Promote your value
· Keep aware of current trends and expectations in jewelry design
· Further inspire your clients
Competitions can supercharge your jewelry design growth and career.
The First Competition I Entered
In 2004, I submitted an entry (see image above) to the Swarovski Be Naturally Inspired jewelry design competition. I downloaded a copy of the rules and set to work. The project had to be at least 75% Swarovski Austrian crystal beads, stones, or other components. You had to submit an image of your final piece, an image of your inspiration, an artist bio, and an artist statement about your piece and how you translated your inspiration into the finished piece.
This image of the Grand Canyon at sunrise was my inspiration:
Grand Canyon Sunrise
I set out to work. Created the general design, selected the technique I wanted to use, and with determination and a lot of trial and error, created the finished piece. In the process, I discovered that different Austrian crystal colors, when used together, tended to blur boundaries and lose some of that distinct color sense that I wanted. I had to solve that problem, which I did, by using black 1.8mm delica beads between each crystal bead. This helped create sharper boundaries.
Up until that point, I had not written any kind of bio or artist statement. I was uneasy about how to describe the finished piece, such as what to call attention to. I had to do several drafts of each. Was a great exercise.
Submitted the piece. Heard back that I was a finalist. Then I had to send them the original piece. I had trouble letting go and saying goodbye. I found one package to use, then rejected it. Then another package, and rejected that. The fifth packaging idea was finally satisfying. Then I held onto the ready-to-ship package for almost a week before taking it over to the UPS shop. I had to insure it. The value was priceless to me. But I had to pick a number. And I prayed that the package would not get lost or damaging.
Swarovski emailed me that it had arrived safely.
I was invited to the awards ceremony they held in their offices in New York City.
And said goodbye again to my piece which was headed for their museum in Innsbruck Austria.
You Are Always A Winner
Whether you win or lose, you are, in fact, experiencing a rich source of inspiration and learning. There never really is a setback.
At the very least, you most likely will be included in a publicly presented list of submitters. You have already increased your visibility.
If your submission is accepted, you have something to list on your resume or list of achievements. You can use this as talking points when selling to a client, store or gallery. You can add this information to wherever you showcase the submitted work. You can embellish your descriptions with information from the materials you submitted for contest entry.
You can generate press releases, social media posts, special email announcements. You can send out updates as your submission progresses through the competition process, such as should you become a semifinalist.
As you do these kinds of things to increase your visibility, this builds credibility and brand awareness. Many store and gallery owners watch these contests closely, often making note of the better pieces and their designers, often following the designers over their career.
Whether The Feedback Is Positive or Negative — It Always Gives You A Better Understanding of Yourself As a Designer
Feedback provides clues to why your jewelry has VALUE to them. What do they want to know about it? How does the design help them solve a problem? What key attributes of VALUE should you promote to your clients?
Participating in competitions gives you a great opportunity to practice speaking about yourself and your jewelry, and seeing how others react.
Competitions provide many clues about what is relevant in the moment. They force you to figure out how to relate you and your design sense to a set of competition rules and expectations.
All this public visibility will actually inspire some people to spread the message about you. Generating word-of-mouth is often the most successful type of marketing.
Competitions Are Juried
Periodically do online searches for jewelry and art competitions. If the active link is a newsletter or mailing list of some sort, give them your email address. Some art competitions will allow submissions of jewelry; others will not.
Not sure how I got this way. I can remember when I was 10 or 11 years old, my friend Gary and I, and sometimes Ira, who was sometimes a friend, sometimes someone we bullied, used to set fires, and then try to put them out. We would set fire to this field behind the Ford dealership on Rt. 22. We would set fire to homes and businesses under construction. We would set fires, let them burn awhile and then try to put them out by stamping them with our feet, putting blankets over them, pouring water on them.
We set fires until we were caught. By the police. Punished severely by our parents who could not figure out why we were setting fires. The word because was insufficient for them. We did it because we could. The fields and buildings were there waiting to be used. We used them the way we knew how. That gave us some fun. A feeling of power. And that was that.
That was that for Gary and Ira. Actually, not for me. I became mesmerized. The colors. The contrasts. The saturation and vibrancy. The interplay. The movement and rapid color changes. The certainty when it was all over.
My gaze locked in, never wavering, staring as the light tans and beiges of the tall field grasses, very still, began undulating with reds and oranges, some blues, some maroons, the fiery colors taking over, first a small area, then more and more, until the colors were more powerful than the heat generated by the fire. Once the fire was put out, I literally felt the strong juxtaposition between charcoal and beige, at once listless and lifeless, yet exuding a powerful finality.
Color is such a powerful influencer. I never set fires again, but, at the same time, I had no one to share my very personal, very emotional, very primal color experiences with until I was in my late 20’s. In school, I was always tracked with the more intelligent kids. This meant rewards for math and science, and some put downs for art and music. My parents did not want to hear about anything else besides lawyer and doctor.
Soon after Gary and Ira and I were caught, I moved away.
But I doubt color was in their forethoughts as we set fires to things.
The Jewelry Designer Colors Differently Than The Artist
You cannot paint with beads and other jewelry components.
I am going to repeat this: You cannot paint with beads and other jewelry components.
When you take color class after color class rooted in art, they are teaching you how to paint. You can’t do this with jewelry and beads.
I give this warning to all my students. I repeat it frequently in the articles I write. I follow it carefully when designing my own pieces. I have been challenged frequently by people who make jewelry and consider themselves artists. But to create successful jewelry takes you beyond art, its ideas, constructs and precepts. Jewelry has some roots in art, which is true. But it also has roots in craft. It is very comparable to architecture. Its product — the outcome — plays a different role and must conform to different social and physical tensions than paintings and sculptures. I repeat: You cannot paint with beads.
As frustrating as this can be, you cannot ignore the fact that Color is the single most important Design Element. Colors, their selection, use and arrangement, are believed to have universal powers to get people to see things as harmonious and appealing. Color attracts attention. A great use of color within an object, not only makes that object more coherent, it can make it more contagious, as well. Using colors that do not work well together, or using too many colors or not enough colors, or using colors which look good on paper but distort in reality can put people off.
Jewelry Designers can learn the artistic basics of Color concepts and theories. They can reference this visual language of color to influence how they go about making choices, including those about picking and using colors. However, jewelry artists who are fluent in design will be very aware of the limitations this artistic, painterly language imposes on them. They will have to learn how to decode, adjust and leverage their thinking to anticipate how the bead and other related and integrated materials assert their needs for color, and how to strategically compose, construct and manipulate them.
Jewelry, unlike painting or sculpture, has certain characteristics and requirements which rely on the management and control of color, its sensation and its variability with a slightly different emphasis than learned in a traditional art class. Jewelry is a 3-dimensional object, composed of a range of materials. Jewelry situates, moves and adjusts in relation to the human body and what that body is doing at the moment.
To get the attention their jewelry deserves, jewelry artists must become fluent with color selection and application from their own disciplinary perspective. We must understand color in jewelry as the jewelry is worn, and worn in a particular context or situation. Ever-changing directions and intensities of light and shadow, reflection, absorption and refraction. The observation that color may be present, even projected (the color shadow), outside the boundaries of the bead or jewelry component itself.
Beads [here I use ‘beads’ as a stand-in for all the component parts and stringing and canvas materials used in a piece of jewelry] are curved or faceted or otherwise shaped, and the shape and texture and material and dimensionality and even the hole through it affect the color, its variation and its placement and movement on the bead’s surface. They affect how light reflects and refracts, so depending on the angle at which you are standing, and how you are looking at the bead, you get some unexpected, unanticipated, sometimes unwanted colors in your piece of jewelry.
Additionally, you need to anticipate how the bead, when worn, can alter its color, depending on the source and positioning of light, the type and pace of movement of the wearer, and how the eye interacts with the bead at any point of time or positioning. There are many more color tensions that come from the interrelationships between positive and negative spaces. There are many gaps of light between each pair of beads, and you can’t paint these in. The colors don’t blend, don’t merge, don’t spill over, don’t integrate. You can’t create the millions of subtle color variations that you can with paint.
I’m not suggesting that beaders and jewelry makers be afraid of colors. Rather, they should embrace them. They should learn insights into understanding colors. They should be inspired by colors. They should express their artistic and creative selves through color. They should use color palettes to their fullest. They should recognize how their various audiences see and claim and interact with color.
It is most important that jewelry designers understand color, its use and application from their own disciplinary standpoint. In some sense, however, the approaches of most bead artists and jewelry designers too often remain somewhat painterly — too rooted in the Art Model.
The Art Model ignores things about functionality and context. The Art Model does not anticipate all the additional management and control issues which arise with jewelry creation and how /where / when it is worn. The Art Model diminishes how the individuality of the designer, and the subjective responses of the wearer and viewer affect each other. In many respects, these are synergetic, mutually dependent and reciprocal. The Art Model understands the success of jewelry only as if the jewelry were sitting on an easel, not as it is worn. When jewelry is treated as an inanimate object, apart from when it is worn, then traditional art color theories would suffice and apply.
As a result, when the use of color is solely dictated by art theory, then color theories get oversimplified for the jewelry artist. “Value” is barely differentiated from “Intensity”. Color selection focuses too much on harmony and variety, and too little on resonance and edginess. Color training too often steers jewelry designers towards a step-by-step, paint-by-number sort of approach to color selection and application. Color theory seeks to explain the universal, and paintings, given that they are immobile, hung on a wall, give time and space for the viewer to experience these universals.
Jewelry, on the other hand, requires an understanding of how color can be adapted to more subjective experiences. It does not stay in the same place. It is not desired in the same way across individuals who view it and wear it. As such, the co-dependent relationship between Color and other Jewelry Design Elements is downplayed and glossed over. This is a major disservice.
Designers need to think of colors as building blocks, and the process of using colors, as one of Creative Construction. Creative Construction requires focusing on how color (and multiple co-existing colors) is (are) sensed, and sensed by various audiences which include the artist him- or herself, and the wearer and the viewer, and the exhibitor, collector, and the seller, if need be. Creative Construction also requires anticipating how color is sensed within those context(s) and situation(s) the jewelry will be worn. Creative Construction includes an ability to anticipate how the various audiences of the designer use color to assume, perceive, understand, express, value and desire jewelry within any context.
All jewelry designers, including myself, are challenged with tasks like controlling the presentation of color(s) along a jewelry object’s silhouette. Or in blending colors among fixed physical objects awkwardly aligning or misaligning within some positive and negative spaces. Or having two or more colors co-exist within the same space or form which may or may not harmonize, given the reality that beads and other jewelry objects do not come in every possible and desirable color, nor consistently express any particular color over their entire surface.
I have found the use of simultaneity effects especially useful here. The one I use the most is that of grays. Gray takes on the colors around it. If I line up an orange bead, then a gray bead, then a blue bead, the middle gray bead will create the perception of a blended orange to blue form. Any bead with an underlying gray or black tone, strategically placed, will accomplish some color blending otherwise problematic.
I often play with other simultaneity effects. Some colors in combination emphasize warmth, and others cold. A sense of temperature (for example a red square embedded within a white square vs. that same red square embedded within a black square) can sometimes be used to divert the mind’s attention from whether the colors correctly harmonize.
In a similar way, some colors in combination (example a yellow square within a black square vs. within a white square) can create the illusion of either projecting or receding, and this too can be used to divert the mind’s attention from whether the colors correctly harmonize.
In my pieces, you will often find colors which, if not used strategically in combination and placement, would not seem to go together. They don’t fit a color scheme. They do not perfectly conform to a mathematical algorithm. They might even clash. More often, however, they just seem off in some way. But by smartly using simultaneity effects, they feel whole, consistent, coherent, right in some way. But also intriguing as the viewer’s mind tries to make sense of them. The colors resonate and are edgy in some way, yet feel harmonious, and the viewers can never figure out why. I intentionally create an object which lacks inherent meaning in order to trap the viewer into trying to find inherent meaning. Fun stuff. And something which often draws the viewer’s attention to my pieces, and keeps their attention there.
I like to play with color proportions. There are ideal proportions of the presence of any two or more colors. Red should appear in equal proportions to green. There should be one orange for any two blues. In art, we would strive to achieve the perfect proportions. In jewelry design, however, I would want to play with imperfections in proportions to give an edginess to my piece. This edginess, if not gone too far, enhances how the jewelry resonates emotionally for the wearer or buyer. We want our jewelry to have a little bit of edginess, or else it may feel harmonious yet boring and banal.
I believe the jewelry designer needs to be able to apply the careful of consideration of color with the goal of evoking resonance in the viewer. Something beyond harmony. Something represented by the difference of the viewer saying I like it, from the viewer saying I want to wear it, or I want to buy it. The designer is here to perhaps emphasize a little bit of the absurdity in life, some playfulness, some inquisitiveness which result from tensions between order and chaos, meaning and meaninglessness.
The designer is there, in part, to challenge the viewer’s subjective interpretations. This is especially true as the jewelry is worn and the wearer moves from different situations, contexts, and lighting. The use of color in jewelry designer often fails when the designer merely tries to duplicate a perfect color scheme, given perfect lighting and no movement. Jewelry is not a painting or sculpture to be displayed in fixed position. It’s much more. Using color from the designer’s viewpoint, rather than of the artist, is a very useful tool.
All these and similar color tricks I use as a jewelry designer contribute to how my jewelry expresses and reflects my authenticity. They add the cachet to my pieces as contemporary. Uninhibited by social norms encapsulated in art theory rules for the use of color. Creating more of a sense of freedom in my pieces, a sense which affects the feelings of freedom the wearer has. Transcendence. A re-imagining. Revelation, connection, awakening.
That’s what my Rogue Elephant needs, wants, demands. In this chaotic and indifferent universe, that rogue-ness could not have it any other way.
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So what prevents so many jewelry makers and other artist types from living their authentic lives? What prevents so many designers from making choices and taking advantage of opportunities which are not limited by anyone — not limited by friend or family or boss or colleague or perceptions of cultural and social norms?
Aloise was sitting there, fidgeting, only half listening to the discussion in my class about jewelry design, when, suddenly, unusually with a forceful voice and expression, she said, No one likes her stuff. No positive feedback in response to seeing any of her necklaces or bracelets or earrings. She loved her designs, she stated plainly, convincingly. But no one else seemed to. Her designs did not resonate with her friends and the people around her. She loved making jewelry. She loved her style. She loved the pieces and materials she was using. But, because of the nil-to-negative feedback, she never felt authentic as an artist.
If you saw her pieces, you would immediately come to the conclusion that there was no reason for the negative feedback, except, perhaps, that her pieces did not reflect the current fashion. Well conceived. Well-made. Clearly a point of view.
My response to her was simple: They are not the judge, you are. The problem for you is not your design skills. The problem is that you need to either to connect with a different audience, or, much more difficult, you need to learn how better to express what makes sense and has value for you in your own jewelry design work to your current audience. It’s like thinking your design process out loud — how you made choices about materials, techniques and composition.
Design Is A Tool For Expressing Authenticity
Authenticity and design are integral to each other. Design is a tool for expressing your authenticity. You will have difficulty feeling and expressing your authentic self in public without reference to good design. And, ultimately, you can’t have good design without an ability to express your authentic self. Cannot have one without the other.
Authenticity means conveying a sense of your being genuine. Real. True to your values. Consistent and coherent in how you relate your inspiration to your aspiration when creating a piece of jewelry. Then, continuing to be consistent and coherent as you implement your aspiration, understandably making changes and tweaks along the way, into your finished jewelry design. This requires a lot of honesty with yourself. A lot of self-reflection and what is called metacognition. Your jewelry becomes a sincere expression of you and you-the-creator’s vision.
That’s authenticity. The sum of all your choices in the design process. Technical. Artistic. Social. Philosophical. Each piece of jewelry you make is evidence to the world about all the choices you have made. Choices about translating vision into a tangible form. Selection of visual elements, product functionality, technology and technique. Accepting or rejecting client desires and hoped for experiences. Steering your business towards particular ideas about branding. Design can enhance. It can amplify. It can set boundaries. It can increase accessibility. Engage. Impact.
Gennifer refused! She refused to listen to me about how important it is to relate the materials you choose to your design goals. She made wrap bracelets, usually two bands around the wrist. She sold them for $300 each. Took her about 2 hours to make each one. The materials she used were cheap. If the price tag you put on your jewelry has no relationship to the effort and materials you put into it, you’re not being authentic.
