Shawn and Jessica brought their two adopted Korean boys to the Korean restaurant. It was important that they immerse their sons in Korean culture wherever they could. When they finished the meal, they told their two boys to say “Good-bye” to the hostess in Korean.
“Annyonghi kaysayo”
Good bye, the hostess replied.
And a little sparkle was added to their lives.
Each month, Laura and her co-workers would clean up their Adopt-A-Highway. The work was not hard. The camaraderie great. The task important. And each month she returned home with a great sense of self-satisfaction. And some sparkle was added to her life.
The two little Guatemalan girls were fascinated by the Spanish-English dictionary. They stood on the side of the road, giggling with eyes very wide open in amazement. With the Atitlan Volcano behind them and Lake Trinitaria in front of them, they marveled at seeing so many words in such a small book — so many more words than their teacher could ever write on their chalkboard. And some sparkle was added to their lives.
Like other things in life, jewelry adds a little sparkle to people’s lives. And the jewelry designer, in many ways, determines how.
Sarah had never been to a large fabric store before. So when she entered MOOD in New York City, she nearly collapsed with excitement. She was shaking. Where to begin? Where to begin? She ran here. She ran there. She ran her hands along yards and yards and yards and yards of material. She found fabric patterns to compliment the line of jewelry she made. And some sparkle was added to her life.
Sue and Allan had made reservations for the Chef’s table at Dandelion’s eleven months ago. And they were lucky to get the reservation even then, but someone had canceled just minutes before Sue called to make the reservation. This was their very special night. As they were ushered into the restaurant, past one dining room, then another, past patrons enjoying their meals, and then they entered the kitchen door and were seated at the very cozy table. The Chef greeted them. Sue lightly touched her necklace, in a reassuring manner. And their night was as special as they imagined. And, yes, some sparkle was added to their lives, as well.
Aldia was on vacation, and the store clerk asked where she was from. I live in The Villages near Orlando in Florida, she said. They have 45 golf courses in that community! Do you believe it? she continued. I love The Villages. Everyone says Hello! to you. Everyone will love the beads I bought here. And there was a sparkle that came to her eye.
And as in other situations in life, the jewelry designer not only creates sparkle, but also must be very sensitive to how this sparkle enters people’s lives.
Jewelry may help people feel attached to their surroundings, Be more aware of themselves. Their status. Their situation. Their power. Their sexuality. Jewelry may serve to open up a whole new world for someone. Jewelry may signify how people may safely interact, and not interact. It may start conversations. As well as end them.
The jewelry artist designs jewelry. She or he selects materials to use. An order or arrangement is decided upon. A hypothesis is formulated about how best to assemble the pieces. And the hypothesis is put to the test. And hopefully the finished piece is more than the sum of its parts. Because it has to add sparkle to people’s lives.
The crazy black-white-brown-black-white-brown-black-white-brown piece Lucinda wore to the Latin dance club.
The silken pearl necklace which adorned Gena at her wedding.
The long, multi-strand necklace, with strong navy blues, and very large beads with almost mirror-polished flat surfaces that Paula always wore on days of staff meetings.
The very tiny hoops with simple 3mm crystal dangles that Missy wore every day in her life, everywhere she went, every time she left her home.
Jewelry adds sparkle not only to the life of the person wearing it, but also to the person viewing it. So the jewelry designer, in actuality, has to be doubly-effective with his or her designs. The successful jewelry designer has to be able to come up with designs that create sparkled “squared” — a double dose.
Adding “sparkle” is not, however, only about bright, sparkly things. It doesn’t mean adding glitz. It is not about bling. It’s some more subtle thing. Sparkle is something that wells up within. It is completing, reassuring, reaffirming, self-actualizing, reconnecting. It is a momentary oneness with the air, a breathlessness, a feeling so good welling up within you. A smile.
So, we must have some insight, some clue, some fathoming of how the person — whether the wearer or the viewer — begins to sparkle from within. What are they seeing? What are they noticing? How are they interpreting? How are they understanding?
How is their eye and brain working, when it interacts with jewelry, on a perceptual level? What is the eye and brain really seeing? What is it really responding to?
How is their brain interpreting what it sees? How does the brain come to evaluate the degree to which any piece of jewelry meets a person’s needs, wants, desires, motivations? For sparkle.
How does all this translation of lines and points and shapes and colors and textures and patterns and lights and shadows and drapes and flows and movements and silhouettes result in a sparkling from within?
The search for these answers is very much a part of what it means to pursue a sense of design. Otherwise, you will never truly succeed, through your jewelry, at adding a little sparkle in people’s lives.
Except in a random sense.
And that’s not good enough.
The Jewelry Designer Is A Conductor … Of Sparkle
The elements in jewelry, and their arrangement, play a song. These can be one note. These can be many notes. Or chords. Harmonic. Orchestral. Symphonic. Jazz. Waltz. Hip Hop. Cacophony. The jewelry designer needs to be able to hear this song in their inner ear as they design. Because they are responsible for the arrangement. And tweaking or changing the arrangement.
The jewelry designer is a Conductor.
Of sparkle.
Avoiding discord.
Sparkle Requires No Non-Essential Elements
The best jewelry — the most attractive, the most powerful, the most functional, the most inner-sparkling — are pieces within which there are no extraneous elements. Adding (or subtracting) anything within the pieces no longer makes it a better piece.
Here’s where many prospective jewelry designers trip up. Most try to over-embellish their pieces. If one fringe works, 12 fringes will work better. If bead-bezeled cabochons worked, 6 more will be better. They think if one sparkle is enough, many sparkles will be better.
And others are afraid to add more pieces, for fear someone will think they are show’y. They are afraid of too much sparkle. They shy away from asserting power. They are uncertain. If someone says one piece is beautiful, they wonder if they could create it again. Successful jewelry scares them.
These kinds of jewelry designers substitute more sparkle (or less sparkle) as a way of avoiding making hard choices — choices to find that parsimonious array of sparkle and conclusion which works.
I have found that many people get frustrated with these sites, in that sales can be minimal, or the numbers of people they are competing with seems daunting. But I have found these same people not doing all the necessary “good business” tasks, such as some intensive and persistent marketing of their wares, and smart photo and text detail for their pieces.
Question: WHAT KINDS OF EXPERIENCES HAVE YOU HAD, and WHAT KINDS OF TIPS CAN YOU OFFER?
Here’s some of the things I have found.
First, there are many, many online marketplaces to choose from. Some let you set up your own website, and others show your merchandise as part of a larger marketplace. Each has pros and cons. Perhaps one lesson is: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
The PROS for any site: – low commission on sales – good traffic – ease of setting up your shop – having a lot of control over how your shop looks; how customizable it is – no monthly fees – web host does a lot of promotion – site has a good search function – site has good statistics, and lets you easily track traffic and what has sold, at what price point, and when, for both of your specific merchandise, as well as for all merchants with similar merchandise
The CONS for any site: – high commissions and/or fees – when site is too big, may be difficult to get noticed – host limits how you list and present your items – host restricts your contact with your customers
Other types of questions to ask:
– Does site handle the billing and payments for you? – What kind of marketing does the site do? – Is it relatively easy to set up your site and keep it updated? – Are there are limitations on the numbers of items you might list at one time? – Are there any limitations on the number or size of photos you can include on your site? – How and where will your items appear in a search listing on the host’s site? – What payment methods/options are allowed? – Does the site restrict items to “Handmade” only, and how is “Handmade” defined? You do not want to compete with cheap, imported, machine made jewelry. – How easy is it to contact customer service? Do they provide a lot of easy-to-follow tutorials for setting up and managing your site?
Different types of fees that might be assessed: 1. Listing fee 2. Sales commissions, usually as a percent of sale 3. Renewal fees (when listings are time limited) 4. Monthly site maintenance fees
Some Tips and Advice:
(1) Your items should be different enough from others to set you apart, and get you remembered (2) If your items are similar to others, you might consider competing on price (3) Do NOT depend on the host to promote your site; you must actively — that means, almost every day — do things to promote your site. (4) Don’t just list your items and let them sit there (5) Excellent photos are a must (6) Treat your online shop as a business, not a hobby (7) Categorize and label your jewelry and jewelry lines; picture the words someone might type into a search bar in order to find this jewelry, and use those as key words in your labeling (8) Let your passion shine
Many, many people you will be competing with do not necessarily have good business sense, particularly when it comes to pricing their jewelry. People, in general, tend to underprice their pieces. They go out of business quickly. But while they’re in business, you are competing with them, and often you find it hard to compete on price.
This is a given. That means you have to spend more energy on marketing your competitive advantages, in order to justify the prices you need to charge, in order to stay in business. Some of this will come down to better presentation — more facts and great detailed images about your jewelry, and more details about the how your jewelry will benefit your customer. Better presentation equals more trust; more trust should translate into more sales. Some more competitive advantages: your jewelry is better made; it uses better materials; your line of jewelry is broader; you have better customer care policies; your style is more unique; your jewelry supports as “cause”.
And many, many more people you will be competing with have very good business sense. There are over 6 million items of jewelry on sale on Etsy at any one time — many by sharp, savvy artists. To get seen, heard and responded to takes emphasizing your competitive advantages, as well as persistent, broadly targeted marketing.
Little Ghindia (tapestry necklace) by Warren Feld, with overwritten text, source, FELD, 2019
“Jewelry is art, but only art as it is worn.”
That’s a powerful idea, — “as it is worn” — but, when making jewelry, we somewhat ignore it. We bury it somewhere in the back of our brains, so it doesn’t get in the way of what we are trying to do. We relegate it to a phrase on the last page of a book we have promised ourselves to read sometime, so it doesn’t put any road blocks in front of our process of creation.
We like to follow steps, and are thrilled when a lot of the thinking has been done for us. We like to make beautiful things. But, we do not want to have to make a lot of choices. We don’t want anything to disrupt our creative process.
We do not want to worry about and think about and agonize over jewelry “as it is to be worn.” Let’s not deal with those movement, architectural, engineering, context, interpersonal and behavioral stuff. We just want to make things.
To most artisans, making jewelry should never be work. It should always be fun.
Making jewelry should be putting a lot of things on a table in front of you, and going for it.
Making jewelry just is. It is not something we have to worry about managing.
It is easy to make, copy or mimic jewelry someone else has designed, either through kits or through imitation.
Making jewelry is doing. Not thinking.
Creating. Not managing.
We prefer to make jewelry distinct from any context in which it might be worn or sold. We don’t want someone looking over our shoulder, while we create. We don’t want to adjust any design choice we make because the client won’t like it, or, perhaps, it is out of fashion or color-shaded with colors not everyone likes. Perhaps our design choices at-the-moment do not fit with the necessities associated with how we need to market our wares to sell them. Our pieces might somehow be off-brand.
All too often, we avoid having to think about the difficult choices and trade-offs we need to make, when searching for balance. That is balance among aesthetics, functionality, context, materials and technique. And balance between our needs as designers and the wearer’s needs, as well. So, too, we shy aware from making any extra effort to please “others” or “them”. Even though this hardly makes sense if we want these “others” or “them” to wear our jewelry or buy our jewelry creations.
Everything comes down to a series of difficult choices. We are resistant to making many of them. So we ignore them. We pretend they are choices better left to other people, though never fully sure who those other people are. We yearn to be artists, but resign ourselves to be craft-persons. We dabble with art, but avoid design.
We hate to make trade-offs between art and function; that is, allow something to be a little less beautiful so that it won’t break or not drape and move well when worn. We hate to make things in colors or silhouettes we don’t like. We hate to make the same design over and over again, even though it might be popular or sell well.
But make these kinds of choices we must! Your jewelry is a reflection of the sum of these choices. It is a reflection of you. You as an artist. You as a creator. You as an architect and an engineer. You as a social scientist. You as a business person. You as a designer.
So, the more we can anticipate what kinds of choices we need to make, and the more experience we have to successfully manage and maneuver within these choices, the more enjoyable and successful our jewelry designs become … and the more satisfying for the people for whom we make them.
JEWELRY DESIGN IS A MANAGEMENT PROCESS
Designers who are able to re-interpret the steps they go through and see them in “process” terms, that is, with organization and purpose, have the advantage.
There are many different kinds of choices to be made, but they are interdependent and connected. Recognizing inter-dependency and connectedness makes it easier to learn about, visualize and execute these choices as part of an organized, deliberate and managed jewelry design process.
I am going to get on my soap box here. We tend to teach students to very mechanically follow a series of steps. We need, instead, to teach them “Process”. Strategy. Insight. Connectedness. Contingency. Dependency. Construction. Context. Problem-Solving. Consequences.
Good jewelry design must answer questions and teach practitioners about managing the processes of anticipating the audience, selecting materials, implementing techniques, and constructing the piece from one end to the other. Again, this is not a mechanical process. Often, it is not a linear step-by-step pathway. There is a lot of iteration — that is, the next choice made will limit some things and make more relevant other things which are to happen next.
A “process” is something to be managed, from beginning to end, as the designer’s knowledge, techniques and skills are put to the test. That test could be very small-scale and simple, such as creating a piece of jewelry to give to someone as a gift. Or creating a visual for a customer. Or when you need to know the costs. Or, that test could be very large-scale and more complex, such as convincing a sales agent to represent your jewelry in their showroom.
Better Jewelry Designers smartly manage their design processes at the boundary between jewelry and person. It is at this boundary where all the inter-dependencies of all the various types of choices we designers make are clearest and have the most consequence.
WELL-DESIGNED JEWELRY MUST BE MANAGED AT THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN JEWELRY AND PERSON
What exactly does it mean to “manage design at the boundary between jewelry and person?” What kinds of things happen at that boundary?
A person breathes. She moves. She sits at a desk, perhaps fidgeting with her jewelry. She might make sudden turns. She gracefully transitions from one space to another. She has shape, actually many shapes.
Her jewelry serves many purposes. It signifies her as someone or something. It expresses her feelings. Or status. Or future intentions. Or past history. It ties her to people and places, events and times. It suggests power, or lack thereof. It hides faults, and amplifies strengths. It implies whether she fits with the situation.
Jewelry attracts. It attracts seekers of the wearer’s attention. It wards off denigrators. It orients people to the world around them. It tells them a story with enough symbol, clue and information to allow people to decide whether to flee or approach, run away or walk toward, hide or shine.
Jewelry has a feel and sparkle to it. It reminds us that we are real. It empowers a sensuality and a sexuality. It elevates our esteem. Sometimes uncomfortable or scratchy. Sometimes not. Sometimes reflective of our moods. Othertimes not.
Jewelry is a shared experience. It helps similar people find one another. It signals what level of respect will be demanded. It entices. It repels. It offers themes both desirable and otherwise.
Jewelry has shape, form and mechanics. All the components must self-adjust to forces of movement, yet at the same time, not lose shape or form or maneuverability or appeal. If a piece is designed to visually display in a particular way, forces cannot be allowed to disrupt its presentation. Jewelry should take the shape of the body and move with the body. It should not make a mockery of the body, or resist the body as it wants to express itself.
Jewelry defines a silhouette. It draws a line on the body, often demarcating what to look at and what to look away from. What to touch, and what to avoid. What is important, and what is less so.
Managing here at the boundary between jewelry and person means understanding what wearing jewelry involves and is all about. There is an especially high level of clarity at this boundary because it is here where the implications of any choice matters.
The choice of stringing material anticipates durability, movement, drape. The choices of color and shape and silhouette anticipate aesthetics, tensions between light and shadow, context, the viewer’s needs or personality or preferences at the moment. The choice of technique anticipates how best to coordinate choices about materials with purpose and objective. The choice of price determines marketability, and where it’s out there, and whether it’s out there.
You choose Fireline cable thread and this choice means your piece will be stiffer, might hold a shape better, might resist the abrasion of beads, but also might mean less comfort or adaptability.
You choose cable wire and this choice means that your piece might not lay right or comfortably. A necklace will be more likely to turn around on the neck. It might make the wearer look clownish. At the same time, it might make the stringing process go more quickly. Efficiency translates into less money charged, and perhaps more sales.
You choose to mix opaque glass with gemstone beads, mixing media which do not necessarily interact with the eye and brain in the same way. This may make interacting with the piece seem more like work or annoying.
The ends of your wire-work will not keep from bending or unraveling, so you solder them. Visually this disrupts the dance you achieve with wire bending and cheapens it.
You choose gray-toned beads to intersperse among your brightly colored ones. The grays pick up the colors around them, adding vibrancy and resonance to your piece. The gaps of light between each bead more easily fade away as the brain is tricked into filling them in with color.
You mix metalized plastic beads in with your Austrian crystal beads. In a fortnight, the finish has chipped off all the plastic beads.
You construct a loom bracelet, flat, lacking depth or a sense of movement. Your piece may be seen as pretty, but out of step with contemporary ideas of fashion, style, and design.
If we pretend our management choices here do not matter, we fool ourselves into thinking we are greater artists and designers than we really are.
JEWELRY DESIGN MANAGEMENT: BUILDING A STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION FOR THINKING THROUGH DESIGN
Design management is multi-faceted. We intuitively know that proper preparation prevents piss poor performance. So let’s properly prepare. This means…
PROJECT Defining what I do as a “Project To Be Managed” — My Project is seen as a “system”, not merely a set of steps. The “system” encompasses everything it takes that enables creativity and leads it to success. These include things related to art, architecture, engineering, management, behavioral and context analysis, problem-solving, and innovation. For some designers, these also include things related to business, marketing, branding, selling and cost-accounting.
INSPIRATION Documenting, through image, writing or both, the kinds of things that are inspiring me and influencing my design
PURPOSE Elaborating on the purpose or mission of my Project — why am I doing this Project as it applies to me, and as it applies to others?
SITUATION Measuring the context and situation as these will/might/could impact my Project
STRATEGY Developing a strategy for designing my piece — outlining everything that needs to come together to successfully work through my Project from beginning to end
SKILLS Verifying, Learning or Re-Learning the necessary techniques and skills
SUPPLIES Securing my supply chain to get all our materials, tools and supplies needed when I need them
CONSTRUCTION Applying design principles of composition, form and structure. Paying careful attention to building in architectural pre-requisites, particularly those involved with support, jointedness and movement.
SHOWCASE Introducing my Jewelry Design to a wider audience. This might involve sharing, show-casing, or marketing and selling
REPLICATION Anticipating all that it will take to replicate the piece, if it is not a one-off, especially if I am developing kits or selling my pieces
REFLECTION Evaluating whether I could repeat this or a similar Project with any greater efficiency or effectiveness — The better jewelry artist is one who is more reflective and metacognitive.
DESIGN THINKING
Designing jewelry demands that we both do and think. Create and manage. Experience and reflect.
The better Jewelry Designer sees any Project as a system of things, activities and outcomes. These are interconnected and mutually dependent. Things are sometimes linear, but most often iterative — a lot of back and forth and readjustments.
The better Jewelry Designer is very reflective. She or he thinks about every detail, plays mental exercises of what-if analyses, monitors and evaluates all throughout the Project’s management. She or he thinks through the implications of each choice made. The Designer does not blindly follow a set of instructions without questioning them.
At the end of the day, your jewelry is the result of the decisions you made.
Something to think about.
HOW DO WE TEACH JEWELRY DESIGN THINKING AS A MANAGEMENT PROCESS
We should teach students to design jewelry, not craft it. Rather than have students merely follow a set of steps, we need to do what is called “Guided Thinking”.
For example, we might encourage students to construct and feel and touch similar pieces made with different materials, beads and techniques, and have them tell us what differences they perceive. We should guide them in thinking through the implications for these differences. When teaching a stitch, I typically have students make samples using two different beads — say a cylinder bead and a seed bead, and try two different stringing materials, say Fireline and Nymo threads.
We also should guide them in thinking through all the management and control issues they were experiencing. Very often beginning students have difficulty finding a comfortable way to hold their pieces while working them. I let them work a little on a project, stop them, and then ask them to explain what was difficult and what was not. I suggest some alternative solutions — but do not impose a one-best-way — and have them try these solutions. Then we discuss them, fine-tuning our thinking.
I link our developing discussions to some goals. We want good thread management for a bead woven piece. We want the beads to lay correctly within the piece. We want the piece to feel fluid. We return to Guided Thinking. I summarize all the choices we have made in order to begin the project: type of bead, size of bead, shape of bead, type of thread, strategy for holding the piece while working it, strategy for bringing the new bead to the work in progress. I ask the students what ideas are emerging in their minds about how to bring all they have done so far together.
At this point, I usually would interject a Mini-Lesson, where I demonstrate, given the discussions, the smarter way to begin the Project. In the Mini-Lesson, I “Think Aloud” so that my students can see and hear how I am approaching our Project.
And then I continue with Guided Thinking as we work through various sections of the Project towards completion. Whatever we do — select materials, select and apply techniques, set goals, anticipate how we want the Project to end up — is shown as resulting from a managed process of thinking through our design.
In “Guided Thinking”, I would prompt my students to try to explain what is/is not going on, what is/is not working as desired, where the student hopes to end up, what seems to be enhancing/impeding getting there.
With guidance, demonstration and repetition, it is my hope that such thinking becomes a series of Thinking Routines my students resort to when starting a new project. As students develop and internalize more Thinking Routines, they develop greater Fluency with design.
And that should be our primary goal as teachers: developing our students’ Fluency with design.
Abstract: Contemporary Jewelry represents a specific approach for thinking through design. Making jewelry is, in essence, an authentic performance task. The jewelry artisan applies knowledge, skill and awareness within the anticipation of the influence and constraints of a set of shared understandings. Shared understandings relate to composition, construction and performance. These understandings are enduring, transferable, big ideas at the heart of what we think of as “contemporary jewelry”. They are things which spark meaningful connections between designer and materials, designer and techniques, and designer and client. Managing these connections is what we call “fluency in design”.
Jewelry Design is a professional discipline. Every legitimately defined profession has at its core a discipline-specific way of thinking. This includes core concepts, core rules, and core beliefs. And it includes professional routines and strategies for applying, manipulating and managing these. The good designer is fluent in how to think through design, and the good contemporary designer is fluent in how to think through design which earns the label “contemporary”.
But, the jewelry designer can only wonder at this with crossed eyes and bewilderment. As a profession, jewelry design balances a series of contradictions, most notably to what extent the practice is craft, art or design. This works against professional legitimacy.
Jewelry Design, as a discipline, is not always clear and consistent about its own literacy — that is, what it means to be fluent in design. Its core concepts, rules and beliefs are not well-defined, and often break down by medium, by operational location — (visualize museum, gallery, studio, store, factory, workshop, class, home), and by the degree of involvement and commitment to the profession of the jewelry designer him- or herself. The diversity of materials, approaches, styles and the like make it difficult to delineate any unifying principles or professional image.
As designers, we see, feel and experience the evolving dynamics of an occupation in search of a profession. But our profession is still in search of a coherent identify. Perhaps we see this most often in debates over how we come to recognize what jewelry we think should be labeled “contemporary” and what jewelry should not.
On the one hand, the idea of contemporary can be very elucidating. On the other, however, we are not sure what contemporary involves, how the label should be applied, and what the label represents. Yet, our sense-making search for its meaning is at the forefront of the professionalization of jewelry design. Our persistent questioning about “What is contemporary jewelry?” opens up thinking and possibilities for every jewelry designer, working across many styles and with many materials, both experienced and novice alike.
The term “contemporary” is defined as something occurring in our time, and that can be very confusing for the jewelry designer. We get caught in a major Identity Crisis for lack of a clear, agreed-upon definition of contemporary. How we resolve this Identity Crisis around a common understanding of “contemporary jewelry” can go a long way, I believe, towards developing a coherent disciplinary literacy and professional identity for all jewelry designers. Resolution can be very unifying.
Many conceptual questions about contemporary jewelry arise. We need to be very cognizant of how we think through our responses.
Does the label apply to every piece of jewelry made today? We see all kinds of styles, shapes, silhouettes, materials, techniques, fashions all around us. There appears to be no common denominator except that they all have been created in our time.
Should the label be applied to all this variation?
Could it?
Why would we want it to?
Does the label apply to a certain timeframe, with the expectation that it will be supplanted by another label sometime in the future?
What is contemporary jewelry?
“Contemporary” Is A Specific Approach For Thinking Through Design
I suggest that contemporary jewelry is not a specific thing. But rather it is a way of thinking through the design process. It is a type of thinking routine[1] which underlays the universal core of contemporary jewelry design. Contemporary jewelry is not every piece of jewelry made in our time. It is, instead, jewelry designed and crafted with certain shared understandings in mind — understandings about composition, construction and performance.
Contemporary jewelry is not associated with any particular color or pattern or texture. It is, instead, a strategy for selecting colors, patterns and textures.
Contemporary jewelry is not something that only a few people would make or wear, whether boring or outlandish. It is, instead, something most people recognize as wearable with some level of appeal.
Contemporary jewelry is not restricted to the use of unusual or unexpected materials or techniques. It is, instead, something which leverages the strengths or minimizes the weaknesses of any and all materials and/or techniques used in a project.
Contemporary jewelry is not a specific silhouette, or line, or shape, or form, or theme, but, instead, something which shows the artist’s control over how these can be manipulated, used, played off of, and, even, violated.
Contemporary jewelry is an integral part of our culture. We wear jewelry to tell ourselves and to tell others we are OK. It is reflective of the sum of all our choices about how we think through our place among others, our relative value among others, our behaviors among others, our preferred ways to interact, challenge, conform, question, organize and arrange.
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.
Think of all that power!
Each person 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.
If only we had the established profession and a disciplinary literacy to help us be smart about this.
FLUENCY[2] IN DESIGN: Managing The Contemporary Design Process
Jewelry design is, in effect, an authentic performance task.
The jewelry designer demonstrates their knowledge, awareness and abilities to:
1. Work within our shared understandings about contemporary jewelry.
2. Apply key knowledge and skills to achieve the desired result — a contemporary piece of jewelry.
3. Anticipate how their work will be reviewed, judged and evaluated by criteria reflective of these same shared understandings.
4. Step back, reflect, and validate all their thinking to reject any misunderstandings, and make adjustments accordingly.
The better designer is able to bring a high level of coherence and consistency to the process of managing all this — shared understandings, knowledge and skills, evaluative review, and reflection and adjustment. This is called “fluency in design”.
Shared Understandings[3]
Shared understandings should be enduring, transferable, big ideas at the heart of what we think of as contemporary jewelry. These shared understandings are things which spark meaningful connections between designer and materials, designer and techniques, and designer and client. We need, however, to recognize that the idea of understanding is very multidimensional and complicated.
Understanding is not one achievement, but more the result of several loosely organized choices. Understanding is revealed through performance and evidence. Jewelry designers must perform effectively with knowledge, insight, wisdom and skill to convince us — the world at large and the client in particular — that they really understand what design, and with our case here, contemporary design, is all about. This involves a big interpersonal component where the artist introduces their jewelry to a wider audience and subjects it to psychological, social, cultural, and economic assessment. Understanding is more than knowledge. The designer may be able to articulate what needs to be done to achieve something labeled contemporary, but may not know how to apply it.
Understanding is more than interpretation. The designer may be able to explain how a piece was constructed and conformed to ideas about contemporary, but this does not necessarily account for the significance of the results.
Understanding is more than applying principles of construction. It is more than simply organizing a set of design elements into an arrangement. The designer must match knowledge and interpretation about contemporary to the context. Application is a context-dependent skill.
Understanding is more than perspective. The designer works within a myriad of expectations and points of view about contemporary jewelry. The designer must dispassionately anticipate these various perspectives about contemporary design, and, bring some constructed point of view and knowledge of implications to bear within the design and design process.
We do not design in a vacuum. The designer must have the ability to empathize with individuals and grasp their individual and group cultures. If selling their jewelry, the designer must have the ability to empathize with small and larger markets, as well. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is where we can feel what others feel, and see what others see.
Last, understanding is self-knowledge, as well. The designer should have the self-knowledge, wisdom and insights to know how their own patterns of thought may inform, as well as prejudice, their understandings of contemporary design.
How the jewelry designer begins the process of creating a contemporary piece of jewelry is very revealing about the potential for success. The designer should always begin the process by articulating the essential shared understandings against which their work will be evaluated and judged. For now, let’s refer to this as Backwards Design[4]. The designer starts with questions about assessment, and then allows this understanding to influence all other choices going forward.
When designing contemporary jewelry, the designer will push for shared understandings about what it means to be worthy of the label “contemporary.” I propose the following five shared understandings as a place to start, and hopefully, to generate more discussion and debate.
These are,
1. Fixed Frameworks and Rules should not pre-determine what designers do.
Rules do exist, such as color schemes or rules for achieving balance or rhythm. But rules may be challenged or serve as guidelines for the designer. In fact, the designer may develop and implement rules of their own.
Designers do not learn understanding if they are only able to answer a question if framed in one particular way. How the designer invents and applies rules for managing design as a process become of primary importance because they reveal design fluency and thinking. And this allows for a variety of approaches as well as an escape from any dominant definitions. Nothing is sacred.
2. Jewelry should extend, rework, and play with, or even push, the boundaries of materials, techniques and technologies.
Contemporary designers are meant to ask questions, evaluate different options and experiment widely. They do this in order to leverage the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of materials, techniques and technologies used. Their jewelry should reflect this.
3. Jewelry should evoke emotions and resonance.
The audience is an integral part of the success of contemporary jewelry. The viewer/wearer recognizes things in the piece and is allowed to, (in fact, expected to), react and interpret. The designer’s goal is to achieve a level of resonance.
4. Jewelry should connect people with culture.
Contemporary jewelry is not made for art’s sake alone. Contemporary jewelry is made to connect to the world around us. It is meant to assist a person in recognizing how they want to live their lives, and how they want to introduce their view of themselves into the broader community or communities they live in.
5. Successful jewelry designs should only be judged as the jewelry is worn.
Jewelry is not designed in isolation from the human body. Its design should anticipate requirements for movement, drape and flow. Its design should anticipate the implications of the context in which the jewelry is worn. The implications for all jewelry design choices are most apparent at the boundary between jewelry and person.
Given that the designer “backward-designs [4],” he or she begins the process by anticipating those understandings about how their work will be assessed. The designer then is equipped to make three types of informed choices:
A. Choices about composition B. Choices about construction C. Choices about performance
The designer determines (a) what design elements to include in the piece, and then (b) rules for manipulating them. The contemporary designer c) measures these against our shared understandings about contemporary design. These measures are a continuum — degrees of contemporary, not either/or’s or absolutes. In any given piece of jewelry, some design elements may be very contemporary, and others might not.
GOOD COMPOSITION: Selecting and Articulating Upon Design Elements and Their Attributes
Jewelry making is a constructive process. It makes sense for the designer to begin with something like building blocks, which I call design elements. Design elements include things like color, movement, dimensionality, materials, use of space, and the like.
Each design element, in turn, encompasses a range of acceptable meanings, yet still reflective of that design element, and which are called attributes. These design elements can be arranged in different configurations of elements and their attributes.
The combination of any two or more design elements can have synergistic effects.
Working with design elements is not much different than working with an alphabet. An alphabet is made up of different letters. Each letter has different attributes — how it is written, how it sounds, how it is used. Configurations of letters result in more sounds and more meanings and more ways to be used.
