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.
Sometimes I get so sick and tired of this question. I get perplexed. What does it really mean? What are people really telling me when they say I should follow my passion?
What job or career or avocation should I pursue? Do I have an intense interest in anything? Does anything drive me? Motivate me? Capture my undivided attention? What do I wish I would have done? Or should have done? Or could have done? Is something to do with design the answer? Passion! That word is spoken so often.
Follow your passion! Follow your passion! Follow your passion!
You get told this over and over again so many times that you begin to question whether anyone has ever really been successful, or even been substantially motivated, to follow their passions. Especially those people who tell you to do so — surely, they have not actually found their passion. It seems so hard to find. A good goal, but let’s get real. Insurmountable. There are lots of things I like and get very enthusiastic about, but I can’t say I’m passionate about them. And you can’t forget you have to earn a living, whether you are passionate about what you do or not.
You hear and read about finding your passion, so much so, that you feel if you haven’t found yours, something must be wrong with you. And, certainly you think no one else has, either. The pressure, the pressure. Why is it so important to my family and friends and my inner still voice that I be passionate about something?
Their admonitions take different tones, from command, to pleading, to expressing concern and sorrow, to lowering their expectations for you. You see / feel/ know what they are really trying to say to you — sympathy, empathy, pity — by those variations on the memes they throw at you.
You don’t have to make a decision about a career until you find your passion!
Don’t worry, you’ll find something to be passionate about!
Not everyone finds their passion.
You begin to feel like a failure in life for not finding your passion. Or that so-and-so you went to school with found theirs… and you didn’t.
The only way to stave all these folks off is to get a job that makes a lot of money. Pursuing money apparently is seen as a legitimate substitute for following your passion.
And that’s what I did.
For almost 40 years.
I pursued money.
Until I found my passion.
In my late 30’s.
My passion for design.
Specifically, jewelry design.
What Is Passion?
Passion, I have discovered over many years in the design world, is something key to a more fulfilling and successful career.
Passion makes sense for design.
Passion is an emotion.
Passion provides the fuel firing you to action.
Almost in spite of yourself.
Passion is often equated with determination, motivation, and conviction — all moving you in a particular direction. But these three concepts do not adequately capture what passion is all about. Passion challenges you. It is intriguing. It provides the principle around which you organize your life.
Passion is something more than a strong interest. Passion is a bit more energetic, directional. And when you want to change direction, emotionally, passion makes this very difficult. Passion is simultaneously a response somewhat divorced from any reason, but in the service of reason, as well. Once you have it, passion can be very sticky and hard to shake off.
Passion puts you to work. It helps you overcome those times when you get frustrated. Or bored. Or anxious.
Passion reveals what you are willing to sacrifice other pleasures for.
Passion is what helps you overcome those times when you get frustrated when something isn’t working out exactly as you want, or when you are anxious about your ability to do something, or you get bored with what you are trying to do at the moment.
But passion is somewhat amorphous. Intangible. Not something solid enough or clear enough to grab and grip and get ahold of.
Is it Necessary To Have A Passion For Design?
In high school, I decided that my passion would be archaeology. I read books and articles about Middle East history and settlement patterns. I loved the idea of traveling. I loved history. I selected a college that had an excellent and extensive archaeology program.
That first fall semester, I took two archaeology classes. In one of these classes, week after week for 18 weeks, I sat through the examinations and resultant reports looking at the remains of a small grouping of houses in Iran. I saw the partial remains of some walls. An area the remains of which suggested it was a kitchen. And lots of dust and dirt and not much else.
The archaeological reports were each done by teams from different countries. From the scant evidence, the Russian report found the settlement to be communal and socialist. They based their conclusions on the positioning of the walls, the proximity of the kitchen area to the walls, and the remains mostly consisting of chicken bones. The German report found the settlement to be more democratic but still communal. Their evidence was based on the positioning of the walls, the proximity of the kitchen area to the walls, and the remains mostly consisting of chicken bones. And the American report found the settlement to be an early example of democracy and capitalism. Their evidence — can you guess? — was based on the positioning of the walls, the proximity of the kitchen area to the walls, and the remains mostly consisting of chicken bones.
I made a discovery in myself and about myself that first semester of college. Archaeology was not my passion. I changed majors. But still no passion.
I still yearned to be passionate about something, however. A goal. A Task. An activity. A career. Anything. My search took almost another 20 years.
Not having a passion did not affect my ability to work and do my job. But I felt some distance from it. Some disconnection. Something missing and less satisfying.
While it took me a long time to find my passion, for others it happens very quickly. You never know. In either case, passion is not something that falls down from the sky and hits you on the head. It is something that has to be pursued, developed and cultivated over time.
Pursuing your passion has many advantages. When you are passionate about something, you can more easily accomplish things which are difficult and hard. Your work and job and life feel more fulfilling. You feel you are impacting the world around you.
A passion for design enables you to become the best designer you can be. It builds within you a more stick-to-it-iveness, while you develop yourself as a designer over many years, and as you learn the intricacies of your trade and profession. Having a passion for design is a necessity if you are to come to an understanding of yourself as a professional practicing a discipline.
Passion gives us purpose. It attaches a feeling to our thoughts, intensifying our emotions. It is transformative. Empowering. Passion allows us to realize a vision within any context we find ourselves.
A passion for design allows us to navigate those tensions between the pursuit of beauty and the pursuit of functionality. It allows us to incorporate the opinions and desires of our clients into our own design work, without sacrificing our identities and integrities as designers. In a sense, it allows our design choices to reaffirm our ideas and concepts, tempering them with the needs, desires, and understandings of our client and the client’s various audiences. It allows us, through our design decisions, to manage the vagaries in any situation and, ultimately, to get the professional recognition we seek.
Where Did My Passion Come From?
It was always just a whispered aside. Something quiet. A glance in one direction, then back so no one would notice. A comment. And the only comment ever said out loud. But hushed. Always and only in that hushed voice. A voice conveying alarm. Embarrassment. Bravery. Humiliation. Horror. Survival. History. Culture.
“She has a number tattooed on her arm. Did you see it?”
And I had. It was difficult to hide. Everyone spoke with so many gestures and drama, whatever the subject, and the sleeves pulled up on their arms.
And not another word was said about it. It — the situation. The larger situation. I never knew their specific experiences. Nor their views. Nor their feelings. Nor their understandings.
They never shared their terror. Or spoke about their anxiety. Or explained what they thought had happened, or how they had managed to survive.
I could not see anything in their faces. Or their eyes. There was nothing different about their skin. Their height. Their weight. The way they walked. Or talked.
There were those in the room who escaped to America during or immediately after the war. There were those in the room who had escaped similar horrors, but many decades earlier, fleeing Poland and Russia and the Middle East. There were their children. And there were their children’s children, I being one of them.
And while I was only 4 or 5 or 6 years old, I remember the collective feeling — even 60 years later — of the hushed voice and the tattooed numbers. I was never privy to any person’s history. I never heard about anyone’s experience. It was inappropriate to talk about it. But that one memory conveyed it all. The full story. It sparked my curiosity. I had to make sense of things. I wrote the full story in my mind. And attached all the full emotions.
My curiosity grew and drove me to make sense of a lot of things as I grew up. Eventually, I found myself curious about jewelry, and began making jewelry. As many of my creations were less than satisfying and successful, I found myself more curious about design. And more emotionally attached to finding answers. My passion grew from there.
Passion Starts With Curiosity
It is the little things that come up every so often that imbues a curiosity in you. That makes you want to make sense of the world. Find understanding. Make sense of things where you do not know all the details. Or where things are headed. But you fill in the blanks anyway. And keep asking questions. To clarify. To intensify. To soften. To connect with other stories your curiosity has led you to.
Passion starts with curiosity. But not just curiosity. Passion is sparked by curiosity, but goes further. It creates this emotional energy within you to make meaning out of ambiguity. For passion to continually grow and develop, such derived meaning must be understood within a particular context, and all the people, actually or virtually present, who concurrently interact with that context, and your place in it.
Passion involves insights. Passion is about finding connections. Connections to insights and meanings. Connections to things which are pleasing to you. Connections to things which are contradictory. Connections to things which are unfamiliar or ambiguous. Connections to others around you. And finding them again. And reconnecting with them again. And again and again.
Passion requires reflection. It demands an awareness of why you make certain choices rather than others. Why particular designs draw your attention, and others do not. Why you are attracted to certain people (or activities), and others not.
Passion affects how you look at things and people. It is dynamic. It is communicative. It affects all your interactions.
Passion is not innate. You are not born with it. It is not set at birth waiting to be discovered. It is something to find and cultivate.
The elemental roots of my passion were present at a very early age. I was very curious. I tried to impose a sensibility on things. While I wanted people around me to like me, that wasn’t really a part of my motivation. I wanted people to understand me as a thinking human being. And I was always that way.
In some respects, this situation when I was around 5 years old has been an example of the root of my passion. My jewelry designs resonate with that hushed, quiet voice. That voice conveys my intent through the subtle choices I make about color and proportion and arrangement and materials and techniques. I usually start each design activity by anticipating how others will come to understand what I hope to achieve. How they might recognize the intent in my designs. How my intent might coordinate with their desires.
My jewelry design pushes limits. It seeks to find the strengths in materials and techniques and leverage them, while minimizing any weaknesses. Passion sustains the energy it takes to push limits.
My jewelry designs tell stories. They tell my stories. They tell my stories so that other people might be a little curious as well and connect with them. And understand my passion for design.
Are Passion and Creativity the Same Thing?
As designers, we bring our creative assets to every situation. But we must not confuse these with the passion within us. Passion and creativity are not the same thing. We do not need passion to be creative. Nor do we need passion to be motivated to create something.
Passion is the love of design. Creating is making an object or structuring a project.
Passion is the love of jewelry. Creating is making a necklace.
Passion is the love of color. Creating is using a color scheme within a project.
Passion is the love of fashion. Creating is making a dress.
After college, I had some great jobs. Lots of creativity. Not much passion.
I was a college administrator for a year. I was hired to organize the student orientation program. As new students arrived at the university in the fall, I created social activities, like dances and mixers and discussions. I arranged for greet and meets in each of the dorms. I worked with each club to generate their first meetings and some of the marketing materials. I set up religious orientations and services for Jewish, Christian and Islamic students. I set up orientations for women’s affinity groups, black groups, latino groups, and many others. I wrote, photographed and published an orientation handbook and a new faces book. I even planned the food services menus for the first week. I did a lot. I loved it. It was very creative.
But not my passion.
I also had an opportunity to become the Assistant Editor of the American Anthropologist for a year. The regular Assistant wanted to go on a sabbatical. The Editor knew me and asked if I wanted to do her job for a year. I edited and saw to the publication of 2 ½ issues. I worked with anthropologists all over the world in helping them translate their work into publishable articles. I loved this job too. I did a lot. It was very creative.
But not my passion.
I decided to pursue a degree in City and Regional Planning. I was getting an inkling that I liked things associated with the word “design.” I liked the idea of designing cities and neighborhoods and community developments. I was intrigued with transportation systems and building systems and urban development.
I was about to enter graduate training in City Planning, which meant moving from where I lived, but a family crisis came up. Physical planning — buildings, cities, roads, neighborhoods — had captured my interest. But I resigned myself, in order to accommodate family needs, to attend a graduate program close to home which emphasized social and health planning, instead.
I got a job as a city health planner, and worked for a private revitalization agency. I assisted in getting government approval for a rehabilitation center. I developed a local maternal-child health system. I guided a group of health care professionals in developing a health care plan for New Brunswick, New Jersey. I organized a health fair. I loved this job. I did a lot. It was very creative.
But not my passion.
As I have come to believe over many careers and many years, the better designer needs both passion and creativity. They reinforce each other. They accentuate. When both are appropriately harnessed, the joys and stresses of passion fuel creativity, innovation and design. Passion inspires. It is insightful. It motivates. Creativity translates that emotional imaging and feeling into a design. Creativity is opportunistic. It transforms things. It generates ideas. It translates inspirations into aspirations into finished projects.
The design process usually takes place over an extended period of time. There can be several humps and bumps. Passion gets us through this. It is that energizing, emotional, motivating resource for creative work. Passion is that strong desire and pressing need to get something done. Passion helps us, almost forces us, in fact, to build our professional identities around that activity we call design.
Passion reveals an insatiability for self discovery and self development. But this sense of self is always contingent upon the acceptance of others. Sounds a lot like the design process and working with clients. You don’t need to be passionate to do design and do it well. You need passion to do design better and more coherently. You need passion to have more impact on yourself and others.
How Is Your Passion For Design Developed?
I continued working in the health care field, teaching graduate school, doing consulting, government health policy planning, and, my last professional job, directing a nonprofit membership organization of primary health care centers.
Working in health care had become such a hollow experience for me, that I jumped off the corporate ladder when I was 36 years old. With a partner, we opened up a retail operation, in Nashville, Tennessee, where we sold finished jewelry, most of it custom made, as well as selling all the parts for other people interested in making jewelry themselves.
Originally, my partner was the creative one, and the design aspects of the business were organized around her work. I was the business person. I made some jewelry to sell, but my motivation was purely monetary. No passion yet.
During the first few years, it was painfully obvious that my jewelry construction techniques were poor, at best. The jewelry I made broke too easily. This bothered me. I was determined to figure out how to do it better.
This was pre-internet. There were no established jewelry making magazines at that time. In Nashville, there was a very small jewelry / beading craft community. No experience, no support. So I did a lot of trial-and-error. Lots of experimentation.
In these early years in our retail jewelry business, two critical things happened which started steering me in the direction of pursuing my jewelry design passion.
First, our store was located in a tourist area near the downtown convention center. Many people attending conventions lived in areas, especially California, where there were major jewelry making and beading communities. They shopped in our store, and from watching their shopping behaviors, seeing what they liked and did not like, and talking with them, I learned many insights about where to direct my energies.
Second, I began taking in jewelry repairs. It became almost like an apprenticeship. I got to see what design choices other jewelry makers made, and I looked for patterns. I got to see where things broke, and I looked for patterns. I spoke with the customers to get a sense of what happened when the jewelry broke, and I looked for patterns. I put into effect my developing insights about jewelry construction and materials selection when doing repairs, and I looked for patterns.
No passion yet, but I took one more big step. And passion was beginning to show itself on the horizon.
I was developing all this knowledge and experience about design theory and applications. Suddenly, I wanted to share this. I wanted to teach. But I wanted to have some high level of coherency underlying my curriculum. My budding passion for design saw design as a profession, not a hobby. I did not want to teach a step-by-step, paint-by-number class. I wanted to teach a way of thinking through design. I wanted my students to develop a literacy and fluency in design.
I inadvertently cultivated my passion for design over time. I did not really follow one. It was a journey. My passion for the idea of design did not necessarily match a particular job. I coordinated it with the job I had been doing. And over time, my job and my passion became more and more intertwined and coherent. For me, it was a long process. I honed my abilities. I leveraged them to create value — personal satisfaction and some monetary remuneration. My passion became my lifestyle. My lifestyle resonated with me.
Passion involves deep introspection. It requires you to be metacognitive — always aware of the things underlying your choices. It requires talking with people and testing out how different ideas or activities resonate with you. What do you care about? What changes in the world do you want to make? What is driving you? What if this or that? Are you willing to give up something else for this? Would people respect me if…?
During this journey, you will systematically test your assumptions about what you think your personal sense of purpose should be. For the most part, there may not be a single answer or one that will last forever. But you reach progressive levels of clarity which give you a sense of direction and fulfillment.
As a designer, it is more important to focus on personal connections represented in your passion, rather than on creating some material thing. You can steer your job to spend more time exploring the tasks you are passionate about and the people you like to share your passion with. Look for inspirations. Reflect on what you care about. It is a good idea to know yourself as a designer and why you are enthusiastic about it. Self-discipline and management go hand-in-hand with passion so that you maintain perspective and continue to create designs. You won’t necessarily love everything you do, but your passion will keep you motivated to do it.
It’s a cycle of self-discovery. But don’t sit around waiting for the cycle to show up and start rotating. Keep trying new things. Exploring. Taking charge of your life. Revisiting things which interested you when you were younger. Thinking about things you never tire of doing. Thinking about things you do well. Recognizing things you like learning about.