A wrap bracelet consists of beads ladder-stitched between two pieces of leather. She used Indian leather, which dries out and cracks easily. Does not hold up. She stitched her beads with fishing line. Fishing line in sunlight and heat dries out and cracks. Very quickly. She used glass beads from China. Glass beads from China typically are a clear bead with a color coating. The side of all her beads along the full almost 20” length of the bracelet which touched the skin had lost their color. Originally black, they were now white with peeling black. No reinforcement was placed on either end, so, on either end, again pretty quickly, the stitching would start to break and the two supporting strands of leather would come apart.
Gennifer’s wrap bracelets probably had $10–12 of materials in them plus two hours of labor. Her $300 price tag was not representative of appropriate design. She should have upped the quality of her materials: Greek leather, Czech glass or gemstone beads, micro bead cord for the stitching. She should have reinforced both ends, such as using a silk wrap technique. Then her pieces would be durable and justify the price tag, and be much more authentic to herself as a designer. Or, she should charge what her pieces are really worth: perhaps $75–100. I’ve yet to meet one of her customers who has gotten more than six months of use out of her pieces. To me, if Gennifer thinks she is being authentic, I’d tell her it’s contrived.
About Authenticity
Authenticity is multiplex. It functions on several planes.
You have material authenticity. Given the value you want to assign to your piece, your choice of materials, and how you leverage them, should be the highest, appropriate quality in durability, sustainability and craftsmanship.
You have technical and technological authenticity. Your choice of techniques and technologies, and how you leverage them, should bring your design to that optimum (sometimes called parsimonious) point of efficiency and effectiveness. That is, that perfect point where you can maintain both shape and suppleness.
There is emotional authenticity. Good jewelry should resonate with the customer. It should evoke genuine emotions in line with your audience’s intended desire(s).
There is cultural authenticity. Good jewelry shows respect and acknowledges any cultural influences and inspirations, when design elements are borrowed or otherwise represented.
There is contemporary design authenticity. In contemporary design, the designer substitutes personal values and understandings for those of traditional socio-cultural norms and values which influence more traditional design. You must always show respect for tradition while concurrently using your own authentic self as the measure and rationale for successful design choices within any designing process. You must overcome pressures to conform and present a curated version of yourself.
Another type is personal authenticity. As a jewelry designer, you always have something to say. It can be simple such as what you think might be beautiful or wearable or appropriate for a certain situation. It might be more complex where you make a series of interrelated choices relating your values and desires to those of your client.
Dilemmas For The Designer
For me, I grew up with both parents and teachers discouraging me from pursuing my creative self through the arts. Doctor or lawyer. Basically, those were the two allowed choices, as I was steered and tracked and encouraged (or discouraged) over all my young and teenage years. [Parents, if your child tells you who they are, support them!]
Finally, in my early 20’s, having achieved some separation from my overbearing career police, I made an attempt for a few years to paint. Pretty. Ok technique. No reflection of who I was as a person except perhaps, in the choice of subject matter. I tried to convey emotions and meanings, but, primarily ended up with pretty paintings to decorate my apartment. Friends and family loved them. Sold a few. But none of this was coming together as a reflection of my authentic self. I was in my 20’s but hadn’t found anything authentic about me.
Twenty years later, when I began to make jewelry, I felt a strong connection. With jewelry, I had to create something meaningful for both myself and my client. Both our understandings. Both our values. Both our desires. Jewelry by its nature requires this kind of dialogue. That challenge stirred me. It forced me to come to grips by reflecting on what I wanted the object I created to be, and how that compared to what someone else wanted. Add on top of this was the fact the design had to account for the fact that the wearer moves around and never wants to look clownish. Jewelry design, under these circumstances, becomes very complex. And, as a result of all this thinking and concerning and anticipating and interacting, my sense of authenticity began to grow and clarify and grow and clarify some more.
From my experiences, and those of my students and colleagues, I can identify several dilemmas and challenges for the designer who wants to find their authentic self and successfully express it through the designing of jewelry.
The originality dilemma. You don’t design in a vacuum. And most certainly, many of the design choices you make have been influenced by other designers around you. Finding a balance between originality and the influence of others can be daunting. But think about it this way. Define ‘originality’ as differentiation. Your authenticity will emerge and shine by the way you differentiate yourself from other designers and influencers.
The art market dilemma. For many of us, we want some level of commercial success. Often this means compromising our integrity as we bow to things like fashion, market trends, client expectations, commercial requirements and limitations. Sometimes, when commercializing what we do, we use the label “authentic” to commodify our jewelry, when we are really stretching the imagination and legitimacy here. The challenge is to find balance between making a living and maintaining true authenticity.
The shared understanding dilemma. Successful design emerges from the insights and applications of the values and desires of the artist in coordination and conjunction with the assumptions, values and desires of the client. That might mean some compromising. Some give and take. Some less authenticity. The designer must decide to what degree personal integrity will be compromised in the design process.
The vulnerability dilemma. Since jewelry must be introduced publicly — for someone to wear, to be exhibited, to be sold, to be collected — the designer, of necessity, must open themselves up. Be exposed. Be given critique and criticism. There is doubt and self-doubt. There is a questioning of whether you are truly genuine. The designer is faced with determining how to overcome feelings of vulnerability and how much ego-self-protection they want to build into what they do.
The evolution dilemma. You grow, you learn, you change over time. What you thought was your authentic self (and all that that meant) earlier in your career may be different than what it is now and how you want to express it now. In a similar way, your authentic self may vary a bit from one context to another. This might result in a tension between the consistency and coherency of your body of work as these relate to your authentic self as you see / feel / sense it in the moment. The designer, in this case, must grapple with whether to change or not, or if so, how much to change. If you are already an established business with a strong brand identity, this becomes especially difficult to deal with. Changing your brand identity is especially hard. You don’t want to be rejected by or confuse your audience.
During my jewelry designing career, all these challenges confronted me. I can honestly say that there is a give and take, from piece to piece that I have designed, between achieving that authentic self, and having to make some compromises. Often, when I find I have had to compromise too much — usually to conform to my client’s wishes — I concurrently design a piece in the abstract, one I can create which majorly resonates with many aspects of my personal authenticity as an artist.
One last point. Look around at all the jewelry available for sale and that people wear. There is a lot of sameness. Standardization. Very machine-made looking. In some sense, lacking in personality and individuality. Infusing your jewelry design with your authentic self helps you differentiate yourself from mass-produced or superficial alternatives.
How someone actually goes about finding and expressing their authentic self varies from person to person. This isn’t a straightforward process. You the designer must be guided by your own self-reflection, empathy and commitment to your core values, beliefs and desires. You must strive to align your choices about design with your inner convictions.
And remember: Rogue Elephants are always authentic. They can be no other way.
_______________________________
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Keep From Letting ‘Doubt’ Paralyze You As A Jewelry Designer
For the novice, all that excitement at the beginning, when thinking about making jewelry and making some pieces, sometimes collides with a wall of developing self-doubt.
It’s not easy to quiet a doubt.
As a jewelry artist, you organize your life around an inspiration. There is some fuzziness here. That inspiration has some elements of ideas, but not necessarily crystal clear ones. That inspiration has some elements of emotions — it makes you feel something — but not necessarily something you can put into words or images or fully explain. You then need to translate this fuzzy inspiration into materials, into techniques, into color, into arrangements, into a coherent whole.
You start to make something, but realize you don’t know how to do it. But you want to do it, and do it now. However, to pick up the needed skills, you realize you can’t learn things all at once. You can’t do everything you want to do all at once. That initial excitement often hits a wall. Things take time to learn. There are a lot of trial and error moments, with a lot of errors. Pieces break. Combining colors and other design elements feels very awkward. Picking the right clasps and rings and connectors and stringing materials is fraught with implications. Silhouettes are confusing. You might get the right shape for your piece, but it is difficult to get the right movement, drape and flow, without compromising that shape.
To add to this stress and strain, you need to show your jewelry off. You might want someone to like it. To want it. To need it. To desire it. To buy it. To wear it. To wear it more than once. To wear it often. To exhibit it. To collect it. To show and talk about it with others. And how will all these other people recognize your creative spark, and your abilities to translate that spark into a wonderful, beautiful, functional piece of jewelry, appropriate for the wearer and appropriate for the situation?
Frequently, because of all this, the artist experiences some sense of doubt and self-doubt. Some paralysis. Can’t get started. Can’t finish something. Avoiding showing your pieces to others. Wondering why you became a jewelry designer in the first place.
Doubt holds you back from seizing your opportunities.
It makes getting started or finishing things harder than they need to be.
It adds uncertainty.
It makes you question yourself.
It blocks your excitement, perhaps diminishing it.
Doubt and Self-Doubt should be useful in forcing you to think about and question your choices. However, for many jewelry designers, it mostly holds them back.
Having doubt and self-doubt is common among all artistic types. After all, for much of what you do and how you spend your time, you’re mostly alone with your thoughts.
What becomes important is how you manage and overcome it. You do not want your doubts to get in the way of your creative process and disciplinary development. You want your doubts, rather, to inform them.
8 Major Ways Doubts Can Force You Into That Abyss
There are 8 major ways in which jewelry designers get caught beginning to fall into that abyss we call self-doubt:
1) What If I’m Not Creative Enough or Original Enough or Cannot Learn or Master or Don’t Know a Particular Technique?
2) What If No One Likes What I Make?
3) What If No One Takes Me Seriously As An Artist And Designer?
4) I Overthink Things and Am A Bit of a Perfectionist.
5) How Can I Stay Inspired?
6) Won’t People Steal My Work?
7) Being Over Confident or Under Confident
8) Role Confusion
1. What If I’m Not Creative Enough or Original Enough or Cannot Learn or Master or Don’t Know a Particular Technique?
Everyone has some creativity baked into their being. It is a matter of developing your way of thinking and doing so that you can apply it. This takes time.
So does originality. The word originality can be very off-putting, but it does not have to be.
At first, when you are getting started making jewelry, originality will mean that you will try different ways of personalizing projects. There are always things you can do to bring some aspects of originality to your pieces. This might be the choice of colors, or using a special clasp, or rearranging some elements in your composition.
Again, as with creativity, the ability to be more and more original will evolve over time. It is helpful to think of originality, not necessarily as coming up with something completely new, but rather as differentiation — how you differentiate yourself from other jewelry designers.
For almost everyone, you don’t begin your design career at the height of your levels of creativity and originality. Yes, if you look around you, other people are more creative and original than you or have more skills than you. Don’t let these observations be a barrier to your own development as a jewelry designer. You get there through persistence and hard work. You handle your inner critic. You may not be there, yet — the key word here is yet. But you will be.
2. What If No One Likes What I Make?
We all have fears about how our creativity and originality are going to be evaluated and judged. We project our self-doubts to the doubts we think we see and feel from others. What if no one wants to wear my pieces, or buy my works?
We can’t let these outsider reactions dictate our lives and creative selves. A key part of successful jewelry design is learning how to introduce what we do publicly. At the least, it is the core nature of the things we create that they are to be worn on the body. Jewelry is a very public thing.
Turn negative comments into positive ideas, motivators, insights, explorations. Allow yourself some give and take, some needs to step back awhile, some needs to tweak. Jewelry design and jewelry making are iterative processes. They in no way are linear. Your outcomes and their success are more evolutionary, than guaranteed.
Distressing about what others may think of your work can be very damaging to your self-esteem. It can amplify your worries. Don’t go there.
Don’t become your worst critic.
3. What If No One Takes Me Seriously As An Artist And Designer?
Jewelry design is an occupation in search of a profession. You will find that a lot of people won’t recognize your passion and commitment. They may think anyone can design jewelry. They may think of jewelry making as a craft or some subset of art, not as something unique and important in and of itself. They may wonder how you can make a living at this.
The bottom line: if you don’t take yourself seriously as a jewelry designer, no one else will.
People will take you seriously as they see all the steps you are taking to master your craft and develop yourself as a professional.
4. I Over Think Things And Am A Bit Of A Perfectionist
Some designers let a sense that their work is not as good as imagined get in the way. They never finish anything. They let doubt eat away at them.
Perfectionism is the enemy of the good. It’s great to be meticulous, but emotionally, we get wrecked when anything goes astray, or any little thing is missing, or you don’t have that exact color or part you originally wanted.
Go ahead and plan. Planning is good. It’s insightful. It can be strategic. But also be sure to be adaptable and realistic. Each piece is a stepping stone to something that will come next.
The better jewelry designer develops a Designer’s Toolbox — a collection of fix-it strategies to deal with the unfamiliar or the problematic.
Overthinking can be very detrimental. You can’t keep changing your mind, trying out every option, thinking that somewhere, someplace there exists a better option. Make a choice and get on with it. You can tweak things later.
Yes, attention to detail is important. But so is the value of your time. You do not want to waste too much time on trivial details.
Be aware when you begin over-analyzing things. Stop, take a breath, make a decision, and move on.
5. How Can I Stay Inspired?
Designing a piece of jewelry takes time, sometimes a long time. That initial inspirational spark might feel like it’s a dying ember.
Don’t let that happen.
Translate that inspiration into images, colors, words, sample designs, and surround your work space with these.
Talk about your inspiration in detail with family and friends.
6. Won’t People Steal My Work?
Many jewelry designers fear that if they show their work publicly, people will steal their ideas. So they stop designing.
Yet jewelry design is a very communicative process which requires introducing your work publicly. If you are not doing this, then you are creating simple sculptures, not jewelry.
Yes, other people may copy your work. See this source of doubt as an excuse. It is a self-imposed, but unnecessary, barrier we might impose to prevent us from experiencing that excitement as a jewelry designer. Other people will never be able to copy your design prowess — how you translate inspiration into a finished piece. That is unique and special to you. It is why the general public responds positively to you and your work.
7. Over Confidence can blind you to the things you need to be doing and learning, and Under Confidence can hinder your development as a designer.
Too often, we allow under confidence to deter us from the jewelry design and making tasks at hand. We always question our lack of ability and technical prowess for accomplishing the necessary tasks at hand. It is important, however, to believe in yourself. To believe that you can work things out when confronted with unfamiliar or problematic situations. It is important to develop your skills for thinking like a designer. Fluency. Flexibility. Originality. There is a vocabulary to learn. Techniques to learn. Strategies to learn. These develop over time with practice and experience. You need to believe in your abilities to develop as a designer over time.
With over confidence comes a naivete. You close off the wisdom to listen to what others have to say or offer. You stunt your development as an artist. You overlook important factors about materials and techniques to the detriment of your final designs and products. You close yourself off to doubt and self-doubt, which is unfortunate. Doubt and self-doubt are tools for asking questions and questioning things. These help you grow and develop as an artist and designer. These influence your ability to make good, professional choices in your career.
8. Role Confusion
Jewelry artists play many roles and wear different hats. Each has its own set of opportunities, requirements, and pressures that the artist must cope with. It’s a balancing act extraordinaire.
First, people who make jewelry wear different hats: Artist and Designer, Manufacturer, Distributor, Retailer, and Exhibitor.
Second, people who make jewelry have different needs: Artistic Excellence, Recognition, Monetary Gain, or Financial Stability.
Third, the artist needs to please and satisfy themselves, as well as other various clients.
Fourth, the artist constructs pieces which need to function in different settings: Situational, Cultural, Sociological, Psychological.
Last, the artist must negotiate a betwixt and between situation — a rite of passage — as they relinquish control over the piece and its underlying inspirations to the wearer and the viewer, who have their own needs, desires and expectations.
This gets confusing. It affects how you pick materials and supplies. Which techniques you use. What marketing strategies you employ. How you value and price things. Anticipating who your audience is. And the list goes on.
It is important to be aware (metacognitive) of what role(s) you play when, and why. Given the role, it is important to understand the types of choices you need to make, when constructing a piece of jewelry. It is critical to understand the tradeoffs you will invariably end up making, and their consequences for the aesthetic, emotional and functional success of your pieces.
Some Advice
While doubt and self-doubt can hinder our development as jewelry designers, some degree of these may be helpful, as well.
To develop yourself as a jewelry designer, and to continue to grow and expand in your profession, you must have a balanced amount of both doubt and self-doubt. Uncertainty leads to questioning. A search for knowledge. Some acceptance of trial and error and experimentation. A yearning for more reliable information and feedback.
Jewelry design uses a great deal of emotion as a Way of Knowing. Emotions cloud or distort how we perceive things. They may lead to more doubt and worry and lack of confidence. But they also enhance our excitement when translating inspirations into designs.
· Don’t let your inner doubts spin out of control. Be aware and suppress them.
· Be real with yourself and your abilities.