A person working with an alphabet has to be able to decode the letters, sounds and meanings, as letters are used individually as well as in combination. As the speaker becomes better at decoding, she or he begins to build in understanding of implications for how any letter is used, again, individually or in combination.
This is exactly what the jewelry designer does with design elements. The designer has to decode, that is, make sense of a series of elements and their attributes in light of our shared understandings about jewelry design. The contemporary designer decodes in light of our further shared understandings about contemporary jewelry design.
The designer might, for example, want to select from this list of design elements I have generated below. I have arranged these design elements into what is called a thinking routine[1]. The designer uses the routine to determine how each element might be incorporated into the piece, and how the desired attributes of each element relate to contemporary design. They might also use the routine to look for issues of true and false. They might use the routine to rate each element as to importance and uncertainty.
THINKING ROUTINE: YOU JUDGE: MORE OR LESS CONTEMPORARY Use this Routine to assess whether a piece of jewelry is more or less contemporary.
Example of some choices I made using the routine when creating my piece Canyon Sunrise:
GOOD CONSTRUCTION: Applying Knowledge, Skills, Competencies for Manipulating Design Elements
Design elements need to be selected, organized and implemented in some kind of satisfying design. Towards this end, the artist, consciously or not, anticipates our shared understandings in order to make these kinds of choices.
These are the most visible choices the artist makes. We can see the finished piece of jewelry. We interact with it. We question it. We get a sense of whether we want to emotionally respond to it. We either feel its resonance, or we don’t.
Most artists manage intuitively, learning to make good choices as they receive feedback and assessment, and adjust their decisions accordingly. The better jewelry designers, however, show “metacognitive awareness” of all the things they have thought of, anticipated, structured, and accomplished during the design process as these relate to larger shared understandings about contemporary jewelry.
Let’s return, for a minute, to the analogy with building blocks and the alphabet. The design elements are building blocks. I compared them to the letters of the alphabet. Building blocks have attributes, and letters have attributes. Attributes further define them and give them purpose.
The novice designer learns to decode these building blocks and their attributes. With more experience, the blocks, just like letters, get combined and constructed into words and phrases and larger, meaningful ideas and expressions.
In essence, the finished piece of jewelry is an exemplar of the jewelry artisan’s vocabulary and grammar of design. The fluency in how the artist uses this vocabulary and grammar in designing their piece should be, I would think, especially correlated with the success and resonance of the piece.
Often, artists implement their design element choices with attention and recognition to Principles of Construction. Principles of Construction are the rules or grammar for using design elements in a piece. Given the artist’s goals for beauty and function, the artist is free to apply the rules in any way she or he sees fit. However, we expect to find this grammar underlaying all pieces of jewelry, whether the piece is contemporary or otherwise.
When we want to apply the label “contemporary,” however, we search for the choices and logic the artist has used for constructing design elements into a contemporary whole, and in anticipation of our shared understandings.
I suggest these 10 Principles of Construction. All Principles need to be applied, yet each is different from and somewhat independent of the others. For example, the colors may be well chosen, but proportions or placement not right.
GOOD PERFORMANCE: Seeking Continual Feedback and Evaluation About Choices and Results
The jewelry designer brings perspective. The designer shows they can rise above the passions, inclinations and dominant opinions of the moment to do what their feelings, thoughts and reflections reveal to be best. And, at the same time, the designer shows that they can strive for a rapport, a sharing of values, an empathetic response, a type of respect deemed contemporary.
If we return to our alphabet metaphor, it is necessary, but not sufficient, for the artist to assemble a palette of building blocks, thus, design elements. It is necessary, but not sufficient, for the artist to apply a vocabulary and grammar for arranging these building blocks, thus for constructing a piece of jewelry.
Most importantly, however, it is both necessary and sufficient for the artist to anticipate how the piece of jewelry will be assessed prior to making any choice about design element or construction. The more coherent and aligned each aspect of this process is, the better managed. To the extent the artist can strategically manage this whole “backwards” design process, the more fluent in design that artist is. The more fluent in design, the more the finished piece reveals the artist’s hand and resonates.
So, there is a very dynamic performance component to design. The contemporary jewelry designer needs to think about what criteria their client and the general culture and market will use as acceptable evidence of “contemporary” and “good contemporary design”, when the piece is introduced. The artist needs to think about things like connection, emotion, resonance, integrity, market.
The designer needs answers to several questions at this point.
What is the designer’s process and routine for thinking about shared understandings and evidence of authentic performance?
How well have they anticipated these criteria of evaluation?
Has the designer created a continual feedback loop so that acceptable evidence is introduced throughout the full process of design?
To what extent will the eventual evaluation of the contemporary jewelry designer and their work be fair, valid, reliable, and a sufficient measure of their results?
1 Thinking Routines. I teach jewelry design. I find it useful to engage students with various ways of thinking out loud. They need to hear me think out loud about what choices I am making and what things I am considering when making those choices. They need to hear themselves think out loud so that they can develop strategies for getting more organized and strategic in dealing with information and making decisions. My inspiration here was based on the work done by Visible Thinking by Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education .
2 Fluency. I took two graduate education courses in Literacy. The primary text we used was Literacy: Helping Students Construct Meaning by J. David Cooper, M. Robinson, J.A. Slansky and N. Kiger, 9th Edition, Cengage Learning, 2015. Even though the text was not about jewelry designing per se, it provides an excellent framework for understanding what fluency is all about, and how fluency with language develops over a period of years. I have relied on many of the ideas in the text to develop my own ideas about a disciplinary literacy for jewelry design.
3 Shared Understandings. In another graduate education class, the major text reviewed the differences between understanding and knowledge. The question was how to teach understanding. Worth the read to gain many insights about how to structure teaching to get sufficient understanding to enrich learning. Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005.
4 Backwards Design. One of the big take-aways from Understanding by Design (see footnote 2) was the idea they introduced of “backwards design”. Their point is that you can better teach understanding if you anticipate the evidence others will use in their assessments of what you are trying to do. When coupled with ideas about teaching literacy and fluency (see footnote 1), you can begin to introduce ideas about managing the design process in a coherent and alignable way.
Abstract: Jewelry making is a constructive process of expression. The language of expression begins with the idea of Design Elements. Design Elements are the smallest, meaningful units of design. Design Elements function in a similar way as vowels and consonants in a language. They have form. They have meaning. They have expression. Some can stand alone, and others are dependent and must be clustered together. Better jewelry designers are aware of and can decode these expressive aspects of design elements and how they are included within any piece. This is one part of learning a disciplinary literacy in design. This literacy begins with a process of decoding and builds to an intuitive fluency in design. This article focuses on this process of decoding.
Jewelry Design Composition
Jewelry making is a constructive process of expression.
The language of expression begins with the idea of Design Elements. Design Elements are like building blocks and function a bit like the vowel and consonant letters of the alphabet. They have form. They have meaning. They can be assembled into different arrangements which extend their meaning and usefulness in expression.
There is an underlying logic to this process — a vocabulary and grammar, so to speak. Recognizing how this vocabulary and grammar is structured and applied enables the jewelry designer to learn how to be fluent in design. Such recognition is critical in developing a coherent, consistent disciplinary literacy in jewelry design. Such disciplinary literacy is at the heart of a professional identity for jewelry design artisans. This literacy structure in design has four main components to it:
1) Vocabulary: Design Elements As The Basis Of Composition
2) Grammar: Principles of Construction
3) Strategy: Project Management[1]
4) Context/Culture: Shared Understandings[2]
This article focuses on the first component — Design Elements.
It makes sense for the designer to begin with something like building blocks, which I call Design Elements. Design Elements, like building blocks, are tangible things. They can be visualized. They can be touched and moved around. They can be combined in different arrangements. They can be used to create many types of expressions. Design Elements include things like color, shape, movement, dimensionality, materials, use of space, and the like. Design Elements are the smallest, meaningful units of design.
Not every Design Element is alike. Color is different than Shape is different than Texture. Movement is different than Balance is different than Dimensionality. Learning about and understanding the differentiation among Design Elements becomes very important if the jewelry designer is to have sufficient power and insight over consistency, variation, coherence and unity in their designs. This power and insight is called decoding. Every jewelry designer needs to learn how to decode, if they are to be successful in design.
Some Design Elements are syllabic meaning they are independent and can stand alone. Others are non-syllabic, meaning they are dependent and cannot stand alone.
Design Elements have graphic representations. Graphic representations allow these elements to be recognized symbolically as a sort of short-hand.
Each Design Element also encompasses a range of acceptable meanings, which I call expressive variations. These expressive variations, while different among themselves, are still reflective of that Design Element. They have universal qualities in that people tend to share understandings about what these expressive variations mean and how they are to be used. Color Schemes, for example, are objective, agreed-upon combinations of colors seen as coherent and unifying. Thus, any color scheme is an expressive variation on the design element of Color.
The universal, expressive variations associated with each Design Element are, in effect, attributes of that Design Element. These attributes have an objective quality to them in that there is general agreement among designer, viewer, wearer, buyer and seller as to what they express and how they might be used. There is an expectation that whatever role a person plays relative to the piece of jewelry, the Design Elements and their attributes will be decoded in a similar way.
At this stage in the jewelry design process, the focus is on a simple vocabulary. The vocabulary is made up of Design Elements and their expressive attributes. The vocabulary encapsulates a generally shared understanding of its meaning and how it is to be used. It is at the point of grammar, thus manipulation and construction, that individual artists get to show their artistic hand in selecting and placing these elements into a finished piece of jewelry.
These Design Elements and their attributes can be arranged in different configurations I call clusters. Clusters may consist of independent Design Elements alone, dependent Design Elements alone, or a mix of both. For example, we may use an arrangement of glossy and matte Color beads to project Dimensionality. We may use different Colors of beads, rhythmically arranged, to project Movement.
Combinations of Design Elements into clusters can have different effects, from synergy, antagonism, blending, bounding, freeing and inflection.
Selecting Design Elements and clustering them does not occur in a vacuum. The designer selects and arranges Design Elements in anticipation of how these choices will be understood by others in a universal or objective sense.
This is a process which I call “Backwards Designing”.[3] The building blocks and their attributes are first selected in anticipation of these shared understandings. For instance, the designer might choose colors by anticipating how others will recognize the legitimacy and appeal of certain clusters of colors — color schemes.
If the viewer, wearer, buyer or seller of a piece of jewelry cannot understand and relate to its Design Elements and how they are clustered within the piece, they will not understand it. They will not appreciate it. They will not see it as a legitimate piece of artistic expression. It will not feel authentic. To others, if the piece lacks evidence of shared understandings, this will result in that jewelry (and by implication, the jewelry artisan) getting labeled, for example, as unsatisfying or boring or ugly or monotonous.
DESIGN ELEMENTS COMPRISE A VOCABULARY OF BASIC ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
Working with Design Elements is not much different than working with an alphabet.
An alphabet is made up of different letters. Each letter has different attributes — how it is written, how it sounds, how it is used. Configurations of letters result in more sounds and more meanings and more ways to be used.
A person working with an alphabet has to be able to decode the letters, sounds and meanings, as letters are used individually as well as in combination. As the speaker becomes better at decoding, she or he begins to build in understanding of implications for how any letter is used, again, individually or in combination.
This is exactly what the jewelry designer does with Design Elements. The designer has to decode, that is, make sense of a series of elements and their attributes in light of our shared understandings about which Design Elements are appropriate, and how they should be legitimately expressed.
Let’s examine a set of jewelry Design Elements in more detail and elaboration.
The Japanese Fragrance Garden Bracelet
“Japanese Fragrance Garden Bracelet”, by Warren Feld, March 2018, photography by Warren Feld
For example, this is the kind of building blocks thinking I did when designing my Japanese Fragrance Garden Bracelet.
This bracelet has a foundation base. The finishes of these beads in the base are either a luster finish or a dichroic finish. Off the base, I created flower stalks that were 4–6 seed beads tall, and topped with a slightly larger and more brightly colored seed bead. The colors of the beads in the stalks vary from dark (near the base) to light (near the flower tip). Between each bed of flowers is a “moon bridge” — the kind you might expect when meandering through a Japanese garden.
See how I clustered independent and dependent Design Elements to achieve a particular expression.
What I Wanted To Achieve Design Elements I Thought About
A. Movement B. Dimensionality C. Color Blending
A. Movement with flower stalks where they would retain their verticality (thus not flop over) after the piece was worn.
Technique: Fringing technique
Technology: Use of One-G beading thread which, unlike all other beading threads, has a springy quality to it. When the fringe is pulled out during wearing, the thread helps spring it back into place
Color: To mimic how moving colors will be perceived, I varied color in flower stalks from dark at the bottom to medium to light at the top, just under the flower, and then used bright colors for the flowers topping off each stalk
Point, Line: Easy for viewer to perceive and follow movement of points and lines, which are key elements in the piece
B. Dimensionality where the piece would not be seen as flat
Point, Line: Visually, the flower stalks lead the eye from the foundation base, up the stalks, and to the bright flower colors on top of the stalks.
Color: I use a reflective foundation base of two types of bead finishes, (a) luster, and (b) dichroic. Both have a mirroring effect, making it difficult for the eye to see the “bottom”, and at the same time reflecting the colors sitting above them.
C. Color Blending where as the eye moves up and down any flower stalk, or moves across the piece from end to end, everything feels coherent and unified
Color: I make a wide use of simultaneity effects, where the placement of one color affects the perception of the color next to it. This fools the brain into blending colors, which in reality, you cannot do easily with beads (as opposed to paints).
Shape/Points/Line/Pattern: There is a consistent repetition of shapes, points and lines, and pattern, leading the viewer to be able to predict what should happen next along the bracelet, and again, fooling the brain into doing some color blending perceptual tricks of its own.
How Do You Teach Designers A Vocabulary of Design?
Most designers most likely start theirjewelry making careers taking craft-oriented classes and following instructions in how-to books or online in how-to videos. They learn to repeat a set of steps and end up with something like what is pictured. The whole jewelry making approach assumes that jewelry making is a natural process. Surround the budding artist with patterns, books and videos, and they will somehow become great jewelry designers.
Yet, although the artisans follow a set of steps over and over again, they never learn how to make choices or evaluate implications or get any experience making judgement calls and tradeoffs when designing something that must look good and wear well at the same time. Jewelry making is not a natural skill that is learned automatically. Jewelry designers need to be taught to design.
Towards this end, I think it is much more useful to build an educational curriculum and program around the idea of disciplinary literacy. We need to teach designers to explicitly and systematically think design. Designers need to be able to recognize the elements that make up a piece, how they were used, and how this leads to more or less success in evoking an expression or an emotional response.
Disciplinary Literacy, means, in part, that the designer is aware of the “codes” which were selected for a piece of jewelry. The designer is able to segment the piece and identify its Design Elements. The designer is also able to put Design Elements together and blend them to achieve a desired expression. The better designer is very aware of all the codes, or Design Elements. The better designer is very aware of how the codes, or Design Elements, were selected, combined, blended and expressed. And the designer is very aware of how and why clusters of Design Elements may sometimes get bounded; that is, may be unfortunately stuck within some indeterminant meaning or expression.
Towards this end, this means first teaching designers how to decode. It means figuring out what universally accepted Design Elements should be used in a piece. It also means recognizing how these elements can vary, and how such variation can change the artistic or design expression of the piece. Designers need to learn how Design Elements get clustered and constructed to convey certain expressions, and which cannot.
At this stage, we are training the designer to have some comfort recognizing and applying objective, shared understandings about what certain Design Elements mean, and the variations in how they might get expressed within a piece.
As the designer’s education progresses, we would gradually reduce the student’s involvement with decoding, and increase the involvement with tasks involving fluency. This involves more in-depth learning about manipulation and construction. Here the designer is taught how to define a personal style and approach, and implement it. The designer is guided from creating the merely appealing, to the more resounding resonant. The designer is also taught to look for, anticipate and incorporate context clues. All this gets into the areas of grammar and process management, which I discuss in other articles.[1,2]
[2] I discuss a little about shared understandings in a yet unpublished article I wrote about Contemporary Design. From that article…
“Shared understandings should be enduring, transferable, big ideas at the heart of what we think of as contemporary jewelry. These shared understandings are things which spark meaningful connections between designer and materials, designer and techniques, and designer and client. We need, however, to recognize that the idea of understanding is very multidimensional and complicated.
Understanding is not one achievement, but more the result of several loosely organized choices. Understanding is revealed through performance and evidence. Jewelry designers must perform effectively with knowledge, insight, wisdom and skill to convince us — the world at large and the client in particular — that they really understand what design, and with our case here, contemporary design, is all about. This involves a big interpersonal component where the artist introduces their jewelry to a wider audience and subjects it to psychological, social, cultural, and economic assessment.
Understanding is more than knowledge. The designer may be able to articulate what needs to be done to achieve something labeled contemporary, but may not know how to apply it.
Understanding is more than interpretation. The designer may be able to explain how a piece was constructed and conformed to ideas about contemporary, but this does not necessarily account for the significance of the results.
Understanding is more than applying principles of construction. It is more than simply organizing a set of Design Elements into an arrangement. The designer must match knowledge and interpretation about contemporary to the context. Application is a context-dependent skill.
Understanding is more than perspective. The designer works within a myriad of expectations and points of view about contemporary jewelry. The designer must dispassionately anticipate these various perspectives about contemporary design, and, bring some constructed point of view and knowledge of implications to bear within the design and design process.
We do not design in a vacuum. The designer must have the ability to empathize with individuals and grasp their individual and group cultures. If selling their jewelry, the designer must have the ability to empathize with small and larger markets, as well. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is where we can feel what others feel, and see what others see.
Last, understanding is self-knowledge, as well. The designer should have the self-knowledge, wisdom and insights to know how their own patterns of thought may inform, as well as prejudice, their understandings of contemporary design.
How the jewelry designer begins the process of creating a contemporary piece of jewelry is very revealing about the potential for success. The designer should always begin the process by articulating the essential shared understandings against which their work will be evaluated and judged. For now, let’s refer to this as Backwards Design[4]. The designer starts with questions about assessment, and then allows this understanding to influence all other choices going forward.”
[3] Backwards Design. I had taken two graduate education courses in Literacy and one in Planning that were very influential in my approach to disciplinary literacy. One of the big take-aways from Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005, was the idea they introduced of “backwards design”. Their point is that you can better teach understanding if you anticipate the evidence others will use in their assessments of what you are trying to do. When coupled with ideas about teaching literacy and fluency (see Literacy:Helping Students Construct Meaning by J. David Cooper, M. Robinson, J.A. Slansky and N. Kiger, 9th Edition, Cengage Learning, 2015), you can begin to introduce ideas about managing the design process in a coherent and alignable way.
It is not happenstance that some pieces of jewelry draw your attention, and others do not. It is the result of an artist fluent in design. That fluency begins with selecting Design Elements, but it comes to full fruition with the application of Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation. This is where the artist flourishes, shows a recognition of shared understandings about good design, and makes that cluster of jewelry design choices resulting in a piece that is seen as both finished and successful. These Principles represent different organizing schemes the artist might resort to. Jewelry artists translate these Principles a little differently than painters or sculptors, in that jewelry presents different demands and expectations on the artist. The better artist/designer achieves a level of disciplinary literacy — selecting Design Elements and applying Principles — where fluency becomes automatic, accurate, and rapidly applied.
Some pieces of jewelry draw your attention. Others do not.
This is not a matter of happenstance. It is the result of an artist fluent in design. That fluency begins with the selection of Design Elements — the smallest meaningful units of design. But it comes to full fulfillment with the application and manipulation of Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation. These “organizing schemes” reflect what the individual artist wants to express, and how the individual artist anticipates how others will understand and respond to this expression.
Design Elements, which I have discussed in an earlier article [1], are like building blocks and function a bit like the vowel and consonant letters of the alphabet. They have form. They have meaning. They can be assembled into different arrangements which extend their meaning and usefulness in expression. Examples: color, shape, texture, point/line/plane, movement, dimensionality, and the like. Each Design Element has a set of expressive attributes. Color can be expressed as a color scheme, or as proportions, or as simultaneity effects. Shape can be geometric or dimensional or recognizable or symbolic. And so forth.
Design Elements function like a vocabulary. They represent universally accepted expressive content. Visualize the analogy between design elements and vocabulary. Picture a “t”, perhaps combined with an “h”, and then with an “e”. Or, picture the difficulty in trying to combine a “th” with a “z”. Or, still yet, picture how the “c” in “cat” is pronounced differently than the “c” in “sense”, yet still recognized as a “c”. In similar ways, the artist might decide to use the design elements of “color” and “line,” and combine them to yield another design element of “movement.” Literacy begins with the ability to decode, and this ability centers on the selection and use of Design Elements.
Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation function more like a grammar. Given the Design Elements selected by the artist, Principles represent organizing strategies to which the artist resorts when attempting to achieve a piece that will be seen as both “finished” and “successful”, both by the artist, as well as that artist’s audience. The artist might arrange several design elements and their expressive attributes to yield a higher level organizing principle. For example, the artist might combine:
color(intensity)+line(direction)+shape(geometry)+placement(symmetry)+balance+material” to yield a sense of “rhythm.”
To continue our analogy with vocabulary, grammar and literacy, picture our “t”, “h” and “e” put together to form a full word like ”thesaurus”, then expanded into an idea, like “teachers like to use a thesaurus”, and further expressed, in anticipation of a response, to something like “but students hate when the teacher asks them to use a thesaurus.”
Literacy goes beyond decoding; it includes a fluency in how the Design Elements are organized to evoke an emotional response. This involves an intuitive understanding of Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation, and how to apply them. While Design Elements are selected primarily based on shared, more universal understandings of what they express, often, Principles are applied in ways more reflective of artist’s hand, and its subjective expression.
The successful jewelry designer has developed a fluency in the Disciplinary Literacy of jewelry design. Fluency is the ability of the designer to select and connect Design Elements smoothly, in visually and functionally and situationally appropriate ways with understanding. The idea of understanding is broadly defined, to include the artist’s personal goals for expression, as well as the expectations of all the audiences — the wearer, the viewer, the buyer, the seller, the student, the master. The better designer achieves a level of disciplinary literacy where fluency becomes automatic, accurate, and rapidly applied.
This Disciplinary Literacy in jewelry design has a structure all its own. There are four main components to it:
1) Vocabulary: Design Elements As The Basis Of Composition
2) Grammar: Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation
3) Strategy: Project Management[2]
4) Context/Culture: Shared Understandings[3]
This article focuses on the second component — Principles.
What Are Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation?
Jewelry Design is the strategic application of basic principles of organization and expression to achieve a piece which evokes emotion, resonates, and is appealing as it is worn. Traditionally the art and design worlds referred to these as “Principles of Composition.” Often artists and designers get tripped up on the word Principles, and jewelry designers get a bit confused or frustrated with the word Composition.
The use of the word “Principles” in art and design can be somewhat confusing. These Principles do not represent a set of universal, dependable and repeatable standards to strive for, which we might assume, at first.
A different meaning about “Principles” applies here. A Principle is an organizing scheme as a way to combine design elements into a more pleasing whole composition. The design elements include things which are visual effects; but, for jewelry designers, they also include things which functional, as well as things which are more social, psychological, cultural and situational. Principles inform artists in their expressive, authentic performances. Every artist is expected to apply these Principles, but only in ways the artist chooses. There might be better or worse ways to apply them, but no right or wrong ways.
Another aspect of confusion is the use of the word “Composition”. I’ve expanded the phrase, though somewhat awkwardly, to “Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation.” The traditional art and design idea of “composition” covers two very different types of jewelry design literacy skills under a single label, namely decoding (Design Elements) and fluency (Principles). The better jewelry designer needs to learn and apply both aspects of disciplinary literacy, but each involves different ways of thinking. As a teacher, both require different sets of strategies for training and educating jewelry designers.
Jewelry designers, by the nature of jewelry, have to deal equally with functional aspects of design, not just artistic composition. Traditional Principles of Composition need to be re-oriented for the jewelry artist to be more sensitive to the more architectural aspects of design. Design choices are also best understood at the boundary between the art of design and the body it adorns.
Limited to the idea of composition, jewelry might be judged successful as “art”, as if it was displayed on a mannequin or easel. But jewelry, in reality, can only be judged as a constructive, manipulated result situated at the boundary between art and body; that is, jewelry can only be judged as “art as it is worn.”
In this article, I focus on Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation. The Principles, as organizing schemes, are intertwined, and, the use of one will often depend on another. Movement might be achieved by the placement of lines, which might also establish a rhythm. Such placement of lines might be symmetrically balanced, with line thinness and thickness statistically distributed evenly through the piece.
These organizing and arranging schemes might include:
the Positioning and/or Ordering of things (white/black/white/black vs. black/black/black/white)
the Volume or Area the piece takes up (one row of beads vs. 3 rows of beads)
the Scale and Size of the pieces (6mm 6mm 6mm vs. 10mm 10mm 10mm)
the Colors, Textures and Patterns of individual pieces, and/or sets or groupings of pieces (matte/matte/shiny/matte/matte vs. shiny/shiny/matte/shiny/shiny)
the Forms (identifiable sets of pieces, highly integrated)
the Materials
the interplay of Light, Dark, Shadow, Reflection and Refraction (dark/dark/transparent/dark/dark vs. transparent/transparent/dark/transparent/transparent)
the clasp assembly and other supporting systems
Some of these design Principles are applied in similar ways to all art forms, such as painting and sculpture, no matter what the medium.
For other Principles, jewelry creates its own challenges, because all jewelry places some different demands and expectations on the artist than painting or sculpture does. Jewelry…
functions in a 3-dimensional space, particularly sensitive to position, volume and scale
must stand on its own as an object of art
but must also exist as an object of art which interacts with the body, movement, personality, and quirks of the wearer
serves many purposes, some aesthetic, some functional, some social, cultural or situational
has a much more integrated and inter-dependent relationship of the center piece, strap, fringe, edge, bail and surface embellishment — an arrangement that traditional Art theory rejects. Art sees the center piece as the “art”, and these other things as supporting, not artistic details, like a frame for a painting or a pedestal for a sculpture.
Good jewelry should exude an energy. It should resonate. This energy results from how the artist applies these Principles to compose with, construct and manipulate light and shadow, and their characteristics of warmth and cold, receding and approaching, bright and dull, light and dark. The artist’s piece is judged on whether the resulting piece feels coherent, organized, controlled, and strategically designed, again, as the jewelry is worn. Successful application of these Principles results in a piece which feels finished and successful.
The Principles include,
Rhythm
Pointers
Linear and Planar Relationships
Interest
Statistical Distribution
Balance
Forms, Their Proportions, Distributions and Dimensionality
Temporal Extension: Time and Place
Physical Extension: Functionality
Parsimony (something similar to, but a little beyond harmony and unity)
TABLE OF PRINCIPLES
THE PRINCIPLES IN MORE DETAIL
1. Rhythm
Movement is the path our eyes follow when we look at a work of art, and it is generally very important to keep a viewer’s eyes engaged in the work. Without movement, artwork becomes stagnant. A few good strategies to evoke a sense of movement (among many others) are using diagonal lines, placing shapes so that the extend beyond the boundaries of the picture plane, and using changing values.
Rhythm is one Principle used to shape the viewer’s experience with the piece. Rhythm is how the piece leads the viewer through sequences of steps. It is a measure of the degree the piece engages the viewer’s eye.
There is a continuance, a flow or a feeling of movement from one place of the piece to another.
Repetition and pattern are key here. The artist might achieve a rhythm by varying or repeating colors, textures, sizes, forms. The rhythm might be slow, fast, predictable, random, staccato, measured, safe, edgy, and so forth. The intervals between repetitions and patterns can create a sense of rhythm in the viewer and a sense of movement. Repetitions and patterns can be random, regular, alternating, flowing, progressive — there are many directions the artist can go in establishing a rhythm.
When a piece has multiple and coordinated rhythms, we call this Symphonic Rhythm. For example, in a piece, there might be a clear rhythm set by the use of colors throughout the piece, as well as the positioning of definable forms, such as a series of beaded leaves or other shapes.
The Rhythm should assist the viewer in cognitively making a complete circle around the piece. You don’t want the viewer to lose interest, get bored, or fall flat, before the eye and brain can make that complete circle.
The better designer can empower the design, if using Rhythm in the right way.
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2. Pointers
Pointers are places of emphasis, dominance or focus. Certain elements assume more importance than others within the same composition.
Pointers guide the viewer to a specific place, or focal point. Cognitively, you want to create the place for the eye/brain to come to rest.
Examples:
Something can be centered
The color can be varied, say from dark to light, to serve as an “arrow” or “Pointer” to a section of the necklace
The positioning of the clasp might serve as a pointer
A dangling pendant might serve as a pointer
The size of the beads can be varied, such as smallest to largest, to serve as an “arrow” or “Pointer”
Coordinating the placement of Focal Point on jewelry with the pattern in the clothing upon which the piece will rest
Something can be strategically off-centered.
The better designer is able to capture the viewer’s attention to more important parts of the piece.
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3. Linear and Planar Relationships
This is the degree the piece is not disorienting to the viewer, or particularly confusing in terms of what is up and what is down.
People always need to orient themselves to their surroundings, so that they know what is up and what is down. They usually do this by recognizing the horizontal planes of the floor and the ceiling of a room (ground and sky outside), and the vertical planes of the walls of a room (buildings, trees and the like outside).
Jewelry must assist, or at least not get in the way, of this natural orienting process. It accomplishes this in how its “lines” are arranged and organized. If a piece is very 3-dimensional, then how its “planes” are arranged and organized becomes important, as well.
Design elements we might use to achieve a satisfactory planar relationship within our piece:
– a strategic use of lines and planes
— shapes
— boundaries
– -silhouettes
— contours
– symmetry
– or, more difficult to achieve, a satisfying asymmetry
– a planar pattern in how each section of the piece relates to the other sections
– how sections of the piece interlock
– how we “draw and interrelate” parallel lines/planes, perpendicular lines/planes and curved lines/planes within the piece
Example:
How can a person truly pull off wearing only one earring? After all, visually, it pulls the person off to one side, thus violating the basic orienting planar relationships. What about the composition of the earring, allows this to work; what about the composition doesn’t?
Example:
Wearing a necklace, where the clasp is worn on the side, instead of the back. Again, what about the composition of the necklace, allows this to work; what about the composition doesn’t?
“Interest” means the degree to which the artist makes the ordinary…noteworthy.
Here the artist demonstrates how to balance off and control “variety” with “unity” and “harmony”. Without unity and harmony, the piece becomes chaotic. Without variety, the piece becomes boring, monotonous and uninteresting.
Arranging and organizing Design Elements might involve: – selection of materials and mix of materials
– selection of color combinations
– varying the sizes of things
– pushing the envelop on interrelating planar relationships among the sections of the jewelry
– playing with the rhythm
– clever use of a focal point
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5. Statistical Distribution
The artist is always concerned with the number or size or scale or measurement of things. This principle focuses on these statistics. With this principle, we are not concerned with the placement or balance of things — just the numbers and measurements.
We ask: How pleasing and satisfying are the selection of the numbers, sizes, proportions, volumes/weights, and color/textures of objects the artist wants to use in the piece. The artist might, at this point, anticipate creating a pattern, or not.