What Are The Characteristics of a Passionate Designer?
A prominent country music star and her six-person entourage entered my store. They had heard about our jewelry design work, and were eager to see what we could make for the singer.
She had some specifics in mind. A necklace. It had to be all black. She wanted crosses all around it. Each cross had to be different. Each cross had to be black.
We accepted the challenge.
We began laying out some different ideas and options on the work table. The singer said No! to each idea. The entourage chimed in like a Greek chorus. (Admittedly a little weird and unnerving.) We weren’t really getting anywhere, so we set another meeting date. We would put together more options, and get their opinions. Agreed.
The color of black was easily accomplished. We could string black beads or use black chain or black cord. It would be a challenge to find or design a lot of black crosses, but not impossible.
We put in a lot of hours gathering materials and developing some more prototype options.
The second meeting was no more fruitful than the first. The artist and her entourage could offer no additional insights about what they wanted. Our mock-ups were unacceptable.
We ended the meeting.
We were not, however, going to throw in the towel. Our passion would not let us.
In fact, we were intrigued by the puzzling puzzle put before us. Our passion energized us to continue the chase and find the solution.
We decided we needed more information about why this country music artist wanted this necklace, what outfit and styling she would wear it with, and why an assortment of differing black crosses was important to her.
We put on our anthropology, psychology and sociology hats and played Sherlock Holmes. We approached members of her entourage individually. Her entourage was made up of her stylists. We were able to fill in a lot of the blanks by talking with them. She was going to wear this piece on the road, performing in several concert venues. We got into some discussions about her religion, more specifically, how she practiced it. The best way to describe this was a pagan-influenced Christianity. We had enough information to go by. This was particularly important in picking out crosses, and arranging them around the necklace.
They loved our prototype, and we only had to do a little tweaking.
Three Types Of Passions For Design
It took awhile, and it was always confusing, but I came to realize that not everyone’s passion is the same.
Some designers are passionate about making things. This designer’s passion is focused on an activity. They believe it is possible to make something out of nothing. Designers do, see, touch, compose, arrange, construct, manipulate. This passion is very hands-on and mechanical. Its drive is orderly, methodical, systematic, and directional.
Other designers are passionate about beauty and appeal. They believe it is possible to do whatever it takes to create or develop something of beauty. Designers select, feel, sense, compose, arrange, construct, manipulate. This passion is very emotional and feeling. Its drive follows the senses, the intuitive, the inspiration with an eye always on the ultimate outcome — beauty and appeal.
Still other designers are passionate about making things make sense — coherency. This designer’s passion is focused on resolving tensions, typically between the need for beauty concurrently with the need for functionality. They believe it is possible to resolve these tensions. Designers think, analyze, reflect, organize, present, resolve, solve. This passion is very intellectual. Its drive is meaning, content, sense-making, conflict resolution and balance. This is the type of passion that drives me.
How Does Being Passionate Make You A Better Designer?
I discovered that not every professional designer is passionate about what they do. Nor do they have to be in order to do a good job and make money.
It is not necessary to pursue your Rogue Elephant in order to do a good job. Part of me hopes that such pursuit is a necessity toward this end, but, alas, it has become clear to me that it is not. And pursuing your Rogue Elephant does not solve any problems at work — the stresses, the difficult interpersonal relationships, the need to find people to pay you for what you do.
Instead, Rogue Elephants guide you to better resolve problems. They make the work extra special. The work becomes less a job, and more a process of continual growth and self-actualization. Pursuing your Rogue Elephant helps you more easily clarify the ambiguous and unfamiliar. More readily overcome obstacles. Assist you in finding that sweet spot between fulfilling your needs and intents, and meeting those of others who work with you, pay you for what you do, critique, evaluate and recommend you.
Having a passion for something, that is, pursuing your Rogue Elephant, does not equate to having a professional career. Careers don’t necessarily happen because you have a passion for them. But it is great to have your career and passion co-align. This imbues you with the freedom to create your own meaning and purpose as reflected in the jewelry you design. Deeper thinking. Liberating. Breaking out of the confines of everyday living. Fully engaged. Your authentic self. Confronting the questions about your existence. You are more ready and able to pursue your design without compromise. Expressing your emotions and experiences through design.
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.
2 one-foot lengths of thicker cord, like 1–2mm leather or waxed cotton 3 ft of bead cord, about .5–1.0mm thick
Tools needed: Clip board or bulldog clip Bic lighter or thread zapper Glue like G-S Hypo Fabric Cement or Beacon 527 or E6000 Chain nose pliers
SILK WRAP
Sometimes, the ends of your pieces are messy. There may be a lot of knots there. Or glue. Or something else you would like to hide.
You might use one of the jewelry findings called ends to hide and cover this messiness up.
Or you might do what is called a silk wrap, and use a cord to coil over the mess, and make the ends look pretty.
Silk wraps result in a very finished, professional look.
The silk wrap will also provide some extra support there, if you think the ends of your pieces might be weak points of vulnerability, or, you want to make the clasp assembly easier to open and close.
I want to review how to make a 10-coil silk wrap.
NOTE: 10-coil is a good goal, but it can be more or less, depending on how it looks visually, and the actual volume of the space needed to be wrapped.
I am going to make a silk wrap for a 2-strand necklace strung on leather cord.
Where the two cords come together at each end, I have attached my clasp, and, in addition, I have bound the two leather cords together with some thread tied into a bunch of knots. I have put a drop of glue there.
I am going to use some size #18 bead cord, which is a .5mm thick, choosing a bead cord in a complimentary color to the leather, and make a silk wrap to hide the threads, knots and glue.
I start with a 10” — 12” piece of size #18 bead cord.
Step 1:
Make a loop towards one end, leaving a short tail off this loop (about 1 ½”).
This gives you a loop, a short tail and a long tail.
Step 2:
Lay the loop over the 2 leather legs, about 1” from the end of the leather cords where the clasp is attached.
The short tail is the shorter tail off the loop. The short tail should extend past the position where the clasp is connected to the two leather cords.
We are going to call the rest of the 10” silk wrap cord the long tail.
So, the short tail should lay next to and side-by-side with the leather stringing cord along its outer or top surface.
The long tail will run along the bottom surface of our stringing cord.
The end of the long tail is closest to the end of the stringing cord and the clasp.
Step 3:
We are going to use the long tail to make 10 coils around our 2 leather stringing cords, starting from the clasp end, and working towards the loop we have created with our silk wrap cord.
Your long tail should be below the two leather cords. We are going to coil clockwise.
NOTE: If it is more comfortable, you can coil counter-clockwise.
We want to end up with the coils tightly bumped up against each other, with no gaps between them.
Again, our first coil is closest to our clasp. And we are moving away from the clasp towards the loop end.
So, to begin, let’s make that first coil. Take the long tail, go up, over and around the short tail.
Continue going behind both leather stringing cords, and back down below the leather stringing cords.
Making this first coil wrap is the most difficult. At about the 3rd coil, you can gain a lot of management control, tightening the first three coils, and then continuing to add additional coils.
As you continue making coils, keep the tension tight on your long tail as you do the coiling, so that the coils do not loosen up and unravel.
Step 4:
Make the rest of the coils.
Continue wrapping the long tail around the short tail and the 2 leather stringing cords, headed away from the clasp end.
Make about 10 coil wraps.
Again, be sure the coils are tight.
Compress them (which means close the gaps between any two coils) together with your fingers or use a chain nose pliers to slide along the leather stringing cords and bump up against the coils.
Step 5:
Clamp everything tight between your fingers.
Bring the long tail through the loop, going from front to back, or top to bottom, depending on how you are holding your piece.
Step 6:
We are going to create a knot.
Hold onto the long tail, and pull on the short tail. It might be easier for you to pull the long tail away from you and the short tail towards you.
Keep pulling on the short tail. You want to pull the loop inside the coil wraps, but not yet all the way.
Bring the loop just under that first coil.
Step 7:
Put a drop of glue, preferably G-S Hypo Fabric Cement, where the loop and long tail connect right at that first coil wrap.
Step 8:
Using your fingers or a chain nose pliers, pull on the short tail and pull the loop all the way into the coil wraps,
To finish off our knot.
Step 9:
Cut the tails.
In this demonstration, I’ve used a nylon cord. I can hold the ends of the trimmed tails near a flame, like from a bic lighter or thread zapper, and melt the ends.
With other materials, I would use a drop of glue on each trimmed tail end. Preferably G-S- Hypo Fabric Cement.
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.
My academic advisor in my graduate Urban Planning program at Rutgers University was black. I probably should say happened to be black. Black has nothing to do with her working as a professor or as my advisor. The English language and our Culture and Society do not provide us with better words and phrases to distinguish someone’s characteristics and heritage without implied value judgments and stereotypes and assumptions. This is an article about racism, so her ethnicity is important, but has no relationship to the professorship or advisor-ship. The better words fail me.
In any case, I loved her dearly. She was so instrumental in guiding me through health planning theory and applications. She was a much-needed sounding board in my job as a health planner for a private revitalization agency in New Brunswick, NJ called New Brunswick Tomorrow. I could not have assisted the ushering in of a rehabilitation center, or designing a maternal-child health system, or leading a community board in developing a health plan, without her. I would not have left my job to pursue a doctorate degree in Public Health in Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina without her encouragement and advice.
A few years later, while I was still in my doctoral program, she happened to be in Chapel Hill. Her husband was interviewing for a professorship at UNC, and as the wife, and a professional in her own right, the University set up job interviews for her in the Epidemiology Department at the School of Public Health. She told me what occurred.
She walked into a classroom in the Department. The chairs were arranged in a circle. She was directed to one chair. The rest of the chairs were filled by the faculty and the department chair and a few graduate students. The department chair stood up, and began to introduce himself and the program. And then he said, in a thoughtful way for him, and a condescending way for her: As an African-American and a woman, we would not expect to hold you to the same standards as everyone else.
Whew!
Well, one thing we knew. He hadn’t read her resume (called a CV or curriculum vitae for academics). She had published articles and program development experiences out the wazoo. She had been a nurse practitioner before becoming a college professor. She had already met and exceeded all those standards everyone was expected to meet. But the chairman saw black and female gender. That’s all he felt he needed to know.
Is There Racism In Beading?
I asked my Advanced Bead Study group, “Is there racism in beading?”
“No,” yelled the white beader chick carefully stitching her beadwork to perfection.
“But I’m not sure about that. I don’t think there’s racism with a capital ‘R’, but maybe some things with a little ‘r’”.
Look around. Very, very, very few, virtually none, Black bead artists in America. Or Latino. Or Asian. Look at the major national instructors. We have Joyce Scott. Who else?
Look at the faces of the women and men who contribute articles to the various bead magazines. White, white, white.
Look at the complexion of the attendees at bead shows, or the customers, staff and owners of bead shops, or the members of the local bead societies. Or at the entrants to all our national and international contests sponsored by Land of Odds and The Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts — The Ugly Necklace Contest, All Dolled Up: Beaded Art Doll Competition or The Illustrative Beader: Beaded Tapestry Competition.
Does this mean, from a color palette sense, that beading is primarily monochromatic, with no color clash, contrast, coordination or complementarity — mostly of interest to white folks, and not black, brown, or yellow? I have my doubts. I imagine everyone loves jewelry, and the same proportions of people within any cultural group probably like to make jewelry as much as any other group, as well.
One of my friends told me that in New York and New Jersey, there is a diversity of culture and complexion, and one that is very natural. But this diversity doesn’t extend across the country. Certainly not in Nashville, Tennessee.
Is It Beauty Or Cultural Appropriation?
Personally, I love ethnic beads, trinkets and jewelry. They seem powerful. Obviously hand made. Artistic to the core. A sense of history and culture. Something different that most other people admire but do not wear. But some people define these ethnic pieces as stolen. Ethnically originated, and stolen. Ethnically flavored, and stolen.
We have all seen women (and men) wear jewelry that is culturally significant to another group without a proper understanding or appreciation of the cultural significance behind the jewelry. Disrespectful. Offensive. They dishonor. When you speak with them, it is obvious they made no effort to explore its original cultural purpose, tradition, value and history. They reduce meaningful objects to mere fashion accessories.
However, I can look at things from a different perspective. Some people define wearing jewelry made up of objects from a minority or less developed culture as freedom. When adopting and using cultural elements from other cultures, the person expresses their personal style, value and self-image. It is not about cultural appropriation. It’s about the expression of individual freedom and choice. Ethnic pieces are merely a means toward this end.
I’m not sure it is for me to judge. But I can get very judge’y. I believe that if you are going to wear ethnic beads, trinkets and jewelry, you should take the time to learn something about them. In a moral, ethical sense, wearing ethnic jewelry can perpetuate harmful power dynamics between dominant and marginalized cultures. It has been too easy historically for members of dominant cultures to exploit the cultural riches from marginalized cultures. These members from dominant cultures do not face the same kinds of discrimination and marginalization that members of those cultures do. There are some aspects of the sacred when these ethnic pieces are worn. Some reverence here, always.
On the other hand, I do not share the belief that any particular culture owns all its artifacts and is the only group entitled to wear them. There is obviously a power dynamic going on here. Unhealthy. Jewelry designers and people who wear and buy jewelry should acknowledge that they have a responsibility to others, and to minimize any negative consequences resulting from the impact of them wearing these pieces. But they should be able to wear them. They should be able to use these adornments as their own personal expression.
Should We Avoid Making Jewelry Inspired By Other Cultures?
If all there was to Jewelry Design was following a set of instructions and mimicking someone else’s work, a concern about diversity would not be that important. You follow the steps. You get the job done. No socio-cultural issues influencing any of your choices.
But for people who design things, this isn’t the case. Design is about creative construction. Design is where you take ideas and you take emotions and you apply your hands. Segregating ideas by race weakens your own. Segregating ideas by race results in failed opportunities to interact with others who are not like yourself. Segregating ideas by race are failed opportunities to learn new designs. They are failed opportunities for manipulating design elements in ways you’ve never thought about.
As a designer, you want to have many and varied experiences all through life. These experiences influence your recognition of colors, your choices for linking beads and pieces to stringing materials, your ideas about styles and looks and lengths and fashions. You don’t want to close yourself off to any part of the world. If you did, you would short-change your creative spirit. That essence within you and from which your jewelry resonates.
Yes, I know, you often bead and make jewelry as a type of escape from the real world. A meditative, relaxing, no problemo means of production. But you can’t escape the real world entirely. And you shouldn’t want to.
Around the year 2000, I formed what we called an Advanced Bead Group. There were up to 20 of us. The purpose of the group was to delve deeper into bead weaving and jewelry design techniques. We began with Horace Goodhue’s book about Native American beadwork. He documented over 200 different bead weaving stitches developed by many different Native American tribes across America. We took them one by one. First, we tried to learn the stitch. We found, in order to understand what Goodhue tried to document, we had to re-write each of the patterns. Then, we explored the history of each tribe, particularly information about their crafts, their values, and the materials they chose to use.
When learning the Oglala Butterfly stitch, we discovered that there was a Oglala Women’s Movement that had a lot to do with beads. About 400 years ago, French traders traveled through Canada and then down into the Dakotas. They brought with them glass trade beads, which had been manufactured in the Czech Republic, Bohemia and the Netherlands, and traded them for pelts. One of the major roles of women in Indian tribes was to make beads. They spent all day, every day, making beads out of stones and wood and antlers and shells. When these French traders came with these premade beads, it freed up a lot of time. And the women took advantage of that time.
To show that they won, the women changed the costuming of the men. Before the movement, the men wore bead embroidery strips tacked down linearly along their sleeves. After the movement, the women stitched only part of the embroidery strip to the sleeve, and let the rest hang down like a ribbon. So when the men went off to war or hunting or whatever, they would wear the mark of the women because the ribbons would flow.
Our Advanced Bead Group also studied Zulu bead weaving stitches as documented by Diane Fitzgerald. As we learned each technique, we talked about how to make the pieces visually look more contemporary. For example, by twisting a Zulu-stitched square tube, it took on a more contemporary feel — greater sense of movement and dimension. We learned a lot about the symbolic, communicative information various Zulu tribes wove into their pieces during that 70–80 year period of colonialism and apartheid.