· Keep a journal. Detail what your doubts are and the things you are doing to overcome them.
· Create a developmental plan for yourself. Identify the knowledge, skills and understandings you want to develop and grow into.
· Remember what happened in the past the last time doubt got in your way. Remember what you did to overcome this doubt. Remember that probably nothing negative actually happened.
· Talk to people. These can be friends, relatives and colleagues. Don’t keep doubts unto yourself.
· Don’t compare yourself to others. This is a trap. Self-reflect and self-evaluate you on your own terms.
· Worrying about what others think? The truth is that people don’t really care that much about what you do or not do.
· Don’t beat yourself up.
· Get re-inspired. This might mean surrounding yourself with images and photos of things. It might mean a walk in nature. It might me letting someone else’s excitement flow over to you.
It’s important to learn in an organized, developmental way. You want to be always asking how things are interrelated. What depends on what? You want to pose what-if questions so that you can train yourself to anticipate the implications and consequences of making one choice over another. What happens If? What happens When? What enhances? What impedes? What synergizes? What can be leveraged, and toward what objective? You want to reflect on your outcomes.
Some places for learning:
Local craft or bead store Community college University (art, fiber arts, metalsmithing, fashion) Jewelry design program Fashion schools Bead and Jewelry Making Magazines Social media groups Self-taught, crafting at home On-the-job training Certifications Art institutes Art grants How-to books Video tutorials Networking with other craft artists
Types of Beading and Jewelry Making
There is so much to know, and so many types of choices to make. Which clasp? Which stringing material? Which technique? Which beads? Which strategy of construction? What aesthetic you want to achieve? How you want to achieve it? Drape, movement, context, durability.
Sample of Techniques:
Stringing Assembling Bead Weaving Bead Working Wire Working Wire Wrapping Wire Weaving Silversmithing, Metal Work Cold Connections Fabrication Casting Fiber Arts, Knitting, Crochet Micro-Macrame Bead Embroidery Kumihimo, Knotting, Braiding CAD (Computer Aided Design) Enameling Lampworking and Glass Blowing Stamping Engraving Polymer Clay, Precious Metal Clay, Sculpting Lapidary Woodwork, Carving
Types of Tasks Jewelry Makers and Beaders Do
Adjust, reshape, resize, create and attach clasp assemblies Cutting stones, setting stones, determining value and authenticity of stones CAD (Computer Aided Design), 3-D Printing Fabrication, stamping, engraving, casting, soldering, cold connections, shaping metal wire and sheet, annealing Model and mold building, sculpting Manage thread tension, create self-supporting shapes, manage movement, drape and flow String, weave, netting, embellish, embroider, knit, crochet, braid, knot, wrap, assemble Understand jewelry-making as a process, from beginning to end Select color, proportion, volume, shape, forms, size, silhouettes, themes Place and Arrange design elements and components Read patterns, figures, graphs Select materials and techniques Determine measurements Assess stress, strain, strength, suppleness, stability and synergy Understand and access the creative marketplace, introduce their pieces publicly
Learning Objectives
A. Technical Mechanics
1. Managing tension, whether using thread, cord, string or wire
2. Holding your piece to work it
3. Reading simple patterns, figures, graphs
4. Selecting appropriate materials
5. Identifying areas of potential weakness, and strategies for dealing with these
6. Determining measurements, including width and length of a piece, especially in relationship to bead and other component sizes
7. Extending your piece, such as adding thread or wire
8. Finishing off your piece and adding the clasp assembly
B. Understanding Craft Basis of Technique or Stitch
Starting the technique or stitch
Implementing the basic technique or stitch
3. Finishing off the basic technique or stitch
4. Learning variations on the technique or stitch
5. Embellishing the Stitch, including fringe, edge, bail, strap, connectors
C. Understanding Art & Design Basis of Technique or Stitch
1. Learning implications when choosing different sizes/shapes of beads or other components, or using different stringing materials
2. Understanding relationship of the technique or stitch in comparison to other techniques or stitches
3. Understanding how bead asserts its need for color
4. Creating your own design with this technique or stitch, in reference to design elements and jewelry design principles of composition
5. Creating shapes, components and forms with this technique or stitch, and establishing themes
6. Building in structural supports, and other support elements, into the design
D. Becoming a Bead Weaving or Jewelry Making Designer
1. Developing a personal style
2. Valuing or pricing your work
3. Teaching others the technique or stitch
4. Promoting yourself and your work
5. Advocating for jewelry as “Art” and as “Design”
Types of Tools Needed To Get Started
Scissors Chain nose pliers (inside of jaws smooth) Flat Nose Pliers Side Cutters Flush Cutters Tweezers and Awl Assorted sizes of hard wire, cable wire, bead cord and bead, thread, elastic string Ruler Crimping pliers Hammers and mallets Steel block plate Doming block, anvil Sizing cones Hand held torch and fire-proof work surface Bead stoppers / clamps Color wheel Work Surface or Pad Bead board Round nose pliers Ring, Jump Ring, and bracelet mandrels Needles, wax Jeweler’s saw and blades Good lighting Comfortable seating
Finding jobs and pathways utilizing your skills as a jewelry designer…
There are actually many career pathways for people who have backgrounds in jewelry making and bead working. Besides the obvious pathways of making jewelry to sell, or teaching jewelry making, there are still many job and career opportunities for you.
Jewelry maker Illustrator Fashion designer Stylist Metalsmith Teacher Lapidary Gemologist Jewelry repair Wood worker Fiber artist Lampworking and glass blowing Physical and Occupational Therapist Counseling Custom designer Engraver Sales Merchandising Website design Data analyst Grants writer/reviewer Program director Video instructor or host Jewelry assessor Display and Packaging Influencer Writer Business Developer
I am writing an article about how jewelry designers began their careers/hobbies/avocations.
I would be interested in you sharing your stories.
Some of the questions I want to explore in my article:
1) How did you get started making jewelry? motivations, intentions, whether the start was very dramatic or mundane, whether you thought it was fate, destiny, luck, personal choice. Was there a particular point in time, or some kind of evolution?
2) What was your first moment of validation like? Not when you started making jewelry per se, but when you started telling people and feeling like an ‘artist’ or ‘designer’. It might have been a quiet admission, coming out to yourself as an artist. It might have been something public, like selling a piece, exhibiting it, some reaction from a client. It might have been some kind of break-through or finding newness or inspiration. It might have been a feeling of originality. A lot of people make jewelry, and can be very talented at it, but do not consider themselves as ‘artists’ or ‘designers’.
3) To what extent did beginning as a jewelry artist/designer feel like a response to society or family or local culture? Art doesn’t exist only because of feelings and emotions. There is a complex infrastructure within which the jewelry designer needs in order to survive. How would you describe this infrastructure within which you work and because of it you can survive. To what extent does it help you to enhance your work and vocation? To what extent does it impede you?
4) Were there special circumstances that were critical in your beginning and development as a jewelry artist/designer? Were there specific excitements, anxieties, challenges you faced?
5) For you, was there a beginning, and then a beginning again? Describe how difficult it was to begin again. How did it feel/seem to question or know whether you could create again?
6) What kinds of things have enabled you to keep going as a jewelry artist/designer? What contributed to your ability to survive your creative life?
I may or may not reference what you share in my final article. Unless you specifically tell me it’s OK, I will not use anyone’s real name in my article.
I appreciate you taking the time to share. I know a lot of jewelry designers and would-be jewelry designers can learn a lot from your experiences.
That’s it for now! There is a lot of creative expression all around the world right now. Hope you get to experience a lot of it, either first hand, or through social media online.
Ceramic jewelry, including clay, porcelain, earthenware, and stoneware, can relieve stress, aid relaxation, improve circulation, and balance energy flow throughout the body, making it a flexible and holistic tool for enhancing overall well-being. Clay, with its grounding and stabilizing qualities, fosters a sense of rootedness within the wearer, while porcelain’s smooth and delicate texture similarly imparts a calming and harmonizing energy, encouraging relaxation and tranquility. Earthenware’s rustic charm, on the other hand, nurtures a connection with the natural world, promoting balance and vitality, while stoneware, renowned for being strong and durable, provides a solid foundation for stability and endurance, so you can navigate life’s challenges with resilience and grace. So, whether you’re seeking inner peace, improved circulation, or balanced energy flow, ceramic jewelry offers a holistic approach to self-care and empowerment.
Finding peace with ceramic jewelry
Ceramic jewelry, including stoneware and clay pieces, alleviates stress and anxiety through its grounding qualities, tactile nature, and connection to the natural world, offering wearers a soothing respite from the pressures of daily life. In particular, clay jewelry’s natural, earthy qualities have a soothing effect on the mind and body. The tactile experience of wearing clay pieces encourages you to focus on the present moment and serves as a grounding, anchoring force amidst the whirlwind of untamed thoughts and emotions. Clay’s inherent warmth and texture is also comforting, creating a sense of connection to the natural world and offering a moment of respite from daily stressors. Similarly, stoneware jewelry also has a grounding effect thanks to its rugged texture and earthy hues. This material promotes emotional resilience and confidence, helping you retain a sense of inner calm amidst life’s challenges. In particular, the tactile experience of handling stoneware pieces serves as a tangible reminder of the earth’s enduring resilience, offering comfort and reassurance in times of uncertainty.
Boosting blood flow for wellness
Since ceramic jewelry promotes relaxation, it can also aid blood flow throughout the body, which results in better oxygenation of the body’s tissues, faster healing of injuries, and a greater sense of vitality and well-being (when the body’s relaxed, blood vessels dilate, allowing for smoother blood flow throughout the body). In particular, earthenware, with its warm and rustic texture, offers comfort that, in turn, encourages relaxation, therefore helping to promote better blood circulation. Porcelain, on the other hand, has a smooth, delicate surface and gentle touch that encourages relaxation and reduces tension in the skin and muscles. This can help improve circulation without causing irritation, making porcelain a great option for individuals with sensitive skin. Moreover, porcelain jewelry’s circulatory benefits can also help lower inflammation in the body. Enhanced blood flow and oxygenation encourage the delivery of vital nutrients and immune cells to inflamed tissues, accelerating healing and diminishing swelling and discomfort. This reduction in inflammation is especially advantageous for individuals with inflammatory conditions like arthritis, tendonitis, or muscle strains. By enhancing circulation, porcelain jewelry not only alleviates pain but also promotes healing in affected areas, offering relief and improved well-being.
Exploring ceramic jewelry’s energetic properties
Drawing from principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, ceramic jewelry is also believed to possess inherent energetic properties that help harmonize and regulate the body’s subtle energy systems, therefore promoting balance, vitality, and overall well being. Specifically, ceramic jewelry interacts with the body’s energy systems to rectify imbalances or blockages in the flow of chi (vital life or energy force flowing throughout the body). So, for example, porcelain, with its smooth and refined surface, is associated with a gentle and harmonious energy flow, promoting relaxation and tranquility. It’s a great choice for anyone seeking a sense of inner peace and serenity in their daily lives. Clay, on the other hand, possesses an earthy warmth and grounding qualities believed to help anchor chi and promote stability and resilience. As a result, clay jewelry offers wearers a holistic approach to well-being, nurturing both inner strength and a deeper connection to the world around them.
Ceramic jewelry, including clay, porcelain, earthenware, and stoneware, can relieve stress, aid relaxation, improve circulation, and balance energy flow throughout the body. With their innate healing qualities, these pieces become not just accessories, but transformative tools for holistic well-being, inviting wearers to begin a path of self-care and empowerment.
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From my book: SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form,Ebook , Kindle or Print formats
Abstract:
For some jewelry designs, the incorporation of mixed media or mixed techniques can have a synergistic effect — increasing the appeal and/or functionality of the piece better than any one media or technique alone. It can feel more playful and experimental and fun to mix media or techniques. But there may be adverse effects, as well. Each media or technique will have its own structural and support requirements — that is, its own special characteristics and its own philosophy of technique. Each will react differently to various physical forces impacting the piece when worn. So it becomes more difficult for the designer to successfully coordinate and integrate more than one media or technique.
MIXED MEDIA / MIXED TECHNIQUES
It’s my belief that you cannot combine two different media or two different techniques to make a piece of jewelry without letting one of them predominate over the other.
Whether combining fiber with beads or metal with beads or paint and sculpture with beads, or braiding with beads or metalwork with glasswork or glass beads with gemstone beads, it is difficult to have a successful, satisfying outcome, without letting one of the media or technique be dominant over the other.
Each media and technique has its own set of structural rules and requirements — that is, its own special characteristics and its own philosophy of technique. Each interacts with light and shadow very differently; that is, the materials and techniques associated with a particular media reflect, absorb and refract light differently. Each has different problems with and responses to physical mechanical forces impacting the piece internally and externally with different stresses and strains. Each requires different strategies for managing tradeoffs between aesthetics and functionality. Each triggers differing responses by wearers and viewers as to sensory, sensual and/or symbolic impressions.
These kinds of things make the viewer’s experience and interaction with the media or technique and its resulting products different, from media to media and technique to technique.
So, you can have a “knitting” project that incorporates some beads, or a “beading” project that uses a knitting stitch and/or some yarn. In the former, knitting would predominate, with more focus on the fibers; in the latter, beading would predominate, with more focus on the beads. You can have a wire project which incorporates some beads, or a beading project which incorporates some wire elements.
But it is rare that you can look at a project, and say it concurrently meets the criteria for finish and success of both media — so, both a successful, satisfying knitting AND beading project, and both a successful wire AND beading project. It is difficult to preserve the integrity of either media if you force them to be co-equals.
It is difficult to mix materials within the same project. For example, it is difficult to mix glass and acrylic beads, or glass and gemstone beads…. Unless, you let one material become predominant over the other, or one technique become predominant over the other.
But all of this is very challenging, almost off-putting, to the jewelry designer who wants to combine media techniques and materials.
Types of Mixed Media / Mixed Technique Jewelry Projects
There are four distinct types of mixed media / mixed techniques projects.
Collage: Different materials or techniques are combined in an additive fashion. Often we create a foundation or base out of one material or technique, and embellish on top of it with another material or technique. It is very 2-dimensional.
Assemblage: This is a variant of the collage, where different materials or techniques are used to enhance the dimensionality or movement within a piece. The result is very 3-dimensional, sculptural and is very multiplicative.
Found Object: Various objects which are found and used by jewelry designers within their pieces because of their perceived artistic value.
Altered: An existing piece of jewelry will be reused and altered or modified physically, resulting in a different piece with a different sensibility. The original piece might be added to, cut up and re-arranged, materials changed, different techniques applied to reconstruct the piece.
How Can Two Things Come Together For Artistic Success?
For some jewelry designs, the incorporation of mixed media or mixed techniques can have a synergistic effect — increasing the appeal and/or functionality of the piece better than any one media or technique alone.
It can feel more playful and experimental and fun to mix media or techniques.
But there may be adverse effects, as well. Each media or technique will have its own structural and support requirements. Each will react differently to various physical forces impacting the piece when worn. So it becomes more difficult for the designer to successfully coordinate and integrate more than one media or technique.
Ask yourself,
How will you match tasks and/or materials?
How will you switch between them?
How will you adapt should one restrict or impede the flow of action?
How will you adapt should one alter or otherwise impede a shape or shapes within your piece?
What if it is easier to finish off the piece with one but not the other?
Typically, what works best overall is if you allow one media or technique to predominate. There its conformance to various art and design requirements will shine through without any sense of competition, incompleteness or discordance.
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CONQUERING THE CREATIVE MARKETPLACE: Between the Fickleness of Business and the Pursuit of Design
How dreams are made between the fickleness of business and the pursuit of jewelry design
This guidebook is a must-have for anyone serious about making money selling jewelry. I focus on straightforward, workable strategies for integrating business practices with the creative design process. These strategies make balancing your creative self with your productive self easier and more fluid.
Based both on the creation and development of my own jewelry design business, as well as teaching countless students over the past 35+ years about business and craft, I address what should be some of your key concerns and uncertainties. I help you plan your road map.