Balance has to do with placement. How pleasing or satisfying is the placement of objects (and their attributes) within a piece?
Usually, the designer is trying to achieve a feeling of equality in weight, attention or attraction of the various visual design elements. The design attributes would include such things as the positioning or relative positioning of the materials used, the colors, textures and patterns, the sizes and scales.
The artist might play with placement in terms of proximity, alignment or repetition.
There are different types of balance.
(1) symmetry: the use of identical compositional units on either side of a vertical axis
(2) approximate symmetry: the use of similarly balanced compositional units on either side of a vertical axis
(3) radial symmetry: an even, radiating out from a central point to all four quadrants (directions) of the shape’s plane (surface)
(4) asymmetry: even though the compositional units are not identical on either side of a vertical axis, there is a “felt” equilibrium of the total piece. Often, with jewelry, this equilibrium depends on what clothes or other jewelry the person is wearing, or something about that person’s body/body shape.
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7. Forms, Their Proportions, Distributions and Dimensionality
Jewelry often can be structured in terms of segments, components or forms. How are pieces interconnected or amassed? Is this achieved through optical effects or reality?
The designer is concerned with managing these structures in terms of proportions, distributions and/or dimensionality. The artist makes choices about how each part relates to the whole in terms of scale or relevance.
The artist might play with things like: Layering
Surface embellishment
Fringing
Curvature
Overlapping planes
Balance
The better designer creates pieces where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Example:
Flat loomed bracelet and a button clasp, that sits so high on the bracelet, that it detracts from the 2-dimensional reason-for-being of the piece.
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8. Temporal Extension: Time and Place
Any piece of jewelry must be acceptable within a certain historical, social, cultural or situational context.
For example, is a piece appropriate for a wedding also appropriate for office wear? Is a great University of Tennessee Orange Necklace as successful when worn to a Vanderbilt football game?
Temporal Extension may narrowly refer to one specific wearer in particular, or more broadly to group, situational, social or societal expectations.
Other examples:
white pearls are associated with bridal jewelry
using metalized plastic beads, where the plating chips off in a short period of time, should not be used in an heirloom bracelet
making a matching set of earrings and necklace for jewelry that typically should be worn as a matching set
gifting a carved jade pendant with an message-word carving inappropriate for the religion of the person receiving it
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9. Physical Extension: Functionality
Any piece of jewelry must be functional when worn.
Functionality has to do with such things as movement, drape, comfort, flow and durability. The piece of jewelry needs to feel comfortable when worn, always look good on the wearer no matter what the wearer is doing, and be durable. This involves a lot of building in understandings of physical mechanics and architectural principles of construction.
When there is (or should be) movement in a piece, there should be clear evidence that the designer anticipated where the parts came from, and where they are going to. Jewelry is worn by people who move, so the design should be a natural physical extension to such movements, and the stress they put on the piece.
For example, in a necklace, the clasp should remain on the neck, even as the beadwork moves with the person, without the necklace turning around on the neck, or breaking.
Example: The dangle earring which has the dangle stuck in a 90 degree angle.
Example: The crimped bracelet which breaks at the crimp.
Example: The bracelet too tight when the design is turned into a circle placed around the wrist
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10. Parsimony (something similar to, but a little bit beyond harmony and unity)
At the point where the piece is judged to be finished and successful, there should be no nonessential elements. When the piece is finished and successful, it should evoke emotions and resonate.
The designer should achieve the maximal effect with the least effort or excess.
There is a tendency of beaders and jewelry makers to over-do:
– over-embellish the surface
– add too much fringe
– repeat themes and design elements too often
– use too many colors
Parsimony vs. Unity
In art, the traditional measure of completion and success was a feeling or sense of “Unity.” Unity signified how everything felt all right. All the Design Elements used, and how they were coordinated and placed, were very coherent, clear, harmonious and satisfying.
I think the idea of unity begins to get at the place we want to end up. But this concept is not concrete enough for me. You can have unity, but the piece still seen as boring when there is no variety. This condition is unacceptable as a principled outcome of jewelry construction. Finished and successful jewelry should evoke emotions and resonate. You can have unity, but the assessments rely too much on universal, objective perceptions of design elements and their attributes. The artist, the wearer, and the situation are too easily left out of the equation.
Jewelry creation usually demands a series of judgment calls and tradeoffs between aesthetics and functionality, artist goals and audience understandings and expectations, a full palette of colors, shapes and textures and a very limited one. A measure of completeness and success needs to result from the forced choice decisions of the artist. It needs to account for the significance of the results, not just the organization of them. It needs to explain the Why, not just the What.
For me, the more appropriate concept here is “Parsimony.” Parsimony is sometimes referred to in art and design as “Economy”, but the idea of economy is reserved for the visual effects. For jewelry designers, we want that economy or parsimony to apply to functional and situational effects, as well. When the finished and successful piece is parsimonious, the relationship of all the Design Elements and their expressed attributes will be so strong, that to add or remove any one thing would diminish, not just the design, but rather the significance of the design.
Parsimony…
– forces explanation; its forced-choice nature is most revealing about the artist’s understandings and intentions
– relies on evidence moreso than assumptions to get at criticality
– focuses examination of the few elements that make a difference
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THINKING ROUTINE[4]: LOOK — SCORE — EXPLAIN
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FOOTNOTES [1] Feld, Warren. “Jewelry Design Composition: Playing with Building Blocks Called Design Elements,” 3/17/2018
[3]Shared Understandings. In another graduate education class, the major text reviewed the differences between understanding and knowledge. The question was how to teach understanding. Worth the read to gain many insights about how to structure teaching to get sufficient understanding to enrich learning. Understanding by Designby Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005.
[4] Thinking Routines. I teach jewelry design. I find it useful to engage students with various ways of thinking out loud. They need to hear me think out loud about what choices I am making and what things I am considering when making those choices. They need to hear themselves think out loud so that they can develop strategies for getting more organized and strategic in dealing with information and making decisions. My inspiration here was based on the work done by Visible Thinking by Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education .
“Vestment”, Warren Feld, 2004, Miyuki cubes, seed beads and delicas, Austrian crystals, with 14KT, gold filled, sterling silver, and antiqued copper chain, clasps and other findings, lampwork bead by Lori Greenberg
Abstract:
Jewelry Designers want to be successful. But things can get a little muddled when thinking about how to get there. Our teachers, our friends, our colleagues often disagree on this point, and tell us to look for conflicting measures of success. We can often lose sight of what we want to end up with. The Goal-Oriented Jewelry Designer has but one guiding star: To achieve Resonance. Everything else is secondary. We achieve Resonance by gaining a comfort in communicating about design. This comfort, or disciplinary fluency, translates into all our composing, constructing and manipulating choices. This is empowering. Our pieces resonate. We achieve success.
THE GOAL-ORIENTED DESIGNER: The Path To Resonance
Jewelry Designers want to be successful.
But things can get a little muddled when thinking about how to get there. Where should they start? What should they learn first? What materials should they accumulate? What techniques should they start with? Should they focus on the process of designing jewelry? Or moreso on making jewelry? Or still yet, on achieving certain target measures, such as numbers of pieces made, or numbers of sales, or numbers of venues in which their jewelry is sold? Are there qualitative things which are important to accumulate, such as self-satisfaction or customer-satisfaction? Or style? Or recognition? Acceptance? Understanding?
Our teachers, our friends, our colleagues often disagree on how to get there, and tell us to look for, what turn out to be in effect, conflicting measures of success. We can often lose sight of what we want to end up with. We get a lot of contradictory advice. How should we organize our creative work and our time? How should we select materials and techniques? How do we know when our piece is finished? How should we anticipate our client’s desires? How should we showcase our jewelry? How should we be judged and evaluated? We need to perform, we want to perform authentically, but how — how should we perform as a jewelry designer? The search for answers can be very frustrating, confusing, even demoralizing.
But it shouldn’t be. Every jewelry designer should have but one guiding star — Resonance. If our jewelry does not have some degree of resonance, we keep working on it. If the process of creative exploration and design does not lead us in the direction of resonance, we change it. If the results we achieve — numbers of pieces made and numbers of pieces sold — is not synced tightly with resonance, we cannot call ourselves designers.
The Goal-Oriented Jewelry Designer specifies those goals about performance which will lead to one primary outcome: To achieve Resonance. Everything else is secondary. Design elements are selected and applied with that idea of Resonance in mind. Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation are applied with that idea of Resonance in mind, with extra special attention paid to the Principle of Parsimony — knowing when enough is enough.
People may approach the performance tasks in varied ways. For some this means getting very detailed on pathways, activities, and objectives. For others, they let the process of design emerge and see where it takes them. Whatever approach they take in their creative process, for all designers, a focus on one outcome — Resonance — frees them up to think through design without encumbrance.
This singular focus becomes a framework within which to question everything and try to make sense of everything. Make sense of what the materials and techniques can allow them to do, and what they cannot. Make sense of what understandings other people — clients, sellers, buyers, students, colleagues, teachers — will bring to the situation, when exploring and evaluating their work. Make sense of why some things inspire you, and other things do not. Make sense of why you are a jewelry designer designing jewelry. Make sense of the fluency of your artistic expression, what works, how it works, why it works.
We achieve Resonance by gaining a comfort and ease in communicating about design. This comfort and ease, or disciplinary fluency, has to do with how we translate our inspirations and aspirations into all our compositional, constructive and manipulative choices. It is empowering. Our pieces resonate. We achieve success.
Resonance, communication, success, fluency — these are all words that stand in place for an intimacy between the designer and the materials, the designer and the techniques, the designer and inspiration. They reflect the designer’s aspirations. They reflect the shared understandings of everyone the designer’s jewelry is expected to touch. They reflect the designer’s managerial prowess in bringing all these things together.
Resonance and disciplinary fluency result from a well-managed jewelry design process [3]. This process of creativity involves artist, audience and context. It is very interactional. Transactional. Integrative. Contingent.
For the artist, this process functions on several, coordinated levels, including…
Contemplation
Inspiration
Aspiration
Anticipation
Specification
Application
Fluency and Empowerment
CONTEMPLATION: An Intimacy with Materials and Techniques
Contemplation is a mystical theology.
Beads have a mystique to them. 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 — curiosity, beauty, peace and calm, reflection, 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 bead and make jewelry. There’s a lot involved here.
You have to buy (or fabricate) beads and findings and stringing materials, 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 our materials translate light into color, shade and shadow, then jewelry making would simply be work. But it’s not.
You have to put one piece 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 you — why is it so enticing? Why do you beg it to let you 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 you’re drawn to it in a slap-silly sort of way.
When you arrange many beads, the excitement explodes geometrically within your 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. You feel so powerful. Creative. You can make more of what you have than with what you started.
You need to select a method or strategy for arranging your beads. There are so many choices. Your organization should be appealing. It must enhance the power the bead has for you, then transcend as a power the bead has for others. It must be architecturally correct because this architecture determines the wear, drape and flow where the jewelry meets the person at the boundary between bead and body.
And this 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.
Designing jewelry is an authentic performance task. This involves a profound intimacy with the materials (and techniques) the artist relies on. This intimacy means understanding how to select them, how to leverage their strengths and minimize their weaknesses, and how to manage their ability to enhance or impede resonance.
INSPIRATION: Becoming One with What Inspires You
Inspirations are sacred revelations you want to share through art and design.
The word inspiration comes from the Latin roots meaning “to breathe into.” But before you can breathe your inspiration into your jewelry, you need to become one with it.
There are these wonderfully exciting, sensually terrific, incredibly fulfilling things that you find as you try to imagine the jewelry you will create. They come from many sources: ideas, nature, images, people, behaviors. They might be realistic or abstract. They may be the particular color or pattern or texture or the way the light hits it and casts a shadow. They may be a need for order over chaos. They may be points of view. They may flow from some inner imagination.
For some reason, these inspirations take on a divine, sacred revelation for you — so meaningful that you want to incorporate them somehow into what you do. A fire in your soul. You want to translate these inspirations into colors, shapes, lines, patterns and textures. You want to impose an organization on them. You want to recapture their energy and power they have had over you. You feel compelled to bring these feelings into ideas.
There are many challenges to inspiration. That which we call “inspiring” can often be somewhat fuzzy. It might be a feeling. It might be a piece of an idea, or a small spot on an image. You might feel inspired, but, cannot put the What or the Why into words or images. On the surface, it may seem important to you, but unimportant to others. You the artist may not feel in control of the inspiration in that it seems like it is something that is evoked, not necessarily directed, by you.
When inspired, artists perceive new possibilities that transcend that which is ordinary around them. Too often, the artist feels passive in this process. This transcendence does not feel like a willfully generated idea. However, it needs to be. The successful artist — one who eventually can achieve a level of resonance — is one who is not only inspired by, but also inspired to. This all requires a great deal of metacognitive self-awareness. The artist must be able to perceive the intrinsic value of the inspiring object, and how to extend this value in design, where the piece of jewelry becomes its expression.
Inspiration is motivating. Inspiration is not the source of creativity; creativity does not come from it. Inspiration, instead, should be viewed as a motivational response to creativity. It motivates the artist, through jewelry and its design, to connect this inspiration with others. It serves as a mediator between the self and the anticipated shared understandings of others. The jewelry encapsulates the artist’s ability to make this connection. When the connection is well-made, resonance follows.
But finding inspirations is not only personal, but more importantly, it is an effort to influence others. It is an act of translating the emotions which resonate in you into some object of art which, in turn, will inspire and resonate with others. How does the inspiration occur to you, and how do you anticipate how this inspiration might occur to others?
Too often we lose sight of the importance of inspiration to the authentic performance task of creating jewelry. We operate with the belief that anyone can be inspired by anything. There’s nothing more to it. Moreover, inspiration gets downplayed when put next to the discussion of the effort of making jewelry itself. But it should not. Inspiration is not less important than perspiration. It plays an equal role in the creative process. The artist’s clarity about why something is inspiring, and why this inspiration motivates the artist to respond, will be critical for achieving success, that is resonance.
ASPIRATION: Translating Creativity into A Technical Product Design
Aspiration motivates the artist to actualize inspiration.
Aspiration is where the artist translates inspiration into a completed product design. The artist begins to control and regulate what happens next. This involves selecting Design Elements[1] and clustering them to formulate meaningful expressions. The artist then applies Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation[2] for organizing and arranging things into a more complete whole with more elaborated expressions. The greater value the artist places on resonance, the stronger the aspiration will be to achieve it.
Aspiration is future-oriented. It requires a stick-to-it-ness. The artist must be sufficiently motivated to invest the time, energy and money into designing and making the jewelry that will not necessarily be finished, displayed or sold right away. It may require some additional learning and skills-development time. The artist may need to find a level of creativity within, and discover the kinds of skills, techniques and insights necessary for bringing this creativity to the aspired task at hand.
Aspiration requires the calculus: Is it worth it? It adds a level of risk to the project. It forces the artist to pay attention to the world around her or him. This world presents dynamic clues — what I discuss below as shared understandings — about opportunities, constraints, risks, contingencies, consequences, strategies and goals, and likely successes.
For some artists, motivation primarily is seen as instinctual. Think of seat-of-the-pants. Emergent, not controlled. A search for harmony, balance, rhythm, unity as something that feels right and looks right and seems right with the universe. Expressive, yes. Imaginative, yes. But not necessarily resonant.
Achieving resonance, however, is, for the most part, more than instinctual. It has some deliberate quality to it. It is communicative. It requires a purposeful act on the part of the artist. It is a different type of motivation — intentional. The artist might want to convey a specific emotion. Or advocate for some change. Or illustrate a point of view. The artist may want to entertain or teach. Heal. Attract mates. Propagandize. Where a jewelry’s design is not reflective of an artist’s intent, there can be no resonance.
ANTICIPATION: Shared Understandings[4]
Shared understandings dictate opportunities, contingencies and constraints.
The question of whether the audience correctly infers the presence of the artist’s inspiration, and the sense of how the artist’s hand comes into play within the design, remains. The answer revolves around a dynamic interaction between artist and audience, dancing around an object each calls jewelry, as they anticipate understandings they share, and ones they do not.
Shared understandings should be enduring, transferable, big ideas at the heart of what we think of as goodjewelry design. These shared understandings are things which spark meaningful connections between designer and materials, designer and techniques, and designer and client. We need, however, to recognize that the idea of understanding is very multidimensional and complicated.
Understanding is not one achievement, but more the result of several loosely organized choices. Understanding is revealed through performance and evidence. Jewelry designers must perform effectively with knowledge, insight, wisdom and skill to convince us — the world at large and the client in particular — that they really understand what design is all about. This involves a big interpersonal component where the artist introduces their jewelry to a wider audience and subjects it to psychological, social, cultural, and economic assessment.
Understanding is more than knowledge. The designer may be able to articulate what needs to be done to achieve something labeled good jewelry design, but, may not know how to apply it.
Understanding is more than interpretation. The designer may be able to explain how a piece was constructed and conformed to ideas about good jewelry design, but this does not necessarily account for the significance of the results.
Understanding is more than applying principles of construction. It is more than simply organizing a set of design elements into an arrangement. The designer must match knowledge and interpretation about good jewelry design to the context. Application is a context-dependent skill.
Understanding is more than perspective. The designer works within a myriad of expectations and points of view about good jewelry design. The designer must dispassionately anticipate these various perspectives about design, and, bring some constructed point of view and knowledge of implications to bear within the design and design process.
We do not design in a vacuum. The designer must have the ability to empathize with individuals and grasp their individual and group cultures. If selling their jewelry, the designer must have the ability to empathize with small and larger markets, as well. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is where we can feel what others feel, and see what others see.
Last, understanding is self-knowledge, as well. The designer should have the self-knowledge, wisdom and insights to know how their own patterns of thought may inform, as well as prejudice, their understandings of good jewelry design.
How the jewelry designer begins the process of creating a piece of jewelry is very revealing about the potential for success, and ultimately achieving a level of resonance. The designer should always begin the process by articulating the essential shared understandings against which their work will be evaluated and judged. For now, let’s refer to this as Backwards Design[5]. The designer starts with questions about assessment, and then allows this understanding to influence all other choices going forward.
Some essential shared understandings for good jewelry design, I would posit, might include the following:
Every designer has some creative ability, but may need to learn concepts and techniques and ways to apply them
Some understandings are universal and objective, particularly in reference to the selection, clustering and application of various Design Elements, such as color, shape, movement and dimension.
Other understandings are both objective and subjective. There is universal acceptance of what various organization and arrangement schemes — Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation — might be applied by the artist. However, how they are actually applied, and how satisfying that is to various audiences, is very personal and subjective.
The strengths and limitations of various materials or techniques should be respected, maximizing the strengths and minimizing the limitations
Jewelry should communicate and reflect the artist’s intent
Jewelry should affirm the wearer’s purpose and identity in context
Jewelry can only be considered as art, as it is worn
We know the jewelry is finished and successful when the choices made and the tradeoffs among appeal, function, and context are implemented to the point we see parsimony and resonance.
SPECIFICATION: Goal-Orientation
It’s not just what you do…it’s how you get there.
Jewelry designers are too quick to focus on the outcome, and too lax to focus on the process. It’s always things like getting it done. Getting it to the client on deadline. Ending up with something concrete to show someone. Too much concentration on outcome can lead to taking shortcuts. Shortsightedness. Inflexibility. A misunderstanding, perhaps illusion about, whether the piece is finished and successful.
Artists more appropriately should focus on goals. Artists who are focused on goals tend to embrace process. It’s about all the smart choices regarding composition, construction and manipulation you made at each increment along the way. By specifying goals, the artist is encouraged to find connections, and be connected to and aware of shared understandings and their impact on perceived success. When problems arise, a goal-oriented focus allows the artist to be flexible and problem solve. The artist is present from contemplation to inspiration and through to aspiration, anticipation, specification and application. The goal-orientation prevents the artist from becoming lost or paralyzed with inaction.
The jewelry artist pursues several goals at once. The jewelry should be both appealing and functional. It should evoke emotion, elicit response, and resonate. The piece should show both unity and variety. The piece should create opinions, validate status, and reconfirm a cultural and social identify. The piece should be reflective and communicative. It should be pleasurable to the maker, the wearer and the viewer alike.
When specifying goals, it is important to remember that not all goals are alike. The goals I am discussing here are the essential elements related to effective performance. That effective performance results in a finished and successful piece of jewelry reflective of the artist’s hand and which resonates among a varied set of audiences.
The artist needs to set goals which clarify what results need to be accomplished by the time any piece of jewelry is finished and showcased. Goals provide perspective. They are there to prevent the artist from achieving anything less than resonance. These goals relate to generating deep understandings and competence at performance. They are not results-specific per se; they are overarching. They serve as sign-posts to point to and highlight what jewelry designers need to engage with when thinking through and implementing design.
The jewelry designer specifies goals as standards of professional performance, such as…
Leveraging the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of desired materials and techniques
Discussing and reflecting upon inspirations and motivations toward the expression of the creative self
Defining aspirational intent, point of view, and what it means to connect to various audiences
Delineating shared understandings among self, wearer, viewer, student, master, buyer and seller, in relationship to how the jewelry will be observed and assessed and worn within a context
Elaborating on all artistic and architectural elements and principles which should come into play, and why
Reflecting on personal learning throughout the process, particularly as it relates to developing and expanding on skills related to fluency in design
Determining how skills, insights and lessons learned from the current project might be transferred to your next one
Within each generalized performance goal, the designer can further identify particular tasks, knowledges and skills required in order to accomplish them. Often, with too many choices about what to do, what to include, and how to proceed, priorities and timeframes will need to be set, as well.
Resonance is more easily achieved when the designer approaches design as a process, an understanding of the myriad sets and levels of choices as made within a coherent system of creative thinking and activity, and with clear performance goals to guide the way.
APPLICATION: Unity, Emotions, Resonance
Think like an assessor[6]…find evidence related to desired results.
What is the evidence we need to know for determining when a piece is finished and successful? What clear and appropriate criteria specify what we should look at?
There are different opinions in craft, art and design about what are the most revealing and important aspects of the work, and which every authentic jewelry design performance must meet.
The traditional criteria used in the art world are that the designer should achieve unity, variety and evoke emotions. These, I feel, may work well when applied to paintings or sculpture, but they are insufficient measures of success when applied to jewelry. Jewelry involves the creation of objects where both artistic appeal as well as practical considerations of use are essential. The artistry of jewelry cannot be distinguished from that jewelry as it is worn, and the context within which it is worn. So, when referencing any jewelry’s design, I prefer to use criteria of parsimony and resonance, instead. We know when a piece is finished and successful when the choices of the artist are deemed parsimonious, and the various audiences perceive the piece to resonate.
Parsimony vs. Unity/Variety
In art, the traditional measure of completion and success is a feeling or sense of “Unity.” Unity signifies how everything feels all right. All the Design Elements used, and how they were coordinated and placed, are very coherent, clear, balanced, harmonious and satisfying. I think the idea of unity begins to get at the place we want to end up. But this concept is not concrete enough for me.
What bothers me the most is that you can have unity, but the piece still be seen as boring when there is no variety. Criteria provided from the art perspective recognizes this. But somehow tempering unity with variety starts to add some ambiguity to our measurements of finish and success. This ambiguity is unacceptable as a principled outcome of jewelry construction.
Another concern I have, is that you can have unity with variety, but, from the art perspective, these assessments rely too much on universal, objective perceptions of design elements and their attributes (for example, the use of color schemes). Resonance is not about picking the correct color scheme. It is more about how that color scheme is used, manipulated, leveraged or violated within the piece. We must not leave the artist, the wearer, and the situation out of the equation. We must not minimize the artist’s hand — the artist’s intent, thinking, strategizing, arranging, pushing the boundaries, even violating the universal, objective rules.
Jewelry creation usually demands a series of judgment calls and tradeoffs. Tradeoffs between aesthetics and functionality. Tradeoffs between artist goals and audience understandings and expectations. Tradeoffs between a full palette of colors-shapes-textures and a very limited one. Any measure of completeness and success needs to result from the forced choice decisions of the artist. It needs to account for the significance of the results, not just the organization of them. It needs to explain the Why, not just the What.
For me, the more appropriate concept here is Parsimony. Parsimony is when you know enough is enough. When the finished and successful piece is parsimonious, the relationship of all the Design Elements and their expressed attributes will be so strong, that to add or remove any one thing would diminish, not just the design, but rather the significance of the design.
Parsimony is sometimes referred to in art and design as Economy, but the idea of economy is reserved for the visual effects. The designer needs to be able to decide when enough is enough. For jewelry designers, we want that economy or parsimony to apply to functional and situational effects, as well.
Resonance vs. Evoking Emotions
Finished and successful jewelry should not only evoke emotions, but, should resonate.
Resonance is something more than emotion. It is some kind of additional energy we see, feel and otherwise experience. Emotion is very reactive. Resonance is intuitive, involving, identifying. Resonance is an empathetic response where artist and audience realize a shared (or contradictory) understanding without losing sight of whose views and feelings belong to whom. Emotion can be seen in the reaction, “That’s beautiful.” Resonance can be seen in the reactions, “I want to wear that, “ or “I want to buy that.”
Resonance results from how the artist controls light, shadow, and their characteristics of warmth and cold, receding and approaching, bright and dull, light and dark. Resonance results from how the artist leverages the strengths of materials and techniques and minimizes their weaknesses. Resonance results from social, cultural and situational cues. Resonance results from how the artist takes us to the edge of universal, objective understandings, and pushes us every so slightly, but not too, too far, beyond that edge.
FLUENCY[7] AND EMPOWERMENT: Managing Choices In Expression
Empowerment is about successfully making choices. These are choices about expressing one’s intent through art and design.
These choices could be as simple as whether to follow through on some inspiration. They might involve selection of elements of design, or principled arrangements of beads, forms and components. The designer will make choices about how to draw someone’s attention to the piece, or, present the piece to a larger audience. The designer will make choices between aesthetics and functionality. She or he may decide to submit the piece to a magazine or contest. She or he may want to sell the piece and market it. The designer will make choices about how a piece might be worn, or who might wear it, or when it might be worn, in what context.
The fluent designer will be adept at making these choices. The better designer is able to bring a high level of coherence and consistency to the process of managing all this — intent, shared understandings, knowledge and skills, evaluative review, and reflection and adjustment. This is called “fluency in design”.
Fluency is the ability of the designer to select and connect Design Elements smoothly, in visually and functionally and situationally appropriate ways with understanding. The idea of understanding is broadly defined, to include the artist’s personal goals for expression, as well as the expectations of all the audiences — the wearer, the viewer, the buyer, the seller, the student, the master. The better designer achieves a level of disciplinary literacy where fluency becomes automatic, accurate, and rapidly applied.
The better, more fluent jewelry designer is able to anticipate how others will come to understand these mechanisms and the implications for applying them in one way or another. For example, the better and more fluent designer would be able to select and combine design elements to appropriately differentiate jewelry that would best be worn at work, and jewelry that would best be worn, say, when someone was going to a night club for dancing and socializing.
Lastly, fluency means that the designer has also been taught to look for, anticipate and incorporate context clues. Design does not occur in a vacuum. It has implications which become realized in a context. That context might be historical, cultural or situational.
RUBRIC[8] AS THINKING ROUTINE
Designers need a simple map to all these ideas about literacy and fluency — something they can easily review and determine where their strengths and weaknesses are as they gain proficiency and fluency in design. One type of map is a rubric.
A rubric is a table of criteria used to rate and rank understanding and performance. A rubric answers the question by what criteria performance should be judged. The rubric provides insightful clues for the kinds of evidence we need to make such assessments. The rubric helps us distinguish degrees of performance, from the sophisticated to the naïve. The rubric encapsulates what an authentic jewelry design performance would look like.
Such a rubric is presented below for the artist to use as a thinkingroutine.[9] Here I have used one rubric to represent both (1) understanding and (2) performance, but, I could have easily created two separate rubrics toward this end. In this rubric table below, the rows represent contemplation, inspiration, aspiration, anticipation, application, and fluency and empowerment. The columns represent the degrees of understanding and performance along a continuum, from proficient on one end to not there yet on the other. By way of example, I use the rubric to assess my performance with a piece I created called Vestment (Feld, 2004).
RUBRIC: How Proficient Am I In Achieving Resonance?
The Rubric…
RUBRIC: How Proficient Am I In Achieving Resonance?
[4]Shared Understandings. In another graduate education class, the major text reviewed the differences between understanding and knowledge. The question was how to teach understanding. Worth the read to gain many insights about how to structure teaching to get sufficient understanding to enrich learning. Understanding by Designby Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005. [5] Backwards Design. One of the big take-aways from Understanding by Design(see footnote 3) was the idea they introduced of “backwards design”. Their point is that you can better teach understanding if you anticipate the evidence others will use in their assessments of what you are trying to do. When coupled with ideas about teaching literacy and fluency (see footnote 2), you can begin to introduce ideas about managing the design process in a coherent and alignable way. [6] Understanding by Designby Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, p. 146, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005. [7]Fluency. I took two graduate education courses in Literacy. The primary text we used was Literacy: Helping Students Construct Meaning by J. David Cooper, M. Robinson, J.A. Slansky and N. Kiger, 9th Edition, Cengage Learning, 2015. Even though the text was not about jewelry designing per se, it provides an excellent framework for understanding what fluency is all about, and how fluency with language develops over a period of years. I have relied on many of the ideas in the text to develop my own ideas about a disciplinary literacy for jewelry design.
[8]Rubrics. Understanding by Designby Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, p. 146, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005. [9] Thinking Routines. I teach jewelry design. I find it useful to engage students with various ways of thinking out loud. They need to hear me think out loud about what choices I am making and what things I am considering when making those choices. They need to hear themselves think out loud so that they can develop strategies for getting more organized and strategic in dealing with information and making decisions. My inspiration here was based on the work done by Visible Thinking by Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education .
Abstract The artist creates something out of nothing. And the jewelry artist does the same, but also imposes this act on the person who wears the result, who in turn, decides whether to display or demonstrate its desirability and wearability, and all within a particular context or situation. So, we start with nothing into something. That something takes up space. That space might be filled with objects we call points, lines, planes, shapes, forms and themes. With whatever that space is filled, and however these objects are organized, the space and its composition convey meaning and value, communicated not merely to the artist, but as importantly, to the wearer and viewer, as well. As Design Elements, it is important to differentiate among the power of each of these objects to focus, anchor, direct, balance, move, expand, synergize, coordinate, conform, bound, connect, and violate.
POINT, LINE, PLANE, SHAPE, FORM, THEME: Creating Something Out Of Nothing
The artist creates something out of nothing.
And the jewelry artist does the same, but also imposes this act on the person who wears the result, who in turn, decides whether to display or demonstrate its desirability and wearability, and all within a particular context or situation.
So, we start with nothing into something.
That something takes up space.
Space separates and connects us with things. It is these arrangements and contrasts which allows us to find meaning, feel connected, recognize implications.
That space might be filled with points, lines, planes, shapes, forms and themes. We might add color, texture and pattern.