Jewelry Making And Beading Shape Who We Are And How We Identify
Jewelry and beads are imbued with meaning, history and cultural significance. They influence our development as individuals with self-perspective, self-esteem, and an understanding how to live day by day and relate to other people. They are more than fashion. They are existence.
No one wants their ornaments and adornments misused or used against them. I can site many examples where the use of beads and jewelry has not always been positive. One thing, for instance, that saddened me, was the exploitation of Native American jewelry by factories in Asia.
Downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a commercial square with wide side walks on every side. Positioned on the sidewalks are Native American artisans plying their wares. Earrings. Bracelets. Cuffs. Necklaces. Beaded. Silver-smithed. With Turquoise and shell and coral and jasper. In the 1970s and 1980s, when I would visit, I couldn’t get enough, I was so excited about what I saw. In the 1990s, however, Asian knock-offs had hit the markets all across the United States — at retail prices way below the actual costs of materials for these pieces in the United States.
The square in Santa Fe was no longer that designer’s dream. There were fewer artisans. You can see the choices — and I considered them poor choices — that these artisans made to try to make their products competitive. Several added Austrian crystal beads to their pieces. They incorporated non-Native fashion styles and silhouettes. They used synthetic materials. Much of the jewelry I saw for sale no longer had any cultural significance. Profit became the sole motive. Fashion became the vehicle. These strategies did not work.
Race Issues Are Not New Problems
Race issues aren’t new problems that suddenly appeared circa 2023. They have historical roots, and an unsettling lingering quality to them.
I remember when I was in high school, there were only 7 other Jewish-Americans and only 1 other Chinese-American in the entire school. Everyone else was white. All 9 of us were all called the N-word by our peers. They used the N-word because they didn’t know the K-word or the C-word. The N-word would do. It was uncomfortable and awkward to go to school, and, as a result, I learned, at least while I was in high school, to see an anti-Semite under every rock, whether there was one or not.
I wanted to apply to Cornell University and Princeton University. At a college day at my high school, recruiters from many universities and colleges came to meet with students one by one. Earlier in the morning, I met with the recruiter from Cornell. We exchanged some pleasantries, to start off the conversation, but then he immediately, starkly, with sincere concern that I not waste my time and energy, told me that Cornell doesn’t accept many Jewish students, and that I would be wasting my time to apply. Didn’t matter that I had a straight A average. Didn’t matter that I had many leadership experiences. My Jewish nose extended outside the lines of their facial template. Don’t apply. I did, but got rejected.
I already wasn’t having a good day, when not that much longer in the day afterwards, I met with the recruiter for Princeton. I did not want to hear it. I knew it was coming. I grew up near Princeton. I knew their reputation. I let the recruiter speak. Without much chit chat, and no questioning of me, my goals, my experiences, my motivations for wanting to attend Princeton, he could have just as easily worked for Cornell. Princeton, he pointed out, accepts very few Jewish students, and it would be a waste of my time to apply. I didn’t apply.
I can remember, also, and this was decades ago, when I was young and in junior high and high school, that my dad had to manage racial issues on a different level. It wasn’t discrimination against him. It was he discriminating against others — a perhaps necessary discrimination, from a business standpoint.
My dad owned a small pharmacy in a very small town called Raritan, New Jersey. Raritan was inhabited mostly by old world Italians, and was very insular. There were no black people in town. The people in town wouldn’t allow it. I remember once that a black family had bought a house there. A week later, before this family had moved in, it was suspiciously burnt to the ground. No one knew who did this, and everyone knew who did this. This family did not rebuild.
My father was not racist. Yet he would never hire a black person as a clerk or as a delivery driver. A black clerk, he feared, would keep his customers away. And a black driver, he feared, would be shot dead.
All these tensions in the air did not mean that we had no black customers. In fact, we had many black customers. They boarded the bus — during the day, not at night — and traveled the 2 miles from the next town over — Somerville. There were two drugstores in Somerville at the time. Blacks perceived that they were discriminated against at these stores, and not at ours. As I said, my father was not a racist.
[Just an aside: In the early 1900s, Italians in America were viewed as nonwhite. The Italian folks of Raritan, New Jersey, raised a lot of money for the WWI war effort. The US Navy benefited so much from the townsfolk efforts that they named a ship after the town. But because the money came from Italians, the US Government felt they could not name the ship The Raritan. Instead, they reversed the letters so no one would know the origin and history of the name. The ship was named The Natirar.]
Similar race issues still arise. And while not as emotionally charged as when I was young, they’re still a bit emotionally charged. Owning the bead store means I can’t run and hide and bury myself. I have to deal with uncomfortable situations involving race. And I do.
It wasn’t until around 2009–22 years after starting this business — that we seemed to have some regular, repeat customers who were black, and Latino, and Asian. But still very few. Definitely not enough. I can’t imagine that there are not many, many more minority beaders and jewelry makers in town.
Each time we advertise to fill a staff position, we try to go out of our way to attract qualified minority applicants. We talk to our minority customers. We contact newspapers and agencies that target various minority communities. We contact the state’s Job Service. We get very few minority applicants, and fewer qualified ones. We pay well. The job is very interesting and rarely boring. While I’ve offered jobs to minority applicants, I’ve only had one taker. Whether I project this onto the situation, or it’s real, I get a sense of ill-ease, some risk, some discomfort.
Minority customers seem to self-select where they shop, where they look for jobs, and where they take classes. They seem to go to the large craft stores and discount stores, rather than the small bead and craft shops. This is understandable. As a minority, you are more likely to get discriminated against in a mom-and-pop shop in the South, than you are in a large corporate retail setting. You more likely have to deviate from the major roads or what are safe neighborhoods for you in order to visit these mom-and-pop shops. The odds are against you of getting hired in these small shops, because, just like with my dad, even if the owners are not racist, they have to be realists.
It doesn’t take much to make someone feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease. Perceived slights are everywhere. Not getting asked if you need some help. A too-abrupt explanation of classes. A question which reveals that assumptions have been made about you, because of your ethnicity. Often an expected level of service rises and falls with the energy-level of the staff, or how pressured they have been during the day, or other things going on in their personal lives. It rarely rises and falls because of race. But it’s not always perceived or understood that way.
I had one minority student who tried to register for one of my advanced jewelry design classes — a class with 3 other prerequisites — and I turned her down. She was furious. She explained that she had taken all these other classes at other bead stores. I told her that our classes are not the same as at other beads stores. They teach steps; we teach theory and applications. I asked her a couple of design-theory questions — things I cover in my other classes — and she was clueless. My first question is always “Do you know the difference between gold-filled and gold-plated?” Rarely does anyone know the answer, and she did not either. I explained to her that I make everyone start at the beginning of our curriculum, including experienced beaders and jewelry makers, because classes elsewhere are craft-oriented project classes, and our classes are skills-based and more academic. I told her she would be wasting her money starting with this advanced class. She took it to mean that, as a minority, I felt she was incapable of learning. I tried to reason with her, but to no avail. Lost a student, garnered more bad word of mouth, and felt I was not heard nor understood.
On another occasion, a minority customer walked into the store, and was not greeted by staff. She walked in at a moment where the staff member who would have greeted her, had gotten sick and was throwing up in the bathroom, two other staff working on internet orders had been dealing with a problem with a customer on the phone, and another staff was getting some inventory from the back room. She expected to be greeted. She assumed the lack of any attention — and she did not even have a staff member glance her way and smile — was because she was black. She complained vociferously to me. Barely stretching my voice over her anger, I explained in great detail what was happening around her. Eventually, she calmed down. She has remained a customer. But she could as easily have gone elsewhere. She did not have to complain to me, and in effect, challenge her first assumptions. But she did. And this was a subject I did not want to deal with — not at all. But glad we had that conversation.
People make assumptions about other people based on their race. This is an unfortunate, but rationale thing that people do. It can be both funny and tragic. Someone puts you into a box in terms of the types of beading or jewelry making they expect you to do, because of your skin color or the slant of your eyes. Someone assumes that your level of jewelry-making proficiency must be based on your cultural and social and biological history.
Time and again over the years, I’ve introduced minority students to one of our bead study groups or jewelry making classes. The groups and classes are very inviting. But how many times I’ve overheard them peppering the person with questions, assuming, for instance, a black person would automatically be interested in Zulu beadwork, tribal jewelry and motifs, or African Trade Beads. And they’re not. Or that an Asian student would only be interested in bead weaving or pearl knotting, and only with Japanese seed beads or Japanese pearls. And they’re not. Or that a Latino student would prefer to use very bright colors. When they’re not. Or a Native American student would only be interested in traditional Native American styles and never contemporary ones. When they’re not. And they get asked all these questions, including the Where are you from? question, implying they are from some other place than America, and which re-emphasizes that they are not necessarily among friends. And they don’t come back.
While these occurrences are the exception, rather than the rule, they happen often enough to make you think about the relationship of beads to race, beading to race, and bead stores to race. We don’t want to contribute to a hostile environment, even if this sense of hostility is very slight, often unintended. We want to contribute to a free flowing and overflowing multitudinous outpouring of ideas.
Racism Can Be Both Individualistic And Systemic
Beads have been used for centuries. They were symbols of life, expression and identity. We see this clearly across Native American tribal groups in the United States. Or, they were symbols of the afterlife, such as when they were used in burial ceremonies in ancient Egypt. Or, these were a form of currency in many cultures around the world. They were traded by Europeans for slaves in Africa. They can signify social status, with certain colors, like royal purple, and designs reserved for the upper classes or royalty themselves. They can be used to represent continuity across generations.
Beads are embedded within the culture. The same can be said for racism. Cornell and Princeton restricted where, as a Jew, I could go to school. Exclusionary, restrictive deeds in New Jersey limited where my parents could live. Exclusionary policies at country clubs and hotels and restaurants restricted where I could socialize, play, vacation and eat. I remember all of these. No Jews, No Blacks, No Catholics. This was the New Jersey way.
These limits and restrictions and exclusions, while many no longer set in law, still existed throughout my life. In many cases, it becomes obvious when you apply for a job, whether your race becomes an issue residing just below the surface. When I got my job with the state of Tennessee, one of the first things said to me over and over again was how unusual it was for the state to hire someone who wasn’t Southern Baptist or Church of Christ. Someone I worked with got all worked up every day, worried that I would go to hell unless I converted. I asked the powers that be to get her to stop trying to convert me, but they would not. When I was director of a primary care association representing health care clinics across Tennessee, one clinic director told me she liked me, but didn’t think she could work with me because I didn’t accept Christ. I was a talented, personable individual, but there were (are) all these barriers and boundaries and limitations imposed on me which I have to accept and live with. As one person, I can try, but, in truth, I cannot change these things alone.
There are two camps in America which want to impose their understanding of racism and how to deal with it on everyone else — the it’s systemic camp and the it’s individualistic camp.
One camp feels that racism is systemic — that is, it is embedded within the structural underpinnings of culture and society. Racism is not necessarily tied to intentional beliefs or actions of individuals, but rather is embedded within the very fabric of society and perpetuated through institutions and systems. It becomes impossible for anyone from a marginalized group to find freedom, equality and happiness without these structural underpinnings getting replaced. In fact, because of this, marginalized groups can become further alienated and disconnected from the larger society.
With jewelry, the fashion industry can continue to appropriate cultural elements in their designs without giving proper credit or compensation. Materials used in jewelry can be sourced from countries with a history of colonization and exploitation, perpetuating systemic inequalities. The lack of diversity in the jewelry industry can be perpetuated through its history, practices, assumptions, and lack of diverse representation. This lack of diversity and representation can lead to narrow and limited views of what is considered beautiful or desirable. It can result in the exclusion of certain designs, styles, and color combinations which might be significant or meaningful to minority communities. The marketing and advertising of jewelry can perpetuate harmful stereotypes, such as through the choice of models, their body types, facial characteristics and skin tone.
It would take many individuals and many companies and many industries to work together towards inclusivity and equity for all communities. Truly work. Not just lip service. This costs money, time, even reputations and the effort to preserve networks of businesses and customers, or allow them to disintegrate. It means giving credit where credit is due. It means giving reasonable compensation. It means publicly recognizing cultural and social meanings and purposes. It means open and continuing compensation and dialog.
From the systemic view, those who refuse to recognize and confront systemic racism are in fact racist themselves.
The other second camp in America believes that racism resides at the level of individual and individual interaction. Racism is only based in individual actions and beliefs. Everyone is free to make choices. Everyone faces barriers to implementing these choices. In a Darwinian sense, the stronger overcome these barriers. The weaker do not. There is nothing systemic about these barriers. It is obvious that some individuals from marginalized communities have been able to overcome these barriers, so, perhaps, racism is no longer widespread nor is it systemic.
In the late 1970s, I was a professor at Ole Miss. Loved my time there. It was a very special place. I had befriended one of my African American students, a guy who was a freshman and had taken one of my classes. We would have lunch together a few times a year. When he was a Junior, we were having lunch, and he began to talk about Louis Farrakhan, and how inspiring he was. And then how dangerous Jews were. I interrupted him. I told him that I was Jewish. Did he think I fit any of those stereotypes he had learned? He looked at me quizzically. You can’t be Jewish, he said. I told him most Jews were like me. I patted my head. I didn’t have any horns, because he had learned that Jews have horns. I hoped, through our one-on-one interaction, he would change his views.
For the fun of it, before I left New Jersey for North Carolina (mid 1970s), I took the required academic course track for police in New Jersey. It was part of their licensure requirements. The classes were offered at the local community college. Really good teacher. Learned a lot about how the law gets implemented in the community and some of the concerns and fears of police. Mid-semester in the first class, the topic turned to race. This teacher was very adept at opening up the discussion. Which was heated. Very heated. Between black officers and white officers. At one point, they were starting to rise up from their seats. The teacher calmed things down. Then he made several points. One important one: you have to talk to each other to overcome racism.
In this individualistic perspective on racism, beads and jewelry are seen more as distractions. Things to adorn. Things to play with. Things to which anyone, no matter their origin, can attach meaning and purpose to. If something is seen as racist or culturally appropriated in a bad way, these are understood as artificial constructs. Beads and jewelry in and of themselves cannot be racist. And people playing with beads and making jewelry cannot be understood as racist. These objects reflect beauty, and through beauty and its contrast with harsh reality, many might view racism in the world. But the objects themselves, and the people playing with them, cannot be racist.
Both camps accuse the other of falsehood. But both perspectives have truth to them. Giving up some ideology for practicality means giving up some power — that’s something a lot of people do not like to do.
I’m Sick Of Racist Stereotypes
The elementary school my sister attended hired its first black teacher. In fact, she was the first black teacher the whole school district had hired. My sister was assigned to her class. The parents of one third of my sister’s classmates pulled their children out of the class and out of the school. Obviously because the teacher was black. They knew nothing about her credentials. Or how she was as a teacher. All they knew was that she was black.
My sister liked her new teacher. My mother decided one day to invite the teacher to our house for dinner. And then my mother got nervous. What would the neighbors think? She visited each neighbor — eight in all — to tell them, forewarn them, that a black woman would be coming to dinner. Nothing to be scared about. Nothing to call the police about. Nothing to scorn our family about. I thought it odd that my mother felt this need to talk to the neighbors. I thank God she served a beautiful meal, and not fried chicken and watermelon.
I find, too often, that the fashion industry resorts to stereotypes. There are beadworks and talismans and cross-stitch patterns and advertising campaigns which caricature Native Americans or African Americans in a distasteful way. We can appreciate the beauty of the beads and the appeal of the jewelry, but have to question the consequences.
The Complexity Of The Human Experience Reflected In Beads And Jewelry
Rogue Elephants know nothing about racism. It’s a human thing. It is one of those things which can prevent you from ever meeting up with your Rogue Elephant. Or find that passion within yourself to find him. Or discover meaning and purpose in your life.
Beads and jewelry play many roles within any culture and society. Sometimes these roles can be associated with racism. Their existence for many of us can raise questions about the meaning and purpose of life. They can affect our authenticity and what we want to recognize as authentic.