Whether you are a hobbyist or a self-supporting business, success as a jewelry designer involves many things to think about, know and do. I share with you the kinds of things it takes to start your own jewelry business, run it, anticipate risks and rewards, and lead it to a level of success you feel is right for you, including
· Marketing, Promoting, Branding: competitor analysis, developing message, establishing emotional connections to your products, social media marketing
· Selling: linking product to buyer among many venues, such as store, department store, online, trunk show, home show, trade show, sales reps and showrooms, catalogs, TV shopping, galleries, advertising, cold calling, making the pitch
· Resiliency: building business, professional and psychological resiliency
· Professional Responsibilities: preparing artist statement, portfolio, look book, resume, biographical sketch, profile, FAQ, self-care
SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form
So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer reinterprets how to apply techniques and modify art theories from the Jewelry Designer’s perspective. To go beyond craft, the jewelry designer needs to become literate in this discipline called Jewelry Design. Literacy means understanding how to answer the question: Why do some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not? How to develop the authentic, creative self, someone who is fluent, flexible and original. How to gain the necessary design skills and be able to apply them, whether the situation is familiar or not.
The Jewelry Journey Podcast “Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture” Podcast, Part 1 Podcast, Part 2
PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!
I developed a nontraditional technique which does not use tools because I found tools get in the way of tying good and well-positioned knots. I decided to bring two cords through the bead to minimize any negative effects resulting from the pearl rotating around the cord. I only have you glue one knot in the piece. I use a simple overhand knot which is easily centered. I developed a rule for choosing the thickness of your bead cord. I lay out different steps for starting and ending a piece, based on how you want to attach the piece to your clasp assembly.
SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS: 16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows
In this book, I discuss 16 lessons I learned, Including How To (1) Find, Evaluate and Select Craft Shows Right for You, (2) Determine a Set of Realistic Goals, (3) Compute a Simple Break-Even Analysis, (4) Develop Your Applications and Apply in the Smartest Ways, (5) Understand How Much Inventory to Bring, (6) Set Up and Present Both Yourself and Your Wares, (7) Best Promote and Operate Your Craft Show Business before, during and after the show.
Learning Bead Stringing Is More Than Putting Beads On A String And Tying On A Clasp
There is an art and skill to stringing beads. First, of course, is the selection of beads for a design, and the selection of the appropriate stringing material. Then is the selection of a clasp or closure, appropriate to the design and use of the piece.
You want your pieces to be appealing. You want them to wear well. You want someone to wear them or buy them. This means understanding the basic techniques, not only in terms of craft and art, but also with considerations about architecture, mechanics, and some sociology, anthropology and psychology.
In this book, I go into depth about: (1) Choosing stringing materials, and the pros and cons of each type, (2) Choosing clasps, and the pros and cons of different clasps, (3) All about the different jewelry findings and how you use them, (4) Architectural considerations and how to build these into your pieces, (5) How better designers use cable wires and crimp, as well as, use needle and thread to string beads, (6) How best to make stretchy bracelets, (7) How to make adjustable slip knots, coiled wire loops, and silk wraps, (8) How to finish off the ends of thicker cords or ropes, so that you can attach a clasp, (9) How to construct such projects as eyeglass leashes, mask chains, lariats, multi-strand pieces, twist multi-strand pieces, and memory wire bracelets, (10) How different teaching paradigms — craft vs. art vs. design — might influence the types of choices you make.
452 pp, many images, illustrations, diagrams, Ebook, Kindle or Print
Design and Assemble Your Own Jewelry, The Complete Insider’s Guide
New book by Warren Feld
Learning Bead Stringing Is More Than Putting Beads On A String, And Tying On A Clasp
There is an art and skill to stringing beads. First, of course, is the selection of beads for a design, and the selection of the appropriate stringing material. Then is the selection of a clasp or closure, appropriate to the design and use of the piece.
You want your pieces to be appealing. You want them to wear well. You want someone to wear them or buy them. This means understanding the basic techniques, not only in terms of craft and art, but also with considerations about architecture, mechanics, and some sociology, anthropology and psychology.
In this book, I go into depth about:
1. Choosing stringing materials, and the pros and cons of each type
2. Choosing clasps, and the pros and cons of different clasps
3. All about the different jewelry findings and how you use them
4. Architectural considerations and how to build these into your pieces
5. How better designers use cable wires and crimp, as well as, use needle and thread to string beads
6. How best to make stretchy bracelets
7. How to make adjustable slip knots, coiled wire loops, and silk wraps
8. How to finish off the ends of thicker cords or ropes, so that you can attach a clasp
9. How to construct such projects as eyeglass leashes, mask chains, lariats, multi-strand pieces, twist multi-strand pieces, and memory wire bracelets
10. How different teaching paradigms — craft vs. art vs. design — might influence the types of choices you make
For Warren Feld, Jewelry Designer, (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com), beading and jewelry making have been wonderful adventures over 36+ years. These adventures have taken Warren from the basics of bead stringing and bead weaving, to pearl knotting, micro-macrame, wire working, wire weaving and silversmithing, and onward to more complex jewelry designs which build on the strengths of a full range of technical skills and experiences. http://www.warrenfeldjewelry.com
It is very difficult to differentiate among sex, sensuality and sexuality. Are they the same? Does one precede the other? Do you have to have one in order to have another? Can you have one without either of the others? Are these experienced universally? Subjectively? Do we have to experience any one of them at all?
This becomes even more confusing when we add the idea of jewelry to the mix. Does jewelry make sex or sensuousness or sexuality more obvious, less obvious? An invitation? A warning? A restriction? An assistive guide for caressing? A symbolic assertion about beliefs? A signal about desire? A confidence booster for self-esteem and self-expression through sex? A gender marker?
We let jewelry touch our body, though not necessarily everywhere. Its placement on the body tells a story. We often use it to attract the gaze of others, but can as easily use it to restrict that gaze or redirect it or cause it to be forbidden entirely. Jewelry can be inviting to the touch, or disinviting. We can use jewelry to demand respect. We can use jewelry to demand consent.
Jewelry is something we desire for its look, its value, but most importantly, for how it serves our needs and desires. Jewelry, indeed, can express our desires publicly without our having to articulate them out loud to anyone. These desires can be very sexual and sensual. Or not. These desires can be directed at certain people with certain traits, and hidden from others.
Take the necklace. In one culture it can signal that the viewer must keep his gaze above the silhouette boundary line. In another culture, it affirms for the viewer, as if it were a pointer, that it was OK to touch the breast, even encouraging it. In still another culture, the colors of the necklace determine if the situation is sacred (that is, no sex now), or is profane (sex now). The design, composition and color choices within the necklace might demonstrate which characteristics of any viewer were desirable, or not. The necklace might indicate if the woman was married and unavailable, married and available, or unmarried and, yes, available. It might broadcast femininity or masculinity.
The jewelry designer is one of the few types of professionals, typically healers, that people allow to touch their bodies. The jewelry designer is allowed to measure the wrist or the neck. Allowed to position the piece relative to the breasts. Allowed to dress the body, putting the earring on their ear, or the necklace around their neck, or the bracelet around their wrist, or the anklet around the ankle. Allowed to push them towards one emotional direction or another.
Everyone has their own personal journey learning about sex, experiencing it, becoming aware of what feels sensual and what feels sexual. People set some boundaries about what they find appealing and what they find repugnant. And they often rely on jewelry to signify all this.
My Personal Journey
My personal journey has had ups and downs and ins and outs and this ways and that ways. I consider myself gay. But I am still attracted to women, including having sex with women — I always have been so — but I like sex with men better, so I label myself gay. Not bi, not poly, not sapio, not asexual nor unisexual, not heteroflexible nor homoflexible, not fluid nor a switch. I did not consider myself gay, though, until I was in my 20’s.
When I was 7 or 8, I used to fool around with Jay Smith. We would hide in the basement. Drop our pants. Grab each other’s genitals. This wasn’t gay. This was play. Homoerotic sexually, but not sensually. There was no desire here. No passion. We stopped playing when we were 9, but kept this a secret between us.
When I was 10 or 11, I would stop at a gas station on my way walking home from school. The gas station had a little convenience store attached to it. In the store, there was a rack of porn books (hetero only, of course). I shop-lifted many on many occasions. And what I did with them, well, I’d probably make Portnoy in Portnoy’s Complaint blush. Of course, both Portnoy and I had the mother thing — the complaint! — in common. My mother did catch me with these porno books once. She made me return them. [A lot of material here for another book, but I digress.] I re-stocked later on. Would you have expected any less of me?
From the first grade, when I was 6, until the sixth grade, when I was 12, I always remember having at least one girlfriend. Sometimes it was the same girl — that’s you, Arlene — but at different times in different grades. Sometimes it was two or three girls in my class. I repeatedly tried to kiss them on many occasions. This would probably be labeled some kind of date rape today. But it, too, was play. I always thought that I’d settle down with a woman, have two kids, a house, a dog and a yard.
The only jarring disruption occurred in second grade. The teacher was Miss O’Neal. She was very sensual, I could not help noticing, even at my young age. Miss O’Neal loved David. I was extremely jealous. I wanted her to love me. My second grade teacher was hot, what can I say. All through the school year, I wanted her to love on me, as she repeatedly did to David. She would gently place her hands on David’s face, covering each cheek with one hand. She would stare into his eyes and say, “Oohhhhhh…. David!” The words came out slowly, softly, deliberately, as if their sound struggled to never end. She slowly raised David’s head up closer to hers. Her lips would meet his. I tried every Machiavellian thing I could think of at my age of 7 to try to get her to gently stroke my cheeks, and say, “Oohhhhh… Warren!”, and share that kiss. Never happened. Could care less that this teacher was most likely a pedophile. “Oohhhhhh…. David!” Damn David.
JEWELRY DESIGNS CREATE EMOTIONS
As a child, you are never certain about what your emotions are. How they came to be. How they get expressed. What they mean. But as you age, the recognition — conscious, subconscious or otherwise –of senses and their relationship to desires, sex and sexuality gets ever clearer. Sex with sensuality.
A good jewelry designer helps steer the wearer and the buyer towards positive emotions. And in turn, positive emotions often form the core of the designer’s inspirations.
Because of this, jewelry designers need a deeper understanding of types of emotions and their psychological underpinnings. They need to be in touch with themselves about how they experience and reflect sexuality and sensuousness. They need to be able to translate these emotions into jewelry designs where their wearers and buyers share similar emotional understandings.
Jewelry, on one level, encapsulates sensuality. Even the plainest, simplest pieces wreak of it. People sense this emotionally as they interact with their jewelry as worn. The sensations of the wearing of jewelry and the touching of jewelry and the seeing of jewelry can feel good.
People, in fact, develop emotions with jewelry on three levels of sensuality: (1) visceral (intrinsic), (2) behavioral (behavior), and reflective (reflection).
(1) Visceral (wants to feel): attractiveness, first impressions, feelings
(2) Behavioral (wants to do): usability, function, performance, effectiveness
(3) Reflective (wants to be): meaning, impact, shared experience, psycho-socio-cultural fit
People use their mastery of sensuality to attract others. These might be friends. These might be mates. This mastery might hold over time, or be ephemeral within a particular situation. Wearing jewelry, buying jewelry, making jewelry all contribute to making this mastery simpler, easier to apply and manipulate. And spill over into sex, if the wearer wants that.
Yes, I Did Go To The Prom
Junior high and high school, for me, were almost a complete sexual bust. I fooled around with some girls, but there was always this racial barrier. I was Jewish, and that was a deal breaker over and over again. I attended some Jewish youth groups parties and mixers, but these were far away from where I lived. There was sex, but no sustained relationships.
In my senior year in high school, I did have a girlfriend for awhile. Her name was Jean. She was Church of Christ, and her parents were very, very wary of me. They said so. And while they were not liberal in any sense of the term, they let their daughter date me. They were unaware that we had sexual relations. I took her to the prom. Never saw her again after I graduated.
Also, when I was a senior in high school, I became very close to another student — Geoff. We had a very deep, platonic, male-to-male relationship. One night, we were outside talking, and he turned me around, and for no other reason than an especially strong feeling of closeness, he kissed me.
My reaction was quick. I turned stiff. I pulled away sharply. This was very disgusting to me. Two guys kissing. Made me very uncomfortable.
Over the next few weeks, I found that I was disappointed in myself. Why shouldn’t two people, regardless of gender, be able to express their closeness with a kiss? I struggled with this. But a few weeks later, again later at night, outdoors, talking about whatever, I turned to him and kissed him. I felt OK about this.
SEX, SEXUALITY, AND SENSUALITY
As a jewelry designer, you have to be very aware of the roles jewelry plays in sex, sexuality and sensuality. The act of sex. Everything leading up to it. Attraction. Intimacy. Pleasure. Eroticism. The sensations experienced and summed up by the label sensuality. The sexuality as an interpretation about how one wants to express their sensuality within the sexual act.
It is important to differentiate sex from sensuality. Sensuality is how the jewelry brings out the sensual — the gratification of the appetite for visuals, sounds, tastes, smells and touch. Sensuality always makes jewelry desirable. More attractive. More intimate. More pleasurable. More erotic. But perhaps no two people experience the sensuality of a piece of jewelry in the same way.
Sex, on the other hand, is sex. It can be mechanical, but more preferably, passionate. It can be a simple kiss, or completion of an act. The desire here is simple and limited. It’s simply a desire to maximize the biological. Sensuality adds emotion to this. Intimacy. Sexuality is how we desire to express sex and sensuality publicly. We need sex, sexuality and sensuality as human beings. We need to manage these through our choices about composition, construction and manipulation as designers.
Part of managing sex, sensuality and sexuality is to understand the different roles jewelry plays in their expression. These sex-sexuality-sensuality roles, among others, include,
(1)The Peacock Role
(2)The Gender Role
(3)The Safe Sex Role
See if you recognize any of these.
One sexual-sensual role of jewelry is the Peacock Role. People wear personal adornment to attract the viewer’s attention. This means that the jewelry not only needs to be flashy enough, or at least stylishly coherent, but also must contain culturally meaningful elements that the viewer will recognize and be sufficiently meaningful as to motivate the viewer to focus his or her attention on the jewelry and who is wearing it.
These culturally meaningful elements might include the use of color(s), talismans, shapes, forms. They clue the viewer to what is good, appealing, appropriate, and to what is not. But the jewelry must also provide clues to the individuality of the wearer — her (or his) personal style, social or cultural preferences, personal senses of the situation in which they find themselves.
Another of these sexuality-sensuality roles — The Gender Role — is to define gender and gender-rooted culture. Certain jewelry, jewelry styles, and ways of wearing jewelry are associated with females, and others with males. Some are used to signal androgyny, others non-binary identity, polyamory or gender fluidity. You can easily label which jewelry looks more masculine, and which more feminine. Some jewelry is associated with heterosexuality, and others with homosexuality. I remember when men, in a big way, started wearing one earring stud, it was critical to remember whether to wear the stud in the left ear lobe (hetero) or the right one (gay). For engaged and married women, it is important to recognize which style of ring is more appropriate, and which hand and finger to wear these on.
One of the most important sexuality-sensuality roles, however — The Safe Sex Role — concerns the placement of jewelry on the body. Placement will garner either attention or movement or both. Such placement is suggestive of where it is safe, and where it is unsafe, to look at (attention) or to touch (movement) the person wearing it. The length of the necklace, relative to the neck, the breast, or below the breast. How long the earring extends below the lobe of the ear. Whether the person wears bracelets. The size of the belt buckle. If a person has body piercings, where these are — the navel, the eyebrow, the nose, the lip.
Jewelry calls attention to areas of the body the wearer feels are safe to view or touch. It’s like taking a sharpie marker and drawing a boundary line across the body. Jewelry gives the viewer permission to look at these areas, say above the line, and not others below the line. Jewelry may give the viewer permission to touch these areas, as well. The wearer may want to call attention to the face, the neck, the hands, the ankle, but also to the breasts, the naval, the genital area.
We know that certain areas of the body are more sexually arousing than others. We know that different people are more or less comfortable with these areas on the body. But how does the wearer communicate that? How does the wearer communicate her (or his) personal views of what is sexually acceptable without having to physically and verbally interact with someone in order for that person to find out? Taking many minutes and 10’s of minutes before interacting and using this time to espouse your personal sexual philosophy of life can really be a buzz kill.
Jewelry. How jewelry is worn is one of the most critical and strategic ways for achieving this Safe-Sex goal. The linear form of the jewelry imposes a boundary line on the body. Do not cross it. And make no mistake, this boundary line separates the permissible from the impermissible, the non-erotic from the erotic, the safe from the unsafe. In a similar way the centerpiece focuses attention as if it were an arrow pointing the way. Jewelry is not just a style preference thing. It’s a safe-sex preference thing, as well.