With whatever that space is filled and organized, the space and its composition convey meaning and value, not merely for the jewelry artist, but as importantly, for the wearer and viewer, as well. Filling space with objects will always create a level of tension because any viewer will feel compelled to make sense of it all. This is work. This is risky — what if the person evaluates poorly or makes a mistake or shows bad judgement or is compelled to pretend to understand? It’s always easier (and perhaps safer) for the person to turn and look away. To reject the jewelry. Not wear it. Not buy it.
Jewelry designers do not want people to avoid their creations. So, it is important to also anticipate what happens when more objects are added to the composition. Further adding to and organizing and arranging these points, lines, planes, shapes, forms and themes into a design will exacerbate things even more, increasing the risk, but also the reward, for the viewer to maintain their stance, keep looking at it, and keep trying to figure out what it all means, and what it all means for him or her.
Meaning and value emerge from some type of this dialectic-type interaction, first between artist and self, and then between artist and client, often reflected in the selection of materials and choices about arrangements. The meta-qualities and inspirations and aspirations underlying these decisions then transition into forms and themes.
This emergence is contextually bound by shared understandings about whether the piece should be judged as finished and successful.
The choices are infinite.
Let’s begin to decode points, lines, planes, shapes, forms and themes. The jewelry designer’s ability to learn about, manage and control space is perhaps the most critical skills to develop.
[1]Points, lines, planes, and shapes are independent design elements, and forms and themes are their dependent cousins. Independent design elements function a little like vowels in the alphabet, and can stand alone and be expressive. Dependent design elements function more like consonants, and typically require some combination with independent elements to have fully formed expressions.
Whatever their independence or dependence, these design elements are progressively interrelated. As we move from point along the list to theme, we increase our power to express meaning, establish value, create tensions, and resonate. As we use more than one of these elements — either more of the same element or combinations of different ones — within the same composition, we also are increasing our artistic and design control, power, and ability to show intent, establish meaning, and achieve a successful result.
These design elements discussed here are considered objects to the extent that they are things to be positioned and manipulated. They are considered parts of structures to the extent that they are part of some organization or arrangement. Both objects and structures express meaning and value, but structures moreso.
Themes are explanatory meanings resulting from the interpretation of forms. They may be literal or abstract. They may be symbolic and layered. They may be culturally- or situationally-specific.
Forms are especially coherent combinations and arrangements of points, lines, planes and shapes. They may be distinct or overlapping. They may be fully formed or partially formed. They reflect broader, deeper meanings and reflections — something considerably beyond the meanings of the component parts.
Shapes are bounded lines and planes, delimiting spatial units which convey much more meaning than their individual component lines and planes could ever suggest on their own. Shapes function in 2- or 3-dimensions. Shapes are interpretable, whether they are immediately or easily recognized, or not.
Planes are defined by the intersection of 2 lines, or the presence of 3 noncollinear (not on the same line) points, or 2 parallel lines, or a line and a point not on that line. Planes suggest the ideas of existence, thought, and development. Planes imply the possibilities for movement and dimension.
Lines are defined as a series of points. Lines imply the possibilities for boundaries, directions and movement. They can be used to measure things. They can demarcate that which is OK and sacred from that which is unacceptable or dangerous or profane.
Points change the nothingness of space into something-ness. They can focus the attention. Points are the simplest geometric elements which imply the possibilities for imposing individual intent, meaning and value on the universe. The presence of two or more points can suggest relativity.
The jewelry designer cannot ignore any of this. As design elements, points, lines, planes, shapes, forms and themes are an integral part of the jewelry artist’s tool box. As elements within compositions, they are to be constructed or manipulated into principled arrangements we call jewelry. They allow the artist to show his or her hand. They are some of the major building blocks the artist uses to convey meaning and connectedness, show intent and inspire others.
As Design Elements, it is important to differentiate among the power of each of these elements to…
(1) Focus the eye (2) Anchor or establish some kind of predominance or hierarchy within a composition (3) Direct the eye (4) Establish balance, order, and a satisfying distribution of proportions and sizes, or their opposite (5) Give a sense of movement and flow (6) Give a sense of dimension (7) Synergize or marry the relationship between positive and negative space (8) Establish a sense of coherence, coordination, sameness, unity, difference, and/or variety, or some grouping rules for elements (9) Conform to the shape of the body (10) Establish a silhouette or personal identity (11) Connect to a time frame, context, or situation (12) Conform to or violate shared expectations about good design
As used with Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation, it is important to understand how each of these elements can enhance or impede the artist’s ability to arrange objects to achieve a finished and successful piece of jewelry. Each can support or detract from a compelling arrangement.
The designer does not have to use all of these elements. But the designer does need to know what each can and cannot be used to do. The designer must develop that intuitive and fluent knowledge how each of these elements function. The goal of jewelry design is to communicate. Communicate the artist’s inspirations and aspirations. Communicate the choices made to turn aspirations into concrete products. Communicate the self-identifying relevance of jewelry pieces to the wearers. Communicate the socio-cultural relevance of jewelry pieces both wearers and viewers.
Finally, each element should be used parsimoniously (that is, that Goldilocks point of just right), to attain a level of resonance. Our jewelry, at the minimum, should evoke an emotion, and more importantly, go a little beyond this and resonate.
POINTS
In math, the point exists but has no mass. However, for this and our other design elements discussed in this article, we use a looser definition in art and design. The point is the simplest geometrically based design element the artist can use to create something out of nothing and draw someone’s attention to a piece. The point can be very small, or medium or large. It can be a simple circle, or a blob, or a square, or anything that might get interpreted as a point.
The point is the building block for everything else. Every mark we can make will be a combination of one or more points. Every line, plane, shape or form is essentially a point, regardless of its size.
Most importantly, the point calls one’s attention to a place where no attention was called for or placed before. They create a reference point. With 2 or more points, that reference point builds up much more meaning. It shows relativity in a relationship. It suggests distance and direction. It can suggest layering or dimension — think two over-lapping points.
Relationships between and among points pose two especially important meanings. One, the relationship that emerges about proportions of the point(s) to the space around it. Two, the relationship that emerges about the position of the point(s) within the space around it. Proportions and positioning.
Jewelry Applications/Decoding Points
A Point which steers your eye to the upper right, partly due to proportion and placement
The jewelry designer usually starts with a collection of different kinds of points with some determination and a lot of experimentation to arrange them in some pleasing way. Some points might be various round beads. They might be beads of different shapes. They might be a clustering of beads into some shape or form. They might be a fully formed component.
The artist thinks about the distribution and balance of points. Sizes, relative sizes, shapes and variety of shapes are pondered over. Then points are placed, usually, with jewelry, in some kind of circle or silhouette. Their placement may establish a sense of balance, such as symmetry. Their placement might create a rhythm, either fast or slow.
The artist determines where any emphasis should go. Often the artist uses a pendant drop, some variation in proportion, or some color placement effect to call a viewer’s attention to a certain part of the jewelry. These function as points.
The artist determines how emphasis, size, proportionate relationships and placement affect how the piece will be interpreted and decoded by others. In what way(s) does the point influence the space around it? Should attention be focused or directed? What kind of rhythm should be established? Should a feeling of closeness, apartness, integration or skew be created? Have the dots contributed to a sense of symmetry or asymmetry? Do the points lose their “point-ness” and suddenly get perceived as a lines or shapes, when they move closer together?
The artist decides the number of points to be used, and decides their parsimonious selection and placement. That is, the artist decides when enough points are enough. Using more than one point adds a level of tension to the piece. There is a competition for space and how position and proportion will affect interpretation of the artist’s intent, whether the piece feels finished, and whether the piece is seen as successful.
Overlapping points create a figure/ground perspective. They change the nature of the space and the person’s interaction with it. They add depth. Overlapping points might get re-translated into a new point, or into a new shape.
LINES
Lines are defined by the connections between 2 or more points. Lines have length and width. They connect, they divide, they direct. The points along the line can attract or repel each other. They can emote strength, weakness, or harmony. They can excite, muddle or confuse. They can be actual or implied.
Where points are about emphasis, lines are mostly about direction and movement. A line is not attracting you to a point in space, but rather, it is directing you. Lines prevent the viewer from getting stuck staring at one point in your jewelry composition. They encourage the viewer to move around and take into account the whole piece.
Lines both separate and join things. They establish a silhouette. They demarcate boundaries. They signal a beginning and an end, or travel in one or both directions all the way out to infinity, and perhaps beyond. Lines can violate boundaries, or establish walls around something.
They can curve and curve around things. A line which curves around and connects its beginning to its end becomes a circle. If the line delineating the circle becomes too thick and fills all the negative space, it becomes a point. If the curving line does not meet itself, beginning to end, it becomes a spiral. A curved line usually conveys a different sense of beauty and romance than a straight line.
As lines become thicker, they begin to take on the characteristics of planes. To maintain their identity and integrity as lines, they must always be longer than they are wide. Changing the ratio of the length to the width has the greatest impact on how any line will be perceived and understood.
As lines become thinner, they more and more emphasize the quality of direction. As both endpoints of lines seem to extend towards infinity, they emphasize movement. If one endpoint is fixed, while the other endpoint is allowed to extend towards infinity, more tension is perceived as the space around the line is interpreted by the viewer.
Two or more lines together create a measure of things. People try to make sense of each line, sometimes in combination, but often as individual segments. The interval space between the lines becomes critical in this endeavor.
When two lines converge, they create an angle between them. This joint or connecting point becomes the nexus for things moving in two different or altering directions. The angle and juxtapositions of multiple angles can establish a rhythm. Angles smaller than 90 degrees generate perceptions of more rapid movement than angles larger than 90 degrees.
When two lines are separated, they often are perceived separately, each with its own identify. Think of the single vs. the multiple strand necklace or bracelet. The interval between the lines becomes a critical part of the story ascribed to each line separately. It is important how that interval’s negative space is filled up or left empty. It is important how wide that interval is between each pair of lines. Pieces with narrower interval spaces have more tension resulting from how the lines are perceived and thought about.
The width of interval spaces between lines creates rhythm. The use of color can further enhance (or impede) this perception of rhythm within a piece of jewelry. Varying the intensity and values of the lines can create dimensionality, where some lines appear to advance and others appear to recede.
Thicker lines placed close together can change the gestalt, where the viewer’s attention shifts from the original lines to the negative interval spaces, now seen as the lines.
Jewelry Applications/Decoding Lines
Lines are design elements used to compose, construct and manipulate beads and other pieces into jewelry. They assist the artist in translating inspiration into aspiration, establishing intent, and securing shared understandings about whether the piece is finished and how successful that piece should be judged.
We’ve learned that the control over line includes choices about thinness or thickness, finite or infinite, continuous or sporadic, integrated or disjointed, connected or not, and spacing between intervals. The presence of more than one line, and the chosen attributes of each line, adds more meaning, more complexity, and more opportunity for the jewelry artist to play with materials, techniques and designs.
The tensions underlying points get assessed and managed differently by the jewelry artist than those underlying lines. While the point is more about attracting your eye, the line is more about directing it. Points emphasize and focus and anchor. Lines add movement and flow. Points lead us to ideas about balance and predominance. Lines lead us to ideas about alignment, coordination, closeness, grouping. Lines add additional measures of meaning, such as those associated with violation, conformance, span of control, silhouette, dimensionality, boundaries and framing and walls.
PLANES
Planes are used to encompass a space. Planes suggest unity. Planes provide reference and boundaries and direction. They suggest dimension and movement. As such, the use of planes often makes it easier for the viewer to find and interpret meaning of all the other design elements found within or outside that plane.
Because of this, establishing planar relationships among design elements can also lead to a measured sense of history and time and timeliness. They can lead to more concrete understandings of context and situation within which the other design elements present themselves, and seek to affect.
Planes are created in different ways. These include, (a) Two intersecting lines (b) A line and a point not on that line c) Three points, one of which is not on the same linear path as the other two (d) Two parallel lines
Planes are not restricted to a single point of view. They allow widespread placement and fragmentation.
Planes may overlap. They may be parallel. They may intersect. They may be flat or curved. Their boundaries may be linear or nonlinear. They may have clearly defined or diffuse boundaries. They may be warped and pulled in different directions.
Just as lines can be thought of as an accumulation of points, planes can be thought of as an accumulation of lines.
As a plane becomes larger, it sometimes takes on the characteristics of a point. If it takes on the characteristics of a point, then its contour takes on more critical importance, diminishing the point-like characteristics, and increasing those of shape-like attributes.
For jewelry designers, planes can be seen to have surfaces. Textures and patterns may be added to these surfaces. Textures involve the placement of 2 or more design elements within the same space and which are seen to somehow relate to one another. Textures have visual impacts. When this structural relationship among textural objects seems to have some order or regularity to it, we refer to the texture as a pattern.
Textures and patterns may be 2- or 3-dimensional. They may be regular, predictable and statistical. Or they may seem random and non-statistical. They may be repeated or singular. They may be both visual and tactile. We may see textures and patterns which are layered or not, or smooth or rough.
Jewelry Applications/Decoding Planes
For the jewelry artist, planes can become both a help and a hindrance. They can aid the designer in establishing a coherent point of view. But they can get away from the designer, and allow incoherence and irrelevance to slip into the composition.
SHAPES
When we come to focus on the outer contours of a plane, we begin to recognize this design element as something we call a shape.
Shapes are areas in 2- or 3-dimensions which have defined or implied boundaries. They are somehow separated from the space surrounding them. Shapes may be delineated by lines. They may be filled or emptied. They may be formed by differences in color values and intensities. They may be formed by patterns and textures. They suggest both mass and volume.
Shapes may be organic or mechanical. They may relate to the background, foreground or middle ground. They may be geometrical (regular, predictable contours) or organic, distorted or overlapping, blended or distinct or abstract.
Shapes may be interrelated by angle, sometimes forcing a sense of movement and rotation.
More than one shape in a particular space may make one shape appear more active or more important or more prominent. This may change the perception of what that shape is about, particularly when shapes overlap. Secondary shapes may seem more point-like or line-like in relation to the primary shape.
When we recognize something as a shape, we begin to try to impose meaning on it. Shapes provide orientation. They are very powerful connectors between viewer and object. They may take on attribute qualities, such as masculine or feminine.
Shapes have meaning in and of themselves, and are not dependent on the human body for their expressive qualities and powers. When dependent on the human body, they become forms, rather than shapes.
Jewelry Applications/Decoding Shapes
Jewelry artists need to be able to relate the shape to the message they hope the shape will convey. The shape should reconfirm, rather than obscure, that message.
Part of successfully working with shapes is controlling whether the boundaries are distinct, blurred or implied. Another important part is controlling how the interior space is depicted — such as, left empty and negative, shaded, colored, textured, either partially or fully, densely or not. A last important part is whether the shape represents a 2-dimensional or a 3-dimensional space.
FORMS
Form is any positive element in a composition. It may be related to points, lines, planes and shapes.
A form cannot be decoded and understood without referencing the space around it. A viewer must be able to understand and impose some meaning on the relationship between the form and the space it occupies. A viewer must be able to differentiate the form or figure from the space or ground. The artist cannot change the form without concurrently changing the space, thus how things get interpreted and related to. The tension established between form and space determines the extent, time, and motivation of the viewer to interact with that form, and find it satisfying or not.
With jewelry, forms are primarily actualized as they relate to and are worn on the body. They convey and solidify the expressive relationships among design elements, person and context. Jewelry forms are not merely structures with wearability. They are expressive design elements which resonate their expressive purpose and power as they are juxtaposed and positioned against the curvilinearity the human body.
Form tends to be similar to shapes, but more 3D in reality or implied by illusion. Form can be delineated by light and shadow on it’s surface, whether actual or illusory.
Jewelry Applications/Decoding Forms
Forms supercede their constituent point, line and shape elements
For the jewelry artist, she or he must determine where the point, line, shape and plane end, and where the form begins. This means developing the decoding and fluency skills which can delineate and anticipate what happens to the expressive powers of the jewelry when the piece is worn.
The choice of form becomes a primary consideration in communicating the artist’s message and intent.
The artist must manage the tensions between form and space, foreground (advancing) and background (receding), object (design element) and structure (arrangement).
Forms can have magnetic powers, stickiness, and synergy. Forms can pull your eye in certain directions, or multiply, add, subtract or divide meaning and value, based on positioning, mass and volume. Forms can provide additional control over balance and movement felt within a piece.
THEMES
Themes are ideas which are conveyed by the visual, tactile and contextual experience with the piece of jewelry. Most often themes are implied, rather than explicit. They relate the jewelry to the mind, and cannot be understood apart from the individual or group culture in which the jewelry is worn.
Themes are forms which reference, or can be interpreted to have reference, or inflect in some way some reference to individual, group, cultural, societal or universal norms, values and expectations.
Themes infuse or imply power, position, protection, or identification. They may be clear or abstract. They may be repeated or not. They may result from interpretations of individual forms, or whole compositions. They may be obvious or they may be symbolic.
Jewelry Applications/Decoding Themes
Thematic use of forms
Well developed themes enhance excitement, interest and investigation. They increase the chances the artist’s design will achieve a level of resonance.
In Summary
Points, Lines, Planes, Shapes, Forms, and Themes are objects used to turn nothingness into something.
That something holds meaning, asserts meaning and expresses meaning.
Points anchor. Lines direct. Planes encompass. Shapes orient. Forms provide referents. Themes connect ideas.
Meaning is dialectic, in that how it is ultimately received and interpreted results partly from the fluency of the jewelry designer to use these objects (and other design elements, as well) to translate inspiration into aspiration and aspiration into a finished result, and partly from the various audiences of the designer and their shared understandings about what it means to be finished and what it means to be successful.
Arranging these objects into some organized composition provides a structure for them. Both the objects themselves, and the structures they are arranged and embedded in, convey expressive meanings. As these meanings get expressed within shapes, forms and these, their complexity, tensions and implications become deeper and more resonant.
At some point in the design process, points, lines, planes and shapes take on the characteristics of forms and themes. That is, the jewelry is no longer decoded as a set of individual parts. Decoding jewelry becomes more contingent on how the jewelry relates to the body (forms) and how the jewelry relates to the individual or group culture within which it is worn (themes). The whole of the composition takes on meaning and value beyond that of the sum of its parts.
So, take a moment. Grab a pen and blank piece of paper. Draw a dot.
You are now an artist.
Draw a series of dots, lines, planes and shapes in the form of a necklace.
You are now an artist with an interest in jewelry.
Jot down some ideas how you would build upon your initial sketch and develop forms and themes. You might re-interpret what you drew as a series of components. You might select other design elements — particularly Color — to better define the forms and establish a them.
You are now a jewelry artist.
Think about how your developing piece of jewelry reflects your personal inspirations and intent. Anticipate how others will view your piece of jewelry and judge it as finished and successful. Think about clues you can look for to reconfirm to yourself that your jewelry has degree of resonance — that others will not just appreciate it, but want to wear it.
[1]Bradley, Steven, Points, Dots, And Lines: The Elements of Design Part II, Web Design, 7/12/2010. This article incorporates many ideas from this article. as seen on https://vanseodesign.com/web-design/points-dots-lines/
Abstract: Color is the single most important Design Element, whether used alone, or in combination with other Design Elements. Yet jewelry creates a series of dilemmas for the colorist not always anticipated by what jewelry designers are taught in a typical art class. This article reviews the basic concepts in color theory and suggests how to adapt each of these to the special requirements of beads and jewelry. Special attention is paid to differentiating those aspects of color use we can consider as objective and universal from those which are more subjective. The fluent designer is one who can maneuver between universal understandings and subjective beliefs when selecting and implementing colors, color combinations and color blends. This involves managing the sensation of color light value (balance), the sensation of color contrasts (proportion), and the sensation of simultaneous color contrasts (context) among designer, wearer and viewer.
RETHINKING THE TEACHING OF “COLOR” IN JEWELRY DESIGN
You cannot paint with beads and other jewelry components.
I am going to repeat this: You cannot paint with beads and other jewelry components.
When you take color class after color class rooted in art, they are teaching you how to paint. You can’t do this with jewelry and beads.
As frustrating as this can be, you cannot ignore the fact that Color is the single most important Design Element. Colors, their selection, use and arrangement, are believed to have universal powers to get people to see things as harmonious and appealing. Color attracts attention. A great use of color within and object, not only makes that object more coherent, it can be contagious, as well. Using colors that do not work well together, or using too many colors or not enough colors, or using colors which look good on paper but distort in reality can put people off.
Designers can learn the artistic basics of Color concepts and theories. They can reference this visual language of color to influence how they go about making choices, including those about picking and using colors. However, jewelry artists who are fluent in design will be very aware of the limitations this artistic, painterly language imposes on them. They will have to learn how to decode, adjust and leverage their thinking to anticipate how the bead and other related and integrated materials assert their needs for color, and how to strategically compose, construct and manipulate them.
Jewelry, unlike painting or sculpture, has certain characteristics and requirements which rely on the management and control of color, its sensation and its variability with a slightly different emphasis than learned in a traditional art class. Jewelry is a 3-dimensional object, composed of a range of materials. Jewelry situates, moves and adjusts in relation to the human body and what that body is doing at the moment. To get the attention their jewelry deserves, jewelry artists must become fluent with color selection and application from their own disciplinary perspective. We must understand color in jewelry as the jewelry is worn, and worn in a particular context or situation.
Beads [here I use ‘beads’ as a stand-in for all the component parts and stringing materials used in a piece of jewelry] are curved or faceted or otherwise shaped, and the shape and texture and material and dimensionality affect the color, its variation and its placement and movement on the beads surface. They affect how light reflects and refracts, so depending on the angle at which you are standing, and how you are looking at the bead, you get some unexpected, unanticipated, sometimes unwanted colors in your piece of jewelry.
Additionally, you need to anticipate how the bead, when worn, can alter its color, depending on the source of light, the type and pace of movement of the wearer, and how the eye interacts with the bead at any point of time or positioning. There are many gaps of light between each pair of beads, and you can’t paint these in. The colors don’t blend, don’t merge, don’t spill over, don’t integrate. You can’t create the millions of subtle color variations that you can with paint.
I’m not suggesting that beaders and jewelry makers be afraid of colors. Rather, they should embrace them. They should learn insights into understanding colors. They should be inspired by colors. They should express their artistic and creative selves through color. They should use color palettes to their fullest. They should recognize how their various audiences see and claim and interact with color.
It is most important that jewelry designers understand color, its use and application from their own disciplinary standpoint. In some sense, however, the approaches of most bead artists and jewelry designers too often remain somewhat painterly — too routed in the Art Model. The Art Model ignores things about functionality and context. It diminishes how the individuality of the designer, and the subjective responses of the wearer and viewer affect each other. In many respects, these are synergetic, mutually dependent and reciprocal. The Art model understands the success of jewelry as if sitting on an easel, not as it is worn.
As a result, color theories get oversimplified for the jewelry artist. “Value” is barely differentiated from “Intensity”. Color selection focuses too much on harmony, and too little on resonance and edginess. Color training too often steers jewelry designers towards a step-by-step, paint-by-number sort of approach to color selection and application. The co-dependent relationship between Color and other Design Elements is downplayed and glossed over. This is a major disservice.
So, I’ve tried to re-think how we could and should think about and teach “color” to jewelry artists. Not easy. Art and Design Theory suggests that, in order to teach designers to make good choices, we need to break down color concepts and theories into teachable and digestible groups of skills. And then show how the next set of skills builds upon the first.
We need to show jewelry artists what kinds of color choices they will be making as they create pieces of jewelry, and then put them in situations where they are forced to make these kinds of choices. We need to think of colors as “building blocks”, and the process of using colors, as one of creative construction. Creative construction requires focusing on how color (and multiple colors) is (are) sensed, and sensed by various audiences which include the artist him- or herself, and the wearer and the viewer, and the exhibitor, collector, and the seller, if need be.
So, that’s where I’ll begin with color: Delineating the types of choices that the jewelry artist needs to make, starting with choices about picking colors.
Picking Colors
As a design element, color is used to attract attention. It aids in grouping some objects and setting boundaries between others. It can emphasize and focus. It conveys meaning and value. Usually color enhances the aesthetics and appeal. Color can be used as an organizing tool and create segments, components, rhythms, movement, dimension and hierarchical arrangements within your jewelry composition. Color can affect the figure/ground relationship of the composition.
There are many different kinds of choices involved, when using Color:
Choices about colors based on our understanding of…
— Personal strategies for picking colors or finding inspirations for colors — Color theories and concepts
— How the bead (and related jewelry materials) asserts its (their) needs for color
— How color affects the viewers of color
— The process for designing jewelry with color
— The situation or context within which the jewelry is to be worn
Part of picking colors is very personal and subjective. And part of this is very strategic and must be managed. That is, part of picking colors is about anticipating more universal understandings about how various audiences will sense and pick colors. How do you actually go about picking your colors, and then deciding on your final colors for your piece? What kinds of things influence you in choosing colors? What inspires you? Where do you look for inspiration? Do you have favorite colors and color combinations? Or colors and color combinations that you detest? How do you anticipate how others will view and evaluate the colors you pick?
Choosing Colors is an involved exercise. Most people avoid this kind of exercise, and settle for a set of colors that match. But, in design terms, Colors are used by the designer to clarify and intensify the effects she or he wants to achieve.
What does it mean to “clarify and intensify” the effects you might want to achieve? For example, the artist may use color to clarify and/or intensify any of these kinds of things…
— delineation of segments, forms, themes, areas
— expressions of naturalism or abstraction
— enhancing the sense of structure or physicality (forward/recede; emphasize mass or lines or surfaces or points)
— playing with light (surprise, distort, challenge, contradict, provoke)
— altering the natural relationship between the jewelry and the situation it is worn in (context, clothing, setting)
Color is the primary Design Element designers choose to express their intent, establish unity, create rhythm, set movement and dimensionality in place, enhance shape, make points, lines and planes come alive, and the like. Alas, too few people apply this kind of thinking and make this kind of effort when choosing colors.
For myself, I know that as I start to play with my design arrangements, I also begin to identify potential color issues. Designs are imperfect. Beads are imperfect. Colors are imperfect. With each issue, I try to figure out solutions — other things I can do with colors to make everything work. My choices begin with scientifically proven color theories — shared universals that virtually everyone has about picking colors.
In literacy terminology, this is called decoding. Then I begin to personalize my choices so that my results show more of my individuality as an artist. Some of these latter choices do not necessarily reflect shared universal understandings about color, its sensation and its use. In literacy terminology, my ability to move back and forth between the objective and subjective is called fluency.
Bead Choices
The bead — its very being — creates as series of dilemmas for the colorist. And each dilemma is only overcome through strategically making and managing choices about color and design.
Such dilemmas include things like…
Beads are not the same as using paints
Can’t blend beads
Boundary issues
Issues associated with shapes, faceting, edges, crevices
Jewelry reflects and refracts light, and this may change as the wearer moves, or lighting changes, or perspective and angle of vision changes, or materials or material mixes change
Limits in the range of colors (and color tones) you can pick from
Issues associated with the fact that jewelry as worn, takes many shapes/positions, as the person moves, and the color appearance may change or vary
Beads are parts in whole compositions, and juxtaposition of 2 or more beads may change or vary the colors’ appearance
Jumping from bead to bead within the composition, means the viewer’s mind has to fill in where there are gaps of color to give the illusion there is a continuance of color throughout the composition
Yet most people do not recognize or anticipate these kinds of dilemmas.
Emotions, Moods and Choices
The emotional and psychological effects of color are undeniable. These effects are usually felt through processes of color comparisons and contrasts. The better designer anticipates the goals of the wearer, and what emotions and moods the wearer wants to evoke in all that see the jewelry as worn. This might be appeal, beauty, trust, power, wealth, intelligence, and the list goes on.
Designing With Color — Many Choices
The jewelry designer must be strategic with color, which comes down to..
Selection
Placement
Distribution
Transition
Proportion
Designers must be intentional, not only with the selection of colors, but in the placement of color within the piece, as well. The designer achieves balance and harmony, partly through the placement of colors. The designer determines how colors are distributed within the piece, and how colors transition from one color to the next. And the designer determines what proportions of each color are used, where in the piece, and how.
These kinds of choices affect movement and rhythm, dimensionality, and resonance.
Subjective or Objective Choices? SOME TOOLS FROM ART THEORY
Many people are often skeptical that you can choose colors with any basis of rationality. Choosing colors is intuitive, subjective, personal. You can’t teach people to be better users of colors, because you’re either born with a sense of color, or you are not.
People seem to have cultural or social expectations about the meanings of some colors. When Vanderbilt students see black and gold, they associate it with school colors. When others see black and gold, they associate it with something else. The same goes for University of Tennessee Orange, and so forth school to school.
If we are to be able to teach jewelry makers and beaders to be more scientific in their choices of colors, and be able to anticipate how their various audiences respond to colors, then we would need to have some objective rules, rules that refer universally to just about everyone. Rules that inform people what colors are best. What colors go together, which ones do not. Rules that show how to manipulate color and its expression in perfect and predictable ways.
But everything seems so subjective.
When people see colors on the vertical, they may respond very differently than when they see these same colors on the horizontal.
Look at flags of countries around the world. Many flag colors are red, white and blue.
If you look at France’s flag, you have red/white/blue on the vertical.
Russia’s flag has red/white/blue on the horizontal.
You frequently find that people might like a color arrangement in a vertical organization, but feel very uncomfortable, or have much disdain for those same colors, when found in the horizontal.
COLOR TOOLS AND THEIR THEORETICAL BASIS Sensation Management
Color research over the past 100 years or so suggests that there are many universals in how people perceive, understand and respond to colors. These universals provide the basis for several “sensation-management tools” jewelry designers might use to help them manipulate various design elements and their arrangements within a jewelry composition. Some of the most useful color tools are those which designers use to control how to make one color relate to another. These have to do with creating and managing…
A. Sensations of Color Balance (Light Values)
B. Sensations of Color Proportions (Color Contrast)
C. Sensations of Simultaneous Color (Simultaneous Color Contrasts)
As jewelry designers, we need to know…
— What these color TOOLS are, and with which we can play
— What the special demands beads (and all other materials) place on our use of these TOOLS
— How we can push the limits of these TOOLS to achieve harmony, variety and emotional responses
— How Far We Can Push the limits of these TOOLS to achieve parsimony and resonance
Toward this end, we need to know a little bit about the research and theories these tools are based upon. We need to understand some things about perception and cognition. That is, we need to understand, as people interact with our jewelry, how the brain comes to see color, recognize color, and interpret color in context.
Theory / Research Underlying These Color-Sensation Management Tools
My favorite book on the research into the theoretical bases of these kinds of color management tools is by Johannes Itten [2] called The Elements of Color. The most important theories about color universals for jewelry designers, as detailed in his book, include,
(1) After Images
(2) Use of the Color Wheel
(3) Color Schemes
(4) Color Proportions
(5) Simultaneity Effects
As a design element in and of itself, Color (and its attributes) are universally understood as if they were objective facts which comprise a visual grammar. It is important to understand how to employ universal understandings about color.
Universality, in and of itself, however, is necessary but not sufficient for understanding why some color use draws your attention, and others do not. Here aspects of subjective interpretations and reactions, given the context, have great influence. The fluent, successful jewelry designer should understand both those universal and subjective aspects of color.
The initial discussion below, however, primarily concerns itself about color as a design element — that is, as something universal and objective.