Too often beads and jewelry become tools with which to exploit or exoticize others. Others become those with less power, less wealth, less centrality within a culture or society. Beads and jewelry, somehow precious to these others, can be commodified for the benefit of the powerful, the wealthy, those central members to the detriment of others who are not. Cultural objects can be used to perpetuate harmful narratives and stereotypes.
The beader’s and jewelry maker’s job is not to solve the problems of the world. But in a quest for good design, the beader and jewelry maker have to let some of the world in — problems and all.
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.
I don’t mean to drag a poor Elephant by its tail, kicking and screaming, into our bead and jewelry world against its wishes. Nor do I perceive the elephant to be a threat, like you might see if you found an Elephant in the boudoir, or the fine China store. And I don’t want you to shut your eyes and pretend not to notice that this Elephant is here, standing shoulder to shoulder with every beader and jewelry maker around.
The Elephant is not a joke. And the fact that it is Rogue makes it more important than ever to figure out why it’s here, why it keeps glaring at me, whether on the far horizon or close enough to feel its breath. Why it teases me. Why it commands and monopolizes my attention. Why I have to catch it. Corral it. Adorn it as it charges across the countryside with jewelry which flows this way and that way and up and down and sideways and towards you and away from you and always looks perfect — a Rogue Elephant perfection.
So absurd. A Rogue Elephant among size #10 English beading needles, and Czech size 11/0 seed beads, and Austrian crystal beads. It seems so worldly, yet other-worldly, my Elephant. It’s not my muse. It’s not my Cassandra. It has no secret plan or strategy. It does not depend on its size to make its point. It does not hesitate to stomp and chomp and clomp because the beads before it are raku or glass or gemstone or crystal or metal or plastic. But a Rogue Elephant in the middle of my craft room forces upon me a completely different logic, so that I can make sense of it all.
And that’s what happened with me. Though not all at once. Struggling excitedly, often clueless, creative frustration, wonderous illusion — that’s how I would describe my over 35 plus years stringing beads, weaving beads, combining wire with beads, soldering silver with beads, entangling fibers with beads. Somewhere along the way I felt that Rogue Elephant staring at me from a distance. I moved closer to him. And all the applications and all the techniques and all the materials and all the making-selling-making-selling-making-selling began to cohere into something very real. Very meaningful. Integrally resonant. Purposeful. I discovered my Rogue Elephant and beaded him.
You Cannot Separate The Parts From The Design
You stare at a bead, and ask what it is. You put some thread on a needle, then the bead on the needle, and ask what to do. You stitch a few beads together, and wonder what will become of this. You create a necklace, and ask how it will be worn. And you stare at each bead again, and think where do all these feelings welling up within you come from — beauty, peace and calm, satisfaction, magic, appeal, a sensuousness and sexuality. Your brain and eye enter into this fantastic dance, a fugue of focusing, refocusing, gauging and re-gauging light, color, shadow, a shadow’s shadow, harmony, and discord.
You don’t just string beads on string and voila a necklace. There’s a lot involved here.
You have to buy beads, organize them, buy some extra parts, think about them, create with them, live with some failed creations, and go from there. If there wasn’t something special about how beads translate light into color, shade and shadow, then beading would simply be work. But it’s not. You have to put one next to another…..and then another. And when you put two beads next to each other, or one on top of the other, you’re doing God’s work. There’s nothing as spectacular as painting and sculpting with light.
This bead before me — why is it so enticing? Why do I beg it to let me be addicted? An object with a hole. How ridiculous its power. Some curving, some faceting, some coloration, some crevicing or texturing, some shadow, some bending of light. That’s all it is. Yet I am drawn to it in a slap-silly sort of way.
When I arrange many beads, the excitement explodes geometrically in my being. Two beads together are so much more than one. Four beads so much more than two. A hundred beads so much more than twenty-five times four. The pleasure is uncontainable. I feel so powerful. Creative. I can make more of what I have than with what I started.
And the assembling — another gift. String through the hole, pull, tug, align, and string through the hole, pull, tug, align, and string through the hole, pull, tug, align, and string through the hole, pull, tug, align. So meditative. Calming. How could beads be so stress-relieving, other-worldly-visiting, and creative-exciting at the same time?
Contemplation. To contemplate the bead is to enter the deep reaches of your mind where emotion is one with geometry, and geometry is one with art, and art is one with physics, and beads are one with self.
So these days, I confront my innermost feelings about beads. What I enjoy, and what I do not. What I have learned, and what I have not. What I want to achieve, and what I fear I cannot.
It’s not that, originally, I wanted to bead much of anything. I imagined what I wanted to create, and quickly found I couldn’t create it. This is when I sensed my Rogue Elephant somewhere out there. An abundance of creativity coupled with frustration and doubt sent out some kind of aroma attracting him. Unintentional. Unplanned. Probably not wanted at that time. An Elephant and a pheromonal response, nonetheless.
I had very specific ideas of what my beadwork should look like, how it should be put together, and how it should function. I did not want to be considered a painter who uses beads, or a sculptor who uses beads. I visualized myself more than an artist. I wanted to be considered a jewelry designer. A jewelry designer who legitimately uses beads, and not paints, and not clays or stone. A designer who makes things for people to wear, not merely admire as something hung on a wall, or resting on an easel, or sitting on a pedestal. This was my dilemma.
Alas, this was the basis of all my fears. Could jewelry designers intentionally design with light in a fundamentally different way than painters use paint, or sculptors use clay or stone? If I beaded a mannequin, I’d be painting or sculpting. But what if I beaded a Rogue Elephant? Something that moved. Something that reacted differently in different situations. Something that appeared in different contexts. Something that would have to look good and make my Rogue Elephant look good, no matter what. Would my beadwork stand up to some test of grammar, poetry, art, vision and even love?
I was tentative, at first, about beading, but that Rogue Elephant kept getting in my way. To tame it, to get rid of it, to make sense of it, I had to bead it.
But how? Should I? Could I? Would I? It’s huge! It’s fast! It’s ornery!
Should I make my Elephant some kind of necklace or anklet to wear? How about a little hat? I can tubular peyote around its trunk OK, but what about its ears? What do I do there? That mid-section is awfully rotund. Fringe would be pretty, hanging around some kind of blanket. But, alas, wouldn’t it just drag along the ground?
The main problem is, though, that this beast keeps moving. How am I ever going to get anything to look good, and stay looking good, on this Elephant if it keeps moving? After all, Rogue Elephants don’t Pose. They’re not “Vogue” Elephants. They’re “Rogue” Elephants. They’re too busy tossing their heads at everything else in sight.
If I use large beads, I can accomplish this feat faster, but not necessarily as elegantly. Should my Elephant be elegant? Sophisticated? Earthy? Adventurous? Bohemian? Fashion-aware or fashion-I-don’t-care?
I cannot get this Rogue Elephant out of my mind. The thoughts of beading it seem insurmountable, unconquerable. My eyes strain, my hands ache, my back stiffens at these thoughts. It will never get done. I won’t finish it. I won’t do it. I most certainly don’t have the time. I’ll try something easier, like a toy rabbit or a stick. A small stick. A very small, very straight, perfectly round stick. Surely not an Elephant, a Rogue one at that.
Calm down, I say to myself. Stop hyperventilating. Wipe those clammy palms. Don’t let the task before you scare you before you even start.
I grit my teeth. I stand up straight. I squeeze my hands into a fist. I hold my fisted-hands stiffly and tightly against my right and left sides. I lift my chin up ever-so-slightly until my eyes meet his. I stare that Rogue Elephant right into the face for those few seconds it stands in my field of vision. I will bead you. I will bead you. I will bead you. I set my mantra going. I try to focus on my inner self. I reach way back to grab my inner being, setting its life force and motivation on track to complete this awesome task.
I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead.
Glue. Thank God someone invented glue. I could corner that Elephant, pour buckets of glue on him, and use a leaf blower to blow a pile of beads right onto that beast. They’ll stick. I’ll be done. Whatever happens, happens. That’s what I’ll do.
But I wouldn’t be happy. And that Elephant would probably want to scratch and itch. Beads would pop off. The glue would yellow. That Elephant wouldn’t be able to walk with any sense of style or grace. It might trip. It would probably fall down, actually. And not be able to get up. Pitiful. It would lose its Rogue-ness. It’s essence of being. I would tame it, yet more than humble it. Where’s the excitement? Glue just won’t do.
I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead.
How about Mardi Gras beads? These beads, already ironed into place onto a string, could be wrapped around and around and around. Purple Iris’s. Topaz AB’s. Olivine Lusters. They’d be colorful. They’d shine. They’d sparkle. It would be like lassoing a steer — over and over again. I don’t know if my Elephant would stand still for that. Perhaps I could corral him. I could tape one end of the bead string to the tail. Then go around and around and around his body until I reached the other end of the trunk. I’d parade the Elephant in front of all the other Elephants out there, and they’d all want to look as dapper. Everyone the Elephant meets, in fact, will want to be wrapped in bead-ropes. How easy, how simple, how divine.
Once I let my Elephant out of the corral, however, I fear the bead-ropes will reposition themselves and slip off and look sloppy. My Elephant would have to lose its Rogue-ness to pull off this look. My Elephant would have to stand still and pose. I don’t think my Elephant would stand for that. In fact, I know he wouldn’t. The jungle is not a circus, and the banks of the jungle watering hole do not provide a level pedestal for such an event. My elephant would be perplexed. And the result would not be satisfactory beadwork. He’d be off in an instant. This would be a mess — a big Mardi Gras mess. Only sanitation workers in New Orleans getting paid much overtime would have any determined appreciation.
I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead.
Just what is the recipe then? Take needle and thread, add beads, mix lightly, separate whites and darks, bake, turn once, and voila? Do I have to have a recipe? A determined strategy? A plan of action? Can’t I just bead it? Do I have to think about how to get the beadwork to stay in place? Look good? Look great? Must the Elephant still be able to run with the beadwork on? If the Elephant runs, must the beadwork stay on? And still look good? Oh, dear, my head is beginning to hurt. I don’t know if I can do all this. And be satisfied.
And the poor Elephant. It looks at me one more time. It’s green eyes dart on me. Challenging me. Daring me. Perhaps fearing me and my determination. Perhaps pondering the why’s and wherefores of my insistence that he be beaded — in totality, Rogue-ness and all. The Elephant turns its head, touching his long torso from shoulder to belly with his trunk. His tusks shift uncomfortably. I’m sure the Elephant is wondering How! — How would the beads go on? How would they be arranged? How could he continue to walk and drink and eat and talk? How would the other Elephants react? How could anyone ever begin to bead a Rogue Elephant?
My Elephant looks at me one more time — staring directly into my eyes. It’s more than a glance. He stares, as if to say, it can’t be done. My Elephant lifts its trunk, extends its ears, snorts, shakes its tail, turns and darts away toward the horizon.
I have only one regret from that time. I assumed my Elephant had no desires. Only my desires which was to adorn him. But, Elephants are smart. They have feelings. They think about things. They do have desires. And these should influence what I do.
But that chant in my head, an ear worm, I can’t let it go.
I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead. I will bead you. I can bead.
I follow him.
It Has Been A Journey
I wanted to be great all at once. It didn’t work out that way. The first three years, I was only into it for the money. Selling jewelry is always a high. Began doing a lot of repairs and getting interested in things from a more academic perspective — why things broke and why things didn’t. Besides bead stringing, I began to learn wire wrapping, then silver smithing, and it was at that point, when I was creating sterling silver pieces through fabrication and soldering that I began to hear and smell and feel that Rogue Elephant, still forever in the distance.
I created a shopping lady brooch. A mix of sterling and brass. Her legs moved. In one hand, I made a shopping bag, which moved. Some layering, some riveting.
Then, my Maori mask brooch. I wanted to experiment using hard, medium and easy solder in the same piece. I created 3 layers. I cut out different parts of each sheet of silver to create an overlay of positive and negatives spaces. I wanted to duplicate the face tattoo, and give it a lot of dimensionality. I hammered the piece to create a concave curve. Then soldered the pin back to it. I created what felt like a true piece of art.
I came late to bead weaving. I only learned the various bead weaving stitches because I was creating a school where that would be one of the foci. Such small beads. Vowed never to use size 15/0 seed beads — so tiny. [Of course, I couldn’t keep that vow.] I had difficulty finding instructors willing to teach from what I call the Design Perspective. Required too much thinking. Too much work. As I was told often, they could make just as much money teaching a step-by-step approach than the way I wanted them to teach. So, I took on the responsibility for teaching these classes myself. Found out I loved bead weaving.
Now when I was in about year 11 of my journey, I found design. I felt compelled to find and bead and bejewel my Rogue Elephant. I wanted to find / bead / bejewel my bead strung pieces, my wire wrapped pieces, my metal fabricated pieces, and my bead woven pieces. Everything.
My journey unfolded in stages.
Contemplation
This is my story. A fable for all jewelry artists who aspire to become one with Design. How to Bead a Rogue Elephant is a collection of personal perspectives and experiences on the issues and inspirations that drove me, and that drive other bead and jewelry-making artists in their designs.
Design is the operative word here. A Rogue Elephant does not present an obstacle, nor create any opportunities, for the jewelry designer, unless that designer understands, follows through and is committed to Jewelry as an Art Form, and realizes that jewelry is art only as it is worn.
Jewelry as art isn’t a happenstance. It is made up of a lot of different kinds of parts. These must be strategically and thoughtfully brought together. They are brought together as a kind of construction project. The results of this project must be beautiful and appealing. They must be functional and wearable. The result should be more appealing and more satisfying and more better in every way than its parts. And this all comes about through design. Jewelry must be designed. And designed it is.
Rogue Elephants are big, and jewelry design is a big task. Rogue Elephants move in unpredictable, yet forceful ways. And jewelry must be designed with movement in mind. Rogue Elephants come with a surface scape, texture and environment, against which the jewelry must look good. And again, good jewelry emerges primarily from the design perspective and the control of the bead, and all the other incumbent parts by the jewelry artist. And as I mentioned before, I learned this over time, Rogue Elephants are not stupid. They want something from you in return for letting you bead them. They have desires. They seek value, and wander off when they think there is none. The jewelry designer cannot ignore all this. Or substitute their own values for his.
Most beaders and jewelry makers don’t pursue their Rogue Elephants. They don’t even think about getting into the hunt. They never get to the point where they can fully answer the question: Why some pieces of their jewelry get good attention, and others do not? And they don’t think about this question. They have fun making things. They match outfits. They give gifts. They sell a few pieces. They use pretty beads and other components. And sometimes they get compliments. Other times they do not.
Also, they don’t necessarily know what to do with the pieces they are playing with. What are they made of? What happens to them over time? Should they be included within the same piece of jewelry? What should they be strung on? Will anyone appreciate the materials? Are the materials appropriate for the technique? What happens when the shade and positioning of the light source changes? If necessary, what can be substituted for some pieces preferred, but not found?
These jewelry makers don’t control these pieces, or the process of combining them. They follow patterns and instructions. And do these again. And again and again. Their artistic goals are to complete the steps and end up with something. They might stick to one or a few techniques they feel comfortable with. There is an unfamiliarity with the bead –What is it? Where did it come from? What makes it special as a medium of art and light and shadow? How does it relate to other beads or clasps or stringing materials or jewelry findings? When they look at the bead, what do they see? Will the wearer and viewer experience the same sense and sensibility? In order to bead their Rogue Elephant, they will have to know how to leverage the strengths of the materials they are using and the strengths of the techniques they want to employ, and minimize any weaknesses.
Luckily, beading and jewelry making for many jewelry designers is an evolving obsession. It’s not something learned all at once. This obsession leads them to contemplate the bead and its use. The bead and its use in art. The bead and its use in jewelry. The bead and its use in design. The bead and its relationship to the designer’s studio. Beads are addictive. Their addictiveness, hopefully, eventually leads the beader or jewelry maker to seek out that Rogue Elephant that haunts them along the distant horizon. They know they want to bead it. They’re not sure how. But they steer themselves along the pathway to find out. This pathway isn’t particularly straight, level or passable. But it’s a pathway nonetheless. And the ensuing possibilities for learning and growing as an artist and designer along the way reap many worthwhile and satisfying rewards.