When news of the AIDS epidemic first burst on-stage in the 1980s, you witnessed a very dramatic change in jewelry and how it was worn. Right before the AIDS epidemic, large, long earrings were in style. Remember shoulder dusters. But as awareness of AIDS spread, most women stopped wearing earrings for awhile. Then gradually, they began wearing studs. Then very small hoops. It wasn’t until around 2004 that some women wore the new chandelier earrings, and you saw longer earrings on actresses as they paraded down the red carpets of one award show after another.
Prior to AIDS, the necklace style was for longer necklaces — 24” to 36” long. The necklaces were full — multi-strand, lots of charms and dangles. Again, as awareness of AIDS spread, the necklace profile changed rapidly to no necklace at all, or to thin, short chains and chokers. You would typically find ONE tiny charm, not many, on a necklace. Attention was pulled away from the genital area, the navel and the breasts, all the way back up to the face.
Prior to AIDS, necklaces and earrings were the best-sellers in my store. After AIDS, it became bracelets. Holding hands. Not necking. Not fondling. Not kissing the neck. Not sexual intercourse. Holding hands was now the acceptable norm. This was safe.
Body piercings came into major vogue during the 1980s. And look what typically got pierced in this decade. Noses, belly buttons, eyebrows, lips. Think of this as a big Body Chart for safe sex. It was not until the early 2000’s that nipple piercings and genital piercings became widespread.
As society became more understanding of AIDS and how it spread, the jewelry became larger. It extended to more areas of the body. People wore more of it. But in 2009, it was still restrained, when compared to what people wore before the 1980s.
In the sexual hunt between the sexes, jewelry plays an important boundary-defining role. Let’s not forget about this. Jewelry, in some sense, is an embodiment of desire. Jewelry communicates to others how the wearer comes to define what desire might mean for the self. It communicates through placement, content, embellishment and elaboration.
Jewelry does not have to be visibly erotic, or include visual representations of sexual symbols, in order to play a role in sexuality and desire — a role that helps the hunter and the hunted define some acceptable rules for interacting without verbal communication.
College
I went to Brandeis University for college. This was a Jewish sponsored but secular institution. A large Jewish student body.
During my freshman year in college, I was a sexual pig. You would not have liked me. Or respected me. I showed little respect to women. It was all about sex and conquest. I pushed boundaries. Inappropriately. I formed untenable attachments. I pushed a friend too far, and I knew it. But did it anyway. And lost a friend.
Losing this friend bothered me a lot. I’m still atoning for that.
I changed my ways.
When I was a junior, I became very serious as a student. I studied all the time. I was eager to learn things. Philosophically. Practically. Artistically.
After awhile, however, I could no longer suppress my sexual desires. My academic self was fighting my sexual self. My academic self was losing. I did not have time to form relationships. And I no longer felt comfortable taking sexual advantage of the girls around me.
For several months, I began to visit the red light district of Boston. I’d visit the gay movie theaters and have random sex. It was fun. It was a release.
Then I tired of it.
Adornment and Sexuality
Jewelry has been intertwined with sexuality and sensuality throughout history. Some cultures linked them with abandon; others feared such linkage. The movement of Buddhism from its origin in India to further east through Indochina, China and eventually Japan, is a key example of all this. In India, Buddhism was strongly linked to sexuality, and jewelry was very intricate, elaborate and elaborated and adorned all parts of the body. By the time Buddhism arrived in Japan, it had become more and more detached. In Japan, they passed a law forbidding the wearing of any jewelry that was anything but functional. Wearing jewelry as a belt buckle (netsuke) or as in the hair to keep it in place was acceptable; wearing jewelry for other than functional reasons was not, and was punishable by the authorities.
Functionality, however, could not fully contain the power of jewelry to excite, entice, attract. Functional jewelry was still made from valued materials like gold and jade and ivory. Functional jewelry still had sparkle and combinations of colors and patterns and textures of which people desired to see and touch and bring that experience into their inner selves. Functional jewelry could still be used to enhance a person’s physical features. Functional jewelry could not suppress the needs of people to interact sexually and sensuously, no matter how hard the authorities tried to make it.
Jewelry as adornment is a symbol of desire. And the exchange of desires. Whether a wedding ring or a gift to adorn the neck, jewelry makes it impossible to escape this symbolism.
Jewelry can be used to articulate eroticism. It can be very obvious like a nipple ring, or more subtle, such as where the jewelry, in its design, points to an erotic zone on your body. The sensation and perception of jewelry can influence the experience of pleasure, arousal, and intimacy in sexual and sensual contexts.
Jewelry can be used to signify someone’s gender or gender identity. It might take the look of a rainbow LBGTQ+ form. It might incorporate symbols specific to female or male genders, or specific to sexual preferences.
Wearing jewelry may be empowering. It may lead an individual to feel more confident in sex or in their sexuality and self-expression.
Jewelry has a power to physically and emotionally pull one person towards another. It can be used to overcome any shyness or hesitancy in initiating a relationship or following through on any attraction.
When I Design Jewelry
I design jewelry for all kinds of people for all kinds of events and situations. Often, when I am not doing custom work for a client, and I get to design something I want from scratch, I try to visualize a woman wearing the piece in context. I want the woman to feel that, by wearing my jewelry, she is somehow more attractive, more sensual, more powerful. I want my sense of desire to match her sense of desire.
My woman is in her late 30s / early 40s. She has some kind of career. She likes to dance. I always picture my woman wearing my piece on the dance floor. In a nightclub. Fast, not slow dancing. No matter what vantage point anyone else in the room is, and no matter what positioning of her body is in while she dances, my jewelry is designed to attract. To draw attention. To hold that attention. To experience that sensuality of the piece as she might experience it.
My jewelry is not garish. It is subtle. Parts of it are to be seen head-on. Other parts to be noticed from the sides. The parts comprising the whole composition form a vernacular that can be easily articulated. Other parts are designed to heighten experiences only. I visualize the necklace moving side to side, front and back, up and down, as she moves on the dance floor. And I want it always to look good, no matter its orientation relative to the other vantages points around the room.
There is always a subtle edginess. But not too much. The colors extend just beyond the boundaries of a color scheme. The textures vary always a step too far. A pattern will need more than a few words to describe. A concurrent formality and informality. I use adaptable elements so my pieces can work for more than one body type or for more than one situation.
My pieces must feel good to wear. I am always aware of that sense of touch. They must be comfortable, so I spend a great deal of thinking and reflection time about how to build in architectural features to make this so.
My woman wants to wear my jewelry over and over again. Not because she has to. Not because she is told to. Not because she is conforming to some social or cultural norm. But because it makes her feel good about herself. It is transformative. It projects a sensual, sexual, positive self-image to those around her.
To Exist Is To Be Sexual
To be authentic, to feel free, a person must be allowed to make choices about how to sexually express themselves, and to what degree such expression morphs into desire, identity and orientation. The contemporary jewelry designer has to rise above any societal or cultural norms which impact on or restrict this expression. The designer must be supremely cognitive of how that designer’s personal framework on life gets imposed on their jewelry all the while maintaining that sense of authenticity critical to whether someone will want to wear or buy their pieces.
Jewelry design becomes an act of reconciliation. There are the designer’s sexual and sensual preferences. There is the jewelry as a reflection of these things. There are the wearer’, viewer’, buyer’, exhibitor’, collector’, teacher’, student’s sexual and sensual preferences. There is the jewelry so designed in anticipation of these other preferences. Choices about silhouette, shapes, colors, forms, patterns, textures, themes. These choices lead to this reconciliation. Jewelry, and how it influences attention and movement, has a major role to play, triggering all this.
To be sexual is to grapple with questions about intimacy. Jewelry assists in setting the stage for such intimacy between two individuals. What jewelry is. What it is made of. How it is worn. When it is worn. Jewelry may lead these individuals to conclusions about the significance of their relationship, and the role of intimacy within it. Or it may fail to do that. In this latter case, the designer, in many respects, has failed in their design. The designer is a professional. She or he has a professional obligation to design jewelry in line with the values and desires of the client. Intimacy is one critical, valued desire which the jewelry design must design for.
In a concurrent way, jewelry should affect the situation between any two, intimate individuals whereby the experience of intimacy is pleasant, positive, fulfilling. Jewelry should reduce the anxiety and dread which can arise from thinking about sex, sensuality, sexuality and their expression through intimacy. The experience of sex can be fleeting. But the desire is that it be intimate and enduring. Jewelry can secure that desire. It makes things feel permanent, rather than impermanent. Persisting, rather than temporary. Impactful within a relationship, rather than chaotic or destructive.
As sex transforms into the sensual, this brings more pleasure, engagement, a heightened physical experience, a more aesthetic quality to the relationship. Jewelry plays a significant role in shaping a person’s subjective experience of existence, in this case, sex. Jewelry brings to the fore all those unarticulated, unformulated feelings, visions, tastes, smells, sensations of being alive. This allows the individual to transcend any narrow definitions they may have about the meaning and purpose of their lives. It allows them to surpass the limits of their everyday existence. That increased sensuality, which the jewelry has assisted in triggering, forces the individual to question how all this pleasure aligns with their sense of authenticity. In other words, jewelry impacts an individuals’ relationship with their desires, pleasures and bodily experiences.
My Decision To Be Gay
When I was 21, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She survived one more year. The last four months of her life were spent in Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan. I lived in New Brunswick, NJ at the time, was attending Rutgers University to get a Masters in City and Regional Planning. I was also serving as a health planner in New Brunswick.
I would take every opportunity to take the train into New York, and spend time with my mother. She was on high dosages of morphine. She lay quietly on her bed, darkened skin shrunk tightly on her skeletal body. I sat there. Sad, scared, horrified, in denial. She once suddenly sat up and shouted, “Ike,” then lay back down in a drug-induced slumber. I guess she liked Ike.
When I would leave the hospital, I made my way down to the red light district. Just as I had done in Boston. It was a way to leave the real world and pretend nothing bad was happening. It was a way to relieve all the stresses which overwhelmed every part of my conscious and physical being.
Back in New Brunswick, I had been dating two women. At various times, I had considered marriage to each. But the timing was all wrong. I was trying to get established in a career. I was dealing with family dynamics and responsibilities now turned topsy turvy because of my mom’s illness and eventual death. Neither Jeanne nor Robin was sufficiently empathetic to my plight. The emotional distance between each of them and myself kept widening.
I cannot put all the blame on them. I was a lousy communicator. I never articulated what was going on in my head. I hid half my sexual self. I’m sure these unspoken things irritated them.
When I moved to North Carolina to get my doctorate, one relationship ended, and the other I allowed, but shouldn’t have allowed, to slowly, over many years, die on the vine.
I continued this pattern of dating women and running off to the gay bars for several years. Then the AIDS epidemic came, beginning on the coasts, but eventually working its way to the South and Midwest. I was a professor at Ole Miss with an apartment in Memphis when AIDS began to color my life.
There were many friends and many sex-partners in Memphis who came down with AIDS and died. One after another after another. I slammed the breaks on sex, though it took awhile to slow down.
Now I was living in Nashville. I had taken a job as a health policy planner with the state of Tennessee. I was lonely. Bored with the women and the men I was dating. I had a little conversation with myself: the next interesting and creative person I meet — man or woman — that’s the path I’m going to follow.
I met James.
Sex And The Single Rogue Elephant
Let me get this straight, right up front. Finding your Rogue Elephant doesn’t mean to have sex with him. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But, on the other hand, this is not to make your Rogue Elephant asexual. He is not.
He likes his ears stroked. A gently pressure applied with both hands, one on one side and the other on the other, with a slow movement toward the ear’s end, can feel very sensual for him. With a warm attachment to you.
Playfully petting him, and playfully twirling the hair on his body, is all so sensuous for him.
His trunk can be warm and wet, or rough and dry.
He doesn’t stand there waiting for you to comfort him.
Comfort comes in the details.
As you bead him.
And as he roams.
_______________________________
I hope you found this article useful. Please consider sharing.
CONQUERING THE CREATIVE MARKETPLACE: Between the Fickleness of Business and the Pursuit of Design
How dreams are made between the fickleness of business and the pursuit of jewelry design
This guidebook is a must-have for anyone serious about making money selling jewelry. I focus on straightforward, workable strategies for integrating business practices with the creative design process. These strategies make balancing your creative self with your productive self easier and more fluid.
Based both on the creation and development of my own jewelry design business, as well as teaching countless students over the past 35+ years about business and craft, I address what should be some of your key concerns and uncertainties. I help you plan your road map.
Whether you are a hobbyist or a self-supporting business, success as a jewelry designer involves many things to think about, know and do. I share with you the kinds of things it takes to start your own jewelry business, run it, anticipate risks and rewards, and lead it to a level of success you feel is right for you, including
· Marketing, Promoting, Branding: competitor analysis, developing message, establishing emotional connections to your products, social media marketing
· Selling: linking product to buyer among many venues, such as store, department store, online, trunk show, home show, trade show, sales reps and showrooms, catalogs, TV shopping, galleries, advertising, cold calling, making the pitch
· Resiliency: building business, professional and psychological resiliency
· Professional Responsibilities: preparing artist statement, portfolio, look book, resume, biographical sketch, profile, FAQ, self-care
SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form
So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer reinterprets how to apply techniques and modify art theories from the Jewelry Designer’s perspective. To go beyond craft, the jewelry designer needs to become literate in this discipline called Jewelry Design. Literacy means understanding how to answer the question: Why do some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not? How to develop the authentic, creative self, someone who is fluent, flexible and original. How to gain the necessary design skills and be able to apply them, whether the situation is familiar or not.
The Jewelry Journey Podcast “Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture” Podcast, Part 1 Podcast, Part 2
PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!
I developed a nontraditional technique which does not use tools because I found tools get in the way of tying good and well-positioned knots. I decided to bring two cords through the bead to minimize any negative effects resulting from the pearl rotating around the cord. I only have you glue one knot in the piece. I use a simple overhand knot which is easily centered. I developed a rule for choosing the thickness of your bead cord. I lay out different steps for starting and ending a piece, based on how you want to attach the piece to your clasp assembly.
SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS: 16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows
In this book, I discuss 16 lessons I learned, Including How To (1) Find, Evaluate and Select Craft Shows Right for You, (2) Determine a Set of Realistic Goals, (3) Compute a Simple Break-Even Analysis, (4) Develop Your Applications and Apply in the Smartest Ways, (5) Understand How Much Inventory to Bring, (6) Set Up and Present Both Yourself and Your Wares, (7) Best Promote and Operate Your Craft Show Business before, during and after the show.
Learning Bead Stringing Is More Than Putting Beads On A String And Tying On A Clasp
There is an art and skill to stringing beads. First, of course, is the selection of beads for a design, and the selection of the appropriate stringing material. Then is the selection of a clasp or closure, appropriate to the design and use of the piece.
You want your pieces to be appealing. You want them to wear well. You want someone to wear them or buy them. This means understanding the basic techniques, not only in terms of craft and art, but also with considerations about architecture, mechanics, and some sociology, anthropology and psychology.
In this book, I go into depth about: (1) Choosing stringing materials, and the pros and cons of each type, (2) Choosing clasps, and the pros and cons of different clasps, (3) All about the different jewelry findings and how you use them, (4) Architectural considerations and how to build these into your pieces, (5) How better designers use cable wires and crimp, as well as, use needle and thread to string beads, (6) How best to make stretchy bracelets, (7) How to make adjustable slip knots, coiled wire loops, and silk wraps, (8) How to finish off the ends of thicker cords or ropes, so that you can attach a clasp, (9) How to construct such projects as eyeglass leashes, mask chains, lariats, multi-strand pieces, twist multi-strand pieces, and memory wire bracelets, (10) How different teaching paradigms — craft vs. art vs. design — might influence the types of choices you make.
452 pp, many images, illustrations, diagrams, Ebook, Kindle or Print
I looked around, and there was no one whose life I wanted.
No one’s routine. No one’s status or power or celebrity. No one’s legacy.
And yet, I wanted others to want my life, my values, my perspectives, my convictions. Even, though. Even, though. Even, though. Even, though, I was yet to live my full life or fully define and clarify my values, my perspectives, my too-often changing convictions.
I’m not poor, but I’m not wealthy either. I’m not wealthy enough to get a building named after me at some university, or to be included in those all-too-often pay-to-play opportunities such as getting a board seat in a prominent nonprofit organization. I can’t use money, position or power to impose my legacy on anyone. Of course, I fantasize that I can, but I can’t.
But I can try to live out my life in a purposeful way, and hope that some kind of legacy emerges from that. Results from that. Takes over from that. I have doubts that it will.