(1) After Images
The first research had to do with After Images. If you stare at a particular color long enough, and close your eyes, you’ll begin to see the color on the opposite side of the color wheel. So, if you stare at red, close your eyes, and you’ll see green.
I know you want to do this, so stare away:
So our first color-sensation tools are based on LIGHT VALUE. Each color has its own energy signature. This seems to be universally perceived, and perceived in the same way.
Some colors have a positive energy signature; other colors have a negative energy signature. The brain wants to balance these out and harmonize them into some kind of zero-sum outcome. Everyone seems to see after images and see the same after images. It seems that the eye/brain wants somehow to neutralize the energy in color to achieve some balance or 0.0 point. The brain always seeks a balanced energy in light and color. The human eye is only “satisfied” when the complementary color is established.
[This is the basis underlying the various color schemes below. ]
If red had an energy of +10 (I’m making up this scale), and the eye/brain then convinced your psyche to see green, then I would suppose that green would have an energy of -10. Hence, we reach a 0.0 point (+10–10 = 0).
Again, the brain wants balance, harmony, beauty, non-threatening situations. The brain does not want edginess, tension, anxiety, fear, or ugliness. So, when you perceive red, your brain, in knee-jerk fashion, and in the absence of other information which might lead to a different interpretation of the situation, tries to compensate for the imbalance by also seeing green.
And we can continue to speculate that your eye/brain does Not want you the designer to overly clarify and intensify, should this result in a more resonant, perhaps edgy, composition. This takes you too far away from 0.0 energy, and starts to become threatening. It might excite you. It might revolt you. In either case you would react, feel, sense the power of color, but maybe not in a more balanced way the eye/brain would prefer.
But all jewelry designers need to know, and this is important, that their guiding star is “Resonance”, and this can take you a little beyond the harmony the brain seeks. Creating a little “edginess” in your jewelry can’t hurt, and might better help in achieving finish and success. But creating too much “edginess” might strike too forcefully at the heart of our prewired anxiety response, and our brain will not let us go there. Your eye/brain does Not want you to push yourself and your jewelry too far to the edge with color. This countervailing force might create tensions with your artistic and design intentions.
The eye/brain wants balance, harmony, monotony. Red and green can seem so much fun at Christmas time. But if you put your red and green necklace on a copy machine, and took a photocopy of it, it would all look like one color of black. Red and green will always copy as the same color and shade of black.
And that is how we perceive them. And cognate them. We see red and green as the same. As the same color black. And if we assign red a +10 score, and green a -10 score, the eye/brain is happy to end up with a 0.0 score. This combination can be boring and monotonous. Combinations of red and green can feel unified and appear varied, yet somehow fail as choices in our jewelry designs.
And it is important to recognized that if, your composition only uses red, that in reality, when something doesn’t balance off the color red, in this case, the brain will create its own after image — some sensation of green — to force that balance. The brain wants to feel safe and in harmony and balance. Everyone’s brain seems to operate similarly so that this aspect of perceiving color is universally employed.
How far the jewelry designer should fight this universal tendency is up for debate. However, when initially picking colors to combine in a piece, we might try to achieve this 0.0 balance score (thus, a point of harmony and balance), and then, by clarifying and intensifying, deviate from it a little bit, but always with an eye on that 0.0 — what anyone’s eye/brain is driving it to do. We want the eye/brain to feel satisfied and “safe”, but as a designer, we also want to give the jewelry a punch, a wow, an edge. There are many color tricks and techniques that the designer can apply here.
(2) The Color Wheel: A Spectrum of Light Values
Science and Art Theory have provided us with tools to help us pick and combine colors. One tool is the Color Wheel. With almost every book about color, there is a Color Wheel. Some are more detailed than others. Some are easier to turn and manipulate. They all have different colors at the North, South, East and West points, but it is the same series of colors, ordered in the same way, color to color.
It is important to understand how to use the Color Wheel. This curtain of color provides the insights for selecting and arranging colors that might go together well. The color wheel helps us delineate what color choices we can make, and which combinations of colors might work the best together, to achieve a perceived harmony and balance.
The Color Wheel is a tool and a guide. It’s not an absolute. Beads don’t always conform to the colors on the wheel; nor do they reflect light and color in ways consistent with how these colors appear on the wheel.
Look at this color wheel:
Get some color pencils, and color in all the colors around the wheel.
On the Color Wheel, there are 12 colors arranged into three families of color.
The Primary Color [3] family includes three colors: yellow, blue and red. These colors present the world as Absolutes. They are definitive, certain, and steady. They convey intelligence, security, and clarity.
The Secondary Color family includes those colors you can make by mixing any two primary colors. These three colors are: green, orange and violet. These colors present the world as Contingencies. They are situational, dependent on something, and questioning. They convey questioning, inquiry, risks assessed against benefits.
The Tertiary Color family includes six colors. Each of these colors is a mix of one of the primary colors and one of the secondary colors. These include: red-violet, yellow-orange, blue-green, blue-violet, yellow-green, red-orange. These colors show Transitions. These colors are useful for transitioning from one primary or secondary color to the next. They bridge, integrate, tie things together, stretch things out. They give a sense of before and after, lower then higher, inside and outside, betwixt and between. They convey ambiguity or a teetering on the fulcrum of a scale.
As you begin to pick colors, you will also want to manipulate them — make them lighter or darker, brighter or duller, more forward projecting or more receding, and the like. Expressions of color are referred to as attributes. Expressive attributes are the ways you use color as building blocks in design. So, here are some important building block/color terms/attributes and vocabulary.
(3) Color Schemes — Rules for Balancing Light Values
Color schemes are different, universally recognized and proven ways to use and combine colors, in order to achieve a pleasing or satisfying result. Good color combinations based on color schemes have balanced, harmonious tonal values — their light energy levels balance out at the zerozero (0.0) point. Better designers like to tweak these combinations a bit, in order to evoke an emotional and resonant response to their work.
Color Schemes, then, as represented in a Color Wheel, are based on harmonizing (e.g., zero-sum) combinations of colors. Color schemes — like the split complementary scheme of violet, yellow-green and yellow-orange — are different combinations of colors the Light Values of which add up to zero, and achieve harmony.
You can place geometric shapes inside the Color Wheel, and rotate them, and where the points hit the wheel, you have a good color combination. For example, if you place an equilateral triangle (all sides are equal length) within the circle, as in the diagram below, the points touch Yellow, Red and Blue. If you rotate it two colors to the right, it touches Orange, Violet and Green.
With color schemes, you always need to think about things like:
Whether one color should predominate, or all colors should be more or less equal
Whether there should always be a “splash of color”, as interior designers like to say — a “drama” color to achieve exciting, focal, look at me first effects
If symmetry works with or against your color choices
If you need to adjust intensity (brightness) or value (lightness) in each color, to get a better sense of satisfaction
If you need to adjust the proportions or distributional patterns or arrangements of each color used; that is, experiment with same colors, different placement or different sizes or different quantities or different shapes or mixes of shapes
Let’s look at the three most popular, often-used Color Schemes — Analogous, Complementary, and Split Complementary.
Analogous
The analogous color scheme is where you pick any 3 hues which are adjacent to one another on the color wheel. For example, you might pick yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange. This scheme is a little trickier than it seems. It works best when no color predominates. Where the intensity of each color is similar. And the design is symmetrical. I also think this scheme works best when you have blocks of each color, rather than alternating each color. That is, BETTER: color 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3 rather than WORSE: color 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1.
Complementary (also known as “true complementary” or “dyadic”)
The complementary color scheme is where you pick any 2 colors which are the direct opposite on the color wheel. For example, you might pick yellow and violet. To use this color scheme effectively, you would balance the contrast of the colors by value (lightness/darkness) and/or intensity (brightness/dullness). In this color scheme, one color has to predominate.
Split Complementary
This is the most popular color scheme. Here you choose three colors: a hue and the hues on either side of its complement. For example, you might choose yellow and blue-violet and red-violet (thus, the two colors on either side of Violet — the complement). In this scheme, one color needs to predominate. This scheme works well with both symmetrical and asymmetrical designs. You can use an isosceles triangle (has two sides with equal length) within the Color Wheel to pick colors.
One thing I like to do with this scheme is arrange all my beads, then replace one color with one of the others, and vice versa. Let’s say you had 20 blue-green (aqua), 10 orange, and 5 red beads, which you had laid out in a satisfactory arrangement. You could change it to 20 orange, 10 bluegreen, and 5 red beads, and it would look just as good.
A lot of people have difficulty using the color orange in jewelry designs, but find it easy to use blue-green. Here’s a nifty way to trick them into using orange, and liking it. Do the composition with blue-green dominant, then switch out all the blue-green for orange, and any orange you used for bluegreen.
There are many other color schemes. Some examples:
Analogous Complementary.(3 analogous colors, and one complement of one of these 3). Example: blue-violet, violet, red-violet with yellow-green.
Triadic: (3 tertiary hues equidistant on the color wheel.) Example: red-violet, yellow-orange, and blue-green. You can use an equilateral triangle within the color wheel to help you pick choices.
Tetradic: (Using 4 colors, a double complementary scheme). Example: Yellow-green, orange, red-violet, and blue. You can use a square or rectangle within the color wheel to help you pick choices.
Hexadic: (Using 5 colors). Can use a pentagon within the color wheel to select your colors.
Monochromatic: (A single hue, though with different intensities, tints and shades)
Achromatic: (black and white and gray (without color))
Neutrals: (mixes of hues to get browns (or grays))
Clash: (combines a color hue with a color on either side of its complement). Example: blue w/red-orange or orange-yellow There are many books, as well as free on-line color scheme designer apps to check out and play with.
(4) Color Proportions and the Sensation of Color Contrasts
Just because the colors picked conformed to a Color Wheel, doesn’t mean that they will be successful within your jewelry composition. It turns out that making color choices based on Light Values alone are less than perfect. Colors do not occur in a vacuum. They appear next to other colors. They appear within a situation or context. They reflect and refract light and shadow differently, depending on setting, lighting, and context.
That means, perceiving and recognizing one or more colors is important information to have, but not enough information for the brain to determine if the object is satisfying or not, or safe or not. People do not yet have enough information to make an absolute choice whether to wear or buy a piece of jewelry, at this point.
This bring us to the sensation of Color Contrasts. Colors appear together in different proportions. This also affects the brain’s processes of trying to harmonize them — that is, achieve a light value of zero.
Another series of color research focused on the effects of color proportions. These scientifically derived proportions show the joint effect of 2 or more colors, if the brain is to score their sum as a value of 0.0. (Again, I’ve made up this scoring, but you get the point about reaching equilibrium). The brain would like to know, not only what color it is, but what proportion relative to other colors, we have before us.
As designers, to achieve a sense of harmony and balance, we are going to mimic what the brain does when seeing more than one color — we are going to vary the proportions so that, in combination, the sense of that perceptual and cognitive zero-sum game is still maintained.
And again, I’ll make the point that not all compositions have to be perfectly harmonious.
Itten has a picture of the ideal and relative proportions of colors in harmony and balance.
Yellow to purple, 1:4 (This is read as “1 in 4”, and means that given 4 parts, 1 should be yellow and the remaining 3 should be purple. )
Orange to blue, 1:3
Red to green, 1:2 Yellow to orange: 1:1.3
Choreographing Color Blending and Transitioning: Playing With Proportions
Every so often, you might want to create a rainbow, or some sequencing of colors, say from light to dark, where all the colors seem to emerge from the last, and bleed into the next. This is much more difficult with beads than with paints for all the usual reasons discussed above.
A “Random” selection or placement of colors doesn’t usually work as well as selecting and placing based on some more mathematical formula. “Alternating” or “graduating” colors doesn’t always work as well, either. You must create a more complex, involved patterning. You must choreograph the layout of colors, so that, from a short distance, they look like they are blending, and gradually changing across the length of your piece.
One of the easier mathematical formulas to come up with as a way to choreograph things, is to play with color proportions. Go bead by bead or row by row, and begin with the ideal proportionate relationship between two colors. Gradually manipulate this down the piece by anticipating the next ideal proportionate relationship between the next two colors that need to follow.
In fact, any kind of statistical or mathematical formula underlying an arrangement will work better than something random or intuitive, when managing color blending and transitions.
(5) Simultaneity Effects and the Sensation of Simultaneous Color Contrasts
It turns out there is even more to how the brain recognizes and tries to harmonize colors. Knowing (1) the color (light value) and (2) the relative proportions (contrasts) of color within the piece of jewelry is necessary, but still not enough for the brain to decide whether the piece of jewelry will be satisfying, finished and successful, or somewhat ugly, buyable or wearable.
Some colors, when sitting on or near a particular color, are experienced differently, than when sitting on or near a different color. The line of research we are focusing on here deals with what are called Simultaneity Effects. Colors can be affected by other colors around them (simultaneous color contrasts). Colors in the presence of other colors get perceived differently, depending on the color combination.
Simultaneity Effects are a boon to the jewelry designer. They are great tools for such things as…
Filling in the gaps of light between beads
Assisting in the blending of colors or the sense of movement of colors along a line or plane
Assisting in establishing dimensionality in a piece that otherwise would appear flat
Harmonizing 2 or more colors which, on as a set, don’t quite match up on the color wheel
Establishing frames, boundaries or silhouettes
Re-directing the eye to another place, or creating sense of movement
For example, a White Square on a Black background looks bigger than a Black Square on a white background. White reaches out and overflows the boundary; black contracts.
Gray always picks up some of the color characteristics of other colors around it.
Existence of these simultaneity effects is a great piece of information for the designer. There will be gaps of color and light between beads. Many bead colors are imperfect, particularly in combination. Playing with what I call “grays” [thus, simultaneity effects] gives the designer tools to overcome some of the color limitations associated with the bead.
Simultaneity effects trick the brain into filling in those gaps of light between beads. Simultaneity effects trick the brain into believing colors are more connected and blended and mutually-supportive than they would, if separately evaluated. Simultaneity effects trick the brain into seeing satisfying arrangements, rhythms, and dimensionality, where, without them, things would be unsatisfying instead.
A final example of simultaneity effects has to do with how people sense whether colors are warm or cool. In one composition, depending on the color mix, a particular color might be felt as “warm”. In a second composition, with a different color mix, that same color might be felt as “cool”.
Here the yellow square surrounded by white feels lighter, brighter and a different temperature than its counterpart.
The red square surrounded by the black feels darker, duller, and a different temperature than its counterpart. Again, simultaneity effects give tools to the jewelry designer for intensifying and clarifying the design, without disturbing the eye/brain pre-wired fear and anxiety responses. These allow you to “blend” and build “bridges” and create “transitions.” You have a lot of tricks to use here which enable you to push the envelop with your designs. And still have your piece be judged as beautiful and appealing.
Simultaneity Effects are some of the easiest things the jewelry artist can control and manipulate, to fool the brain just a little bit. They let you bring in unexpected colors, and fool the brain into seeing color coordination and color blending. They let you convince the brain that the color proportions are correct when, in reality, they are not. They let you convince the brain to jump the cliff, which the gap between beads presents.
For the brain, gaps between beads — that is, areas with undefined colors, creates work for the brain, and is fraught with danger. The brain has to actually construct a color and meaning to fill in this gap. Without any clues or rules or assistance, it is more risky for the brain to jump the cliff, so to speak, and fill in the gaps with color, than it is for the brain to follow an easier pathway and simply define the jewelry as ugly or boring and reject it and move on. Similarly, simultaneity effects convince the brain to look around corners, go into crevices, explore and move around the whole piece from end to end.
It is at this point in the design process where the jewelry artist must be most fluent, creative and strategic in using color. It is primarily and most often through establishing, and then managing, the sensation of simultaneous color contrasts where the artist begins to build that connection between audience and self, wearer and resonance, the wearing of and the context, coherency and contagion.
With Simultaneity Effects, colors begin to take on meanings and emotions. These can be as simple as sensations of warm and color, close and far, approaching and fleeing, soft and harsh. Or they can be much more complex, even thematic and symbolic.
The Use of “GRAYS” (simultaneity effects) to tie things together — Blending and Bridging
With beads, the eye often needs to merge or coordinate colors, as it scans any piece. And then there are the gaps of light between beads. The eye needs help in spanning those gaps. The Artist needs to build color “bridges” and “transitions”, so that the eye doesn’t fall off a cliff or have to make a leap of death from one bead, across the gap, all the way to the next.
One easy technique to use is to play with simultaneity effects. One such effect is where gray takes on the characteristics of the color(s) around it.
In beads, there are many colors that function as “grays” — gray, black diamond, alexandrite, Montana blue, prairie green, fuchsia, Colorado topaz — colors that have a lot of black or gray tones to them. Most color lined beads result in a gray effect (where the class encasing distorts the inside color). Metallic finishes can result in a gray effect.
Aqua/peach lined Antique rose Teal iris In one piece I made, for example, I used 11/0 peach lined aqua beads as a “gray” to tie in larger teal and antique rose beads together. While aqua is different than teal and the peach is different than the antique rose, in combination, the aqua/peach-lined beads acted like a gray. When close to the teal iris beads, the aqua took on the teal color; when close to the antique rose beads, the peach took on the antique rose color. Gray colors pull from one bead, and transition to the next in a very subtle way, that tricks the brain, but does not disturb it.
Expressive Attributes of Color and Color Contrasts: Important Color Terms and Vocabulary
Each color on the wheel is called a HUE. Hues are pure colors — any color except black or white. And if you look again, there is no black or white on the Color Wheel.
BLACK is the absence of color. We consider black to be opaque. Usually, when people see black, they tend to see shadows. With black, designs tend to feel older, more antique’y, richer, more traditional and solid, and seem to have a patina around them.
WHITE is all the colors merged together. When all colors in “light” merge, you get White. When all the colors in paints or pigments are merged, you get a neutral gray-black or beige. With White, designs tend to feel sharper, brighter, more contemporary.
INTENSITY and VALUE. Better jewelry designers are those who master how to play with INTENSITIES and play with VALUES. This means they know and are comfortable with manipulating bright and dull (intensity), and light and dark (value). They know the subtle differences among red, pink and maroon, and how viewers react to these. They know how to punctuate — BAM! — with Yellow, and EASE — with purple, and CALM — with blue.
The contrasts between Bright and Dull or Light and Dark are not quite the same. Bright and Dull (intensity) has to do with how much white, gray or black underlay the Hue or pure color. Low intensity is duller; high intensity is brighter. Think of a Stop Sign. It could have just as easily been Red, Pink or Maroon. Red is the most intense — the brightest of the 3 — and hence the sign is Red. You can see red from the farthest distance away. Red is “Bright (intensity)”, but not necessarily “Lighter (values)” than Pink or Maroon.
The contrasts between Light and Dark are called VALUES. A lower value is darker, though not necessarily duller (intensity). Pink has a higher value than maroon, because it is lighter. Yellow is the lightest color; violet is the darkest. Yellow has a higher value than violet.
Unfortunately, in many texts and guides written by Bead Artists and Jewelry Designers, they combine the concepts of intensity and value into a single concept they refer to as “Values”. Bead Artists and Colorists often write that the “secret” to using colors is to vary “values”. When they refer to “values”, they are actually combining these two color theory concepts — “values” and “intensities”. Both are really different, so this combined meaning is a disservice to the bead artist and jewelry designer trying to learn to control color choices and color expression.
So, as you work with people to create jewelry for them, you make choices about, and then manipulate:
— colors
— balance and harmony (distribution, placement, and proportions)
— intensities
— values
— simultaneity effects
Let’s say you wanted to design a necklace with blue tones. If you were designing this necklace for someone to wear at work, it would probably be made up of several blue colors which vary in values, but Not in intensities. To give it some interest, it might be a mix of light blue, blue, dark blue and very dark blue. Thus, the piece is pretty, but does not force any power or sexuality issues on the situation.
If you were making this same necklace for someone to go out on the town one evening, you might use several blue colors which vary in intensity. You might mix periwinkles and Montana blues and cobalt blues and blue quartzes. You want to make a power or sensual statement here, and the typical necklace someone would wear to work just won’t do.
Let’s continue with some more important color building blocks or concepts.
TINT, SHADE and TONE are similar to values and intensities. They are another way of saying similar things about manipulating color Hues. TINTS are colors with white added to them. Pink is a tint of Red. SHADES are colors with black or gray added to them. Maroon is a shade of Red. And TONES define the relative darkness of a color. Violet is a dark tone and yellow is a light tone. Red and green have the same tonal value. “Tones” are what copy machines pick up, and the depth of the black on a photocopy relates to the tonal value of the colors on the original paper you are copying. Red and green photocopy the same black color. They have the same tonal value.
TEMPERATURE. Colors also have Temperature. Some colors are WARM. The addition of black tends to warm colors up. Warm colors are usually based in Red. Red-Orange is considered the warmest color. Warm colors tend to project forward.
COOL colors are usually based in Blue. Green-blue is the coldest color. Addition of white often cools colors. Cool colors tend to recede.
Given the other colors which surround them, however, usually warm colors may appear cold, and vice versa.
Juxtaposing colors creates MOVEMENT and RHYTHM. By creating patterns, you guide the brain/eye in its circuitous route around the piece, as it tries to make sense of it. Juxtaposing Warm with Cool colors increases the speed or sense of movement.
Some colors tend to PROJECT FORWARD and others tend to RECEDE. Yellow is an advancing color. Black recedes. You can play with this effect to trick the viewer into seeing a more MULTI-DIMENSIONAL piece of jewelry before her. By mixing different colors and different finishes, you can create a marvelous sense of dimensionality.
— Faceted, Glossy beads will tend to look closer and capture the foreground
— Smooth, Glossy beads will tend to capture the middle ground
— Matte, Dull, Frosted, or Muted beads will tend to fall into the background
To Reiterate Some of The Key Ideas and Understandings
The color research begins to open up ideas about how the brain processes color, and which of these processes might be seen as universal, and which more subjective.
The brain first perceives, then tries to understand the color as a color. It senses Light Values.
The brain perceives, then tries to understand the color relative to other colors around it. It senses Color Contrasts.
At the same time, the brain perceives and tries to understand the color within some context or situation, to gauge more meaning or emotional content. It interprets Simultaneous Color Contrasts within the boundaries of a context, situation, personal or group culture.
The END RESULT is simple:
Should we consider the jewelry to be finished and successful?
Should we like the jewelry or not like it?
Should it get and hold our attention, or not?
Should we approach it, or avoid it?
Should we get excited about it, or not?
Should we comment about it to others?
Should we buy it?
Should we wear it?
All this perceptual and cognitive and interpretive activity happens very quickly, but somewhat messy. Some of it follows universal precepts. Some of it is very subjective. Our brain is trying everything it can to make sense of the situation. It tries to zero-sum the light values. It has to take in information about a color’s energy signature. It has to take in information about how much of one color there is in relation to other colors. It has to take in information about emotional and other meaningful content the juxtaposition of any group of colors within any context or situation represents.
With any piece of jewelry, the artist and designer is at the core of this all. It is the designer, in anticipation of how others perceive, recognize and interpret colors in their lives, who establishes how color is used, and manages its expression within the piece. The jewelry designer is the manager. The designer is the controller. The designer is the influencer. The designer establishes and conveys intent and meaning.
DECODING COLOR AS A DESIGN ELEMENT
Art and design theory informs us how to objectively use color. That means, there are universally accepted shared understandings and expectations about what makes a piece of jewelry more satisfying (or dissatisfying) in terms of choices about color.
So, when we refer to our lessons above about color use, and examine the orange and blue necklace above, we can recognize some problematic choices about color.
The first is about color proportions. The most satisfying proportionate relationship between orange and blue is 1:3. That means, for every 3 parts, one should be orange and two should be blue. In our illustrated composition, the relationship is more 1:2 or half orange and half blue. To make this piece more attractive and satisfying, we would need to reduce the amount of orange and increase the amount of blue.
The second is about color schemes. Here we have a 2-color, complimentary color scheme. To make this piece more attractive and satisfying as a complimentary color scheme, we have learned that one of the two colors should predominate. Either we have to add more orange, or have to add more blue.
So, we have decoded our Color Design Element and we see that the proportions are less than optimal, and the color scheme chosen is less than optimal. To make the necklace more appealing, and in conformance with universally agreed upon understandings about good color use, we will need to increase the amount of blue and decrease the amount of orange, so that we get a 1:3 (orange to blue) proportionate outcome, and we allow one color to predominate.
Let’s look at another example:
First, white is not considered a color. We can ignore it.
Second, proportionately, there should be equal amounts of green to that of red. The relationship is 1:2, meaning for every 2 parts, 1 should be green and 1 should be red. Proportionately, in this piece, we are close to this proportionate relationship.
Third, we have, in effect, since we ignore white, a 2-color complimentary color scheme. We have learned that in this scheme, one color should predominate.
That means, in this composition, the current use of color will not and cannot work. It results in an unacceptable and unsatisfying use of color. Proportionately, both colors need to be equal. Color Scheme wise, one color needs to clearly predominate. We can’t conform to both universallyaccepted shared understandings about the use of green and red in a 2-color scheme.
DESIGNING JEWELRY WITH COLOR
Always remember that your choice of color(s) should be secondary to the choices you make about concept, theme, arrangement and organization. Color should be used to enhance your design thinking. Color should not, however, be the design.
When we study color from a design standpoint, we think of color as part of the jewelry’s structure. That means, color is not merely a decorative effect or object. It is more like an integral building component which has been organized or arranged within a larger composition. As a component, it is a “Design Element”. Color is the most important Design Element. It can both stand alone, as well as easily be combined with other Design Elements. There are some universal aspects when color is objectively understood as an element of design. As part of an arrangement, we begin to treat color in terms of Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation. Color takes on some subjectivity. Its effects become much more dependent on the artist’s intent and the situation in which the jewelry is worn.
Color is used to express meaning and enhance meaningful expressions. We use color to express elements of the materials used, like glass or gemstone. We use color to express or emphasize elements of the forms we are creating. We use color to enhance a sense of movement or dimension. We use color to express moods and emotions. We use color to influence others in sharing the artist’s inspirations and aspirations.
As designers, we…
— Anticipate how the parts we use to make a piece of jewelry assert their needs for color
— Anticipate shared universal understandings among self, viewer, wearer, exhibitor and seller about color and its use
— Think through how colors relate to our inspirations and how they might impact our aspirations
— Pick colors
— Place and arrange colors
— Distribute the proportions of colors
— Play with and experiment with color values and color intensities
— Leverage the synergistic effects and what happens when two (or more) colors are placed next to one another
— Create focus, rhythm, balance, dimension and movement with color
— Create satisfying blending and transitioning strategies using color
— Anticipate how color and the play of color within our piece might be affected by contextual or situational variables
— Reflect on how our choices about color affect how the piece of jewelry is judged as finished and successful by our various client audiences
— Use color to promote the coherency of our pieces, and the speed and extent to which attention by others continues to spread
Fluent designers can decode color and its use intuitively and quickly, and apply color in more expressive ways to convey inspiration, show the artist’s strategy and intent, and trigger an especially resonant, energetic response by wearers and viewers alike.
Don’t get into a Color Rut
And a last piece of advice. Don’t get into a color rut. Experiment with different colors. Force yourself to use colors you usually do not use or avoid. If it’s too psychologically painful, make a game of it.
[2] Itten, Johannes. The Elements of Color: A Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2001
[3] In reality, the selection of primary colors is arbitrary. The primary colors depend on the light source, the color of the background, and the biology of the color-sensing components of the eye. We choose red-yellow-blue when referencing painting or coloring on white background, like paper. We choose red-green-blue when referencing color placed on a black background, such as a TV or computer screen. We choose cyanmaroon-yellow-black when using overlapping inks to create color on a white background, and better reproduce true colors. We understand that the eye sees red-greenish yellowblue-violet most clearly.
Color References Worth Checking Out
Rockport Publishers, Color Harmony Workbook, Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 1999.
Deeb, Margie. The Beader’s Guide to Jewelry Design, NY: Lark Jewelry & Beading, 2014.
Let Business Concerns Influence Your Artistic Choices
To what extent do (and should) business concerns influence the artistic choices bead and jewelry artists make?
I’d say, “A Lot!” But this isn’t what a lot of artists like to hear.
You have to market to audiences. You may have to standardize things to be able to make the same thing over and over again. You may have to work in a production mode and repeat making certain designs, rather than freely create and design anew each time. You have to price things so that they will sell, and you have to price things so that you can make a sufficient profit. You can’t undersell yourself, like offering discounts to family, friends and co-workers.
You have to conform to prevalent styles and colors and forms. You have to make things that will photograph well for sale online. You have to make things that local stores want and are willing to buy or put on consignment. You may end up with a lot of “one size fits all,” because producing too much variety in sizes, shapes, colors and sizes could overwhelm you financially.
You find that if you want to make your jewelry design into a successful business, you may have to compromise with yourself, your artistic drives and sensibilities. You may have to limit what you offer. In order to make that sale. In order to make a profit. And stay in business.
Business involves: — Putting your artwork on a sound cost/revenue footing — Developing market-driven strategies (as opposed to product-driven ones) — Pricing your pieces for sale — Implementing various selling strategies — Compromising artistic and design choices, in the interest of the business
Why Artists Fail In Business: Some Key Reasons
Over and over again, I have seen one jewelry artist after another fail as a business. The reasons repeat themselves as well.
1. A reluctance to learn how to conduct oneself as a business
2. Gets bored
3. A fear of marketing your own things
4. Trying to please all audiences
5. Doesn’t do homework on the competition
A reluctance to learn how to conduct oneself as a business.
Many jewelry artists get so excited after selling their first piece, that they think they don’t have to get too involved with business principles. They understand their “business” as a “necklace-by-necklace” endeavor. Make something, sell it. Doesn’t matter what the price. Doesn’t matter to whom. Doesn’t matter if making the piece in the first place is in line with the resources you currently have to make the piece, or will drive you in debt in order to get those resources. All that matters is the count — the number of pieces you have sold.
Artists need to focus, instead of the count, on what’s called Velocity. You need to have in place sufficient strategies for keeping the money turning over at a constant rate. If you can’t maintain this rate, you go in the hole. You make something. You sell it. You reallocate the money you just made to reinvesting in more inventory, replacing the inventory you sold, evaluating the pros and cons of the sale that just happened, adjusting accordingly, and strategizing how to keep this velocity going at a constant, or ever-increasing, velocity or rate.
And artists need to keep good records, and implement good accounting principles.
2. Gets Bored.
People who get started are very excited. They’ve made a lot of pretty pieces, and someone has bought some of them. But then you need to leave your creative mode, and enter a production mode. You need to discipline yourself to make the same things over and over again, particularly in the first 2 or 3 years of your business. Many artists quickly lose interest.
3. A fear of marketing your own things
You won’t succeed without marketing. Marketing is more than advertising. It includes all forms of self-promotion. It includes doing research on your markets and market niches, how to reach them, how to get their attention, how to get them to translate this attention into needs and wants and desires, and how to get them to part with some money.
Many artists are shy about self-promotion. Time to train yourself, if this is you, to get over it.
4. Trying to please all audiences
When people get started, they are reluctant to use the “No” word. They want to please everyone. But when you get started, you can’t. It will put you out of business.