They may not have their Rogue Elephant on their radar screen. Yet. Yet, is the operative word here.
PLAY
The first step in this journey is to figure out how to get started with beads and jewelry making. You need supplies. You need workspaces and storage strategies and understanding how to get everything organized. You need to anticipate bead spills and many unfinished projects. You need to learn to plan your pieces. You need to get a handle on the beads (and all the other pieces), and how to use them.
DABBLING
Whatever the reason, most beaders and jewelry makers don’t get past PLAY. They are content following patterns and making lots of pieces, according to the step-by-step instructions in these patterns. They might fear testing themselves against broader rules of artistic expression. They might not want to expend the mental and physical energy it takes to get into design. They just want to have fun. And if they never notice that Rogue Elephant hugging the horizon, that’s fine with them.
At some point, however, some beaders and jewelry makers will want to start educating themselves to get a little below the surface. That is always my hope. Rather than mechanically following a set of steps, or randomly assembling things bead by bead, you want to know more about what is really going on. How do I hold my piece to work it? How do I manage my thread tension? How do I select colors? What clasp might work best? If you find yourself at this point, PLAY is not enough. You need to start tapping more into your inner, creative self and capabilities.
CREATE
For those beaders and jewelry makers for whom the Rogue Elephant is very disturbing, no matter how far away he may be, there are these wonderfully exciting, sensually terrific, incredibly fulfilling things that you find as you try to bead your Rogue Elephant, ear, trunk, feet, bodice and all.
You learn to play with and dabble with and create arrangements and control the interplay of light and shadow, texture and pattern, dimensionality and perspective, strategy and technique, form and function, structure and purpose. You begin sharing your designs with friends and strangers, perhaps even teaching classes about how to make your favorite project, or do your preferred technique. You might also create a small business for yourself and sell your pieces. Your sense of artistry, your business acumen, your developing design perspective — you need all this, if you are to have any chance of catching up with your Rogue Elephant, let alone beading him.
You question things about the jewelry you make. What is jewelry? What do I want it to express? What do I want it to do? How is the design of jewelry related to perceptions, cognitions, assumptions, values, and desires? Why do people admire it? Wear it? Collect it? Pay for it?
As you begin to evolve beyond the simple craft perspective to one of artistry and then design, you begin developing your creative soft and hard skills.
SAFARI
As your jewelry pieces become more the result of your design intuition and acuity, you begin to wonder how other artists capture, be-jewel, and release their own Rogue Elephants. How did they get started? What was their inspiration? What motivated them to delve into beading, stick with it, and take it to the next level? Do they make their pieces for show or for sale?
You begin to find your passion. This passion sustains you over however long it takes you make any piece of jewelry. You begin to recognize how some pieces of beadwork and jewelry are merely craft, and others are art. You get frustrated with beautiful pieces that are unwearable and fashionable pieces that lack durability and pieces that sell that are poorly constructed. You see many good ideas, some well-executed, but many not.
As you compare yourself as Designer to other jewelry designers all over the world, this is partly a personal adventure as you self-experience your intellectual growth as a designer. And it is partly an adventure of evaluating how well other designers have succeeded in this same quest, as well. You find there are many quests and many pathways. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is preset. There are no social norms or cultural rules you have to conform to, if you don’t want to. For the most part, you are on your own.
One very revealing pathway is following how designers contemporize traditional designs. Still another follows the designer who revives vintage styles. Or the pathway that finds the artist elevating fringe, edging, strap, bail and surface embellishment to the same level of art as the centerpiece. And yet another pathway which looks at multimedia beadwork, and how designers seek to maintain the integrity of each medium within the same piece. You might explore that pathway which involves collaboration.
LITERACY
As you begin to articulate what works and does not work in various pieces in terms of form, structure, art theory, relationships to the body, relationships to psychological and cultural and sociological constructs, you complete your evolution as a jewelry designer. You add a body of design theory and practice to your already honed skills in art, color, bead-stringing, bead-weaving, fabrication and wire working. You create for yourself a Designer’s Tool Box — a set of hard and soft skills and strategies for conquering the unknown, the problematic, and the unfamiliar. You become fluent in design. Flexible in your approach. Original in that you are able to distinguish your works from those of others. You set yourself clearly on the path to find and bead your Rogue Elephant.
FULFILLMENT
Your adventure along this pathway towards design — your success at beading your Rogue Elephant — is very fulfilling. Whether you walk, run, skip or crawl or some mix of the above, it’s a pathway worth following. You’ve learned to transcend the physicality and limitations of your workplace, tools and supplies. You’ve learned to multi-task and organize and construct your project as if you were architecting or engineering a bridge. You have discovered how to dress and present yourself for success, including strategies for self-promotion. You have learned to anticipate how your various audiences — wearer, viewer, buyer, exhibitor, collector, student, teacher, colleague — will critically determine whether your piece feels finished and successful. You get experience incorporating all this knowledge into how you organize and manage your design process, its plan, its rhythm, its operation.
You’re a Designer. You have learned to present yourself and promote yourself as a Jewelry Designer. You’ve evolved as a Beader and Jewelry-Designer and are feeling a true satisfaction.
____________________________________
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.
Materials needed: .014”/.015” or .018”/.019” cable wire enough of a mix of seed beads and Czech glass beads (3mm — 6mm in size) to
cover 36” of cable wire crimp beads horseshoe wire protectors crimp covers end caps or bead caps or cones (2 of them) head pins (2 of them) 2 decorative beads, perhaps teardrop shaped, about 18mm in size
Tools needed: crimping pliers chain nose pliers flat nose pliers scissors side cutters or flush cutters bead board ruler paper pencil
work surface
A lariat is a long, usually beaded, string, which a person wraps around their neck, and lets the tails hang.
The tails can be tied in a loose overhand knot together.
Or one tail may have a large loop or ring or donut, through which the other tail slips into.
Or the lariat can be wrapped around the neck once or twice, and the tails allowed to dangle.
With some designs, the part of the lariat which becomes the focal point, can be varied.
Lariats may be all beaded, partially beaded, or not beaded at all.
In fact, this versatility is the popularity of the lariat. You can create many different silhouettes. And you do not have to bother with a clasp.
And you can make a multi-strand lariat, if you want. The design choices are endless.
DESIGN ISSUES
The design issues associated with the lariat include:
1. Stringing material
2. Length
3. Whether to use a fixed connection point
4. Silhouette flexibility
5. Finishing off the ends
6. Maintaining the tension on your beads, while allowing sufficient ease
STRINGING MATERIAL
Many different types of stringing materials will work well with lariats.
You can use:
· Needle and thread.
· Cable wire
· Bead cord
· Leather or waxed cotton
· Leather lace
· Chain
· Even fabric or ribbon
LENGTH
Usually, lariats are 30 inches or longer.
They can be a lot longer, even 72” long.
I suggest visualizing how you see the lariat worn. Take a string and create the silhouette on your body, then measure the length OF THE STRING.
WHETHER THERE IS A FIXED POINT OF CONNECTION, SUCH AS A LOOP OR RING OR DONUT ON ONE SIDE
This is a personal design choice.
Many lariats do not have fixed points of connection.
One option is to fold the lariat in half, and use the bend as the point of connection, and slip the two legs through the bend.
Another option is to tie a loose overhand knot with the two legs.
Still another option is to wrap it around the neck, and, let the legs dangle.
If you have a point of connection on one side, then you need to be sure that the other tail will be able to slip through the opening.
SILHOUETTE FLEXIBILITY
As a designer, you need to anticipate the various ways your design may be worn.
Then ask yourself:
· Will my design be long enough to accommodate the various ways i visualize it getting worn?
· Is the arrangement of beads, given the various silhouettes, optimal?
· Given the various silhouettes, will the lariat drape well and move in place with the person as the person moves?
HOW TO FINISH OFF THE ENDS
You may want a simple pendant drop or a lot of fringe or something in between.
There are many different jewelry findings — particularly end pieces — which will allow you to accommodate your design goals.
MAINTAINING THE TENSION ON YOUR BEADS, WHILE ALLOWING SUFFICIENT EASE
You are working with a long string of beads.
Before you finish off that second end, you want to make sure you have a good tension on your beads so that you don’t have any stringing material showing in the final piece. Yet, at the same time, retain an ease in flexibility and drape.
Towards this end, before you finish off the second side, coil your lariat into about an 6–7” diameter circle. This will give you a good sense about ease. If the lariat coils easily and doesn’t uncoil when you let go of it, then your ease and flexibility is good.
Then, uncoil, and see if there is still slack you need to get rid of by pushing the beads closer together. If there is slack, you’ll notice a lot of the stringing material showing.
If you need to tighten the tension, do so, then coil again, so that you are finding that optimum tension and ease.
____________________________________
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.
“You Motherf — — -, you Motherf — — -, “ he shouted at her. One curse word after another.
There we were — three of us — crammed into a small office. Seated on three seats in front of a desk, knees nearly touching. The director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Division, in Atlanta, Georgia, was particularly angry at our 9:00 am meeting that morning. He unloaded on my boss. It was relentless. After about 15 minutes of this, I cut in and said that where I’m from, this kind of language is very inappropriate. He told me to Shut Up!, and continued his barrage.
In the early 1980s, I was a policy planner for the Tennessee Department of Health and Environment. One of my responsibilities was to carry out a CDC grant to the Department. The purpose of this grant was to interrelate all the Department’s health data with its environmental data, and determine if living near a toxic waste site (Superfund site) was hazardous to your health. Tall order, bad data, weak data, microscopic parts per billion data. Highly unlikely that any scientific statistical analysis could show any relationship. But I had some success. In two parts of the state — Clinton, TN outside Oak Ridge, and New Johnsonville and Waverly, TN on the western leg of the Tennessee River.
The issues for us at that time were preventing unnecessary severe illness and death. The question: should our initial findings trigger either state or federal action to investigate these areas in more detail. To me, this was a moral question. To the federal representatives, not so much so.
Jewelry designing, on the surface, seems so divorced from moral quandaries. Spending time selecting and arranging beautiful things, well, we shouldn’t have to think about ethics. Ethics shouldn’t contaminate what we do. And, yet.
Design is choice. The choices could be about colors. Or materials. Or techniques and how they should be implemented. Choices might focus on silhouette or customer type or customer desires. Choices might be made to be sensitive to a certain situation or context.
Making choices means that you pick something over something else. The choices made could be rational, meaning that you have weighed the options, and one is factually better than any alternative. The choices could be moral, meaning that the choice will unquestionably and without any doubt or circumstance serve the designer and the wearer or buyer more appropriately than any other choice and without harm. The choice could be ethical, meaning that the choice will enhance any moral judgement about whatever transpires. The choice could be ethical from a business sense, meaning that the choice results in the designer going away happy and the wearer or buyer going away happy, as long as no one gets harmed, whether they actually were served better, or not.
Because designing jewelry involves making choices about materials, techniques, and how the pieces are introduced publicly, design poses, by its very nature, moral, ethical and business ethical judgments. That’s the rub. Even surrounded by extreme beauty and rainbows of color and sensual objects, I have found that moral dilemmas pop up often, even in my bead store, and even in situations involving my jewelry.
Sometimes, morality with design is simple and straightforward. I make a custom piece for someone. Say, the piece breaks where the beadwork is connected to the clasp. Who is responsible for fixing it? With each custom piece I make, the client gets a Certificate of Authenticity. On the Certificate, it states that repairs not due to negligence on the client’s part will be repaired up until 6 months after purchase at my expense. After that that point, it is the client’s responsibility to pay for repairs.
We do a lot of repair work. On one repair, for example, the bracelet was created using a technique called micro-macrame. The original artist was extremely talented, using very thin bead cord, almost like threads, with very tight, closely placed knots. The bracelet was made with 8 separate cords, all of which had to be brought down through 2mm beads and encased in macrame knots. The bracelet had broken and needed to be redone from one end to the other. The repair eventually required 8 hours to complete. Expensive for the customer. Before I began the repair, I mapped out what needed to be done. I reviewed this with the customer. I very clearly told the customer that my talent was noticeably less-than that of the original artist. She approved my going ahead with the repair anyway.
Morality and ethics come up in small and large ways in the jewelry design business. But, usually with less drama than I experienced at the CDC and Tennessee Department of Health and Environment, but with drama and concerns nonetheless.
The CDC contract with Tennessee specified that a type of statistical analysis called regression analysis be done. I had been hired during the second year of the contract. I knew from the start that regression analysis — a type of parametric statistic — would be inadequate to the task. It is not robust enough and powerful enough to analyze bad, very small numbers data. Environmental data usually include things like parts per billion. That’s a small number.
Instead, I substituted a nonparametric statistic, and one that I had developed a few years earlier, for the analysis. Using a mapping program, I divided the state of Tennessee into roughly 7 x 7 mile squares. I allocated the health data and environmental data to each square. Then I ran my nonparametric statistic, I had called this ridit analysis, on the data. Nonparametric statistics are perfect for bad, small numbers data. They do not establish whether there is a strong correlation between variables. They identify the chances something weird is happening and deserves more attention.
I found something. I thought that was good and would be well-received. But obviously not.
I am just a bad boy. I keep pointing out these moral issues because they bother me, and I get frustrated when they don’t bother other people — at the least, bother them enough to result in some changes in behaviors and procedures.
Many things have happened in my jewelry design world. I always get concerned when materials used or techniques used in creating any piece of jewelry are somehow misrepresented in terms of value, durability or price.
For example, this situation happens more than you would think. On one occasion, the first thing the customer said as she laid out all the beads and findings on the counter in my shop: I am a jewelry designer from New York. There in a pile on the counter were Austrian crystal beads and ones which were metalized plastic. There were sterling silver, silver plated and stainless steel beads and findings. Low end tiger tail wire. Some elastic string. I only do higher end, she reassured me, and I already have crimp beads I purchased from Michael’s.
I started to point out some inconsistences: metalized plastic, tiger tail and elastic string are not durable products. Sterling will stay silver, silver plated will not. Some crimp beads are manufactured differently than others. Crimp beads cut right through tiger tail wire and elastic string. The plating on metalized plastic chips off after little wear. I was trying to be helpful. But she would not have any of it. She almost cupped my mouth to silence me. I am a jewelry designer from New York, she repeated. I know all this stuff, probably better than you.
I make a quarterly trip to Michael’s to see what they are selling. They change out their lines about every three months, and it’s important to me to know what they are selling. At one point, they were selling a brand of plated findings. On the package label, it said “S. Silver.” It didn’t say sterling silver, but their customers might assume as much. Another time, they had packages of 2” head pins at 10 cents each. The label said .925, indicating that these were sterling silver. A foot of raw sterling silver at that time sold for $6.00. Two inch head pins in my own store were selling for $2.25. How did Michael’s get down to 10 cents?
On a visit to Claire’s at the mall, there was a rack of earrings. In English, the sign said “sterling silver.” In Spanish, the sign said “silver plated”. The earrings were $5.99 a pair.
A competitor of mine was selling Greek raku-fired clay beads as gemstones. He had a whole routine worked out. He told customers these needed to be weighed and sold by the gram. The result: something that should have sold for about $1.00 ended up costing the customer $25.00.
Michael’s sells a beading needle kit with a needle threader in it. Beading thread is like a typewriter ribbon — flat — and the eye of a beading needle is a rectangular slit. You can get the needle threader into the eye, but after you thread your thread through the threader, it won’t pull back through. It will never pull back through. I can just picture how many of their customers struggle with pulling the thread back through, then give up, and never take up this wonderful bead weaving and jewelry making craft again.
If you go on Etsy or Ebay, or many places online, you will see a lot of turquoise beads for sale. In most cases, they are not turquoise. They are either magnesite or howlite dyed turquoise. But none of them say that. People think they are buying real turquoise.
One supplier of mine sold chasing hammers, with a metal head stapled with only one staple to a wooden handle. As soon as you tried to hammer something, the head flew off the handle. I called this to the attention of the supplier. The supplier never fixed the problem and to this day, sells the same, dangerous chasing hammer.
And I can go on and on.