In any case, I have not lived my life in a straight-forward purposeful way. While there’s always some kind of purpose in the background, it doesn’t feel like I’m in charge. I might be too insignificant. Survival has probably been the biggest purpose. But there is no flow to my existence. There’s a dart in one way, then another. A jumping off a cliff or two. A few dead ends.
When I was 9 years old, I had an ultimate purpose. I thought I would fail as an adult guy if I didn’t get hairy arms. My friend Gary had hairy arms, but I did not. That bothered me. A lot. Gary would get to high school and be OK. I would not, at least with my currently hairless arms. No one would notice me. Listen to me. Let me participate with them in anything. Connect with me. No one. Not without hairy arms.
One day, I asked Gary how he got such hairy arms. He told me he ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. Well, I could do that. So, for the next several months, I ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. Every day. Sometimes 20 sandwiches a day. I didn’t get hairy arms, at least not then. But I did get fat.
My legacy.
Legacy And The Jewelry Designer
I didn’t begin making jewelry in order to leave a legacy. I began making jewelry to make money. That’s it. Didn’t care about beauty. Didn’t care about durability. Could care less if the buyer fulfilled their wishes and desires. Just give me the money.
But as I began to sense that Rogue Elephant somewhere out there waiting for me, things began to change. I designed some pieces for which I wanted to document — written patterns and sketches, photos, some sharing of information and photos. Then more pieces I wanted to preserve in memory.
As I created more custom pieces for people, particularly celebrity musicians and actors, I wanted to preserve these pieces rather than hand them off, so I made duplicates of these and showcased them.
My jewelry designs became more expressive. Impactful for people who wore or bought them. I created more ways to showcase them. Personal and business pages on all the social media sites. My own website. More frequent online posts. An artist statement and a portfolio. Workshops and kits to show others how to recreate these pieces. My jewelry was powerful enough to express my vision about the world and why people wear jewelry. My jewelry became a means for exploring how people become fluent in design. My jewelry became a framework through which to challenge and inspire others to think differently than craftsmen and differently than artists when designing their own jewelry creations.
I often wonder who will inherit my jewelry once I am gone. Will I be remembered for my design work and my design philosophy? Will my ideas endure?
When I received my own copy of this book and found the image for Little Tapestries/Ghindia, I felt a lot like in the movie Working Girl. There’s that last shot before the credits roll. The heroine finally gets into the executive suite and gets her own office. The camera focuses first on the window outside her office. Then it slowly pans back, eventually revealing hundreds and hundreds of office windows stacked up on the side of a tall skyscraper.
It turns out, it is not easy to do Ugly! Our brains are prewired with an anxiety response. We are preset to avoid snakes and spiders and anything that might harm us. So it is very difficult to design an ugly necklace. We are biased towards beauty and harmony and things which won’t upset us. To achieve a truly hideous result, you have to be a very accomplished jewelry designer. You gotta know your stuff. Intimately. Fluently.
Moreover, necklaces are arranged in a circle. The circle shape itself errs on the side of beauty, and anything arranged, ordered or organized, such as the component parts of a necklace, will err on the side of beauty.
To top things off, we required the necklace to be wearable. Design-wise, this was another push away from Ugly.
The contest had been inspired by some work I was doing. In the late 1990s, our business collapsed and we went bankrupt. One of the things we did was to start up the jewelry and bead business again from scratch. While we did that, to pay the bills, I worked remotely with two companies as a website marketer. One company was in New Hope, Pennsylvania; the other in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was in Nashville. Both companies would link me up to various clients, and I would optimize their websites for search engines and do various online promotions to get them more visibility.
One client was SureFit that made slip covers for chairs and couches. Every year, they held an Ugly Couch contest. I was involved with some of the marketing for their contest. This was the origin of my idea for ugly necklaces. While the criteria for the Ugly Couch contest were simply color / pattern / texture, the criteria for judging jewelry could be so much more elaborated. I took this contest and its judging criteria further into the realm of physiology, cognition and design. But still in ‘English’. Still focusing on the fun. But subtly introducing the design philosophy ideas.
We launched the first The Ugly Necklace Contest in 2002, and held it 10 times over the next 15 years.
Designers were asked to push themselves to make hard choices, such things as:
· Can I push myself to use more yellow than the purple warrants, and mix in some orange?
· Can I make the piece off-sided or disorienting, or not have a clear beginning, middle or end?
· Can I disrupt my pattern in a way that, rather than “jazz,” results in “discord?”
· Can I work with colors and materials and patterns and textures and placements and proportions I don’t like?
· Can I design something I do not personally like, and perhaps am unwilling, to wear around my neck?
· Can I create a piece of jewelry that represents some awful feeling, emotion or experience I’m uncomfortable with?
· Can I make something I know that others won’t like, and may ridicule me for it?
Because answering questions like these is not something people like to do, and in fact, avoid, jewelry designers who attempt to achieve “Ugly,” have to have a lot of control and discipline to override, perhaps overcome, intuitive, internally integrated principles of artistic beauty. The best jewelry designers, therefore, will be those designers who can prove that they can design a truly Ugly Necklace. These are designers who can break the boundaries of form, material and technique. That was the crux of the contest.
We often like to say that beauty (and by inference, ugly) is in the eye of the beholder. But once we utter that phrase, we deny the possibilities of design — and the perspective on beauty or ugly from the eye of the designer. If we are preset to create things that have some beauty to them, perhaps anyone then could create appealing jewelry. But, if we take away too much power to create from the designer — something beautiful or something ugly — we begin to deny the need for the designer in the first place. We leave too much to the situation, and too little to our abilities as jewelry designers to translate inspiration into aspiration into finished designs which emotionally affect those around us. We lose the experiencing of each individual designer’s choices in taking inspirations into finished designs. The challenge of designing an Ugly Necklace shows us that without the designer, there can be no design, no resonant beauty, no parsimonious attention to appeal, no true and full authenticity underlying a piece of jewelry.
We made the contest international. We launched it on-line. Our goal was to politely influence the entire beading and jewelry making communities to think in different terms and to try to work outside the box. We also wanted very actively to stimulate discussion about whether there are universal and practical design theories which underlie beadwork and jewelry design, and which can be taught. Or was everything merely a matter of subjective interpretation.
Very enlightening for me, for our judges, for our students, for the participants and the larger jewelry making community.
Definitely a legacy. Most definitely a lot of fun. But still not enough for me. I still felt I had so many disparate things to bring together under the banner Jewelry Designer. I didn’t know what. I didn’t know where to find it. Wasn’t sure what I was doing. My felt purpose was still cloudy.
Living Out Other People’s Legacies
I had to reach a much older age before I began to seriously think about my legacy. Yet, over the years, looking back, I think, for the most part, I was living out other people’s legacies. Sometimes perfectly, other times rejecting them.
My grandfather — my father’s father — in heavily accented, broken English, would say every time he saw me: You be pharmacist. All you need is one clerk. I’m sure that was my father’s wish as well. He wanted me to be a pharmacist and take over his pharmacy once he retired. I was always a big disappointment. Never even tried to become a pharmacist.
I attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, for my undergraduate work. It is a university made up primarily of minorities — Jews, blacks, Latinos, Asians, poor whites. The students colloquially called Brandeis a second rate Jewish Harvard, because whether student or professor or employee, as Jews (or, this extends to other oppressed minorities), when Brandeis was founded in the 1950s, Harvard’s doors were closed to them.
Brandeis has a strong commitment to social justice. It saturates you with that commitment. An infusion. You are told and guided and influenced and challenged to find Truth Until Its Innermost Parts. An emphasis on the importance of authenticity and integrity. A yearning for social justice seeps into your brain and blood and pores. You can never shake it off. It never leaves you. It has never left me.
But perhaps the most important and sustaining other person’s legacy I have been living has been that of my life partner, Jayden. Jayden and I were together over 36 years.
When I met Jayden, Jayden was James. We met in a local bar in Nashville. At the time, I had lived in Nashville a couple of years. I was trying to find friends and trying to date and was always disappointed. The people I was meeting were kind of dull. Not particularly worldly. And definitely not very creative. At the time, most Nashvillians my age left Nashville for other places where they were more likely to find a spouse. And then they would return to Nashville. People my age that I worked with or met here in Nashville were already married.
I dated both men and women. Virtually all of them were waiters, waitresses or hair dressers. At one point, I was so frustrated and so in need of a close human relationship, that I had a little conversation with God in my head. God, I said, the next very creative person I meet — man or woman — will be the way I want to go. I met James. I became gay.
James was the epitome of creativity. So was his whole family. Every craft you could think of, he was an accomplished artist. Leatherwork. Jewelry. Construction. Interior design. I could learn so much from him. He could teach me so much.
Originally from Alabama, James moved to Nashville. He was driving a truck at the time. It was during a recession, and he was having difficulty finding another job. At one point I asked what he could do, and he said he could design jewelry. I said, we could build a business around that.
During this same time, I was directing a nonprofit healthcare organization, and was burnt out. Feeling very disconnected, and wanting to do something else. I quit my job. Jumped into retail. The rest is history: garage sale to flea market to physical store to the addition of an online catalog (www.landofodds.com ).
Our relationship was always contentious. Lots of heated back and forth. Disagreements about life, about business, about friends and relationships. James had grown up in a home where physical and emotional abuse was the rule of the day. Both his father and his mother punished him, broke bones, poured grits on the floor and made him kneel on them for hours. His father was an iterant preacher, and when James was a boy, his father, in exchange for work or money, let other preachers sexually abuse him. James never had any sense of basic trust for anyone. As an adult, he had difficulty relinquishing control. Sometimes, I feel, he confused me with his father.
When we were together about 23 years, James decided he needed to become Jayden. He underwent all the surgeries, and lived the rest of life as a woman. By that time, our relationship long since had ceased to become romantic or sexual. We were very close friends. Business partners. We stayed together. Friends, therapists always questioned my continued loyalty. Given all the tensions in our relationship, why did I remain loyal? Why didn’t I just leave?
Jayden had opened up the world I needed to live in. I learned from her until the point where, to continue to develop as a professional and as an artist, I needed to rely on myself. Legacy was no longer imitation. It had become inspiration. I was becoming the jewelry designer Jayden had wanted to become, but lacked the skills, insights, and energy. I was living out her legacy. But I was finding my own path, too.
Her health was deteriorating rapidly.
I stayed.
Is Legacy The Same As Celebrity Status?
Professionally, I hit a spot where many people knew of me. I had a very positive, shining reputation. But I lacked that magnetic force which would bring people to me. I could offer a workshop, but not fill it with students. I could start an online discussion about jewelry design, but not get enough people to continue to discuss things.
Part of the problem was me. I was a slave to my retail store. I did not have enough free hours to get outside the store and network, whether in the Nashville area, or nationally, or even internationally. Perhaps, if I were out there more, I would have developed that magnetic force which I wanted.
One summer, I applied and was invited to do two workshops at the Bead & Button convention in Milwaukee. I did three workshops, one Japanese Fragrance Garden Bracelet, one ColorBlock Bracelet, and the other, Etruscan Square Stitch Bracelet. When we arrived and I began meeting people at the hotel, everyone knew who I was. In fact, they quoted back to me several of the things I had done, such as a jewelry design workshop in Cortona, Italy many, many years earlier. I was a little off guard. Very unexpected. Played well to my ego.
One of the participants in another contest we held through the store — All Dolled Up: Beaded Art Doll Competition — had made me a bead woven dreidel as a gift of appreciation. She told me how I had changed her life. Given her confidence as a designer. Allowed her to open doors for herself.
Another prominent national instructor, in a back-handed sort of way, forcefully told me she disagreed with my article about jewelry design and color (https://medium.com/@warren-29626/the-jewelry-designers-approach-to-color-bcd9754a83c3 ). In the article, I wrote you cannot paint with beads. She felt she could. I stick by my assessment: you can’t. Beads do not come in all colors. You cannot blend them. Because jewelry is worn and moves with the wearer, the impacts of light and shadow keep changing, and affect the appeal of the piece, given the context. A painting hangs on a wall. It doesn’t move.
I was surprised how many attendees at this conference, whom I never met, followed my career and activities — workshops in Cortona, Italy, other workshops, articles I had written, kits I had developed, TV programs I had been a guest on, enrichment travel cruise.
I got a little taste of the celebrity status I was looking for. But as a legacy, I do not know. I had some influence, some power to create a positive legacy. But I was still insignificant. I returned from Bead & Button, and back to my status: great reputation, but no magnetism. I still did not know what kind of legacy I wanted to leave. There were bits and parts floating around in my head and in the environment, but not coming together.
Why Do I Want To Leave A Legacy?
In college, I thought I wanted to be an urban planner. I was going to work for the Rouse Company — a company that built two planned urban developments — Columbia in Maryland and Reston in Virginia. I had a strong belief in physical determinism. I was going to physically create urban spaces for living, working, playing, entertaining, relaxing, vacationing. All these spaces would define for anyone who interacted with them the meaning of life.
I would have this visual representation of my legacy. I could gaze at it at my leisure. Or purposefully. I could watch people successfully living their lives as people within my physically-designed spaces. Immortality. Fulfillment. What a legacy!
That legacy was not to be. And it was probably a fallacy anyway. A pipe dream. A false prophet.
When I was 62, I applied and got accepted to Teach For America. I thought that perhaps here I might create my legacy as a teacher in an underserved school. After all, teachers have a big impact on their students.
Teach For America trains people, who do not necessarily have a degree in education, to become teachers in low income communities. The goal is to promote educational equity. If you ever get a chance to do this, I highly recommend it. It was one of the most rewarding and challenging things I ever did. And probably one of the most humiliating.
I ended up teaching middle school science and social studies. I was promised a science room, but ended up in a regular classroom. As a science teacher, I was responsible for conducting experiments. My classroom, however, did not have running water, any safety equipment, or other things necessary. I had 32 seats, but my class sizes ranged from 40 to 50. There were no supplies for conducting experiments. I had to buy these on my own. There were no aprons or goggles. Another teacher lent me some of hers which she had had to buy on her own.
As a teacher, I tried to do all the things my various instructors, as well as experienced teachers I interacted with, suggested I do. That first quarter, everything I did, and which they suggested, back-fired. I tried to assert some control, and my students took this as a challenge. I tried to present the required information, but my students never connected to it. They threw candy and pens at me while I was trying to teach. They were always talking. Playing with their cellphones. One student took a gallon of sanitary hand lotion, threw it out the 2nd story window, and busted out the windshield of a parked car below.
The administrators wanted me to teach SEL — Social Emotional Learning. I had no idea what that was. No one could give me a clear idea about it. Got lots of suggestions of things to try, and tried them, but never to the satisfaction of my administrators. They wanted me to coordinate with the other science and social studies teachers. That meant, teaching to the same standards on any particular day, and coordinating exams.
That was a problem for me. The standards, particularly in social studies, were so broad as to make them meaningless. For example, I had to teach the American Revolutionary War in 2 class sessions. In the first session, I was expected to cover 10 different battles. Ten battles in 50 minutes. The same amount of time it took Paul Revere to saddle up his horse.
Before the 3rd quarter started, I rebelled. My goals, by the end of the year, were to feel I was on the path towards becoming a good teacher, and that at least one student would learn one thing from me. I decided to reinterpret all the standards from the students’ point of view. I realized that I needed to find connections to each standard which the students could relate to. Not easy. Their life experiences were much more limited than I imagined. Even though we were in a city like Nashville with lots of accessible resources, my students’ worlds tended to be bounded by the couple of city blocks surrounding their homes. I would cover all the standards, but not everything each standard wanted me to cover. I would not coordinate with the other teachers.
I began to find my footing. By the end of the 4th quarter, literally the last week of the 4th quarter, I felt I was getting there. I found my teacher face and voice. Some students did learn some things from me. Overall, I loved the experience. Learned a lot about me. Became an even better teacher. I had hoped there was a legacy here that I could develop and leave. Not really. I was able, however, to incorporate many of the things I learned into teaching jewelry design, and ultimately writing articles and books about it.
Contemporizing Traditional Jewelry
A jewelry designer must deal with the rational and the reasonable. Those choices which are rational are based on reasons. The choices involve things like which design elements to include and exclude, how to include them, how to create compositional arrangements, and how to manipulate these parts and arrangements to create a satisfying whole which is both appealing and functional, how to introduce your pieces publicly.
Reasons justify everyday life. With traditional jewelry, those reasons are provided as well as bounded by social and cultural norms. These norms prescribe fixed frameworks and predetermined rules of composition. These norms prescribe how materials and techniques are to be selected and used. The focus is on universals. The norms allow emotional responses to beautiful, harmonious jewelry, but begin to restrict responses which get too edgy, too dramatic, too rebellious, too radical. Here one purpose of jewelry is to reconnect the individual with the broader goals and restrictions of society.