Let’s say you have some jewelry that is predominantly purple. Someone at work loves the jewelry, but asks if you can make it in red. If you don’t have an inventory of red beads, and will have to go out and buy them, it may make this sale foolish, from a business standpoint. You can’t buy just one bead at a time; you need to buy strands or packages of these beads.
When you start, you need to pursue a strategy of depth, rather than breadth. You want to buy a limited number of pieces, colors, sizes and shapes in large enough quantities to get adequate price breaks. So, initially, your designs will be limited, as well. You need to be able to say No!. No! to your family. No! to your friends. No! to the people you work with.
In my experience, such as the situation with red vs purple beads above, when you say No!, the potential customer tends to make a face. Pitiful. Angry. Frustrated. Sad. Pleading. If you can wait 60 seconds, in almost every case, the customer stops making this face, and says, “OK, I’ll take what you have in purple.” 60-seconds. That’s how long you have to wait without responding. Only 60-seconds before that person gives up and stops making the Face. It always amazes me, but so many jewelry artists can’t wait that 60 seconds.
And don’t give these people discounts. They’re already getting it cheaper, than if they bought the same piece in a store. One major way your business will get built up is word-of-mouth. You don’t want some of that information to include extremely low price expectations. If your stuck giving low prices, you will never be self-supporting in your business.
5. Doesn’t do homework on the competition
You need to understand how other jewelry artists you compete with function as a business.
How do they define their markets? How do they price things? What kinds of inventory do they carry? What kinds do they NOT carry? Where do they advertise? How do they promote themselves? How do they define their competitive advantage — that is, all the reasons people should buy from them, rather than from anyone else, like you? Where do they sell things — stores, shows, fairs, online, etc? What seems to work better for them? How do they figure out the best place — real or virtual — to link their product and product message to the customers most likely to need, want and buy their jewelry?
You can find a lot of this out by Googling. You can look for jewelry designers. Directories of jewelry designers. You can plug in a jewelry designer’s website, and see where they are listed, and who lists them.
Can I Make Money?
Some jewelry designers are only interested in selling the occasional piece. Others want to create a steady flow of some extra income. Still others want to be financially self-sufficient as a jewelry designer.
Whatever your personal goal and commitment, can you make money? The answer is YES… That is, if you are smart about it.
Your friends and relatives might tell you that jewelry design “Is not practical,” or a warning “Don’t quit your day job.”
I won’t lie to you. It’s tough. Requires commitment and perseverance. It requires some introverted skills and some extroverted skills. It requires managing a process that includes some creative elements and some business and administrative ones. But you can do it.
First, sit down and write down some do-able sets of goals for your business. Some sets of goals will be on the creative side; others on the business side.
One set of goals should answer the question: How are you going to manage the design process (from inspiration to aspiration to finished product to marketing and selling your products)?
Another set of these goals should answer the question: How are you going to maintain your cash flow throughout the whole year? After you start implementing your goals, at some point you should be able to ask a friend: Did I achieve my goals or not?
Second, organize your time. You need to spend a certain amount of time with creative activity. Another block of time on business, administrative and marketing activities. And a certain amount of time for reflection and evaluation and self-care. You need to maintain balance between the personal and the professional, and between the creative and the administrative.
Third, do not try to do too many different projects or work with too many different kinds of colors and parts at the same time — particularly in your first 3 years in business.
Fourth, do not go for roofs before setting foundations. Learn about materials and techniques in a developmental order. Things will make much more sense, and be easier to accomplish, this way as you advance your skills and endeavors.
Last, you can’t do everything by yourself. Find compatriots. Find a mentor. Share or coordinate some workloads. Be sure you structure in ways to be accountable and get feedback.
Teaching literacy in jewelry design is a lot like teaching literacy in reading and writing. We want our students to comprehend. We want them to be able to be self-directed in organizing and implementing their basic tasks. We want them to be able to function in unfamiliar situations and respond when problems arise. We want them to make reasonable judgements on marrying aesthetics to functionality. We want them to develop an originality in their work. We want them to think like designers. And, we want a high level of automaticity in all this. The basic jewelry design curriculum does not accomplish this. There is an absence of strategy and strategic thinking. There is a weak commitment to jewelry design as a discipline, with its own vocabulary and ways of thinking through and doing and responding to different, often unfamiliar, situations as they arise. Without a commitment to embed the teaching of a disciplinary literacy within the standard curriculum, we will fail to impart that necessary learned awareness about fluency, flexibility, originality, and comprehension the designer needs to bring to the design process.
TEACHING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY
She said it wasn’t her job!
This prominent jewelry instructor told me that it wasn’t her job to teach anything beyond the basic steps for getting a project done. It was not her responsibility to share any insights, choices, compromises, fix-it solutions or design considerations she herself made when creating the original project — now taught as a class with a kit and a set of step-by-step instructions. If a student asked a specific question, she would gladly answer it. But otherwise, it was not her job.
This attitude is so prevalent in the standard jewelry making curriculum and education. Teachers stick very closely to the standard, basic curriculum. Facts, not ideas. Absolutes, not what-ifs. Step-by-steps, not creative thinking. Teachers rarely explain the implications for using one bead vs. another, or one stringing material vs. another, or one clasp vs. another, or one material vs. another, or one technique vs. another. They rarely discuss the deeper meanings and potentialities underlying various problematic situations. They ignore the role and power of jewelry to influence human relations.
They have the student gloss over things as if, once seen and memorized, the student will automatically be able to make the right choices over and over, again and again. The teachers see themselves as easily transferring knowledge, skills and understandings to the student as if inoculating them as you would with a vaccine and a syringe. And the student becomes a star jewelry designer. Or not.
Teachers too often see jewelry making and design as a basic set of skills, easily adaptable and applicable to all kinds of jewelry making situations. They assume that the challenge of improving jewelry making skills would primarily be a function of making more and more jewelry.
This might be true for the novice student, but as the student moves from basic decoding to fluency, flexibility and originality in design, what was learned initially becomes less generally useful. For example, the student may learn about basic color schemes, but not how to adapt these in different situations, or leverage them to achieve an even more resonant result, or be more deliberate and intentional when choosing colors and determining how to use them.
There is an absence of strategy and strategic thinking. There is a weak commitment to jewelry design as its own discipline, with its own vocabulary and ways of thinking through and doing and responding to different, often unfamiliar, situations as they arise.
Jewelry, in the standard, traditional design education model, is understood as an object. We can speak about and learn about it as an object. This object is distanced from the creative spark that created it. It is divorced from desire. Apart from the wearer or the viewer. Ignorant of context or situation. There are no deeper explanations, no pointing out implications, no experimenting with situational contingencies, no debating synergistic or other external effects. The student is run through color theories, materials composition, step-by-step jewelry construction as if learning a basic lexicon is sufficient and enough.
This whole traditional process of standard jewelry designer education ignores the required disciplinary literacy. It assumes the student is creative, or not. It approaches jewelry design as if it were a subset of some other discipline, usually art, or more specifically, painting or sculpture. It ignores architectural requirements allowing jewelry to move, drape and flow as it is worn. It forgets that jewelry has personal, situational and social consequences. It pretends that jewelry design does not have any disciplinary requirements of its own. There are no specialized knowledges or ways of thinking unique to jewelry design alone.
It is weak at teaching the student, from a design perspective, how to decode design elements and how to combine them into compositions apart from basic art theory. It pretends there are no architectural issues underlying how jewelry functions. It ignores the fact that jewelry gains much of its appeal and power only as it is worn, and not as it sits on a mannequin or easel. It totally avoids confronting the fact that much of the power of jewelry results from how it instigates and sustains relationships — artist to self, artist to wearer, wearer to viewer, artist to seller, exhibitor to client, artist to collector, and so forth. And, it fails to impart that necessary learned awareness about fluency, flexibility, originality and comprehension the designer needs to bring to the design process.
It’s not their job. It’s not their job to assist the student’s developing creative thinking or applying that creative spark towards better jewelry design.
It’s not their job.
But, in fact, it is!
What Is Disciplinary Literacy?
Disciplinary Literacy1 assumes there are real differences in the way professionals across fields participate and communicate. Without this, students and professionals in a particular field would flounder and fail. Disciplinary literacy encompasses those techniques and strategies used to teach designers to think like designers (or historians like historians or scientists like scientists, and so forth)2.
Disciplinary literacy refers to how the particular discipline creates, disseminates, and evaluates knowledge. Each discipline has its own way of looking at the world, defining things using a specific vocabulary, gathering information, specifying understandings, posing questions and problems, delineating solutions and using evidence to justify their ideas and conclusions.
An artist looking at jewelry, or a craftsperson looking at jewelry, for instance, would have different thought and interpretive processes than a jewelry designer looking at jewelry. Jewelry, after all, is different than a painting or sculpture or simple functional object. Jewelry is only art as it is worn. It must satisfy the requirements of both aesthetics and functionality. It exists in a 3-dimensional space. It is worn on the body. It establishes special relationships between designer and wearer, wearer and viewer, designer and seller, designer and collector. It encapsulates situational and socio-cultural meanings. To evaluate whether a piece of jewelry is finished and successful requires a different thought process than art or craft alone would provide.
There are key disciplinary differences in how a jewelry designer…
Chooses and evaluates evidence
Relates evidence to a perspective
Gains understanding
Visualizes things
Manipulates things
Creates a truth and achieves an error- free solution
Introduces things publicly
Training in jewelry design should teach students the unique challenges they face within their discipline as they think through design and create jewelry. At each increment within the jewelry design process, they need to think like a designer.Not as an artist, nor like a craftsperson.As a designer.Finding evidence whether a piece is finished and successful.Linking causes to effects. Understanding how inspiration resulted in a finished design.Developing knowledge, understandings and skills to the level where they can transfer these to others.Generating a large number of ideas.Making inferences about the implications of any one choice.Producing things which are original.Responding to problematic or unanticipated situations.Finding new ways to adapt existing ideas to new conditions.Anticipating shared understandings about how their work will be evaluated, assessed and judged.Knowing when something is parsimonious and finished, and knowing when something resonates and is successful.
Types of Literacy
There are three different types of literacy — Basic, Intermediate, and Disciplinary. The standard jewelry design curriculum typically focuses on Basic literacy, with some nod toward Intermediate. Disciplinary literacy is usually ignored, but it should be incorporated and integrated within Basic and Intermediate literacy instruction.
Basic Literacy
Basic literacy refers to the degree the student learns knowledge of high frequency concepts that underlie virtually all jewelry design and jewelry making tasks. These concepts are typically universally recognized and understood by artist and client alike. Here jewelry is understood as an object. An object has literal characteristics which the student can identify and list.
The student demonstrates this basic literacy by an ability to decode. The student can decode things like color use, rules of composition, materials selection, technique implementation and the like. The student picks up the basic words and definitions, links the vocabulary to relevant objects, and can identify their presence and use within any piece of jewelry. Each element and principle of design can be graphically represented, and the student begins to make connections between word and graphic. The student begins to recognize which design elements can stand alone, and which are dependent on the presence of other elements. The student can identify harmonious and balanced clusters of these design elements within compositions. The goal is an automaticity in decoding.
Intermediate Literacy
Here the student develops the knowledge to make more complex jewelry forms and designs. There is more comprehension. The student recognizes that the various design elements and principles have a range of variations in meaning and expression. In a similar way, the student begins to recognize that clusters of design elements and principles can also show variations in meaning and expression.
The student learns about different materials and what they can and cannot be used to achieve. Materials have names, places of origins, stories about how they get from one place to another, processes.
The student is introduced to variations in techniques and technologies. There is more than one way to accomplish things. There are more things that can be created using familiar techniques.
The student learns to problem-solve with various “fix-it” procedures, like re-doing, changing tools, requesting help, looking things up, drawing analogies.
The student learns to process-plan. S/he begins to relate inspirations, aspirations and intentions to more critically evaluate their choices or the choices of others. Students are more able to stick with things and maintain attention to a more extended design process.
The student begins to learn how to design for an audience. This might be a client, or a purchaser, or an exhibitor, or a collector. This begins the developing understanding of how to meld personal held preferences with those of others.
Students monitor and reflect on their own comprehension. The goal is an automaticity in fluency.[4] Here jewelry is understood as content. As content, the jewelry as designed conveys meanings and expressions which the student can derive. The jewelry and its compositional design is still, however, mostly viewed objectively, as if sitting on an easel, not as it is worn.
Disciplinary Literacy
This involves a way of thinking and doing specific to the discipline. The student learns specialized literacy skills relevant to jewelry design as the jewelry is introduced and worn publicly. The student learns how parsimony and resonance as outcomes expressed in design differ from harmony and variety as expressed in art.
The student learns to anticipate shared understandings[5] and the role of desire among the many audiences the student works with, works in, and relates to. These include clients, sellers, exhibitors, collectors, wearers, viewers, and the artist him- or herself.
Much of the design process takes on the qualities of backwards design.[7] The designer begins the process by articulating the essential shared understandings and desires against which their work will be evaluated and judged. The designer starts with questions about assessment, and then allows this understanding to influence all other choices going forward.”
The student has an ability to conceptualize and explain what jewelry means, how it is more an action than an object, and how this meaning emerges dialectically, as the jewelry is introduced publicly, worn, shared and displayed.
The student learns to recognize the dynamics of coherency,decoherency, and contagion. The artist’s coherent choices about design become contagious, attracting someone to want to touch the piece, wear it, or buy it. To the extent others share the artist’s ideas about coherence, the more likely the work will be judged finished and successful. Jewelry becomes more than an expression of meanings, but rather, it becomes an expression of meanings within context.
The process of coherence continues with the wearer, who introduces the piece into a larger context. There is more contagion. When efforts at design are less than successful, we begin to have decoherence. Decoherence may come in the forms of bad feedback, inappropriate feedback, less than satisfying feedback, or no feedback at all. The wearer may not get that sense of self s/he seeks. S/he may feel less motivated to wear the piece, or may store it, or give it away.
The student can comfortably and flexibly respond in unfamiliar situations or to new materials, techniques, technologies and requests, and take on larger challenges arising from higher levels of ambiguity, abstraction, subtlety, and contradiction. The student can find new ways to adapt existing ideas to new situations and requirements.
The student learns how to inspire to. That is, the student learns how to translate an inspiration into a design in such a way that the wearer and viewer are inspired to, not merely inspired by. They don’t simply react emotionally by saying the piece is “beautiful.” The piece resonates for them. They react by saying they “want to wear” it or “want to buy it” or “want to make something like it”. They come to feel and see and sense the artist’s hand.
The student learns how to manage a very involved, and often very long and time-consuming process of jewelry design, beginning with inspiration, then aspiration, then execution, and presenting the piece publicly for exhibit or sale. The student also picks up the skills and attitudes necessary to stick with what can be a very long process.
The goal is an automaticity in design flexibility and originality. Jewelry is understood as both intent and dialectic communication. Here the student can visualize, anticipate, and respond to all the things which might happen when the jewelry is introduced publicly and its value and worth is judged and determined.
Literacy in Jewelry Design
Teaching literacy in jewelry design is a lot like teaching literacy in reading and writing. We want our students to comprehend. We want them to be able to be self-directed in organizing and implementing their basic tasks. We want them to be able to function in unfamiliar situations and respond when problems arise. We want them to make reasonable judgements on marrying aesthetics to functionality. We want them to develop an originality in their work. We want them to think like designers. And, we want a high level of automaticity in all this.
Using literacy techniques, goals and concepts, we teach students to read, write, express and express in context when understanding jewelry and its design.
We teach the student to “read” jewelry. That means learning a basic vocabulary, as well as the various design elements, and how these design elements can either function on their own, or be arranged and clustered together within a design. They learn to describe the piece, including the name of the artist and the name of the piece, the style of the piece, when the piece was created, the materials used, the construction technique, and the use of design elements such as point, line, shape, form, space, texture, color, value and pattern.
We teach the student to “write” jewelry. The student constructs (or anticipates how a particular designer has constructed), then reflects, upon the choices made. That means learning various principles of composition, construction and manipulation. These affect arrangements as well as the juxtaposition and clustering of design elements, materials and techniques. They learn to how the placement and organization of elements, materials and techniques results in things like harmony, balance, contrast, variety, unity, emphasis, movement, depth, rhythm, focus, and proportions.
We further teach the student to be more “expressive” with jewelry. That means learning how jewelry signifies various meanings and evokes emotions. They learn to question and ponder through answers to questions like What did they think the designer was trying to say? Or What kind of reaction(s) would you expect to this piece of jewelry? What feelings does the jewelry convey? In what context would wearing the piece be especially relevant and appropriate? Are there things in the piece which might be symbolic or otherwise signify things which transcend the piece of jewelry itself?
Last, we teach the student to be “expressive within a context”. That means understanding how jewelry functions communicatively, socially and psychologically within any context or situation. That means learning how various artists and various audiences use jewelry as a means of self-identity and self-esteem, and how the interaction of the artist with various audiences affects the success (or failure) of their continued relationship oriented around (and perhaps anchored to) the jewelry. It means delving into the how and why the jewelry would be valued or worth determined or evaluative judgements made, and, furthermore, how such judgements and determinations might be contingent in their expression. It also means understanding what jewelry is as it is worn, and the required artistic, functional and design choices and compromises which must be made, if the piece of jewelry is to be judged finished and successful.
Literacy in jewelry design includes such things as:
Learning art and design vocabulary, including design elements, principles of composition, manipulation and construction, and basic vocabulary words
Developing an understanding of a range of materials, how these are selected, and the possibilities for their use, or mis-use, in any one project
Developing a range of technical and technological knowledges and skills, how to vary them, and when to apply them and when not to apply them
Translating inspirations into aspirations into specific designs and execution
Choosing media, technique and strategy to convey concepts, forms and themes
Organizing, managing and controlling a jewelry design process, from start to finish, especially over an extended period of time
Deciphering the graphic representation of ideas
Communicating these ideas through critique and analysis of jewelry genres, styles, media use, and artist/designer intent
Reconciling tensions and conflicts between appeal and functionality, especially as the jewelry is worn
Introducing their work to others, coordinating artist goals with marketing goals, and exhibiting or selling publicly
Working with various client audiences, and translating, influencing or mitigating their understandings and desires about jewelry with those of the designer, whether a piece should be judged as finished and successful
Figuring out “fix-it” strategies where things do not turn out as desired, are uncertain, or things go wrong
Reflecting on one’s own thought processes and choices, increasing that metacognitive awareness of what things lead to better design
Developing a personal style and originality and strategies for how these get reflected in the artist’s finished compositions
Why Do We Need More Fluent Designers?
The standard curriculum and approach for teaching the making and designing of jewelry is commonly viewed as teaching basic literacy. This includes teaching a basic set of skills, widely adaptable and applicable to all kinds of jewelry making situations. These basic skills are highly generalizable and adaptable.
In the standard curriculum, it is assumed that the challenge of improving jewelry making skills is a function of making more and more jewelry. The designer, thus over time, would automatically evolve into a better designer with better, more satisfying, more appealing designs. We refer to this as the vaccination conception of teaching.
In some sense here, these ideas about teaching basic literacy are partly right. All students need a basic vocabulary. All jewelry designers need these basic perceptual and decoding skills which are very connected to early learning. These are entailed in all jewelry designs and crafting tasks.
However, as the designer moves from basic decoding to fluency, flexibility and originality, the basics which were learned become less generally useful. For example, the designer may learn basic color schemes, but not learn how to adapt these in different situations, with components which do not easily match colors on the color wheel, and which present differently when used in combination, or under different lighting or contextual situations.
Our standard teaching curriculum, if that is all we teach, becomes less than useful. We rely on a bad assumption: If we only provide adequate basic skills, so we assume, from that point forward, the student with adequate background knowledge will be able to design and make anything successfully. When the emphasis is on giving out more information and instructions rather than on discussion and challenge, students have little chance to learn to think as a fluent jewelry designer.
But this also begs the question: Why do we need more fluent designers?
Isn’t turning out basic technicians sufficient? Aren’t there enough designers meeting everyone’s jewelry needs? Even if there are not, are there enough clients and customers who would want to see and purchase better, more insightful, jewelry designs?
My answer, obviously, is Yes! We need more fluent designers who have been taught and are fluent in a disciplinary literacy. That is because there are many things going on around us which increase the need for all this.
These include,
The need to adapt to more global competition, better ride the ever-faster waves and changes of fashion and style trends, and more strategically confront and challenge global “sameness” in design
The need to adapt, and adapt more quickly, to changes in technologies and materials
Automaticity in how designers more easily and successfully meet their various client needs — self, wearer, viewer, seller, exhibiter, and collector
Creating a clearer, publicly sanctioned professionalization of the jewelry design discipline
Expanding the connectedness and networking of jewelry designers in today’s world
Increasing opportunities for more attention, visibility, communication, support, demand and income
Encouraging individual student pursuits, diversity and experimentation
How Should Disciplinary Literacy Be Incorporated Into Jewelry Design Education?
Jewelry Design is rarely taught at this disciplinary level.
There is a need to identify what an advanced literacy curriculum in jewelry design might be, how it differs from that in art or craft, and how best to implement it.
We need to move away from the ideas of “teacher of art” or “teacher of craft”, and begin to understand the role of teacher as “teacher of disciplinary literacy in jewelry design”. How can we best prepare all jewelry design students for the thinking, the making, and the critically reflecting upon required by more intermediate and advanced work? How can we prepare students to be independent thinkers? Self-starters? What program of authentic learning more closely reflects what a jewelry designer does in the field?
A disciplinary literacy program should not, however, be understood as a separate curriculum. It is not something supplemental. Rather, disciplinary literacy should be a part of and embedded within all existing instruction, from basic to advanced. Disciplinary literacy should support the standard curriculum with literacy tools uniquely tailored to jewelry design.
Some ideas for integration…
Build more depth into what is already taught and increase student engagement
Leverage a wide range of resources — popular articles and images, academic articles, interviews, gallery exhibits and their presentation and marketing materials, online videos, bead and jewelry making magazines
Task students with communicating what they read, viewed, experienced and attempted to do, and elaborate more on their understandings
Ask questions which encourage students to think like jewelry designers
Model design strategies and fix-it strategies
Allow students to do more problem-solving and experimentation
As teachers of jewelry design, we want to build up our students’ design knowledge and skills through literacy. This means such things as,
Building prior knowledge — showing connections between what they are expected to do now with what they have done or experienced before
Building a specialized vocabulary and how to use this in context
Learning, applying, varying and experimenting with different materials, techniques and technologies
Practicing translating inspirations into aspirations
Learning to deconstruct complex visual representations of ideas which each piece of jewelry encapsulates
Using knowledge of artistic design elements and genres to identify main and subordinate ideas expressed within any piece
Articulating what the graphic representations mean and how they are used within a piece of jewelry, and how this supports the artist’s intent
Posing disciplinary relevant questions
Critically comparing one piece of jewelry to others
Using reasoning with jewelry design, such as searching for alternatives, or selecting evidence to evaluate claims of finish and success
Enabling students to be metacognitive — that is, become aware of the ways in which they think, learn, create and problem-solve, and aware of how they overcome those times of creativity block
Anticipating shared understandings about what it means for a piece to be finished and successful
Bridging creative learning to the creative marketplace
What Are Some Specific Useful Techniques?
We should teach students to design jewelry, not draw it, not sculpt it, not craft it. And that should be our primary goal as teachers: developing our students’ Fluency, Flexibility and Originality with design.
This involves:
a developmental approach and organization of knowledges, skills and understandings to be taught, usually taught as sets of interrelated, integrated skill sets, rather than one skill at a time
a multi-method teaching plan and program with a shared goal of teaching disciplinary literacy,
a rubric specifying degrees of accomplishment and the criteria of evaluation — all shared with the student
a willingness to adjust teaching styles because different students rely on different senses and strategies for learning
I am going to touch on each of these below, but you will find numerous articles in print and online which go into much more detail.
Developmental Approach
Think of jewelry design as a large matrix. The rows are the various knowledges, skills and understandings students need to master. The columns represent ordered stages of learning, indicating what needs to be learned first, second and third, etc.
In the example below, learning objectives were specified for an introductory bead stringing class. The learning objectives were characterized by skill level needed. These objectives were clustered together and taught as a set. The student could identify what things were learned at what level, and what things needed to be learned in another class. Emphasis was placed during the instruction to visibly point out to the student how each learning objective was interrelated to the others.
At the conclusion of the class, students were asked to self-evaluate what they learned about each learning objective, and what else they would like to know or learn about it. What were their take-aways, and what would they like to do next.
When taking a developmental approach, you teach groups of integrated knowledges, skills and understandings. You teach technical mechanics concurrently with art and craft history, and concurrently with discipline-specific literacy. We want our students to be able to think strategically and critically, deal with unfamiliar or problematic situations, and be self directed.
In the Developmental Approach, you start with a cluster of a core set of skills. You show, demonstrate, and have the student apply, communicate about, and experiment with how these skills inter-relate in jewelry design.
You then introduce another cluster of knowledges, skills, and understandings. As with the core, you show, demonstrate, and have the student apply, communicate about, and experiment with how all these inter-relate. Then you repeat all this by teaching how this second cluster of things inter-relates to the core.
And again, you introduce a third cluster, and link to the second, then link to the core. And so forth.
Jewelry design covers a wide range of factors beyond the physical and structural aspects of jewelry. It incorporates aesthetics, structure, value systems, philosophies, sustainability, technologies, and their integrations. Thus the jewelry designer has to know some things about art, and some things about architecture, and about physical mechanics, and anthropology and psychology and sociology, and engineering, and be a bit of a party planner. Here, this developmental approach serves them well. It helps the student learn the inter-connectedness and inter-dependencies of them all, in a gradual, developmental, building-up-to-something sort of way.
Multi-Method Teaching Plan
Students need to come at jewelry design problems from different angles. Within each lesson, teachers need to gradually relinquish control over the learning process to the student. Using a single teaching method, such as having students keep rehearsing a series of steps, or relying on a single textbook won’t cut it. We also need to infuse opportunities for reflection within virtually every activity.
Some of things I find especially useful include,
(a) Guided Thinking
(b) Thinking Routines
c) Developing an effective questioning strategy
(d) Application, practice and experimentation
One approach is called “Guided Thinking”. Here, within each lesson, the teacher begins with controlling the information and how it is presented. This involves some lecture, some demonstration, some modelling. The teacher never insists that there is only one way to accomplish any task. Over the course of the lesson, the teacher gradually relinquishes more and more control to the student for directing the learning activity.
For example, we might encourage students to construct and feel and touch similar pieces made with different materials, beads or techniques, and have them tell us what differences they perceive. We should guide them in thinking through the implications for these differences. When teaching a stitch, I typically have students make samples using two different beads — say a cylinder bead and a seed bead, and try two different stringing materials, say Fireline and Nymo threads.
We also should guide them in thinking through all the management and control issues they were experiencing. Very often beginning students have difficulty finding a comfortable way to hold their pieces while working them. I let them work a little on a project, stop them, and then ask them to explain what was difficult and what was not. I suggest some alternative solutions — but do not impose a one-best-way — and have them try these solutions. Then we discuss them, fine-tuning our thinking.
After some trial-and-error and experimentation, I begin to introduce some goals. They had identified some management and control issues, and had some observations about what they were trying to do. I link these developing discussions to these goals. These are issues because…. And I let them fill in the blanks. What do they think needs to be happening here?
I begin to put words to feelings. I guide them in articulating some concrete goals. We want good thread tension management for a bead woven piece. We want the beads to lay correctly within the piece. We want the piece to feel fluid. We want an easier way to work the piece and hold it, so it doesn’t feel so awkward.
We return to Guided Thinking. I summarize all the choices we have made in order to begin the project: type of bead, size of bead, shape of bead, type of thread, strategy for holding the piece while working it, strategy for bringing the new bead to the work in progress. I ask the students what ideas are emerging in their minds about how to bring all they have done so far together.
At this point, I usually would interject a Mini-Lesson, where I demonstrate, given the discussions, the smarter way to begin and execute the Project. In the Mini-Lesson, I “Think Aloud” so that my students can see and hear how I am approaching our Project.
And then I continue with Guided Thinking as we work through various sections of the Project towards completion. Whatever we do — select materials, select and apply techniques, set goals, anticipate how we want the Project to end up — is shown as resulting from a managed process of thinking through our design.
In “Guided Thinking”, I would prompt my students to try to explain what is/is not going on, what is/is not working as desired, where the student hopes to end up, what seems to be enhancing/impeding getting there.
As the lesson proceeds, I reduce the amount of direction and information I provide. I relinquish this responsibility gradually to the student. The student is asked to try out a technique or strategy, then try an alternative. The student is asked to communicate the differences, their preferences, their explanations why, and what they might try to do next.
Experimentation with evaluation is encouraged. The student is asked to develop a more concrete jewelry project, and explain the various choices involved. What-if and what-next questions are posed. The student is allowed to follow a pathway that might be not as efficient, or even a dead-end. More discussion about what occurs begins. If the student asks me what would happen if, I tell them to try it and see, and then discuss their experience and observations.
Towards the end of the lesson, I prompt the student to communicate what they have done and what they have discovered. I ask them, in various ways, what take-aways they have from the class, or how they think they might apply what they learned in the future. I suggest the “what next.” I identify different options and pathways they might pursue next. Metacognition and reflection are important skills for any jewelry designer to have.
And we’re ready for the next lesson.
Another approach is called “Thinking Routines”. With guidance, demonstration and repetition, it is my hope that these experiences become a series of Thinking Routines my students resort to when starting a new project. As students develop and internalize more Thinking Routines, they develop greater Fluency with design.
Thinking Routines are different strategies for structuring a set of steps which lead a person’s thinking. “They are the patterns by which we operate and go about the job of learning and working together in a classroom environment. A routine can be thought of as any procedure, process, or pattern of action that is used repeatedly to manage and facilitate the accomplishment of specific goals or tasks. Classrooms have routines that serve to manage student behavior and interactions, to organizing the work of learning, and to establish rules for communication and discourse. Classrooms also have routines that structure the way students go about the process of learning. These learning routines can be simple structures, such as reading from a text and answering the questions at the end of the chapter, or they may be designed to promote students’ thinking, such as asking students what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned as part of a unit of study.”[3]
Some examples:
What Do You See…..What Do You Think…..What Do You Know
Think — Pair — Share
What Makes You Think That?
I used to think… Now I think…
Connect — Extend — Challenge
True for Who?
Look — Score — Explain
We use Thinking Routines mirror the kinds of thinking and analytic practices common to the discipline of jewelry design. We encourage students to reflect on what they were thinking. We ask how they were anticipating getting to the point where they would call their piece finished. We ask them whether there was some kind of order or routine to their process. We ask them what criteria they would use to know that they were successful. We ask them to anticipate what others would think, and whether others would agree that the piece was finished and successful.