But, I want to go back to the CDC, Tennessee and the early 1980s. The science folks at this division of the CDC misrepresented regression analysis as the right method to use. They surely knew it was not. Why were they so resistant to changing the method to something they surely knew would be better in this situation?
Clinton, Tennessee is down wind and down river from Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge is where there is a lot of radioactive waste. It is the home of a federal facility that has dealt with, for decades, radioactive materials. The cancer rate in Clinton was hundreds of times that of the state average. A few of us took a trip to Oak Ridge.
It turns out that when you mix federal waste with other waste, all of it is considered federal waste. Federal waste is regulated by the US Department of Energy. Local waste haulers were mixing non-federal waste with federal waste, then driving it to the river’s edge and dumping it. If it were all non-federal waste, this would have been illegal in Tennessee. Dumping in the river, at least at that time, was not prevented by USDE regulations and procedures. As federal waste, Tennessee could do nothing but watch. As we did. We watched near the river’s edge as an unending line of waste trucks were lined up waiting to dump their waste into the river. We felt our options for any further investigation and mitigation were limited.
In New Johnsonville and Waverly, the adverse maternal pregnancy outcomes were 300 times the state average. These included miscarriages, still births, premature births and maternal deaths. It could have been a lousy doctor effect in these largely rural areas. Or something else. There was a Superfund toxic waste site next to the river in New Johnsonville. Toxic waste could have been contaminating the water supply.
We sent a report to the CDC, and in two days, two project officers rushed to meet with us in Nashville. In a large conference room, we all sat at the end of a well-worn wooden table. I was about to explain what we had found and propose some options for further investigation. Before I could get a few words out, the lead project office said stop what we were doing. Return to regression analysis. Cover up anything we had found to date. Yes, he used the words, Cover Up. They left immediately to return to Atlanta. I told my boss that You can’t use the words cover up and professional in the same sentence. Yes you can, she retorted.
And, if that wasn’t awkward and unpleasant enough, the director of the Environmental Division of the CDC demanded our immediate presence in Atlanta.
One of my competitors, another bead shop in Nashville, a husband and wife team, does a lot of things which, to me, are morally wrong and unethical, but maybe not from a business ethics standpoint. I don’t know. But this competitor always gives me a lot of things to marvel at and talk about.
I had arranged a precious metal clay certification workshop at my store. The instructor lived in Wichita, Kansas. The wife drove from Nashville to Wichita and knocked on this instructor’s home door. She said she was driving through and had a lot of Czech glass beads for sale. Would the instructor like to look at her stuff? The instructor let her in.
Rather than show any Czech glass beads, the wife immediately went into influence and persuasion mode. She explained, quite untruthfully, how their shop was much more sophisticated than ours, had a better student clientele, and, in almost demanding terms, told the instructor that the certification workshop should be held there. The instructor ushered her out the door.
On another occasion, I was holding a bead weaving workshop in the store at the end of June one year. The instructor was from California. A few weeks before the workshop date, the husband from my competition phoned her. He asked her for her flight information. He told her he would pick her up at the airport. Of course she found that odd, and declined his invitation. He sent out a notice to his customer list announcing her workshop at his shop. Even though the workshop was at my shop. And the weekend of the workshop, he parked his car in the lot outside my shop. He kept his headlights on. It seemed like he was there to take names. Some of the participants even went out to his car to say Hello. Creepy.
Whatever.
My boss and I drove down to Atlanta. At 9am, we found ourselves in the office of the Director. And his tirade began immediately. It lasted almost 30 minutes, at which point, we were ushered into a conference room.
On one side of the table sat several CDC staff members and a transcriber. My boss and I sat on the other side. They ordered us to change the methodology to regression.
I said, No. Regression is not sufficient, given the study they were paying us to do. Look at how much we already uncovered using my methodology.
Regression.
No.
Regression.
No.
The lead project office stood up and went to the blackboard. He wrote out the regression formula and sat down.
I went up to the blackboard. I erased the regression formula and wrote the ridit formula. I sat down.
The project officer was back up at the blackboard, and re-wrote the regression formula.
I got up again.
This went on until 12:00 pm noon. We took a break for lunch.
In the world of the absurd, lunch was absurd. One of the most absurd things I’ve ever been a part of.
We all went out to lunch together, as if we were buddy-buddy colleagues. We sat around a large round table. The talk was friendly and covered several topics, none of which related to this project-in-question or any health care or environmental topic. Lunch lasted 1 hour.
Back to the CDC offices. And the conference room. Lunch a distant, forgettable memory. Until 4:00pm, it was the same. Project officer up to the board, then back down. And me back to the board, then back down.
Meeting over. No words exchanged. My boss and I got back in her car and headed to Nashville.
That was true in Atlanta, and that is very true in jewelry world.
Swarovski sells crystal beads made in Austria, and allows crystal beads made in China to carry the same Swarovski label. But there are obvious quality differences: not as bright, more misshapen pieces in a package, holes drilled off-center, finishes which should be permanent flaking off to the touch.
Toho sends their lower quality beads to China, they get repackaged and sold in craft stores like Michael’s. But all under the Toho label. Just like the high quality ones produced and packaged in Japan and sold in bead stores.
Sterling silver is supposed to have copper in the alloy, but manufacturers sometimes substitute nickel for copper to keep the cost down. But both get labeled .925 sterling silver (92.5 percent silver, the rest is the alloy). Sterling with nickel in it is more brittle. Picture an ear wire. There is a loop at the bottom which gets opened up, a dangle put on, then the loop is closed. With nickel in the alloy, you can do this maybe 2–3 times before the loop breaks. You don’t have to worry about the loop breaking with copper.
I joke in my classes that this only affects women, and no one cares. But yes I do. Yes we should.
On the drive back from Atlanta to Nashville, my boss and I were both very quiet. We didn’t speak. A bit in shock. As we got closer to home, I asked my boss if we could return the grant to the CDC. There has to be some hidden agenda we weren’t aware of. This didn’t reflect well on our office in Tennessee.
The next morning, my boss met with the Tennessee Commissioner of Health & Environment. He told her he would replace the money lost from the grant with other money. Everyone in the office would be allowed to keep their jobs. He invited me up to speak with him. He asked me, if he were talking to the press, could he say with certainty that there were problems in these locales. I had to say, No, the analysis I did does not prove anything. It merely presents a flag for looking at something more closely.
For awhile, there was a Bead Society in Nashville. We were active participants. In fact, we gave anyone who joined a 50% discount in our store which would last for a month from their join-date. We worked with members to write by-laws and set organizational goals. One goal was to meet the conditions for non-profit status.
Around eight years after we joined, new officers were elected and radically changed the culture of the Society. The President, Vice President and Secretary formed a tight group. They would not even allow the Treasurer to have access to the bank account. They would not allow the Program Committee Chairperson to plan or participate in any events. The three officers handled all the money. The three officers planned the events. All things they were personally interested in, and all money losers. There was a bylaw stating that if any program were anticipated to lose money, the membership would have to vote whether to continue with it. They ignored the bylaw. The officers spent Bead Society funds lavishly on gifts for themselves. We dropped out of the Bead Society.
Back at the Department office, I remember the phone started ringing. Over and over again. The CDC Environment Director, the lead project officer, other project officers were taking turns calling my boss. One call would be threatening. The next polite. One pleading. Back to threatening. Then polite. After 3 days of calls, my boss was about to cave in. But I told her: They hate us. We’re not doing what they want. They could easily get another state to take the money. Why are they so persistently wanting us to take the money back? It was like a light bulb went off above her head. Suddenly, she realized she had some leverage. We just didn’t know why.
The calls went on for almost a week. One last call was from the CDC auditor. It turned out that when a grant is turned back, it precipitates an audit. The Environmental Division had been skimming over $1,000,000 off the grant which was supposed to go to the state of Tennessee.
Morality is an interesting concept. It is not fixed, I discovered. It can be a moving compass. While working for the state, my own compass kept moving further and further away from that moral center. I was ambitious. I wanted to do great things. But to be included with the powers that be and the activities ongoing, I found I began to accept more and more things as ethical — things I would not have labeled as such years earlier.
I found myself very willing to work with people like my project officer to whom cover up and professional could be used in the same sentence. My own boss liked to access private state databases which listed AIDs patients, people accused as sex offenders, doctors and pharmacists and psychiatrists and other professionals whose credentials and behaviors were under review by the various boards. As sport, and almost daily, she would share one or more of the names with people or organizations not particularly friendly or aligned with these people. I looked the other way. I discovered that instigating a federal audit would automatically stop a state audit. I stopped state audits of several Tennessee officials under investigation for abusing funds. To me, I let it feel OK. I was doing my job.
I’m not sure I would have recognized that my moral compass was shifting a bit too much, were it not for a friend who pointed this out to me.
We didn’t take the grant. The final outcomes from our adventure with the CDC grant mostly came down to things I was told happened, but did not know directly.
· A few weeks earlier, one of our staff came back from lunch and told us she met the most interesting person. It was a lawyer from a prominent chemical company. The lawyer had asked a lot about the kinds of things we did in our office. However, no staff knew any of the details of what was happening except myself and my boss.
· This prominent chemical company, as I was told, owned a superfund site on the Tennessee River at New Johnsonville. They had a deep well where they disposed of chemicals. Four years earlier, unbeknownst to anyone except the company executives, their well had cracked. Toxic chemicals were leaking into the river. The river was the main source of the water supply.
· The chemical company met with the Commissioner. They agreed to fix things. The Commissioner agreed to keep things private.
· The Assistant Commissioner for the Environment, the Tennessee official responsible for monitoring situations like these, resigned the very next day. He took a job with that chemical company.
· I was told the CDC-Environmental division was under pressure to prove that living near a hazardous waste site was not hazardous to your health. The administration in Washington, DC at the time, in order to reduce the budget, wanted to cut back dollars allocated to cleaning up Superfund sites. They needed proof why.
· I took another job.
· The State eventually did do a special investigation in New Johnsonville. In their report, they found nothing.
The idea of morality gets mixed up with ideas about deception, misrepresentation, someone not knowing something, something inadvertent, something right from one perspective and wrong from another, something omitted. It can be a difficult concept to pin down.
But if we view jewelry designers as professionals, then we want to include some reasonable idea about morality into what they do. Or at least, their intent. Jewelry designers, and in fact, government officials as well, are free to make the choices they want to make and determine their own destinies. They are free to stay true to their own values and beliefs. But they need to take a level of responsibility for these choices and where these choices take them. And own up to the consequences.
Moral, ethical and business ethical choices should lead to better impacts on the stakeholders. These include the designer him- or herself, the wearer, the viewer, the buyer, the seller, the exhibitor, the collector, the teacher, the student, the colleague. These impacts involve the experience and sensing of beauty, the comfort and wearability of the pieces, the affirmations these pieces provide, the gaining of something of value, the satisfying of desire, and the sharing of the artist’s understandings, inspirations and visions.
Authenticity is important here. A person should not succumb to broader social and organizational norms. They should be true to themselves. I probably was not sufficiently authentic when I worked for the state of Tennessee. As a jewelry designer now, authenticity is key.
And, while pursuing my Rogue Elephant, it would be amoral and unethical to harm it unnecessarily. It would be just as wrong to halt my pursuit or turn around and head the other way. Pursuing my Rogue Elephant is perhaps the most authentic and moral thing I, or for that matter, any jewelry designer, can do.
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.
How To Design, Take Measurements For And Finish Off Multi-Strand Pieces
Multi-strand bracelets and necklaces are always in style and always in demand.
Many designers quickly find out, however, that they are not so easy to construct, and often do not lay on the body the way the designer initially envisioned.
Part of the problem has to do with measurement.
· How long should each strand be?
· How long if the strands are sequential, that is, do not overlap? Here, you will want strands each of a different length.
· How long if the strands do overlap? Usually, if you want overlap, the strands will approximately be the same length.
Related to measurement is some confusion about what you are really measuring — the linear length against a ruler or on a bead board, or, — the circumference length using a person or mannequin or sizing cone.
Actual linear length will vary, based on the diameter sizes of the beads, whether you are dealing with any gradations in bead sizes, and how far apart on the body you want each strand to lay.
Only circumference length will serve you well here. But this means you will be planning and constructing around a curved surface or plane.
Another part of the problem is choosing the wrong clasps and jewelry findings. Different findings work well under differing situations and circumstances.
Or, related to this, part of the problem could be how the clasp assembly was constructed without sufficient support.
How long should each strand be?
Let me re-phrase this question:
How wide do you want the negative spaces to be measuring at the center of each strand?
Usually, your goal is to have a good consistency in the width of the negative spaces between each strand.
A traditional rule of thumb is that you want each subsequent strand to be 3/4″ to 1 1/2” longer than the previous one. I like to start my planning with 1” separations.
So, if the first strand is 16”, which of course, includes the 1–2” length the clasp assembly will add, then the second will be 17”, the third 18”, and so forth.
This rule of thumb is a good starting point for planning your piece. You will have to modify it based on the characteristics and sizes of the actual beads and components you will be using. Larger beads will take up more of the volume of negative space than smaller beads.
When your beads on the strand are graduated in size, you want to measure and work off your largest bead in each strand.
To get things right, and not get too frustrated, it is easiest to work off of a mannequin or sizing cone or an especially life-size necklace easel.
Working on a flat surface just doesn’t cut it.
You will also only attach things temporarily until you get all the strand lengths and negative spaces widths the way you want them.
I always begin with the shortest length strand.
If I’m working with cable wires, I end each side with a horseshoe wire protector. This lets me secure the beads on the strand pretty well, and gives me the equivalent of a hook to temporarily hook into my clasp. And it lets me remove the horseshoe wire protector if I want to add or subtract any beads on the cable.
I do not secure the clasp to the horseshoe wire protector or do any crimping until I have all the strands on the necklace arranged the way I want them.
I next try to complete the second smallest strand, and temporarily hook it to the clasp.
I work my way down until the longest strand.
When I am satisfied with everything and how it lays, I begin to finish the connection of each strand to the clasp assembly.
I finish off the first and smallest strand, connecting the clasp permanently, and crimping things in place.
Most likely, I will need to do some adjusting with the next strand. Things don’t work out 100% perfectly in the real world.
I do any necessary adjusting, then I connect that strand to the clasp permanently, and crimp things in place.
I go to the third strand. Most likely, I will need to do some adjusting. When I’m satisfied, usually focusing on the width of the negative space, I crimp.
And so forth down the necklace until the last strand.
With some styles of clasps, I like to use a strong, intervening jump ring, connecting the horseshoe wire protector to the fixed rings on the clasp.
All my jump rings will be the same size.
So, when I am testing things out, I hook the wire protectors (without the extra intervening jump rings) into the fixed rings on the clasp.
When I am ready to make things permanent, I crimp the crimp bead under the horseshoe, then attach the horseshoe to the jump ring and the jump ring to the clasp.
Say you are using a single strand clasp for a multi-strand necklace.
One approach:
You attach a large intervening ring to the clasp, and then attach each string to this large intervening ring.
The size of the ring should allow enough support or jointedness so that the multiple strands do not put too much stress or strain on one another at this point of connection.
Again, another strategy when using a single strand clasp for a multi-strand necklace, is to use some kind of end piece, like a cone or end cap with a hole.
In this case, you would attach each strand to a soldered ring — that is a ring with no gaps in it. The size of the ring would have to coordinate with the interior diameter of your end piece.
You never pull all the strands through the end pieces. This would put too much strain at that point where they exited the end piece, and attached to the clasp assembly.
You need this soldered ring to work as a support system and absorb and self-adjust to this strain, so your strands won’t break.
So, you attach all the strands to one side of the soldered ring. Then you take another piece of stringing material to the other side of the ring. You pull everything through the opening of the end piece, all the way back so your mess of knots doesn’t show. And you then construct the rest of your clasp assembly.
The soldering ring is your support system. Either the crushed crimps with the required loops, or the series of knots, depending on your stringing material are ugly. Your end pieces act like a lampshade hiding the mess, and making your piece visually appealing.
Still one more strategy is to use an end bar on each side of your piece, which has the number or rings on one side equal to the number of strands in your multi-strand piece, and a single hole on the other side.