With contemporary jewelry, the designer substitutes that designer’s own reasons upon which to base rational choices for those found in culture and society. Contemporary does NOT necessarily refer to the use of unusual materials or unexpected compositions and silhouettes. Contemporary encompasses Anything reflective of a certain way of thinking. Here the designer’s personal values, desires, assumptions and perspectives inform what is rational. The client also, by wearing the jewelry, is expected to connect to the personal, not the societal or cultural. The key to design is the management of the subjective.
Towards this end, the designer might either rely on fixed, established rules of composition, or on violating them in some way. Materials and techniques become things to push to their limits. Responses to jewelry must go beyond emotions and enter the realm of resonance. One purpose of contemporary jewelry is to reconnect the individual with their inner self, their personal culture. It is the designer’s ability to channel his or her personal culture, and that of the client. Within the jewelry so created, these abilities form the basis of professional responsibilities and possibilities.
The contemporary jewelry designer is especially positioned to serve at the nexus of all this culture. The designer’s ability to think through and define what contemporary means becomes instrumental for everyone wearing their jewelry to successfully negotiate the day-to-day cultural demands of the community they live in. Designers have a unique ability to dignify and make people feel valued, respected, honored and seen. Each wearer and buyer stands at that precipice of acceptance or not, relevance or not. The jewelry designer has the power to push someone in one direction, or another. It is the jewelry designer who assists the client in transitioning from conformity to individuality.
This is a power that can form the basis of any designer’s legacy. We can most easily see this power in the designer’s attempts to contemporize traditional jewelry. Here we can begin to recognize and understand how the designer substitutes personal reason for that of the broader socio-cultural one.
I was contracted to do a series of workshops in Cortona, Italy regarding Contemporizing Etruscan Jewelry with Toscana Americana (http://www.toscanaamericana.com) . I began with examining several pieces of Etruscan jewelry. For the Etruscans, jewelry was a display of wealth and a depository of someone’s wealth maintained and preserved as jewelry. Jewelry tended to be worn for very special occasions and was buried with the individual upon her or his death. One piece, an Etruscan Collar (http://www.warrenfeldjewelry.com/wfjecollar.htm ), was one I immediately connected with.
The challenge, here for me, was to create a sophisticated, wearable, and attractive piece that exemplified concepts about contemporizing traditional jewelry. I began to interpret and analyze it. I first broke it down in terms of its traditional components and sensibility. Next, I had to re-interpret the piece in terms of its characteristics and parts. These are the kinds of things the designer can control: colors, materials, shapes, scale, positioning, balance, proportions, # of elements, use of line/plane/point, silhouette, etc.
The designer would also try to surmise who, why and when someone might wear the piece. A final assessment would be made about how finished and successful the traditional piece would have been seen at the time it was made.
I researched what jewelry meant to the Etruscans, and how their jewelry compared to other societies around them. There is considerable artistry and craftsmanship underlying Etruscan jewelry. They brought to their designs clever techniques of texturing, ornamentation, color, relief, filigree, granulation and geometric, floral and figurative patterning. While their techniques were borrowed from the Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures, the Etruscans perfected these to a level of sophistication not seen before, and not often even today.
I designed each of these two contemporized pieces, each taking me in a slightly different direction in what it means to Contemporize Traditional Jewelry. The Vestment (http://www.warrenfeldjewelry.com/wfjecollar.htm) is definitely more literal, with a mix of Revival and Contemporized approaches. The Collar (http://www.warrenfeldjewelry.com/wfjecollar.htm) is more contemporized. The core technique for both was the Ndebele stitch.
I worked with glass beads for the Cortona workshop. Then I took the Collar to the next level. I entered Swarovski’s 2008 Create-Your-Own-Style contest.
In the version I created for Swarovski, I used crystal beads instead of glass beads which posed additional problems. I could define distinct boundaries between colors when using glass. The crystal colors, however, tended to blend together. I needed distinct boundaries. I began by trying to create an Amber/Purple/Olivine (yellow-orange, violet and yellow-green) color palette. I found it very difficult to find a green to go with the amethyst and topaz. I tried olivine, light olivine, peridot, erinite, tourmaline, green tourmaline, and finally settled on lime. I’m not a big fan of lime — I tend to be yellow-phobic and lime is very yellow. But it was the only green that had the same underlying shades and tints as the amethyst and topaz. I added a lot of 2mm black crystal beads to my mix, to create a sense of framing and shadows.
No one says you have to leave a legacy. This may not be important to you. No crime, no foul. You can still find meaning and purpose in life. You can still pursue your Rogue Elephant without pursuing a legacy. For me, there is something I had wanted to happen, a purpose, a justification, a legacy. And I had wanted to see something reassuring in this direction before I died.
I am 70 when I am writing this. In a year I will be closing my shop and semi-retiring. Still working, but getting a chunk of responsibilities off my shoulders. I have mixed emotions. I am confronting that What Is My Purpose? thing. It isn’t easy to walk away from a prestigious position as a business owner in the community. Who am I, if I am no longer important around here?
Jewelry design has been more than a way to fill my time. It’s been, in great part, a mission. It’s been a mission to define it as a professional endeavor, with clear choices, responsibilities, and desired impacts. An authentic performance task. I have spent years clarifying technique, passion, and values. I want those understandings to be shared and continued. Legacy.
The future is always uncertain and unpredictable. There is no guarantee that the purpose and values I found in life, specifically as a jewelry designer, will continue beyond my death. But I feel responsible for at least trying.
I have turned my wanting a legacy into a rite of passage. Through writing, teaching and demonstration, I have attempted to transition from a life focused primarily on me, my goals and achievements, to one focused on leaving a lasting impression on the world. Challenging. Lots of time and resources devoted to this — something that may or may not happen. But all of this has not been a waste. It’s led to considerable personal growth, transformation and development.
Should I Leave A Legacy In A World I Do Not Respect?
One final question. The world at the moment is kind of messed up. I have to ask: Will my Rogue Elephant be here forever? With poaching, climate change, unchecked urbanization and deforestation, censorship, the rise of authoritarianism, displacements and migrations of tens of millions of people, I have to wonder. It feels like forces throughout the world are robbing people of core abilities underlying humanity: critical thinking, empathy, tolerance, and compassion. It is punishing any kind of questioning. It is turning people into technicians and allowing machines to take over many creative tasks.
I may leave a legacy, but it may not be a good fit anymore. It may fail.
It may not.
I will have to leave the answers to future generations.
CONQUERING THE CREATIVE MARKETPLACE: Between the Fickleness of Business and the Pursuit of Design
How dreams are made between the fickleness of business and the pursuit of jewelry design
This guidebook is a must-have for anyone serious about making money selling jewelry. I focus on straightforward, workable strategies for integrating business practices with the creative design process. These strategies make balancing your creative self with your productive self easier and more fluid.
Based both on the creation and development of my own jewelry design business, as well as teaching countless students over the past 35+ years about business and craft, I address what should be some of your key concerns and uncertainties. I help you plan your road map.
Whether you are a hobbyist or a self-supporting business, success as a jewelry designer involves many things to think about, know and do. I share with you the kinds of things it takes to start your own jewelry business, run it, anticipate risks and rewards, and lead it to a level of success you feel is right for you, including
· Marketing, Promoting, Branding: competitor analysis, developing message, establishing emotional connections to your products, social media marketing
· Selling: linking product to buyer among many venues, such as store, department store, online, trunk show, home show, trade show, sales reps and showrooms, catalogs, TV shopping, galleries, advertising, cold calling, making the pitch
· Resiliency: building business, professional and psychological resiliency
· Professional Responsibilities: preparing artist statement, portfolio, look book, resume, biographical sketch, profile, FAQ, self-care
SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form
So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer reinterprets how to apply techniques and modify art theories from the Jewelry Designer’s perspective. To go beyond craft, the jewelry designer needs to become literate in this discipline called Jewelry Design. Literacy means understanding how to answer the question: Why do some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not? How to develop the authentic, creative self, someone who is fluent, flexible and original. How to gain the necessary design skills and be able to apply them, whether the situation is familiar or not.
The Jewelry Journey Podcast “Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture” Podcast, Part 1 Podcast, Part 2
PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!
I developed a nontraditional technique which does not use tools because I found tools get in the way of tying good and well-positioned knots. I decided to bring two cords through the bead to minimize any negative effects resulting from the pearl rotating around the cord. I only have you glue one knot in the piece. I use a simple overhand knot which is easily centered. I developed a rule for choosing the thickness of your bead cord. I lay out different steps for starting and ending a piece, based on how you want to attach the piece to your clasp assembly.
SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS:16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows
In this book, I discuss 16 lessons I learned, Including How To (1) Find, Evaluate and Select Craft Shows Right for You, (2) Determine a Set of Realistic Goals, (3) Compute a Simple Break-Even Analysis, (4) Develop Your Applications and Apply in the Smartest Ways, (5) Understand How Much Inventory to Bring, (6) Set Up and Present Both Yourself and Your Wares, (7) Best Promote and Operate Your Craft Show Business before, during and after the show.
CONQUERING THE CREATIVE MARKETPLACE: Between the Fickleness of Business and the Pursuit of Design
How dreams are made between the fickleness of business and the pursuit of jewelry design
This guidebook is a must-have for anyone serious about making money selling jewelry. I focus on straightforward, workable strategies for integrating business practices with the creative design process. These strategies make balancing your creative self with your productive self easier and more fluid.
Based both on the creation and development of my own jewelry design business, as well as teaching countless students over the past 35+ years about business and craft, I address what should be some of your key concerns and uncertainties. I help you plan your road map.
Whether you are a hobbyist or a self-supporting business, success as a jewelry designer involves many things to think about, know and do. I share with you the kinds of things it takes to start your own jewelry business, run it, anticipate risks and rewards, and lead it to a level of success you feel is right for you, including
· Marketing, Promoting, Branding: competitor analysis, developing message, establishing emotional connections to your products, social media marketing
· Selling: linking product to buyer among many venues, such as store, department store, online, trunk show, home show, trade show, sales reps and showrooms, catalogs, TV shopping, galleries, advertising, cold calling, making the pitch
· Resiliency: building business, professional and psychological resiliency
· Professional Responsibilities: preparing artist statement, portfolio, look book, resume, biographical sketch, profile, FAQ, self-care
SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form
So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer reinterprets how to apply techniques and modify art theories from the Jewelry Designer’s perspective. To go beyond craft, the jewelry designer needs to become literate in this discipline called Jewelry Design. Literacy means understanding how to answer the question: Why do some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not? How to develop the authentic, creative self, someone who is fluent, flexible and original. How to gain the necessary design skills and be able to apply them, whether the situation is familiar or not.
The Jewelry Journey Podcast “Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture” Podcast, Part 1 Podcast, Part 2
PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!
I developed a nontraditional technique which does not use tools because I found tools get in the way of tying good and well-positioned knots. I decided to bring two cords through the bead to minimize any negative effects resulting from the pearl rotating around the cord. I only have you glue one knot in the piece. I use a simple overhand knot which is easily centered. I developed a rule for choosing the thickness of your bead cord. I lay out different steps for starting and ending a piece, based on how you want to attach the piece to your clasp assembly.
SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS:16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows
In this book, I discuss 16 lessons I learned, Including How To (1) Find, Evaluate and Select Craft Shows Right for You, (2) Determine a Set of Realistic Goals, (3) Compute a Simple Break-Even Analysis, (4) Develop Your Applications and Apply in the Smartest Ways, (5) Understand How Much Inventory to Bring, (6) Set Up and Present Both Yourself and Your Wares, (7) Best Promote and Operate Your Craft Show Business before, during and after the show.
In the beginning, and you know how it goes, created the heavens and the earth. Create. In the first section of Genesis, the word create gets used over and over and over again, as if, not only to emphasize its importance, but to marvel at the concept. A beautiful universe is created. Humankind is created. Animals are created. There’s a flood and a re-creation. Create, create, create.
There are two Hebrew words used in Genesis which hold the idea of create within them: bara, meaning to create, and asah, meaning to make or do. They are used interchangeably. Sometimes reserved to represent God and supernatural powers. Other times to represent the impacts of people creating things and what happens over time. The meaning of one word is not more important than the meaning of the other.
And I think those folks who compiled the various stories into the Bible tried to interrelate the idea of a God with the power to create with the idea of humans having the power to create. Create, create, create. As if they kept writing and writing and writing in an attempt to clarify and come to grips with for themselves what the awesome power of creation was inside themselves, and how to use that power. There is a freedom to be your authentic self, and that was celebrated.
And this is what I spoke about in the first sermon I gave as the unofficial, untrained, never-seeking-to-be, rabbi in Oxford, Mississippi.
The Jewish congregation in Oxford varied between 20 and 40 individuals over the 5 years I was there. Some were Jewish and some only interested in Judaism. Did not matter. Vinnie and Ralph had a beautiful home there, and converted part of their home to a sanctuary. Temples in Memphis and Jackson, Mississippi lent the temple a torah and several other religious items, and a collection of prayer books. The person who was serving as rabbi was a professor who was about to move away the year I came to Oxford. I spoke Hebrew and that was my only qualification. I become the rabbi. I officiated over a wedding, a bar and bat mitzvah, and services once a month.
CREATIVITY ISN’T FOUND, IT’S DEVELOPED
Kierkegaard — and I apologize for getting a little show-off-y with my reference — once described Creativity as “a passionate sense of the potential.” And I love this definition. Passion is very important. It is motivating. Creativity obviously important because it’s a way of thinking through things.
Passion and creativity can be summed up as some kind of intuitive sense made operational by bringing all your capabilities and wonderings and technical know-how to the fore. All your mechanical, imaginative and knowledge and skills grow over time, as do your abilities for creative thinking and applications. Creativity isn’t inherently natural. It is something that is developed over time as you get more and more experience designing jewelry.
You sit down, and you ask, what should I create? For most people, especially those getting started, they look for patterns and instructions in bead magazines or how-to books or websites online. They let someone else make all the creative choices for them. The singular creative choice here is picking what you want to make. And, when you’re starting, this is OK.
When you feel more comfortable with the materials and the techniques, you can begin to make additional choices. You can choose your own colors. You can make simple adaptations, such as changing out the bead, or changing the dimensions, or changing out a row, or adding a different clasp.
Eventually, however, you will want to confront the Creativity issue head on. You will want to decide that pursuing your innermost jewelry designer, no matter what pathway this takes you along, is the next thing, and right thing, to do. That means you want your jewelry and your beadwork to reflect your artistic hand. You want to develop a personal style. You want to come up with your own projects.
But applying yourself creatively is also work. It can be fun at times, but scary at others. There is an element of risk. You might not like what you end up doing. Your friends might not like it. Nor your family. Nor your client. You might not finish it. Or you might do it wrong. It always will seem easier to go with someone else’s project, already proven to be liked and tested — because it’s been published, and passed around, and done over and over again by many different people. Sometimes it seems insurmountable, after finishing one project, to decide what to do next. Exercising your creative abilities can sometimes be a bear.
But it’s important to keep pushing on. Challenging yourself. Developing yourself. Turning yourself into a bead artist or jewelry designer. And pursuing opportunities to exercise your creative talents even more, as you enter the world of design.
That describes me. I look for inspirations in the designs of other jewelry makers, in nature, in art, in tapestries, in textures and patterns which present themselves, usually in unexpected places.
Then I go through the mental gymnastics about how to translate these inspirations into a workable jewelry design. I write out a plan of action, and begin. As I incorporate changes, or reject first ideas, I document these. There is always a notepad and pen next to me as I create. When I come to an intellectual or technical fork in the road, I document this as well, and proceed, first down one leg, then back and down the other. I reflect on what works or works better, and document my thoughts.
I keep updating and improving on my original plan of action. Towards the completion of my project, I seek out the opinion of others. Is it satisfying to look at? To wear? To reconstruct following my notes? Can you see my original inspiration within my piece? To what extent does the piece reflect my style?
I Found Myself In Mississippi
I was a New Jersey boy, educated there and in Boston. My first move to the South was to North Carolina — Chapel Hill and Durham area — for my doctoral work in Public Health. Never thought I’d end up in Mississippi. Glad I did.