These are some of the kinds of situations we want our students to develop thinking routines for:
a. Exploration of experience for a purpose; translating inspiration into designs
b. Search for meaning as conveyed by various design elements alone, clustered together, or arranged within a composition
c. Formulating how to deal with unfamiliar tasks or roadblocks preventing the finishing of a task
d. Completing well practiced technical tasks
e. Varying well practiced technical tasks
f. Contingent thinking and fix-it strategies
g. Incorporating the shared understandings of others into the thinking about what constitutes a finished and successful design
h. Introducing jewelry publicly, such as for exhibit or for sale
Another approach I want to point out is having an Effective Questioning Strategy. Students need to be engaged in thinking and talking about jewelry and its design and its powers when worn. The questions we ask them, and the way we phrase them, can have a big impact on this.
Questions should lead the student towards greater understanding. Ask questions which encourage students to think like jewelry designers and understand jewelry design as a series of problems to be solved.
Decode piece of jewelry; measure jewelry’s impact; relate to artist intent
Correlation or causation when explaining and identifying design issues
What q’s weren’t answered; ability to assess the information at hand relevant to the design problem
Do the results solve the design problem and support the conclusions
Other explanations for the results
Given an artist intent, sketch a jewelry design
Given a piece of jewelry to be sold, develop a sales pitch
Some pointers:
Avoid questions with Yes/No answers
Avoid questions which contain the answers, such as “don’t you think the designer did a good job?”
Avoid questions which seem to have a particular answer in mind, such as “how did the designer use materials to represent the upper class?”
Do elicit questions with multiple answers.
Do elicit questions which incorporate each of our senses, not just the visual, such as “what sounds do you think this piece of jewelry would make?”
Do elicit questions of varying levels of difficulty and rigor.
Do elicit personal interpretations of ideas and feelings, coupled with questions about what evidence the student used to come to these conclusions.
Do elicit questions about how to value or judge worth, and how such values might differ among different audiences, and why.
Do elicit questions about contingent situations — if such and such a variable or piece of information changed, how would our thoughts, feelings and understandings change?
Do elicit follow-up questions.
If no one responds immediately to a question, pause and wait about 5 seconds.
Encourage conversation among all participants in the room.
Encourage students to generate their own questions.
When looking at a piece of jewelry, students might be asked (in reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy)[6] to:
DESCRIBE IT: What do you see? What else do you see? If you were describing this to another person who has not seen it, what would you say?
RELATE IT: What things do you recognize? Do you feel connected to the piece in any way? Would you buy it? Would you wear it? How does this piece of jewelry relate (to any other piece of jewelry)? What interests you the most in this piece? If you passed this piece of jewelry onto your children or grandchildren, do you think they would relate to it in the same way you did; explain? Would this jewelry be successful or appropriate in any culture or situation; explain with examples?
ANALYZE IT: What can you tell me about the design elements used in this piece of jewelry? About the arrangement and composition? About its construction? What type of person would wear this piece and why? What is the most critical part of this piece of jewelry which leads to its success (or failure)? What questions would you want to ask the designer? What internal or external forces will positively or negatively impact the piece? What about the piece creates good support, enabling it to move, drape and flow? What about the piece creates good structure, enable it to keep its shape and integrity when worn?
INTERPRET IT: What name would you give this piece of jewelry, and why did you pick this name? What sounds do you think this piece of jewelry would make? What role(s) would this piece of jewelry serve for the wearer, and why? Why do you think the designer made this piece of jewelry, and made it this way?
EVALUATE IT: Does this piece seem finished; explain? Would you see this piece as successful; explain? Would this piece evoke an emotion, and how? Does this piece resonate, and how? Does this piece feel parsimonious — that is, if you added (or subtracted) one more thing, would it make the piece seem less finished or successful? How has the artist selected and applied materials, techniques and technologies, and could better choices have been made and why? What do you think is worth remembering about this piece? What do you think other people would say about this piece? If you were selling this piece, what would be the selling points; explain? In what ways might this piece have value and worth for various audiences? Anticipating the artist’s purpose and intent, to what degree was the artist successful? What would make the piece better, and what would make it worse?
RE-CREATE IT: If you were making a similar piece, what would you do similarly and what would you do differently; explain why? If you wanted to re-create something similar, but for a different audience or context than you thought it was originally made, what kinds of things might you do; explain? What would you change about the piece to make it more appealing to you? What would you change about the piece to change the “sound” it seems to make? How could we make the piece more Traditional? Or Avant Garde? How could you build in more or better support or structure? How might your own work be influenced (or not) by this piece? Have you learned something from this piece that would influence you to do something differently in your own work in the future? If a particular color / material / finding had not been available, what could you substitute instead?
One last approach is encouraging lots of opportunities for Application, Practice, and Experimentation.
Jewelry design students need time to create various understandings, correct or not, and to put these understandings to the test. They should be encouraged to imagine, experiment, play, practice and apply their emerging knowledges and skills. We need to ween them off the standard design-by-number curriculum. We should provide opportunities for students to develop the skills to work intuitively and practically in context.
Towards this end, we should
Provide space/time for artistic creativity and discovery
Provide opportunities to discuss, reflect and critique about the design, management and control issues which arose
Have students actively anticipate, through discussion and/or writing, what kinds of reactions various audiences might have to various design and composition choices
Ask students to compare and contrast various designs or design approaches, including what is appealing (or not) and wearable (or not) and representative of an artist’s ideas and intent (or not)
Students should be given various pieces to decode; that is, breaking them down into their essential design elements and compositional arrangements
Students should be asked to reflect upon how the jewelry would hold up or be evaluated in different situations or cultures
Students can be given different open-ended design tasks, such as creating a piece of jewelry that celebrates the student; or having students write “recipes” for the ingredients in a piece of jewelry and give these to other students to see what they come up with; or creating jewelry with social or political content; of develop a marketing and promotion strategy with a sales pitch for a particular piece of jewelry; or write a poem or short story about a piece of jewelry
A Rubric RUBRIC[8] AS THINKING ROUTINE
Students who plan on becoming jewelry designers need a simple map to all these ideas about literacy and fluency — something they can easily review and determine where their strengths and weaknesses are, what kinds of courses they need to take, what kinds of learning goals they need to set in order to grow within the profession and gain proficiency and fluency in design over time. One type of map is a rubric.
A rubric is a table of criteria used to rate and rank understanding and/or performance. A rubric answers the question by what criteria understanding and/or performance should be judged. The rubric provides insightful clues for the kinds of evidence we need to make such assessments. The rubric helps us distinguish degrees of understanding and/or performance, from the sophisticated to the naïve. The rubric encapsulates what an authentic jewelry design education and performance would look like.
Here is one rubric we provide students to give them insight to the educational curriculum we offer in our program. We divide the program into Skill Levels, from preparation to beginner, intermediate, advanced, and integrated. We identify how jewelry is defined and conceptualized at each level. We specify the kinds of learning goals at each level — that is, what the students needs to have mastered before continuing on to the next level. We list the classes a student could take at each Skill Level.
Willingness To Adjust Styles To The Different Ways Students Think
Students learn in different ways. Some are more visual, some more oral, some more tactile, some more experiential. It is important that teachers vary their styles within each lesson.
For example, better instructions are presented not only with written steps, but also images illustrating each step, and diagrams or patterns explaining each step.
It is important to provide opportunities for students to reflect on what they did, and evaluate the thinking, management and control issues they confronted, and what they attempted to do to overcome these.
Last, it is just as important for the teacher to model (and think aloud) their own thought processes when attempting to design or construct a piece of jewelry.
Why Should The Teacher Be Motivated To Take A Disciplinary Approach?
The unwillingness of instructors to break out of that mold of standard craft or art content curriculum is rooted in many things.
For one, it is not very lucrative. Teaching disciplinary literacy on top of the standard content curriculum is more work. It requires more thought and integration. Initially, it requires more effort and planning. Yet the earned instructional fees would remain the same had the instructor not made the additional effort.
Teaching disciplinary literacy involves making very public and visible the teacher’s design thinking and choices. The teacher is expected to model design behaviors. The teacher will introduce think-alouds, experimentation, thinking routines. The teacher, within each lesson, gradually relinquishes control of the teaching task to the student. The student takes over the design process, making more and more choices, whether good or bad, right or wrong. The student then evaluates, citing evidence, what appears to be working, what not working, some reasons why, and some possible consequences. These disciplinary literacy techniques might make the teacher feel very exposed, vulnerable and uneasy where such thinking and choices of the teacher might be questioned or challenged, or where the student begins to take over and assert control over learning about design.
Teachers must also expand their training and learning to go beyond art and craft. They must more clearly incorporate ideas about architecture and functionality into their teaching. They must train their students to be aware of how jewelry design is a process of communicative interaction.
Teacher reluctance to incorporate disciplinary learning into the standard curriculum might also be due to the fact that there is little professional recognition. The recognition that tends to exist gets very tied to criteria based on a standard content which understands jewelry as an object, not a dialectic between artist and relevant other. Jewelry design is an occupation becoming a profession, and it may feel safer for the teacher to remain in craft or art, rather than design, because the criteria for teacher evaluation is more well defined and agreed-upon.
And there is no student demand. Jewelry design is often viewed more as an avocation or occupation, rather than a professional pursuit. It’s a way to exercise creative thoughts. A way to earn some extra money. A way to have fun. Jewelry design is not seen in professional terms with specialized knowledge and specific responsibilities.
Partly demand reflects low student expectations. There are assumptions that you cannot teach creativity — you have it or you don’t. There are assumptions that anyone can make jewelry, and that once you learn some basic vocabulary and techniques, better design skills will naturally evolve over time. And these assumptions get affirmed because all students ever see and experience is good ole basic craft or art education.
Partly demand reflects some realities of the marketplace. Most people who buy jewelry have little understanding about quality issues, art and design considerations, who the artists are and what their reputations are. They don’t know better so they don’t demand better. Jewelry purchases skew heavily toward the upper classes. However, this does not mean that we should assume that better designed jewelry has to equate to more expensive jewelry.
It is my firm belief, however, that if instructors integrate disciplinary literacy — thinking routines for how designers think design — into the standard curriculum, both student and client demand will follow, as well as teacher pay and recognition.
As teachers of jewelry design, we should be motivated to create that demand for deeper, disciplinary learning. We need to support the professionalization of the field. We should want to make jewelry design even more fulfilling for our students.
Towards this end, we should teach jewelry design knowledge and skills development which lead to greater fluency, comprehension, self-direction, flexibility, originality and automaticity in design. This means developing our students as architects, as well as artists. It means helping our students develop those critical thinking skills so they can adapt to different design situations, and more easily problem-solve when things go awry. It means enabling our students to evaluate situations and contexts in ways which make clear how the shared understandings of others impact the jewelry design process. It means giving our students a clear understanding of how creative thinking relates to the creative marketplace. It means teaching our students to be able to assert their worth — the worth of the pieces they create, their skills, their ideas, and their labor. Only in these ways will we play an active part in enhancing the ability of our students to make a living from their artistry and design work. Only in this way, moreover, will we elevate contemporary jewelry design so that it has a life outside the studio, and so that it doesn’t get whipped by the whims of fashion or seen only as a design accessory.
How Should We Measure Successful Teaching?
In the standard design curriculum, it is relatively easy to measure our success as teachers. We can gauge how many students take our classes. We can refer to the number of concepts learned. We can count the number of successfully completed steps students have completed. We can get a sense of how many students are able to sell or exhibit their pieces.
What is more difficult to measure, from a disciplinary literacy standpoint, is how well our students are able to think, analyze, reflect, create and engage in jewelry design, given variation and variability in audience, client, context, situation, society and culture.
It is difficult, as well, to gauge the degree we have been able to elevate the importance of jewelry design as a profession. Something beyond craft. Something beyond occupation. Something even beyond art.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] T. Shanahan, C. Shanahan. “Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy,” Harvard Educational Review, 2008.
[2] Historians gathering evidence like letters, journals, newspaper articles, photographs, analyze them and compare then. They look for patterns and corroboration. From that they infer understanding and conclusions. The historian may take many paths and turns to discover information that may or may not be factual, but may be helpful.
Scientists set up controlled experiments, typically using information they consider facts, and interrelated these facts mathematically in order to establish understandings and conclusions. They go about things following the scientific method and approach, beginning with observations, formulating hypotheses, setting experiment and collecting data, and so forth.
Jewelry designers manage tensions between appeal and functionality. The successful managing of these tensions involves adequately anticipating the shared understandings of various client groups about whether a piece should be considered finished and successful. The designer is able to establish something in and about the piece which signals such anticipation and understanding.
[3]Thinking Routines. I teach jewelry design. I find it useful to engage students with various ways of thinking out loud. They need to hear me think out loud about what choices I am making and what things I am considering when making those choices. They need to hear themselves think out loud so that they can develop strategies for getting more organized and strategic in dealing with information and making decisions. My inspiration here was based on the work done by Visible Thinking by Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education . http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html
[4] Fluency. I took two graduate education courses in Literacy. The primary text we used was Literacy: Helping Students Construct Meaning by J. David Cooper, M. Robinson, J.A. Slansky and N. Kiger, 9th Edition, Cengage Learning, 2015. Even though the text was not about jewelry designing per se, it provides an excellent framework for understanding what fluency is all about, and how fluency with language develops over a period of years. I have relied on many of the ideas in the text to develop my own ideas about a disciplinary literacy for jewelry design.
[5] Shared Understandings. In another graduate education class, the major text reviewed the differences between understanding and knowledge. The question was how to teach understanding. Worth the read to gain many insights about how to structure teaching to get sufficient understanding to enrich learning. Understanding by Designby Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005.
[6] Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Bloom, Benjamin S. 1956. Taxonomy of educational objectives; the classification of educational goals. New York: Longmans, Green.
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives (Complete ed.). New York: Longman.
Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Arts. Incredible Art Department. As referenced at
[7] Backwards Design. I had taken two graduate education courses in Literacy and one in Planning that were very influential in my approach to disciplinary literacy. One of the big take-aways from Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2nd Edition, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005, was the idea they introduced of “backwards design”. Their point is that you can better teach understanding if you anticipate the evidence others will use in their assessments of what you are trying to do. When coupled with ideas about teaching literacy and fluency (see Literacy: Helping Students Construct Meaning by J. David Cooper, M. Robinson, J.A. Slansky and N. Kiger, 9th Edition, Cengage Learning, 2015), you can begin to introduce ideas about managing the design process in a coherent and alignable way.
Not Just One Type Of Person Wants To Become A Jewelry Designer
There is not just one type of person who becomes a jewelry designer. There are many, many types of people who find jewelry design a common passion. They may have different ambitions. They may prefer to use different techniques and materials. They may have different levels of financial success. They may have different compulsions for creating jewelry.
We can differentiate people who become jewelry designers by their aspirations (1 Neuendorf, 2016) — why they became jewelry designers. Some jewelry designers fit one type of aspiration; others, more than one. Which one are you?
Social Interactants
Creatives often seek out other creatives and form a social network. They may be makers. They may be sellers or exhibiters or collectors. But they look for ways to interact and meet and share close-knot social ties. Part of the reason is to learn new ideas. Another part is to get feedback and critique. The social group and network will offer support, advice, career and business opportunities and direction. These are people you can lean on when times get tough. There might even be some shared glamour and celebrity, depending on the artists and their group.
Social Interactants typically seek recognition for their efforts and their works. The success of any piece of jewelry depends on the judgements of the various audiences which interact with it. Social interactants allocate a good deal of their time anticipating how others will understand and react to any piece of jewelry. They spend time seeking out opportunities to display their works publicly.
Compulsive Creators
There is this innate, compulsive, don’t-fight-it desire that some jewelry designers have for creating jewelry. Composing, constructing and manipulating design elements is intrinsically rewarding. There is a strong, profound commitment to jewelry design, and this directed energy is often associated with productivity and success.
Compulsive Creators love what they do. It allows them to think creatively. They allocate a lot of their time towards achieving a high level of quality and sophistication.
Lifestyle of Freedom Seekers
These designers like to set their own pace, establish their own routines, work when the spirit moves them. A regular 9 to 5 job is not for them. They like to make their own rules and be self-directive. Any financial insecurity and uncertainty that comes with this is worth the price to pay for a lifestyle of freedom.
These designers believe that this freedom allows them to experience the world around them in a greater depth and to a greater degree. In turn, they have more understandings for how to find and then turn inspirations into finished jewelry designs.
Financial Success Achievers
Successful jewelry designers can do quite well for themselves, but it takes a lot of drive, organization and business and marketing sense. Jewelry design can be a lucrative career with such determination, gaining visibility, and a little bit of being in the right place at the right time.
But many designers primarily look for money to supplement their income or retirement. Some look to make enough money to pay for their supplies.
Sometimes, designers make jewelry to seek wealth, rather than income. They accumulate many pieces of jewelry and many unusual supplies and components to achieve wealth as success.
Financial Success Achievers typically try to create a business around their jewelry.
Happenstance and Chance
Not everyone who becomes a jewelry designer aspired to be one. Sometimes people fall into it. They need a piece of jewelry to match an outfit and decide to make something themselves, then get hooked. They watch someone make jewelry, then get intrigued. They try to repair a broken piece of jewelry by themselves. They accompany a friend to a jewelry making class, then want to try it out.
Many Ambition Types
Aspirations and ambitions vary. There is no best way or right way. It becomes a matter of the designer finding that balance of design, self, and other-life which works for them, and drives their passion.
Jewelry designers were motivated to become designers for many different reasons. But motivations are only a start. These make up only a small part of what it truly takes to be a successful designer. Designers need to develop skills and techniques, creative thinking, design process management, and disciplinary literacy, to continue on their pathway to success.
There are many ways to learn beading and jewelry making.
Rote Memory
Analogously
Contradictions
Assimilation
Constructing Meanings
Most people learn by Rote Memory. They follow a set of steps, and they end up with something. They memorize all the steps. In this approach, all the choices have been made for them. So they never get a chance to learn the implications of their choices. Why one bead over another? Why one stringing material over another? How would you use the same technique in a different situation? You pick up a lot of techniques, but not necessarily many skills.
Other people learn Analogously. They have experiences with other crafts, such as sewing or knitting or other craft, and they draw analogies. Such and Such is similar to Whatnot, so I do Whatnot the same way I do Such and Such. This can work to a point. However, beading and jewelry making can often be much more involved, requiring making many more types of choices, than in other crafts. And there are still the issues of understanding the quality of the pieces you use, and what happens to them, both when jewelry is worn, as well as when jewelry is worn over time.
Yet another way people learn is through Contradictions. They see cheap jewelry and expensive jewelry, and analyze the differences. They see jewelry people are happy with, and jewelry people are not happy with, and analyze the differences. They see fashion jewelry looked down upon by artists, and art jewelry looked down upon by fashionistas, and they analyze the differences.
Assimilation is a learning approach that combines Analogous Learning and Learning Through Contradictions. People pursue more than one craft, keeping one foot in one arena, and another foot in the other. They teach themselves by analogy and contradiction. This assumes that multiple media mix, and mix easily. Often, however, this is not true. Usually one medium has to predominate for any one project to be successful. So assimilative learning can lead to confusion and poor products, trying to meet the special concerns and structures of each craft simultaneously. It is challenging to mix media. Often the fundamentals of each particular craft need to be learned and understood in and of themselves.
The last approach to learning a craft is called Constructing Meanings. In this approach, you learn groups of things, and how to apply an active or thematic label to that grouping. For example, you might learn about beading threads, such as Nymo, C-Lon and FireLine, and, at the same time, learn to evaluate each one’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of Managing Thread Tension or allowing movement, drape and flow. You might learn about crystal beads, Czech glass beads, and lampwork beads, and then, again concurrently and in comparison, learn the pros and cons of each, in terms of achieving good color blending strategies. You might learn peyote stitch and ndebele stitch, and how to combine them within the same project.
The Reality
In reality, you learn a little in each of these different learning styles. The Constructing Meanings approach, what is often referred to as the Art & Design Tradition, usually is associated with more successful and satisfying learning. This approach provides you with the tools for making sense of a whole lot of information — all the information you need to bring to bear to make a successful piece of jewelry, one that is both aesthetically pleasing and optimally functioning.
There are no perfect jewelry making materials for every project. Selecting materials is about making smart, strategic choices. This means relating your materials choices to your design and marketing goals. It also frequently means having to make tradeoffs and judgment calls between aesthetics and functionality. Materials differ in quality and value. They differ in their sensorial effects on people. They differ in how people perceive them. They differ in the associational and emotional connections which they evoke. They differ in their functional efficiency and effectiveness to lend pieces an ability to retain a shape, while at the same time, an ability to move, drape and flow. They differ in cost and durability. Last, materials may have different relationships with the designer, wearer or viewer depending on how they are intended to be used, and the situational or cultural contexts.
JEWELRY MAKING MATERIALS: Knowing What To Know
The materials I use are alive
The world of jewelry design and the materials used can be complex, especially for jewelry designers just starting out in their careers. The novice, but also the more experienced designer, as well, often run up against some terms and properties of materials they have not dealt with before. Materials affect the appeal of the piece. They affect its structural integrity. They affect the cost. They affect how people view, sense, desire and understand the piece.
You Would Be Very Aware Of…
If you want to gain an understanding of materials, you would be very aware of where they come from, how they are described, sold and marketed. You would be very aware of the beads and jewelry findings and stringing materials and tools, their qualities, when they are useful and when they are not, and what happens to them when they age. You would be very aware of what country the material is made or found in, how the material is manufactured, synthesized or gotten at, if it is modified or changed in any way, and how it comes to market. You would be very aware if the product is sold at different levels of quality, even if this is not differentiated on the product’s label. It is also important to be very aware how any of these aspects of the material have changed over time, or might change over time in the future.
You would be very aware that there is no such thing as the perfect material. There are only better materials, given your situation and goals. There is no perfect bead for every situation. No perfect clasp. No perfect stringing material. Every choice you make as a jewelry designer will require some tradeoffs and judgment calls. The more you understand the quality of the materials in the pieces you are working with are made of, and the clearer you are about your design goals, and if you are selling things, your marketing goals, as well, the more prepared you will be to make these kinds of choices.
You would be very aware that materials have different values and life spans, and this must relate to your project goals. You would not want to use metalized plastic beads, for example, in a piece you call an heirloom bracelet. Metalized plastic beads are a metal shell around a milky white plastic bead. The shell will chip easily. On the other hand, when doing fashion jewelry, these very inexpensive beads, and which have a short life-span, would be perfect. Not only are they cheap, but because they are cheap, there are lots and lots of designs and shapes and textures.
If your goal is to create more investment quality pieces, then you would not want to buy lampwork beads which have not been appropriately annealed (that is, if not cooled down correctly, they will fracture and break easily). You would buy appropriately annealed ones, but which are considerably more expensive. This may affect the look of your pieces. For an inexpensive, fashion oriented piece, your necklace made up entirely of lampwork beads which have not been appropriately annealed might be very affordable. It would have that great handmade, artisan look. It might sell for only $60.00. With more investment quality lampwork beads, however, you might just use one, or perhaps three lampwork beads, and have a lot of cord showing, or a lot of filler beads, to keep the piece affordable. This would be a very different design look and style. If the necklace was made up of all quality lampwork beads, — to have the same look and style as its inexpensive cousin — it might have to retail for $600–800.00.
Again, for an investment quality piece, you would want to use crystal beads manufactured in Austria or the Czech Republic, and not ones manufactured elsewhere. And you would not let yourself be fooled when the front of the package says “Austrian Crystal” when the back says “Made In China”. Crystal beads made in China are not as bright, there are more production issues and flaws in the beads, and the holes are often drilled off-center when compared to their “Made In Austria” counterparts. But crystal beads more appropriate for that investment quality piece might be overkill for a fashion piece where you want to add a pop of brightness without a lot of additional cost.
You would want to be very aware of the treatments of beads and metals. Some things are radiated, heated, reconstituted, partly synthesized, lacquered or dyed. Sometimes this is a good thing and these treatments enhance the quality of materials in appearance and durability. Othertimes this is a bad thing, negatively affecting the quality of materials.
You would be very aware that many of the materials you use are described in ways that do not provide you with sufficient information to make a choice. Take the material gold-filled. The definition of gold-filled is that the material is a measurable layer of real gold fused to brass, sometimes copper. But the legal definition does not tell you how thick the gold has to be over the brass for the material to be called gold-filled. So in the market, some gold-filled has very little gold and will lose its gold very quickly, and other gold-filled has a thicker layer and will keep its gold, its shine and its shape for decades.
Or sterling silver. Sterling silver is supposed to be 92.5% silver (marked .925). The alloy, that is the remaining 7.5%, is supposed to contain, by law, a lot of copper. However, many manufacturers substitute some nickel for the copper to keep the cost down. This makes the sterling silver less expensive, yes, but it also makes it more brittle. It is the difference between being able to open and close the loop on an ear wire, off of which to hang the dangle, many, many times or only two or three times before the wire loop breaks.
Lots of sterling silver items get marked .925. And in jewelry making, many of the pieces we use are so small, there is no .925 stamp on them. Besides a change of what is in the alloy affecting the usefulness and value, many other things happen in the marketplace, as well. Many sterling silver items have been cast. What frequently happens is that some of the silver is lost in the casting process, so it is no longer at 92.5%. Manufacturers are supposed to make note of this, but many just stamp .925 on these items. Some shops label items as sterling silver, but in reality, are selling you pieces that are nickel. And some places will sell you something silver plated, and put sterling silver .925 tag which is marked .925 on it off the clasp. The tag is sterling; the jewelry is not. I’ve seen some major craft stores and some major jewelry stores sell metalized plastic jewelry and jewelry components and label it .925.
Flexible, nylon coated cable wires are one of the primary types of stringing materials. The measure of cable wire strength is called tensile strength. This has to do with what the wires are made of, what the nylon sheathing is made of, and how thick that nylon sheathing is. What makes the wire strong is the nylon sheathing’s ability to maintain the twist in the wire. As soon as the integrity of the nylon sheathing is violated, the wire untwists and immediately breaks. You will not see tensile strength referenced on the labels of these products. The information that is referenced (number of strands, wire thickness) gives you some information needed to make a choice, but insufficient to make an actual choice. Even when they list the number of strands, this doesn’t give you enough factual information to depend on. One brand’s high-end, 7-strand is stronger and more supple than that same brand’s 49-strand middle range product. This same brand’s middle range 49-strand product is stronger and more supple than another brand’s high end 49-strand product.
You would also be very aware that you cannot assume that there is consistency and uniformity for any given product. There are many production issues that arise in the manufacture of glass beads, for example. Some beads are perfect. Some have flaws. These flaws might include some flat surfaces when everything should be rounded. The color not going all the way through. Holes drilled off-centered. Bead sizes and hole sizes inconsistent from bead to bead. Some bead holes that are especially sharp. Some beads which have coated coloration which is poorly applied and chips off quickly. In clothing, these beads with flaws would be labeled irregulars, but they are not so labeled in beads. Some companies specialize in selling you perfect manufactured glass beads; other companies specialize in selling you the irregulars. They don’t advertise that fact. Either quality looks the same when you buy it; they just don’t hold up the same in close examination or from wear.
You would be aware that fabricated and stamped metal pieces are more durable than cast metal pieces, but a lot more expensive, and with a smaller palette of designs for the artist. You would be aware that the measure of pound strength on any label is the weakest piece of information to grab onto. The law only defines how pound strength should be measured. Since most products are manufactured abroad, little care is taken to guarantee the validity of this information.
You would be aware that there are a lot of things to know about the materials used in jewelry design.
It Is All About Choices
Materials play a significant role in jewelry design. You need to relate and justify the choices you make about selecting and using materials to your design goals (and your marketing goals, as well). Sometimes your choices are preformulated and planned; othertimes, these choices are spontaneous and emerge within your process of design. But these are all choices to be made, with inevitable impacts and consequences.
It is through the characteristics and qualities of the materials that the designer comes to keenly and fully appreciate values, intents, desires, and understandings associated with any design.
It is also through the most effective presentation specific to the materials that the designer experiences the piece to its best advantage and potential. The effectiveness results from the designer’s ability to maximize the strengths of each material, while minimizing its weaknesses. This is called leveraging.
It is a useful exercise, as well, to attempt to simplify the materials and reflect upon whether the piece feels more satisfying and successful, or less so. One key goal of any designer is to reach a point of parsimony where enough is enough.
Appreciation of materials, their selection, use and arrangement lead the designer to see, feel, think and listen to the visual poetry laid out before them. Jewelry is more than functional adornment. It resonates. Materials contribute to this. This appreciation allows the artist to share inspiration and intent with other audiences, the wearer and viewer included. The materials influence the artist in discovery, expression, invention, re-invention, and originality. They become part of the human experience in jewelry design.
For example, you might be in a situation having decide whether to purchase an $80.00 strand of 6mm round garnet beads, or a $28.00 strand of these same beads.
In that $80.00 strand, all the beads actually measure 6mm. They are all perfectly round. The holes are drilled well, and drilled through the center. There are no chips at the hole. There is good coloration, and the coloration from bead to bead is very consistent.
In that $28.00 strand, none of the beads measure 6mm. They are a bit smaller, perhaps 5.5mm. The beads from bead to bead on the strand are not consistent. Sizes are approximate, not exact. Several beads on the strand are not perfectly round. Some have flat surfaces on them. There are many chips at the hole, suggesting that they are not drilled well. Some are drilled off-center. The coloration is good from afar, but a close exam reveals that some beads are less desirable than others.
This situation doesn’t present an easy choice, however. If you are making fashion jewelry, the less expensive strand might be the best choice. Fashion jewelry is not worn for a long time. It is not an investment. It is a look. These beads are less expensive. In this context, the flaws, in this case, may not be so much as a flaw, as more a variation. The variations might enhance the fashion piece, adding a sense of fun, surprise and funkiness. The poorly drilled holes might mean that these beads will crack and break from wear, but given that fashion jewelry is not worn for a long time, this is a non-issue.
If you are making a more investment quality piece, the more expensive garnet beads might be the better choice. They have more value, resulting from the higher quality. The consistency in quality results in a more classic, timeless look. These beads will last a long time. Here, the inconsistencies in the less expensive strand of beads definitely would be viewed as flaws, not variations.
Types of Materials
One of the most fundamental and practical aspects of jewelry design is the importance of the materials. The choices jewelry designers make when selecting materials influence the form, content and movement of their pieces. Every material brings something special to the creative process and the finished jewelry pieces. The material influences, not only the designer, but the wearer and viewer themselves, how they perceive it, the values they place on it, and the extent they desire it.
The types of materials jewelry designers might choose are only limited by the imagination of the designer, and that designer’s budget. I have compiled a short listing of the more prevalent materials used in jewelry design. I distinguish those materials called
– Stringing Materials –
which are used to form the canvas of our jewelry,
from those materials called
– Aesthetic Materials –
which form the primary visual vocabulary and expressiveness of the piece, but also may contribute some functionality,
from those materials called
– Functional Materials –
which solely or primarily have practical value, but only sometimes, most likely inadvertently, add to the aesthetic expression of the piece.
STRINGING MATERIALS (The Canvas)
The canvas is the part of the piece of jewelry onto which things are placed. The canvas is usually some kind of stringing material, and the things placed on it typically are beads and charms. The canvas supports the piece, its shaping and its silhouette. It may or may not be visible in the piece. But the canvas can be anything, including fabric and ribbon, wire mesh, chains, and the like. It can be like a string, or it can be like a flat sheet.