You do the rest of your clasp assembly off the one ring on each end bar.
Be sure to use an intervening ring off each single end bar ring, before connecting the clasp.
Let’s say you have a 5-strand necklace, but only a 3-strand clasp.
It is ok to attach more than one strand to a single ring on the clasp. Just be sure this is sufficient support or jointedness.
If not, use a larger intervening ring, like a jump or split ring.
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.
As I pursue the pathways which have led me to my Rogue Elephant, for the most part, I feel free. I feel I can take responsibilities for the choices I am making, whether to go this way or that. I’m on that road to explore, to critique, to reflect, to ponder, to plan, to strategize, to move on. I feel within myself a purpose in life. This is all good. And right. I feel I have the tools to overcome the unfamiliar and the unknown. Clear. Confident. Not cocky.
However, during most of my childhood, youth and young adult life, my relationships with my relatives sometimes interfered. Irritated. Distracted. Distorted. Got me frustrated. Made me scared. Made me angry.
They are relatives. This is different than relationships with strangers or friends or colleagues. I too easily allowed my relatives to get inside my head. Too easily to be too sensitive and responsive to their own values, beliefs and expectations they placed on me. It made it difficult for me to stay on that path. And search for my Rogue Elephant.
It is that blood connection. That almost primal need for family, clan, tribe. You can’t pull away so easily. Distance yourself from them. Even if you barely know them. Even if you do not share their beliefs and values. Even if you detest them.
The Bridesmaids’ Bracelets
For years, I fretted. I worried, and fretted, and paced up and down, and down and up. I rubbed my hands in the way that worried people rub their hands. I shouldn’t go. I would not go.
To my niece’s wedding.
My only niece.
Of my only sister.
My niece who I had hoped and prayed and prayed some more that she would never get married. Why couldn’t she just live with the guy? Why marry? Marriage is an encumbrance. It’s an outdated, Middle Ages kind of thing that denigrates women under the guise of protecting them. They sign a contract giving themselves over to the man, vowing to obey. Respect. Follow. Bear babies. Cook. Clean. Even earn a living, if he can’t.
Yet the man keeps the power. His voice to God. Her voice through his to God.
Marriage. Not for me.
And I didn’t want to go.
Too afraid I’d say something or do something to upset people.
Because they would be there.
Those cousins.
And their children.
And their children’s children.
Too many of them, and only one of me.
But my cousins had rejected me because I was gay.
And that hurt.
And then that rejection became an idea of rejection and a symbol of rejection, and I thought how often in life, from when I was very young, to when I was much, much older, — how often in life had I been rejected for some label or category or reason having nothing to do with me. Rejected as a Jew. Rejected as gay. Rejected by friends. Rejected by strangers. Rejected by family.
So toxic.
Didn’t want to deal with this.
Preferred avoidance.
Thought over and over again what excuses I could give my sister.
I thought about this when my niece was 13.
I thought about this when she was 18.
Then 20, and 23, and 24 and finally 28, when I had to make a choice.
My sister and her family were very close to these cousins, closer to them in most ways than to me. Years ago, my sister used to invite me for Thanksgiving and for Passover. And she invited all these cousins, as well. She liked to give a party.
Partying with these cousins was too toxic for me, so I made excuses. Too busy at work. Things too slow in business so couldn’t afford it. Had other things scheduled.
For me to feel comfortable, my sister’s choice would have to have been “ME”, not “THEM”. I felt bad. I felt guilty. I didn’t want to put my sister in this situation. It was easier to come up with an excuse.
But year after year, the situation took its toll. Rejection — a symbol, but painful nonetheless. Not because of the act itself, but the symbolic power of the act to affect me — Rejection — put a wedge between my sister and myself. I did not have the self-confidence, and I didn’t value myself enough, to prevent caving in before this symbolically powerful act of rejection because I was gay.
I was always looking for love and connection, but when around my relatives, all I felt was isolated, confused and in despair.
I didn’t have to deal with this as long as I stayed hundreds of miles away from New Jersey and Maryland and Virginia and Florida. Tucked safely in middle Tennessee.
I Had To Go / I Wanted To Go
The wedding was in March.
The previous summer, I decided I would go. Not exactly sure what changed my mind, perhaps a feeling of familial obligation, perhaps putting my sense of self to the test, perhaps wanting to try out all that good food and cake and drink specially prepared for the occasion. My sister plans the best parties.
I offered to make bracelets for all the bridesmaids.
I wasn’t just being a good guy here. Jewelry and design are at the core of my identity. The jewelry I design is the result of my choices. Choices about colors. Choices about the placement of lines, shapes and forms. Choices about the clasp and how to attach it. Choices about materials and techniques.
My inner being. On display. Irrefutable.
My choices have little to nothing to do with the label “JEW”.
Nor do my choices have much to do with the label “GAY”.
They are about me. A Designer.
Reflected in my jewelry.
And would be on display.
Accept or reject my jewelry.
And you accept or reject me.
On my terms.
My own terms.
Me.
My essence.
My resonance.
My jewelry.
This was my chance to shine. I was going to create a special bead woven design for these bracelets. Something frilly and girly for a wedding, but something also indicative of my style. Something that would not take too much work, but would look very rich and substantial.
I designed what I thought would be the perfect bracelet. A mix of stitches. Great looking beads. Had movement and dimension. But I was struggling to find the perfect color palette. The bracelet was made up of 4 colors, and a 4-color color scheme is one of the most difficult to work with — especially when it comes to beads, which are not available in all colors, let alone 4 colors which could specifically work in a specific color scheme in this specific bracelet.
While I was struggling to pick colors, Dara, my niece, had been doing a little online research, as well. She found two bead-strung bracelets on Etsy that she particularly liked, and shared these with me.
No, No, No!!!
My first reaction was Horror! Oh No!, she wants something bead strung and so non-artisan looking. Making these up would not signify to my terrible cousins nor to my good cousins, who I was all about. As Jayden, my partner, said, buy all the parts and do it quick. You’re not close to your niece, so who cares. But to me, although the work involved would be minimal — it would not be enough of a gift for the wedding.
Don’t get me wrong. The two bracelets Dara picked out were very attractive. They were just so out of sync with everything I wanted to do, and everything I wanted to accomplish. And I had to ask myself: give Dara what she wants, or go off in a different direction?
The question was kind of rhetorical. Of course, I’d give Dara what she wanted. But what to do. How can I construe, mold, fashion, arrange the bracelet to be reflective of me? Jewelry designer Me. Bead artist Me. Worthy cousin to be awed and ooh’ed over Me.
Dara’s Bracelet
The bracelet Dara wanted was 3 strands of 6mm round fire polish beads in two coordinating colors which matched the color of her bridesmaid dresses. The beads were staggered in a V-shape like bowling pins, each section separated by a diagonally placed 3-hole spacer bar.
I thought long and hard about how I could make this general design my own.
A few weeks passed. And an idea came to me. I could bead weave the spacer bars. I could alternate right angle weave and flat peyote to create a stable, rectangular shape. The right angle weave sections would be the two sides, which would allow me to build in the holes. The flat peyote would be the top and the bottom, which would allow me to build in a shape-supporting structure. I would embellish the tops of the bars with 2mm round Austrian crystal beads, and I would create bead woven end caps on either side of the bar, to give the bars a finished and polished look. Then I would use needle and thread to string everything up.
That was my answer.
It was a good one.
So, first, I set about coming up with the bead woven pattern for my spacer bars. This did not take very long because I had a clear idea about what I wanted in my head. What was not in my head, however, was how long to make the bars and how many holes each should have. And would they work in the whole composition.
I ended up making 5 test bracelets, each requiring 11 spacer bars, and each with some variety in the design or placement of the spacer bars, and in the attachment strategy for the clasp.
Now I had three key tasks finished: (1) The design of the spacer bars (2) The construction plan for the bracelet (3) The construction plan for attaching the clasp
Next, selecting the right colors of beads.
First off, I wanted to use 6mm round Austrian crystal beads, instead of Czech glass.
There were images of the bridesmaid dresses on line, but the actual color skirted that area between blue teal and green teal, and not every computer screen showed the color exactly. It became critical to the choice of colors, given some limited choices available in the Swarovski line in this range, whether the dress was more on the green side or more on the blue side.
My sister said Blue.
My niece said Green.
My sister was supposed to send me a fabric sample, but she lost it.
I mocked up 3 bracelets, one all blue teal, one a mix of blue and green teal, and one more green teal.
My sister picked the green.
My niece picked the mix of blue and green.
And my gut, from looking at the computer images, was telling me it should be all blue.
Impasse.
I went with my gut, and settled on all blue, actually a mix of capri blue and Caribbean opal.
There were four bridesmaids. I asked my niece to get their wrist measurements. One the bridesmaids had a very, very thin wrist. Would my design work for her? I agonized over it. The sections were very rigidly organized, and I’d have to remove a whole section at a time. Luckily, this worked OK.
The only other hitch that came up had to do with the availability of the parts.
I designed the piece in September. The wedding was in March. In November, I tried to acquire enough clasps and end bars for the clasp assembly, and found out that both the clasp and end bar I had chosen were either out of stock until the following April, or no longer manufactured.
So began the desperate hunt for these parts. The end bars had to be 22mm wide, or very close to that, with 3 holes and 3 holes spaced out evenly across the bar. Most 3-hole end bars were around 15mm wide. Found some in Israel, which while no longer manufactured, the supplier had just the amount I needed left in stock. Easily found a substitute clasp.
Then there were the beads. Again, I’m in November. The capri beads were out of stock from my supplier, and 2 of my alternative suppliers, but due back by December. The Caribbean opal beads were out of stock, and not due back anytime soon. I found a supplier who charged a little bit more for these, but got enough for my needs.
Whew!
Was Standing In The Same Room As My Relatives The Right Choice?
It was a few weeks before the wedding, and I was wondering if my choice to attend was the right one. Over and over and over again, I played out in my head what I would or would not say to my very inconsiderate, selfish, self-centered, inhospitable, unsympathetic, narrow-minded, prejudiced relatives. One part of me wanted me to be pleasant but distant. Another part of me wanted me to say something pointed and ugly.
I asked each of my friends, what they would do. I wanted so badly to be pointed and ugly. I was leaning in that direction. Of course, I didn’t want to upset my sister or my niece.
I thought back on the event that started it all. It was really so insignificant. An expected invitation to a cousin’s wedding never came. But I hadn’t planned on going. I did expect to receive an invitation, however. Because everyone expected me to receive an invitation. We all had been planning vacations and things to do around this invitation. For well over a year at that point. We had been planning. All of us. When we were going to arrive, where we were going to stay, and what we were going to do. And while I didn’t plan on going, I expected the invitation.
Rogue Elephants Are Shy And Hide In The Presence of Self-Doubt And Life Crises
I’m a firm believer that every few years, we each go through a life crisis. When we are babies, we have to resolve a crisis of finding out who to trust, and who not to. A few life crises later, we’re in puberty, having to resolve whether we’re still a kid, or some kind of adult. Several life crises after puberty, we go through the mother of all life crisis — what we call, cue the digital billboard, the Mid-Life Crisis. This crisis is filled with anger, frustration, regret, disappointment, fear.
My mid-life crisis arrived several years before Dara’s wedding. Eventually I came to terms with mid-life. That’s what I did. And then, immediately after my mid-life crisis, as if the mid-life crisis wasn’t traumatic enough, I had a sudden, almost primal, no, yes it was full-on primal, urge to reconnect with my family. I had grown apart from my sister and father and brother. From my first cousins in Florida and those in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. And from their children, my new second cousins. And I was feeling the need to re-connect. Post mid-life I urgently felt the need to re-connect. Like it was life or death. Connection. Affirmation. Completeness.
And I reconnected.
I slowly began to let everyone know I was gay. They kinda knew and suspected already. But I made it official. Pretty much everyone except my sister was supportive at some level. Eventually she got used to it.
I was invited to my cousin Michele’s oldest son’s wedding. And then, over the next few years, to some other weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs and special occasions. I re-connected. I was happy. Soon there were the occasional phone calls and emails. A few of my cousins sent out the periodic mass emails, and I was on their lists. I kept up with their newsy news and not-so-newsy news, their shared successes, their joys in life, and the every-so-often sadnesses. I felt included. Supported.
It was important to everyone, and you could tell, because they spent so much time doing it, to anticipate the next event we’d all attend. The next event was the marriage of my cousin Michele’s middle son.
It was to be a June wedding. I got a phone call sometime in April from my sister. “Did you get your invitation yet?” And a day later, from my cousin Leslie. “Did you get your invitation yet?” And obviously the answer was, No! Not yet. I kept checking the mail for several days, and then it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t invited. I wasn’t going to be invited. And if not getting invited to an event that I wasn’t planning on going to wasn’t enough of a jolt and shock, both my cousins Michele and Paulette dropped me from their almost daily mass email lists.
I was person non-grata. Why?
I asked myself, Why?
And I asked some cousins, Why?
And it became known that the Why was because I was gay.
And that was that.
Excluded again.
Of course, I wanted my sister to make the choice not to go.
She went.
And that put a wedge in our relationship that never really healed, because it was irreconcilable.
And I got very depressed for a few months afterwards.
There Is A Long History
I do not have to think very long or very hard to realize that my relationships with my relatives soured many years ago. There were slights. Special occasions arranged on dates my family could not attend. Arguments over matzah balls (hard or soft) and Thanksgiving dinners (traditional food or non) and inappropriate racist remarks and jokes. It was my uncle Sid, when asked to stop telling black (N-word) jokes, said, OK!, then began telling polish (P-word) jokes.
There were very barbed comments about home décor, kitchen counters, brands of appliances, whether a kitchen island or not. There were my religious cousins who would not visit New Jersey because they believed the ground outside the New York City metropolitan area was unholy. Who would not eat Kosher food prepared by my mom because she could never prepare food Kosher enough. There were the complaints that there was never enough food. And the constant, mean-spirited gossip relatives vomited out of their mouths about other relatives.
If something happened to me or to either of my parents or to my sister or brother, I could never turn to these relatives for practical or emotional support and help. I felt too alienated from them. They alienated me from them.
So I wasn’t invited to a wedding. So my relationship with my sister and her family never became close — at least for a long while. So I no longer kept up with my cousins and second cousins and all their offspring. So I had some issues with my parents and my school and the dominant Christian culture. That’s largely behind me. Not an obsession. But the oncoming wedding of my sister’s daughter forced me to focus on these things again.
Thank God the wedding only lasted a weekend.
Wedding Weekend
True to form, my sister threw a grand event people are probably still talking about.
In the few months leading up to the wedding, I concentrated on designing the bridesmaids’ bracelets. As I determined how I would make the pieces my own, I got very excited. I developed a very clever and professional way to bead weave the 3-hole separator bars. I combined Right Angle Weave and Flat Peyote, using the structural and inherent properties of each in a strategic way. This allowed be to create holes in the sides through when to thread the strands, and structural support to allow the bars to keep their shape.
I kept thinking that, while the bridesmaids would find the bracelets appealing and desirable, they would never appreciate the amount of thought, work and insight involved in their construction. So, I decided I would later turn this piece into a kit and a workshop. This piece was a great example of my evolving ideas and writings about the architectural bases of bead weaving stitches.
The wedding itself was beautiful, and went off without a hitch. The food was terrific. The location romantic. The flowers and bridal gown beautiful. There were over 200 guests. And about 60 of those I was trying to avoid. Relatives!
I arrived a day earlier. One of my cousins, whom I do speak with occasionally, arrived at the airport at the same time. After we checked in at our hotel, we went to lunch and unloaded about all the relatives. She and I have similar opinions about these people.
In the late afternoon, I stopped by the Bridal Suite, where they had set up to greet guests arriving early and staying at the hotel. You walked into the equivalent of a living room. Off to the left were a bedroom, kitchenette and bathroom. Off to the right were a dining room and an outdoor patio. It was in the 30’s and wet and snowy, so no one went out on the patio.