As I was finishing up my doctoral work in Public Health Administration, I applied for several jobs. My dream job was to work for a prominent consulting firm in Philadelphia. These people were always at the table with many government agencies to assist them developing requests for proposals. And, as a result, were at the front of the line in applying for and receiving grant funds. Most importantly, they specialized in both physical as well as social planning. I saw this as a chance to get closer to the urban development and physical planning activities I was more interested in than health care.
I got the job. Yeah! But 6 weeks later, they rescinded the offer. Reagan had just gotten elected as President. He immediately cut out many of the social and physical planning programs that this firm specialized in (and for which I had steered my training and education). This consulting firm felt it was not a good time to expand, and in fact, one year later, they closed their doors.
I thought it safest to apply for a teaching job at a university somewhere. I would wait things out. Surely, after Reagan, the next President would bring these programs back. Of course, they never came back. I decided if I was going to teach, which was not something I wanted to do at the time, I would make it into an adventure. I would locate myself in a place that I would not normally reside in. I concentrated on applying to the University of Iowa and to the University of Mississippi. Got offers from both, and I liked both, but I liked Mississippi a little better.
I lived in Mississippi for five years. I loved it!
What Is Creativity?
If you are going to become someone who makes things, then it is of the essence that you be very clear about what the concept of creativity is all about — about for yourself, about for your various audiences, about for anyone else who will critically interact with the objects you make.
We create. Invent. Discover. Imagine. Suppose. Predict. Delve into unknown or unpredictable situations and figure out fix-it strategies for resolution and to move forward. All of these are examples of creativity. We synthesize. Generate new or novel ideas. Find new arrangements of things. Seek out challenging tasks. Broaden our knowledge. Surround ourselves with interesting objects and interesting people. Again, these are examples of creativity.
Yet, creativity scares people. They are afraid they don’t have it. Or not enough of it. Or not as much as those other people, whom they think are creative, have. They don’t know how to bring it to the fore, or apply it.
But creativity shouldn’t scare you. Everyone has some creative abilities within themselves. For most people, they need to develop it. Cultivate it. Nourish it. They need to learn various tools and skills and understandings for developing it, applying it and managing it. Creativity is a process. We think, we try, we explore, we fall down and pick ourselves up again. Creativity involves work and commitment. It requires a lot of self-awareness — what we call metacognition — extremely important for all designers. It takes some knowledge, skill and understanding. It can overwhelm at times. It can be blocked at other times.
But it is nothing to be scared about. Creativity is something we want to embrace because it can bring so much self-fulfillment, as well as bring joy and fulfillment to others. Creativity is not some divine gift. It is actually the skilled application of knowledge in new and exciting ways to create something which is valued. Creativity can be acquired and honed at any age or any experience level.
For the jewelry designer, it’s all about how to think creatively. Thinking creatively involves the integration and leveraging of three different kinds of ideas — insight and inspiration, establishing value, and implementing something.
Insight. You see something out of nothing. You relate mass to space and space to mass. You begin with a negative space. Within this space, you add points, lines, planes and shapes. Forms and themes may emerge. As you add and arrange more stuff, the mass takes on meaning and content.
Value. You make connections which have meaning, purpose and value. All of a sudden there is desire. Desire hits you in the face. You express. Your expressions hit your various audiences in the face.
Implementation. You make something. You refine it. You change it. You introduce it publicly.
Every Little Mississippi Town Celebrates Creativity
Every little town and every city and every person and every business in Mississippi celebrated creativity. Fully engaged in the act of creating. In fact, they worshipped it. I worship it. I felt very connected. Liberated.
Oxford celebrates Faulkner. You go into the supermarket, and there is a Faulkner corner. Dress shop — Faulkner corner. Souvenir shop — Faulkner corner. Talk to any local native, and they can quote Faulkner, just like someone might quote the Bible. And as you travel around the state, you notice that every town has their artist-writer-musician celebrity. And they celebrate that person. They know that person’s biography intimately. Their works as if they had created them themselves. Cleveland has McCarty potters. Jackson has Eudora Welty. Indianola has B.B. King, who gave a free concert at the local high school every year, then took everyone to a local speakeasy for an after hours party. A hoot.
Edwards, Mississippi, between Jackson and Natchez, had the Mississippi Academy of Ancient Music. Tougaloo College decades ago took in a Polish communist academic refugee when no other institution would. In honor of this music professor, several people associated with the college bought an old, run down plantation home. They held chamber music concerts almost daily. In exchange for some southern hospitality, a room to sleep in and some food, musicians donated some strength and resolve to renovate and refurbish various parts of the plantation home. The Academy become a destination point for all the great musicians across America. Usually a chamber music performance every day, most of the day and some of the night. Perhaps taking a break or two to visit the black busy bee (speakeasy) down the block to imbibe, enjoy a different form of music, snooze a little, and dance.
I traveled up and down the Natchez Trace between Tupelo in the north and Natchez in the southeast. Each connected village and town showcased some craft or art or writer. Even a religious Mennonite colony showed that they too appreciate the human act of creation in honeys and cakes. In a sacred way. Not just for commercialization.
Types of Creativity
The idea of creativity gets all entangled with the idea of originality. Artists and designers can be so fickle about the idea of originality. Fickle to the point of not creating anything, for fear it would be seen as a copy of someone else’s work, perhaps someone who inspired them. Or for fear that someone would steal their ideas and designs. But originality is not a fixed idea when it comes to creativity. It is a flexible idea, contingent on the experience level of the designer.
The idea of originality can be off-putting. It doesn’t have to be. The jewelry, so creatively designed, does not have to be a totally and completely new and original design. The included design elements and arrangements do not have to be solely unique and never been done before.
Originality can be seen in making something stimulating, interesting or unusual. It can represent an incremental change which makes something better or more personal or a fresh perspective. It can be something that is a clever or unexpected rearrangement, or a great idea, insight, meaningful interpretation or emotion which shines through. It can include the design of new patterns and textures. It can accomplish connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena, and generate solutions. It can be a variation on a technique or how material gets used. It can be something that enhances the functionality or value of the piece.
Creativity in jewelry design marries that which is original to that which is functional, valued, useful, worthwhile, desired. These things are co-dependent — originality with value — if any creative project is to be seen as successful. For jewelry designers, creativity is not the sketch or computer aided drawing. It is not the inspiration. It is not the piece which never sees the light of day, because then it would represent a mere object, not jewelry.
Creativity requires implementation. And for jewelry designers, implementation is a very public enterprise.
I First Began To Paint
It was in Mississippi where I first began to paint.
I felt safe there. I had been told so many times that I had no artistic talent, or that I should concentrate on things other than art because I would not be able to make a living at it. Part of my brain told me I could not. Another part told me I could. I finally felt safe enough — I was in my early 20s — to try.
I felt the first painting I did was successful. The inspiration was a deteriorating Black Power poster stapled to a telephone pole. I painted what I saw, and embellished it a little to bring in a little more drama. I was pleased with it.
Now I wanted to see how realistically I could draw. Not something I’m great at. If I go very, very slowly, and concentrate deeply, I can draw realistically. But I’m impatient. It’s difficult for me. But I started a second piece. I created a collage of newspaper articles related to pharmacy. Then I drew, in different locations on the canvas, a pharmacist, the plant foxglove, a blood pressure cuff around a shoulder, and a glass mortar and pestle. Using oils, I painted these in. Unless you look closely, these become indistinguishable from the newsprint. Another success.
Several more paintings later, I felt positive that I had talent. But I began to get a little bored with painting. I had gotten into that doing something blue to hang above a blue couch mode. I wanted to have an impact on people. I wanted both to communicate my perspective on life, and see others responding to this. I wanted to respond to others responding to me. To get a deeper understanding of myself. To convey this deeper understanding in my art.
Painting wasn’t accomplishing that.
It didn’t move. It avoided changes in light, shadow, brightness, dimness, saturation, shading that I love so much with jewelry as it is worn.
I wasn’t passionate about painting.
What Shapes Your Creative Process?
Creative people, at least from my perspective, tend to possess a high level of energy, intuitiveness, and discipline. They are also comfortable spending a great deal of time quietly thinking and reflecting. They understand what it means to cultivate emotions, both within themselves, as well as relative to the various audiences they interact with. They are able to stay engaged with their piece for as long as it takes to bring it to completion. They fall in love with their work and their work process.
Creativity is not something that you can use up. To the contrary, the more you use your creativity, the more you have it. It is developmental, and for the better jewelry designer, development is a continual, life-long process of learning, playing, experimenting and doing.
To be creative, one must have the ability to identify new problems, rather than depending on others to define them. The designer must be good at transferring knowledge gained in one context to another in order to solve a problem or overcome something that is unknown. I call this developing a Designer Tool Box of fix-it strategies which the designer takes everywhere.
The designer is very goal-oriented and determined in his or her pursuit. But, at the same time, the jewelry designer also understands and expects that the design process is very incremental with a lot of non-linear, back-and-forth thinking and application. There is an underlying confidence and belief, however, that eventually all of this effort will lead to success.
I found I had all the necessary ingredients to become a very creative person. But I lacked context. Lacked direction. Lacked purpose. Lacked support. I was trying on lots of different contexts, but no Ta Dah’s! It was not until my late 30s, when I met my future partner Jayden, that I discovered jewelry. And it was a few years later after that, that designing and making jewelry tapped into my creative self in a way in which I found my passion. My impact. My context. My creativity. My Rogue Elephant.
How Do We Create?
It’s not what we create, but how we create!
The creative process, at its core, can be reduced to managing the interplay of two types of thinking — Convergence and Divergence. Both are necessary for thinking creatively.
Divergent thinking is defined as the ability to generate or expand upon options and alternatives, no matter the goal, situation or context.
Convergent thinking is the opposite. This is defined as the ability to narrow down all these options and alternatives.
Creativity then is questioning things. Setting things up apart from social norms, and determining whether social norms should apply. Setting things up in line with personal desires, preferences and assumptions, and determining if any of these should still make sense, given the context. Dealing and coping and understanding one’s creativity, as merely questioning and relating, questioning and categorizing, questioning and rejecting, becomes simple. Accessible. Do-able. Not so scary.
The fluent jewelry designer is able to comfortably weave back and forth between divergence and convergence, and know when the final choices are parsimonious, finished, and will be judged as resonant and successful.
Brainstorming is a great example of how creative thinking is used. We ask ourselves What If…? How about…? Could we try this or that idea…? The primary exercise here is to think of all the possibilities, then whittle these down to a small set of solutions.
Creative thinking, first, involves cultivating divergent thinking skills and exposing ourselves to the new, the different, the unknown, the unexpected. It is, in part, a learning process. Then, next, through our set of convergent thinking skills, we criticize, and meld, and synthesize, and connect ideas, and blend, and analyze, and test practicality, as we steer our thinking towards a singular, realistic, do-able solution in design.
Partly, what we always need to remember, is that this process of creative thinking in jewelry design also assists us finding that potential audience or audiences — weaver, buyer, exhibitor, collector, student, colleague — for our creative work. Jewelry is one of those special art forms which require going beyond a set of ideas, to recognizing how these ideas will be used. Jewelry is art only when it is worn. Otherwise, it is a sculptural object.
What Should I Create?
The process of jewelry making begins with the question, What Should I Create?
You want to create something which results in an emotional engagement. That means, when you or someone else interacts with your piece, they should feel some kind of connection. That connection will have some value for them. They might see something as useful. It may have meaning. Or it may speak to a personal desire. It may increase a sense of self-esteem. It may persuade someone to buy it. It may feel especially powerful or beautiful or entertaining. They may want to share it with someone else.
You want to create something that you care about. It should not be about following trends. It should be about reflecting your inner artist and designer — what you like, how you see the world, what you want to do. Love what you are making. Otherwise, you run the risk of burning out.
It is easier to create work with someone specific in mind. This is called backwards design. You anticipate how someone else would like what you do, want to wear it, buy it, and then let this influence you in your selection about materials, techniques and composition. This might be a specific person, or a type of person, such as a potential class of buyers.
Keep things simple and parsimonious. Edit your ideas. You do not want to over-do or under-do your pieces. You do not have to include everything in one piece. You can do several pieces. Showing restraint allows for better communication with your audiences. Each piece you make should not look like you are frantically trying to prove yourself. They should look like you have given a lot of thought about how others should emotionally engage with your piece.
There is always a lot of pressure to brand yourself. That means sticking with certain themes, designs or materials. But this can be a little stifling, if you want to develop your creativity. Take the time to explore new avenues of work.
You want to give yourself some time to find inspirations. A walk in nature. A visit to a museum. Involvement with a social cause. Participation in a ritual or ceremony. Studying color samples at a paint store. A dream. A sense of spirituality or other feeling. A translation of something verbal into something visual. Inspirations are all around you.
Permit Me Some Final Words
I continually am amazed that my passion honed in on the creation of jewelry. I don’t wear jewelry. I find it uncomfortable. I find it becomes a curtain and shield to who I am as a person. It’s an embellishment and I don’t want to be embellished. Yes, I am attracted to gemstones and their powerful emergent energies. But I prefer to touch them and hold them in my hand, much moreso than wearing them around my wrist or neck.
But that creative process of designing and making jewelry makes me feel so connected to other people. Fulfilling desires. Sometimes to the point of healing. This is so inherently satisfying to me. Driving me. Sustaining me for those pieces that take a very, very long time to conceptualize and make into a reality.
I also especially like taking something and making it more contemporary. More relevant to today’s expectations about what is more pleasing, more appealing, more satisfying. This means adding in more dimensionality, more movement, more tension between positive and negatives spaces, more incremental violations of color and other art theories. This means having intimate understandings of both materials and techniques, and how to leverage their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
I never learned to be creative. I become creative slowly, developmentally, over-coming criticism and complaint. It took a lot of effort to recognize that I had various choices within which to express my creative impulses. It was almost happenstance that jewelry making became my passion. I’m grateful that it did.
CONQUERING THE CREATIVE MARKETPLACE: Between the Fickleness of Business and the Pursuit of Design
How dreams are made between the fickleness of business and the pursuit of jewelry design
This guidebook is a must-have for anyone serious about making money selling jewelry. I focus on straightforward, workable strategies for integrating business practices with the creative design process. These strategies make balancing your creative self with your productive self easier and more fluid.
Based both on the creation and development of my own jewelry design business, as well as teaching countless students over the past 35+ years about business and craft, I address what should be some of your key concerns and uncertainties. I help you plan your road map.
Whether you are a hobbyist or a self-supporting business, success as a jewelry designer involves many things to think about, know and do. I share with you the kinds of things it takes to start your own jewelry business, run it, anticipate risks and rewards, and lead it to a level of success you feel is right for you, including
· Marketing, Promoting, Branding: competitor analysis, developing message, establishing emotional connections to your products, social media marketing
· Selling: linking product to buyer among many venues, such as store, department store, online, trunk show, home show, trade show, sales reps and showrooms, catalogs, TV shopping, galleries, advertising, cold calling, making the pitch
· Resiliency: building business, professional and psychological resiliency
· Professional Responsibilities: preparing artist statement, portfolio, look book, resume, biographical sketch, profile, FAQ, self-care
SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER Merging Your Voice With Form
So You Want To Be A Jewelry Designer reinterprets how to apply techniques and modify art theories from the Jewelry Designer’s perspective. To go beyond craft, the jewelry designer needs to become literate in this discipline called Jewelry Design. Literacy means understanding how to answer the question: Why do some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not? How to develop the authentic, creative self, someone who is fluent, flexible and original. How to gain the necessary design skills and be able to apply them, whether the situation is familiar or not.
The Jewelry Journey Podcast “Building Jewelry That Works: Why Jewelry Design Is Like Architecture” Podcast, Part 1 Podcast, Part 2
PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!
I developed a nontraditional technique which does not use tools because I found tools get in the way of tying good and well-positioned knots. I decided to bring two cords through the bead to minimize any negative effects resulting from the pearl rotating around the cord. I only have you glue one knot in the piece. I use a simple overhand knot which is easily centered. I developed a rule for choosing the thickness of your bead cord. I lay out different steps for starting and ending a piece, based on how you want to attach the piece to your clasp assembly.
SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS:16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows
In this book, I discuss 16 lessons I learned, Including How To (1) Find, Evaluate and Select Craft Shows Right for You, (2) Determine a Set of Realistic Goals, (3) Compute a Simple Break-Even Analysis, (4) Develop Your Applications and Apply in the Smartest Ways, (5) Understand How Much Inventory to Bring, (6) Set Up and Present Both Yourself and Your Wares, (7) Best Promote and Operate Your Craft Show Business before, during and after the show.