The designer selects the canvas or stringing material based on a vision of the structure of the piece, including both its supportive requirements as well as its appearance-related qualities. The particular selection will also impact the durability of the structure. Sometimes the selection of canvas takes on a symbolic meaning, such as using hemp in friendship bracelets or antiwar jewelry, or using leather in biker jewelry.
(1)Beading thread: Typically shaped like a typewriter ribbon, made from bonded nylon. It is something we wax before using it. Materials are strung onto thread using a beading needle. The thread is attached to the clasp assembly by tying knots. Glue should never be applied to these knots. If the beading thread is twisted, rather than bonded, it will break very easily.
Structure: Piece is very supple and moves, drapes and flows very easily. Provides little resistance to the weight of materials placed on it
Durability: Very durable when waxed, unless the holes of beads are very sharp
(2) Cable thread: This is a material where threads are braided together and encased in a nylon sheathing. Used similarly as beading thread. You use a needle. Waxing is optional, but strongly suggested. You tie knots to the clasp assembly. Glue should never be applied to these knots. Cable thread sold in bead stores is non-biodegradable. That sold in fishing stores or fishing departments is biodegradable.
Structure: Piece is very supple and moves, drapes and flows easily, but not as easily as with beading thread.
Durability: Very durable, but the nylon sheathing can be compromised easily from body oils, perfume oils, and cosmetics. Waxing will protect the nylon sheathing.
(3) Bead cord, hemp, knotting cord: This is a material where threads or fibers are braided or twisted together so that they look pretty. This cord is used when you want the stringing material to show, such as putting knots between beads, or where you have a cluster of beads, then the cord showing, another cluster of beads, the cord showing, and so forth. You use this material to macramé, knot, braid, knit, and crochet. You do not wax this material. That would make it look ugly. The primary purpose is to make your piece look attractive when the stringing material is to show. Bead cord may be nylon or silk. You use silk with real pearls, but, I suggest using the nylon with other materials. You will need a needle, usually a collapsible eye or big eye needle. You tie knots to secure the cord to a clasp assembly. You minimize the use of glue applied to knots, but you usually need to apply glue to the final knot.
Structure: Piece is a little stiffer than with bead thread or cable thread, but still feels supple. Will drape well, but respond imperfectly to the movement of the body.
Durability: Silk naturally deteriorates in 3–5 years; nylon does not. Bead cord made from other natural materials will also deteriorate over a relatively short period of time.
(4) Cable Wires: This flexible stringing material consists of wires braided together and encased in nylon. The strength comes from the ability of the nylon sheathing to keep the twist in the wires. If the nylon sheathing is compromised in any way, the wires will immediately untwist and the cable will break at that point. The wire is stiff enough to be its own needle. You use crimp beads to secure the cable wire to a clasp assembly because it is more difficult to tie a secure knot with the cable wire. A crushed crimp adds a more pleasing appearance than tying a knot, but it adds risk. A crushed crimp is like razor blade, always trying to saw right through the cable when the jewelry is worn.
Structure: Piece will be stiff, and never take the shape of the body. Piece will typically rotate in the opposite direction from the movement of the body or arm it rests on.
Durability: Very durable. The nylon sheathing can be compromised easily from body oils, perfume oils, and cosmetics. Usually crimp beads are used to secure the clasp, and these increase the risk the cable will break at the crimp, when compared to the durability of tying a knot.
(5) Stretchy Cords, like elastic string, gossamer floss, elastic cord: These materials are not particularly durable and lose their elasticity over time. People like these because they hate clasps, and you don’t use clasps with these. You secure these by tying knots, and putting glue (any glue except superglue) on the knots. Be sure to coat the bottom of the knot, as well as the top of the knot. Elastic cord is fabric covered around an elastic thong or floss.
Structure: Piece will stretch and return back to its original shape and size.
Durability: Material deteriorates and loses both its integrity as well as its memory over time, especially if left exposed to the air, or worn frequently. The round elastic string is the most durable among the stretchy cords. The floss is the least durable.
(6) Thicker cords like leather, waxed cotton, ultra suede lace, rubber thong, and rat tail (satin cord): These cords are stiff enough to be their own needle. You usually need special jewelry findings, such as crimp ends, end caps, or cones with larger interior openings, to prepare the ends of the thicker cord, so that you can attach a clasp assembly. Some are glued on; some crimped.
Structure: Similar to bead cord, but little stiffer.
Durability: Some cords, like leather, dry out over time and crack. Other cords, like waxed cotton and ultra suede, last a very long time. The rat tail tends to shred.
(7) Hard Wire: Hard wire is not a stringing wire, per se. You can use it to make a chain or bead-chain. You can use it to make shapes, like clasps and ear wires. You can bundle it so that it might be stiff enough to retain the shape of a bracelet or cuff. You can weave it or knit it to create patterns and textures. You create loops and rings to attach hard wire to a clasp assembly.
Structure: Wire stiffness comes as dead soft, half hard and hard. You determine, given how much manipulation of the wire you plan on doing, how stiff you want the wire to be when you begin your project, so that it will hold and retain its shape. Each time you manipulate the wire, it becomes stiffer and stiffer and stiffer, until it becomes brittle and breaks.
Durability: Very durable. Wire 18 gauge or thicker has little risk of losing its shape, distorting, breaking, opening up or pulling apart. As you get thinner, the risk increases dramatically. Dead soft wire requires a lot more manipulation until it can hold its shape, than half hard or hard hard wire.
(8) Chain:Wire is bent into links of various shapes and sizes, and these are interlinked together into a chain. Sometimes the links are soldered closed. Usually they are not. You can string things onto the chain. You can use the chain as part of the clasp assembly, often to make the size adjustable. You can use the chain as a design element throughout your piece.
Structure: Thinner chains will be less able to keep their shape.
Durability: Chains can be very durable, particularly ones that have soldered links, wider links, and/or links created from thicker gauge wires.
(9) Ribbon, fabric:These wider cords are sometimes used as a stringing material. They are secured at each end with ribbon or bar clamps, which then form either side of your clasp assembly.
Structure: Usually, these don’t by themselves support a shape.
Durability: More aesthetic than functional
(10) Lacy’s Stiff Stuff, Stiff Felt, Ultra suede sheet, Paper, Card Board, Poster Board, Rolled Out Polymer or Metal Clay, Brass Cuff Blank:The canvas or stringing material does not have to be a narrow cord. It can be a wide, flat surface, off of which to bead, glue, stitch, embroider, carve, or sculpt. This type of canvas needs to have some amount of stiffness to hold a shape, but not too much that the jewelry made with it feels uncomfortable, or does not move naturally with the person.
Structure: If you were creating a pendant, you might want your canvas o be a little stiffer than if you were creating a bracelet.
Durability: Average durability
(11) Fused Glass:Sometimes the flat canvas is a piece of glass. Other pieces of glass are fused onto this, using a kiln, in order to create a pattern or image.
Structure: Rigid shape.
Durability: Same as any other piece of glass.
(12) Metal Sheet and Wire:Sometimes we fabricate a piece of jewelry, either using soldering, stamping, molding, casting, 3-D printing, or cold connections. Part of the sheet and/or wire becomes our canvas or stringing material.
Structure: These are very reliable materials for creating and maintaining shapes.
Durability: Soldered and stamped pieces are much more durable than molded or cast ones. 3-D printed materials would be used with casting. Cold connections could be used with any technique.
AESTHETIC MATERIALS
The canvas either passes through various aesthetic materials, or these are applied to the canvas or attached off the canvas in some way. These aesthetic materials are used for the yoke, the clasp assembly, the frame, the focal point, the center piece, the strap, and the bail.
Aesthetic Materials are expressive. They are part of the visual vocabulary and grammar of the jewelry. While some play functional roles, as well, they are usually selected for their expressive powers. Some materials evoke sensory or symbolic responses, as well. A touch, a feel, a color sense, sometimes a smell, which extends beyond its factual elements.
Any type of material can be selected to use as an aesthetic material. It can be something very specific, or a found object, or some kind of combobulation of things.
Aesthetic Materials we see often include,
Glass, Fused glass, lampwork glass, blown glass
Metals and Plated Metals
Fibers
Natural (gemstones, wood, bone, horn)
Synthetic (plastic)
Polymer and Precious Metal Clay
Ceramic, Porcelain, Clay, Raku
Paper, lacquered paper
Oxidizers, Patinas, Paints, Fabric Dyes and Paints, Stains, Metal Paints and Rouges
Platings, Coatings
Enameling
These aesthetic materials can be selected for their qualities of
(a) Appeal
(b) Functionality
c) Sensations or symbolism extending beyond the physical and decorative bases underlying these materials
Aesthetic Materials: Appeal
The idea of appeal is a broad concept. It is sometimes universal. But often subjective.
There are many variables underlying the ideas of appeal and beauty. These include things like,
Some materials function better than others in certain situations. For example, sterling silver is very malleable, nickel is more brittle. Bending, shaping, coiling, weaving sterling silver requires much less effort, and with this, can lead to more artistic and design success, than using nickel or other wire material that is stiffer and harder than sterling.
Another example: Using needle and thread as your stringing material is very time consuming. It is awkward using needle and thread. You have to wax it. You want to pass through each bead a minimum of three times. Using a cable wire, instead, lets you go much faster. The cable wire is a self needle. You don’t wax it. You only have to go through each bead once. If you are selling your pieces, it is virtually impossible to get your labor out of a needle and thread project. You almost have to use a cable wire, if you don’t want to commit yourself to a life of slave labor.
Aesthetic Materials: Sensations and Symbolism
Materials have sensory and symbolic powers which extend beyond the materials themselves. Obviously, this can be very subjective. It might have psychological roots, sociological roots and/or cultural roots.
Things may feel warm, cold, soft, rough, oily, weighty. Things may represent romance, power, membership, religiosity, status.
Vanderbilt University’s colors are gold and black, so using those colors in the Nashville, TN area might evoke a different emotional response than when used elsewhere. And here’s that very-difficult-to-design-with University of Tennessee orange, again, in the Nashville area will evoke a very different response than elsewhere.
Materials like amber and bone and crystal are things people like to touch, not just look at. The sensation extends beyond the visual grammar.
FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS
These materials are used in practical terms. They help things hold together. They help pieces stay in place. They help make pieces adjustable in size. They help polish, finish things off, assist materials through stages in their processing and development. They may be used to prevent or retard a change in color, such as a lacquer finish or rhodium plating over sterling to prevent tarnishing. They help capture a form or shape. They are not a part of the visual and expressive vocabulary and grammar of the piece. Nor are they any kind of canvas.
Functional Materials which are more prominent include,
·Adhesives
·Solders
·Pickling, Flux
·Molding compounds
·Bead release
·Fixatives (like Krylon, lacquering, special platings, waxes, other things which create a protective barrier over something else).
It is especially important to know a lot about adhesives. Many people reach for a tube of Superglue for everything. Superglue has few uses in jewelry design. This glue dries like glass, so the bond is like a piece of glass. When the jewelry moves, the bond shatters like glass, and the bond looks like a broken piece of glass. All jewelry moves when worn, so not a good choice.
Another glue many people reach for is hot glue. This glue melts at body temperature, so not a wise choice for necklaces, bracelets and pendants.
The best glue to use is jeweler’s glue. Two brands are E6000 and Beacon 527. Basically the same glue, but the former is thick and the latter is runny. These glues take 10 minutes to set, so you can move things around for 10 minutes. At about 20 minutes, the consistency is like rubber cement and you can use your finger or a tweezers to take off any excess glue. Both glues take 24 hours to dry hard. They dry clear and remain clear over time. The bond does not expand.
If using fabric, particularly silk (ribbon, bead cord, thread), you want to use a cement, rather than a glue. Glues work by forming a collar around an object, then tighten up as the water or other solvent evaporates. Cements work by adhering to each individual fiber. Glue on fabric, as opposed to cement, will lose its grip, so to speak. With silk, I suggest either G-S Hypo Fabric Cement, or any fabric glue.
Before using a glue, you want to know the characteristics of the bond, once dried. These include things like,
– hardness
– whether dries clear, or yellows
– whether yellows with age
– whether it expands or not when it dries
– what materials it is most useful for
– whether you have to prepare the material’s surface before using
– how long it takes to fully set
– how easy it is to wipe away and remove any excess glue
– whether where-ever you purchase the particular brand of glue, such as at a craft store or discount store or bead store, that this brand of glue is the same quality product
– how long the glue will last in its container before hardening or drying out
Mechanical properties describe how a material reacts to an applied force. These include,
Strength: It’s ability not to break under stress or strain
Hardness: How easily it can be scratched, faceted, carved, sculpted, cut, sand blasted
Elasticity: The ability to regain its shape after a stress has been applied to it
Plasticity and Malleability: How much force it takes to make a material permanently deform without breaking
Stiffness and Brittleness: At some point, these materials will be so brittle, they will not bend, and will just break in response to force. Wire materials, for example, get stiffer and more brittle, the more they are worked, such as from twisting, pulling, hammering, coiling and the like. Crystal is much more brittle than glass, so it more likely to break from movement or other force.
Fatigue: When the material fails, after repeated wear and use
Impact Strength: how much a material can withstand an impact
Abrasion Resistance: When two materials rub against each other, what is the resistance before one or both break
Creep: the slow movement of a material over time
Physical Properties
Physical properties describe the inherent nature of the material. Some more important ones related to materials used in jewelry include:
Density: mass and volume
Porosity: the quality of being full of tiny holes; these might hold in something, like a perfume oil, or that something might easily leach out through washing or sweating, like a dye or lead
Water: absorption, permeability and solubility
Softening and Compression: how material holds up under different conditions
Resistance to Heat and Fire
Resistance to Cold
Resistance to a number of cycles of sharp temperature variations without failing
Changing form from solid to liquid to gas
Chemical Properties
Chemical properties refer to how well the material holds up when exposed to chemicals. These chemicals may be in the air. They may be present in cosmetics, perfumes or hair sprays. They may be present in a person’s sweat. These include,
-Corrosion
· Melting, Dissolving, Removing
·Etching
·Colorizing, Oxidizing, Patinas
· Platings
· Bonding, Adherring
· Biodegrading
We have looked at types of materials and their properties. Now we need to understand how materials help establish the viability, finish and success of jewelry. Here, our materials selection process begins to incorporate some value judgments.
Materials Help Establish the Viability, Finish and Success of The Jewelry
Jewelry has character and personality. People intuitively or consciously recognize when it is finished, that is, when the addition or subtraction of any one design element would make the piece seem less satisfying or desirable. Jewelry is judged as successful, to the extent it can maintain its shape while concurrently feeling comfortable, and moving, draping and flowing with the person, as the person wears the jewelry and moves with it on.
Every piece of jewelry has its artistic and individual character due to the many facets from which it is constructed. Stringing, Aesthetic and Functional Materials are three of these facets. Mechanical, Physical and Chemical Properties add some additional facets. These among other additional material choices determine both what can be made, as well as the character of what is made.
Material selection in jewelry design is not only about choosing the most attractive, or most obvious, or most affordable, or most durable materials available. Designers also choose materials for their sensual sensations, like warmth, their formal appearance, like classical, their functional practicality, like a clamp, or their geo-locality, like using materials found locally.
The material selection process is complex. It is influenced by many preconditions, choices made, and considerations to accommodate. Too often, however, designers focus mainly on the visual aspects of the materials, and not enough on other factors. In order to make well-considered and smart choices about materials, jewelry designers need a lot more information. They need information about the entirety of the material, as created or constructed, as visually impactful, as functionally helpful, as perceptually and cognitively understood and as symbolically relevant for designer, wearer and viewer.
Stringing, Aesthetic, and sometimes, Functional Materials, coupled with their various Mechanical, Physical and Chemical properties, help to:
(1)Establish a relationship between visual quality and structural stability (physical properties, shape, silhouette)
(2)Establish a relationship between visual quality and support or jointedness (movement, drape and flow)
(3)Influence the selection of the appropriate technique
(4)Provide character and visual appeal
(5)Reflect the time, era, and socio-cultural context and historical value of the piece
(6)Mix aesthetic elements with functional ones
(7)Highlight a theme or concept expressed in the design
(8)Link the piece to a particular geography or location
(9)Link the piece to its appropriate placement on the body
(10) Determine the budget for the piece
(11) Establish the relationship between quantity and quality, that is, how many similar pieces can be made
(12) Best combine the materialistic qualities with the non-materialistic qualities of the project
(1) Establish a relationship between visual quality and structural stability (physical properties, shape, silhouette)
Jewelry making materials signify structural significance. This may relate to the physical properties of the materials, such as hardness, brittleness, softness, pliability, porousness, and this list can go on and on. This may relate to the shapes of the materials, and the placement and interaction of the shapes within the piece, or the final silhouette. The same may be said for size, weight and volume. This may relate to the stability of the material or its color or finish over time.
The choices and arrangement of materials within a piece of jewelry determines its structure. Structure means shape and material integrity. Shape in jewelry may refer to the silhouette of the piece as a whole, or to individual shapes which occupy one or more sections of our finished piece of jewelry. It may refer to the positioning of positive and negatives areas within the piece. When we refer to structure and shape and material, we imply structural integrity, and the degree we are able to maintain any shape, color or finish while the jewelry is worn over some period of time.
Example 1: We may create a bracelet using Austrian crystal beads strung on a beading thread. We achieve a high visual quality, at least initially. But these beads will cut through the threads when the bracelet is worn, thus ending with a very low structural stability.
Example 2: Sometimes a clam-shell bead tip is used to finish off each end of bead cord, when that is the stringing material. The bead cord, at its end, is tied into a knot, which sits inside the clam-shell, the cord coming out a hole in the bottom of the clam shell. We do not want the knot to work itself loose and slip through the hole. So we glue it. If we use a jeweler’s glue, like E6000 or Beacon 527, these glues dry like rubber. With these glues, the knot can actually contort and work itself through the hole. If we use a glue like Superglue or G-S Hypo Cement, the knot will remain stiff and not be able to slip through the hole. However, the stiff knot reduces what is called support. It reduces the piece’s jointedness, or ability to respond to stress and strain, thus an ability to best move, drape and flow. An alternative to glue is to thread an 11/0 seed bead, passing through the bead twice, before bringing the cord through the hole. This is secure. No glue is used as all. Full support is preserved.
Example 3: How long a metal plated finish lasts depends partly on the metal underneath it, and if it bonds to that metal. Metal plating bonds well to brass, so it lasts a long time before it fades away. Metal plating does not bond at all to aluminum, so it quickly chips off.
(2)Establish a relationship between visual quality and support or jointedness (movement, drape and flow)
Jewelry making materials enhance or impede support or jointedness. The selection and placement of materials, their density, weight, shape, and the like may enable the jewelry to take the shape of the body and move with the body, or not.
Things strung on beading thread will always take the shape of the body and move with the body; things strung on cable wire will not. But the designer has at their disposal several jewelry design tricks in construction which will make the cable wire function closer to needle and thread.
Example 1: A bracelet made up of very large beads, that when encircling the wrist, create a very stiff circle, with much strain and stress on each bead, on the stringing material and on the clasp assembly. If the designer reworks the piece, to include small round spacer beads between each very large bead, the designer, in effect, has added what is called a rotator support system. Each very large bead can freely respond to stresses and strain which result from adjusting to the body and its movement by rotating and pivoting around the spacer bead.
Example 2: People usually pick a clasp after they have designed their piece. They look for something that will make do, perhaps easier to get on and off, and hopefully have some match to the piece. A clasp, however, should be understood as more than a clasp. It should be understood as a clasp assembly, which is a type of support system. S-clasps are very attractive and a S-clasp design can always be found that feels an organic extension of the jewelry. An S-clasp needs a soldered ring off of each arm, and, if stringing on cable wire, a loop in the wire where it connects to the soldered ring. The crimp is never pushed all the way up to the clasp or ring. Each ring or loop is a support system, so our S-clasp needs 4 support systems in this case, to function correctly. With 4 supports on the S-clasp in a necklace, the clasp will always remain on the back of the neck, no matter how the person moves. Without 4 supports, it will not, and the necklace will keep turning around.
(3)Influence the selection of the appropriate technique
The designer must coordinate the selection of Stringing, Aesthetic and Functional Materials, and their inherent Mechanical, Physical and Chemical properties, so that they work in harmony with a particular technique used to assemble, weave, or otherwise secure them together in a finished piece of jewelry.
Conversely, the technique might dictate which materials will work best, and which will not. Bead weaving works with thread or cable thread, but not as easily with elastic string or cable wire.
There was a time when the materials used in any one piece were restricted to a few. Today any material can be used, as well as any combination of materials, without losing any appeal or value or desire.
Examples: A Czech glass bead with a hole size of .8mm would not slip a leather cord with a diameter of 1.5mm. It would be very difficult to create a loomed piece with beads of widely varying sizes. If mixing metals (say, silver, gold and brass) in a fabricated and soldered bracelet, care must be taken in the soldering strategy because each metal melts at a different temperature. You could not begin a wire weaving project using hard hard-wire. We may select cable wire for our canvas. This would not be a suitable stringing material if the technique we wanted to apply was bead weaving.
(4)Provide character and visual appeal
The surface of a material has many characteristics which the jewelry designer leverages within the finished piece. Light might reflect off this surface, such as with opaque glass or shiny metal. Light might be brought into and below the surface before reflected back, such as with many gemstones and opalescent glass. Light might refract through the piece at different angles, even creating a prism effect.
The surface might be a solid color. It might be a mix of colors. It might be matte. It may have inclusions or markings. It may have fired on coloration effects. There may be tonal differences. There may be pattern or textural differences. It may have movement. It may have depth.
Example: It is often difficult to mix gemstone beads with glass beads. However, if you use glass beads which have a translucent quality to them, this glass mimics the relationship of light reflecting back to the eye with that of the gemstones. The finished piece will feel harmonious.
(5)Reflect the time, era, and socio-cultural context and historical value of the piece
Jewelry and its design and materials used can be iconic.
Jewelry can relate the symbolic value of the piece to certain historical themes and ideas, or to specific functions.
Jewelry can be used to preserve, conserve or restore certain cultural or historical values. The material(s) selected may glorify these. Their availability may be closely tied to the time and place. Their use within a piece may be socially subscribed.
Our understanding of how jewelry relates to these contexts can be used to document how jewelry and its design has evolved and spread.
Name an historical period, and you can visualize many of the materials used and design sense. Roman. Victorian. Prehistoric. Modern.
Name a socio-cultural context. Religious. Wedding. Military. American Southwest. Any rite of passage.
Example 1: Pearl knotted jewelry is very strongly associated with silk bead cord, pearl clasps, and bead tips. It is also very associated with Victorian jewelry. It would be difficult to substitute other materials and pieces, such as a different kind of clasp, or not knotting between beads, without the piece losing its appeal.
Example 2: A rosary is made as a bead chain, with a certain number of beads, often a certain size and material of bead, with a Y-shaped connector at its center. The rosary assists the wearer in prayer and religiosity. It’s specific design and use of materials differentiates Catholicism from other religions.
(6)Mix aesthetic elements with functional ones
Jewelry is art only as it is worn. Its aesthetic elements must tightly coordinate with its functional ones, if the piece is to maintain its shape and silhouette, and move with the person, without distorting, feeling uncomfortable or breaking. Thus, its quality and durability are dependent upon how the designer successfully maneuvers the tradeoffs required between function and appeal. A good part of this success stems from how materials are selected, combined and arranged.
Jewelry and its design preserve the aesthetic qualities, without disrupting and losing focus of the practical ones.
Example: The clasp assembly on a piece of jewelry can be very organic, feeling an integral part of the piece. Or it can be very disruptive and annoying, as if it were a last choice and consideration, and the designer found a clasp that would make do. For an S-clasp to function appropriately, it needs at least one soldered ring off of the arm on each side of the clasp. This will force the clasp assembly to take up more space and volume in the piece. This too might end up detracting from the overall appeal of the piece.
(7)Highlight a theme or concept expressed in the design
Materials may be selected, combined and arranged into forms and themes so that they represent larger meanings and concepts. Often this comes down to color, shape, placement, and arrangement. The materials bring out the theme or concept in the design.
Example: You create a piece of jewelry with a blue color scheme, using 4 shades of blue. If the piece is to be worn, say, going clubbing in the evening, you might select 4 shades of blue (metallic blue iris, montana blue, blue quartz, cornflower) which vary in intensity. That means, varying how bright or dull they are by selecting tones with more or less underlying black, gray or white. If the piece is to be worn, say, at work during the day, you might select 4 shades of blue (cobalt, sapphire, light sapphire, ultralight sapphire) which vary in value. That means, varying how light or dark they are by selecting tones that are basically the same, but some are lighter or darker than others.
(8)Link the piece to a particular geography or location
Materials may be strongly associated with a particular geography or location. Lapis is strongly associated with Afghanistan. Paint Rock with Tennessee.
Example: A necklace by a Tennessee designer made entirely with lampwork beads made by Tennessee artisans.
(9)Link the piece to its appropriate placement on the body
Jewelry can only be judged successful at the boundary between jewelry and the body. It must be able to conform to the body’s shape. It must be able to comfortably move, drape and flow as the person moves and shifts positions.
Materials selection might begin with what materials would be most appropriate for a given type of jewelry. Or it might begin with what materials would be most appropriate for a certain body shape or size or placement.
Example: Very heavy beads used in earrings can make them uncomfortable. Creating a 4” earring dangle on a 4” head pin is not quite as a good a strategy as making a 4” earring dangle chain using eye pins. Think about what happens to the former vs. the latter when the wearer bends her head, then returns to the upright position.
(10) Determine the budget for the piece
The total expenditure incurred while designing a piece of jewelry might be, to a large extent, determined by the materials used. A designer often selects the material type based on a budget for the project. [Techniques can also have a big impact on the cost, particularly when accounting for the time it takes to design and construct a piece of jewelry.]
Example: A necklace made entirely of lapis lazuli beads might retail for $150.00. A similar necklace made entirely of lapis color glass beads might retail for $25.00. Both would look similar and take the same time to make.
(11) Establish the relationship between quantity and quality, that is, how many similar pieces can be made
The choice of materials affects the quality of the elements. Within a given project budget, and within a particular design goal, the quality of the materials may limit the number of similar pieces to be made, or the complexity or elaborateness of the design of any one piece.
Example: A stretchy bracelet made with lava beads might retail for $15.00. The materials — elastic string, lava beads, glue — are readily available and inexpensive. The designer could easily make 50 of these to sell, and stay within a reasonable budget. Change the materials to cable wire, crimp bead, horseshoe wire protector, crimp cover, black onyx beads, toggle clasp, and the investment in parts is considerably more. We have more materials and more expensive materials. This bracelet might have to retail for $45.00. Staying within the same budget framework, the designer would only be able to make 16 of these.
(12)Best combine the materialistic qualities with the non-materialistic qualities of the project
Every material has two over-arching qualities. The obvious is its physical properties and physicality. Let’s call this materialistic. It is something that is measurable. In the realm of the mystic, it is ordinary or profane.
But the material also has qualities that extend beyond this. They can be sensory. They can be symbolic. They can be psychological. They can be contextual. Let’s call this non-materialistic. It is something that is non-measurable. In the realm of the mystic, it is extraordinary and sacred.
Both properties must be considered when designing a piece of jewelry. They have equal importance, when selecting, placing and arranging materials and design elements within a piece.
Example: Take a Chakra bracelet strung on cable wire with a clasp. The beads used are gemstones. Each gemstone has spiritual and healing properties. Each gemstone has a coloration, and each different coloration, too, is associated with certain spiritual and healing properties. Moreover, every individual has their own unique needs for which set of gemstones and which assortment of colorations are best and most appropriate. This can get even more complicated in that each situation and context may have its own requirements. The person may end up needing several Chakra bracelets for different occasions. The designer could have used glass or acrylic beads, instead, which have less non-materialistic value, and might be less durable over time. The designer could have strung the beads on elastic string without using a clasp, again, less non-materialistic value and durability.
LESSONS LEARNED
Selecting materials involves a complicated set of choices, some tangible, some intangible, some personal, some in anticipation of the perceptions of others.
Some lessons learned…
1.You can use any material you want when designing jewelry
2.Material selection is a complicated decision making process
3.No material is perfect for every project
4.Don’t assume you know what you know
5.Be skeptical
6.Always ask questions
7.Select materials on both their aesthetic as well as functional properties
8.Don’t sacrifice functionality for aesthetics
9.Anticipate what might happen to your materials over time as the jewelry is worn
10.Anticipate how your various audiences will respond to your selections of materials
11.Work within a budget
12.Match the quality of material to your design (and marketing) goals
_______________________________
FOOTNOTES
(1) WASTIELS, Lisa and WOUTERS, Ine. Material Considerations in Architectural Design: A Study of the Aspects Identified by Architects for Selecting Materials. July, 2008.
Kathleen was one of our bead-weaving instructors at the shop. Her primary sources of inspiration came from nature. I wrote this marketing intro for her jewelry making business she did on the side:
Intuitive. Inspired by Nature and the world around me. Translating feelings and senses and vague images into beautiful jewelry, wonderful beadwork, exciting wearable pieces of art. Beyond following step by step. We’re on the edge and we’re high strung about it.
Kathleen wrote:
Nature inspires all great art, including bead weaving.
Flowers, leaves, vines, and butterflies, (to name a few), are fairly common examples of attempts by bead weavers to transform nature into beadwork. Some are spectacular, like Diane Fitzgerald’s “Ginkgo Leaves.”
Along with other design elements, the color of your beads and the size of your beads and the materials of your beads play major roles in how successful your piece turns out. I have told my students that a solid foundation in the stitches, like we teach at our Stitch of the Month at The Center For Beadwork and Jewelry Arts / Be Dazzled Beads, will allow them the freedom to choose the best stitch for the project. This is particularly true when designing your own piece.
The following is an example of how I was inspired by nature and the resulting Poke Berry Lariat piece.
During a walk one day, I saw some poke weeds. I had so much fun playing with these when I was a child — I love making ink out of the berries! So I went over for a closer look.
Beading is always on my mind, as I examined the stem and berries. It could be done! At least, I could try and re-create this glorious work of nature using beads. I broke off the stem (a bright magenta) and the berries (both purple and green). I took the stem and berries to the bead shop to match up the colors.
The berriesThe stem of the poke plant
The shape of the berries resembled some freshwater pearls. Again I used the actual berries (purple and bright green) to match up the colors with the pearls.
I already had certain stitches in mind. I decided to make this a lariat necklace. Bead crochet was my obvious stitch of choice for the vine-like rope. I decided to use size 8/0 seed beads for the crochet rope to provide strength and a balance to the berry clusters that I would add on to the rope.
For the berry clusters, Ndebele would have strength, provide movement and mimic the way the real clusters are attached to the vine. Using the same magenta color as the crocheted rope, I switched to size 11/0 Japanese seed beads.
The tubular Ndebele stitch was easy to begin right off the crochet rope — both from the ends and a berry cluster about 4 inches from one end. From this Ndebele base, the last stitch, fringe, was used to attach the pearls.
To represent the ripening of the berries, I used a combination of green and purple pearls on 2 of the berry clusters. I decided not to add any leaves. My “Poke Berry” necklace was ready to be worn.
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