As more and more people gathered in the Suite, I found myself talking to some folks in the dining room. And then, one by one, two by two, three by three, these cousins I wanted to avoid started filling up the center room. And I found myself backing up against the far dining room wall, seemingly pushing myself into the wall and through it, or so it felt to me. My mind left the room and merged into the wall. I desperately looked for an opening where I could run through the living room and out the door. But more and more people came flooding in. I was having trouble catching my breath, slowly going into panic.
At last, an opening. I escaped. Hyperventilating. I went up to my room, and waited until I regained some composure. My panic attack had run its course.
Twenty minutes later, I returned to the Bridal Suite, bridesmaids’ bracelets in hand. I had put each into its own jewelry box, with the name of the bridesmaid written on a card in each box. They were going to take the bridal pictures in the morning, and I wanted to be sure they were wearing their bracelets. And I secretly wanted a lot of these people crowding this Bridal Suite to get a glimpse of what I had made.
As I had thought, they loved the bracelets — they were beautiful — but were clueless about design. That “full” feedback is so very important to me, but often missing.
Luckily the colors of the bracelet perfectly matched the dresses.
My job was done.
It was many years later, that I was able to distance myself emotionally from these people. Underlying, gnawing tensions here led, forced might be a better word for it, the way towards finding new meanings in life for myself. A source of growth and discovery. I eventually found my Rogue Elephant and beaded him. A crutch, perhaps. A diversion from family, maybe. Or a hand-knee-trunk up. A connection. A purpose.
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.
I thought I heard some swish sound of something moving in the air. Something from the back of the room. Headed toward the front of the room. And a sudden click, perhaps a bounce, then another click, click, perhaps another bounce, another click, a rolling sound, and yes, something hit the guy speaking in the front of the room. That guy was my father. That noise I heard was the sound of a plastic pharmacy bottle and its plastic safety cap making a bee-line towards that guy in the front of the room. And bull’s-eye!
My father, you see, at the time, was President of the New Jersey Pharmaceutical Association. He had higher ambitions to get appointed as a Commissioner of Pharmacy on the New Jersey Pharmacy Board. The Board, knowing that, politely volunteered him to introduce the new safety-capped prescription bottles to the pharmacy association’s members. So here he was.
And it just wasn’t one bottle that came flying. I was so peeved. I had taken the time to go up and down the aisles of this auditorium, handing sample bottles to each and every pharmacist there. Now these bottles, one after one after one after one, were getting thrown to the front of the room. My father dodged most, but not all. Yet, at no time, did my father deviate from his presentation. He kept talking from his notes from start to finish.
The original safety capped bottles were difficult to open, to say the least. The standard was that it should take an adult 3 minutes or less to open, and a child 5 minutes or less. Forget about it if you were elderly. Opening these wasn’t going to happen. And most elderly, once they got the caps off, left them off. When my father quoted this standard, that’s when most of the bottles flew up into the air, along a curved trajectory, and ever-so-slightly towards the dais. Plastic hitting tile or concrete or whatever.
And my father’s final line: Within 3 months’ time, the state will require all pharmacies to use only these new safety capped prescription bottles. You’d have thought the room was filled with cows with slight speech defects. Boooooo…..! Boooooo…..! Boooooo…..!
I internalized all this. My father modeled what it meant to be a professional. I model for my jewelry making and beading students what it means to be a professional. My father stuck to maintaining high expectations and standards. To the chagrin of many of my students, I hold them up to high expectations and standards. Although I don’t get plastic bottles thrown at me, I have had to confront a lot of resistance when trying to have my students, my clients, my customers, my colleagues live up to that label I call professional.
There is a widespread belief that crafters and makers are not professionals. There is no law about this. Or regulation. Or rule. It is more of an assumption. Laziness. Low expectations. Low self-esteem. A lack of understanding of the role of a jewelry designer. I refuse, however, to succumb to anything less.
The very nature of jewelry itself necessitates the designer’s role as professional. Jewelry is made to a quality standard. Since jewelry is to be worn and bought and sold, the needs and desires of both designer and wearer must be taken into account. In fact, each piece of jewelry, introduced publicly in whatever way and in whatever circumstance, by definition, triggers conversation. Defines relationships. Exposes desire. Sets possibilities as well as boundaries on participation.
The designer has key responsibilities here, given all the choices which need to be made, when translating inspiration into aspiration into an actual piece of jewelry. The designer can be nothing but a professional. Whether she or he believes it or not. Or acts like it or not. Designers cannot barricade their doors to their Rogue Elephants. My point: They have to bead them.
The whole prescription bottle thing was a mess. One of the things professionals learn to get good at is in anticipating their client’s needs, then shaping what they say and what they do accordingly. It’s about establishing relationships which help clarify what each other knows, assumes, wants, desires, can or cannot do. As a professional, the preference should not be on relying on the law to force these pharmacists to comply. The preference should be to reach an understanding so that the pharmacists, no matter how skeptical or reluctant, will comply on their own. My father presented his message, but it wasn’t received well. As a professional during this time, my father needed a little more development.
The Audacity
In 1998, I created a school to teach jewelry making and beading using a professional model of education. I was literally ANGRY, and very frustrated, that so many of our shop customers had taken so many classes around town, but still could not really do much on their own. I wanted them to be more informed. To do more than making the same project over and over again. To challenge themselves. To experiment. To play. I knew Rogue Elephants loved to play.
My professional training had been in planning and design. While it was health planning and urban design, and although I hadn’t worked in this particular professional capacity for 20 years, everything I learned seemed very appropriate for jewelry design and beading.
But what I saw around me in Bead World — the types of classes taught and the types of books available and the types of articles in beading and jewelry magazines — none of these things seemed quite on the mark. None of them taught about design. None of them challenged the beader or jewelry maker to step out of some very constricted boundaries and rules. None of them seemed to result in teaching beaders and jewelry makers a set of transferable skills. None of them guided beaders and jewelry makers to develop their Designer Tool Boxes — those sets of hard and soft skills which would allow them to resolve unfamiliar or difficult problems in design.
In the jewelry making world, everything seemed oriented around sets of steps. Buy books with sets of steps. Take classes to learn sets of steps. Take more and more sets of steps. The more steps you complete, the more supposedly you learn. How many steps do you have to climb before you reach the top?
But, no matter how many steps you complete, you really don’t learn how to recognize the kinds of implications and to make the kinds of choices you need to make, in order to decide what to include, and what not to include, how to proceed, and how not to proceed, in your pieces of beadwork and jewelry. You do not learn how to make the necessary tradeoffs between beauty and function, appeal and wearability, shape and movement. You do not learn how to create jewelry with a recognition of how that jewelry sets a tone. Triggers a conversation. Defines a relationship. Fulfills needs and desires.
I kept thinking of an idea of a Jewelry Making and Bead School that provided classes and other learning opportunities more in line with my own professional training in health care and urban design. Not to teach sets of steps. But to teach skills. Not to learn things randomly and at will. But to learn things in an integrated ordering. However, I didn’t have the depth of beading and jewelry making experience to pull this off. It was a BIG project, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to take something like this on.
And there was that headline — Little beading experience, wants to form School. I found that people thought I was very presumptuous. That I was treading into areas I had not earned the right to be in. That whatever I did, was too complex — either why bother, or why struggle? That there were enough classes at the other beading shops in Nashville, and there would not be any measurable demand for something different, more involved, more demanding.
Who did I think I was? This situation I found myself in reminded me of Picasso’s drive to create cubism. It took him 10 years to define it well enough, create enough attractive and desirable examples, and get it accepted as a force in art. I had visited the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain several years ago. Picasso spent his boyhood years in Barcelona. The museum showcased his early-early work through his “blue” period, and up to before the cubism painting style everyone knows him by so well. It showed the development of Picasso’s inner drive to create something great and to be famous.
What the Museum’s story told was that Picasso was basically a shit in search of a reason. Pushy, arrogant, intense. He’d work a color or motif to death. He was intent on fame, or perhaps validation. As a young man, he moved to Paris for awhile, and associated with all the new exciting artists that Paris attracted in the late 1800s, early 1900s. He learned from them, socialized with them, fraternized with them, shared political and artistic views with them, imitated some of their works, and intently developed rules for a new personal artistic style.
At one point, he was determined to create and define a new style of painting. He collaborated with George Braque over 10 years to refine ideas about cubism. At that point, he was discovered, and became the primary focus of cubism as an artistic style.
I don’t mean, in telling the story about our beadwork and jewelry making school, to compare myself to Picasso. The audacity. I don’t think I was a shit. Though I imagine some of the people I worked with thought so. I never thought it would take so long to feel that our program ideas had “clicked.” It took 7–8 years. Or that I would stay the course, despite set-backs and estrangements. Perhaps that’s for posterity to decide, or another writer, like myself, writing about me.
All About Choices and Responsibility
In my father’s drug store, I stood by the register counter one day. My father was in the pharmacy section on the phone. I eavesdropped.
He was trying to get through to a physician. He wasn’t having much luck getting beyond the first line of defense — the nurse receptionist. He was explaining, trying to, sometimes calm, sometimes with anger, often with concern, that the doctor wrote an adult dosage for a baby, and that this dosage would surely kill the baby. He wanted to ask the doctor to change the dosage. The doctor refused. And refused again.
The law in New Jersey at that time forbid pharmacists from questioning any doctor’s orders. Even my father’s phone call to the physician could be a chargeable offense. By law he was required to fill the prescription.
So my father had a difficult choice: follow the law and let the baby die, or break the law.
Although the jewelry designer is not in this kind of precarious situation, there are still choices to be made and responsibilities to be taken for their choices. Jewelry is to be worn. It may be bought. It may be exhibited and collected. In short, the designer serves someone else. The designer makes that person’s life somehow better. More satisfying. More self-affirming. More culturally-affirming. While a miscalculation in design and construction choices will not lead to death, it can still have many negative consequences. As a professional, the designer will want to anticipate, mitigate or alleviate any possibilities for negative consequences.
And what happened to the baby?
My father resorted to a little bit of civil disobedience. He called every pharmacy in a 5-county area. He got every pharmacist to agree not to fill any and all prescriptions written by this doctor. The doctor’s patients were not happy about this. But, the doctor got the message. The medical society in New Jersey got the message. The Medical Board got the message. The state legislature changed the law to give pharmacists more professional responsibility in this kind of situation.
I always wanted — probably may never succeed — in changing how jewelry makers and beaders learn their craft. It’s about high expectations, professionalism, choices, responsibilities — and developing a literacy and fluency in design and building up that Designer’s Tool Box. This makes so much sense to me … why not to everyone else, I ask myself.
I don’t know if I’m copying my father, paying homage to him, genetically predisposed to who he was. But I bring all this insight — some say, baggage — to the design of jewelry. How it is made. How it is sold. How it is taught.
It Takes A Lot Of Push and Determination
I was talking with a nationally prominent jewelry instructor about my ideas for educating jewelry makers and beaders. She thought it was a waste of time. Most students only want to follow a set of steps and end up with something. Given what they want, that’s all the effort she wanted to make into teaching them. If a student wanted to go further, she would gladly answer their questions. But it was not her job or responsibility to instill professional values, expectations, or higher level skills in her students.
I found the same attitude among local teachers. I had an extensive curriculum and needed teachers to teach the courses. I required written instructions for all classes. Teachers refused. I required that teachers provide samples of the projects in each class. Teachers refused. I required that core tasks be taught with one or more variations. Teachers refused. What really gored me was that the few teachers that agreed to create classes according to my requirements, in reality, did not. They told me one thing, and did something else. After several months, I began to notice that students were not learning what was spelled out in the curriculum. As one teacher I fired told me, she could do less work and get paid the same. I said, Goodbye, Good Luck, Good Riddance.
I began to teach many of the classes myself. Had to learn a lot quickly. Over time, I regained the upper hand. I worked individually with each new teacher. I required that they create 4 interrelated, progressive courses. They had to specify how the goals for the next, related to the preceding course. This strategy worked.
At first, it was also difficult to attract students. They could take classes elsewhere that didn’t have prerequisites and requirements. Pay the same amount. End up with a finished project they could take home. Have fun, that was that. Again, over time, I regained the upper hand. I created a local demand for something more. I did not have to lower any curriculum expectations.
For me, it is such a high to learn things. Develop myself. Conquer new challenges in design, manipulation and construction. Leverage the strengths of materials and techniques, and minimize their weaknesses. I will never get it: Why others don’t share this excitement. Yet I am driven. Whether this relates somehow to my father, or not. I am driven.
In the late 1960s, my father was driven, as well. He wanted New Jersey to allow pharmacists to give injectables in the pharmacy. This could be flu shots, vaccinations, things like that. The law prohibited this. Through a lot of political manipulations, and with the support of both the New Jersey Pharmacists Association and the New Jersey Nurses Association, he convinced the Medical Board to allow a pilot test. He pushed the project forward.
A date was set. A number of pharmacies in the county agreed to participate. Pharmacists were trained. Announcements went out.
Three days before, however: another in a long line of road blocks. The Medical Board reneged on their agreement. Pharmacists would not be allowed to administer injectables. My father knew they could not, however, stop nurse practitioners from doing so. A nurse practitioner was lined up for each drug store.
The Medical Board put up another roadblock 2 days before the event. Now, injectables could only be administered in a separate area devoted to the activity, with a detail of space requirements — roughly 6’x 6’. In our store, we took down a display gondola. We took a wooden door and sat it atop two file cabinets to create a desk. A chair on either side. We put into effect all the other little required details.
The event occurred with great success. The legislature changed the professional standards to now allow pharmacists to administer injectables. Every time I walk into a Walgreens pharmacy to get my flu or COVID or whatever shot, this all started with my father, his ambition, his professionalism and his concern for good health care delivery.
The Professional
As I see it, and as I only allow myself to see it, jewelry design is not merely an activity which occupies your time. It is not something that anyone can do. It requires training, development, experience, more experience. It requires learning specialized skills.
Part of the jewelry designer’s development as a professional involves an ability to anticipate and understand how various audiences express desire and how various audiences judge a piece of jewelry to be finished and successful. Jewelry is here to amaze and intrigue. It is here to entice someone to wear it, purchase it, show it around. It is here to share the inspiration and prowess of the designer with those who see, feel, touch and inhabit it.
The more professional designer takes the time to explore how an audience is engaged with the piece. The designer learns insights in how any piece of jewelry evokes emotions and resonates with others. The designer is very sensitive to the experience people have at the point of purchase or gifting. Finish and presentation are very important. Acquiring jewelry is special and unique a process. Jewelry is not something we must have to meet some innate need; rather, it is something we desire because it stirs something within us.
At the heart of my questioning is whether we are paid and rewarded either solely for the number of jewelry pieces which we make, or rather for the skill, knowledge and intent underlying our jewelry designs.
If the former, we do not need to call ourselves professionals. We do not need much training. Entry into the activity of jewelry design would be very open, with a low bar. Our responsibility would be to turn out pieces of jewelry. We would not encumber ourselves too much with art theory or design theory. We would not concern ourselves, in any great depth, and certainly not struggle with jewelry’s psycho-socio-cultural impacts.
If the latter, we would see ourselves as professionals. We would need a lot of specialized training and experience. Entry into the activity of jewelry design would be more controlled, most likely staged from novice to master. Our responsibility would be to translate our inspirations into aspirations into designs. It would also be to influence others viewing our work to be inspired to think about and reflect and emote those things which have excited the designer, as represented by the jewelry itself. And it would also be to enable others to find personal, and even social and cultural, success and satisfaction when wearing or purchasing this piece of jewelry.
To become a professional jewelry designer is to learn, apply and experience a way of thinking like a designer. Fluent in terms about materials, techniques and technologies. Flexible in the applications of techniques and the organizing of design elements into compositions which excite people. Able to develop workable design strategies in unfamiliar or difficult situations. Communicative about intent, desire, purpose, no matter the context or situation within which the designer and their various audiences find themselves. Original in how concepts are introduced, organized and manipulated, and in how the designer differentiates themselves from other designers.
When I think about beading a Rogue Elephant, I think about taking ownership of my own design process. I think about finding personal meaning, and how through jewelry, this affects others. I think of myself as a professional. I think of my Rogue Elephant as something reachable. Attainable. A creative challenge. My muse.
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.
Learn To Bead 