Editor’s Picks
Beauty By Hand
Inspired by Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, a small group of Southern Californian artists and craft professionals gathered to organize a new craft fair at the Palos Verdes Art Center, from August 22 - 23, 2026.
Background photograph by David Fairchild.
Volume 47, No. 1
Table of Contents
Features
Ojime Universe.
A Gentleman’s Adornment
SNAG Detroit.
Revealing the Beauty of America’s Honest Legacy
Laura Wood.
Sculptural Color
On/Off The Body.
How Does It Wear?
Teri Jo Summer.
Embracing the Creative Spirit
Constellations.
A Stellar Journey Through Contemporary Art Jewelry
Departments
The Promise of Handwork.
California Rising: Beauty by Hand
Inside the Studio.
Pliers: A Vital Tool
LAURA WOOD
Ashley Callahan investigates the colorful jewelry of Laura Wood, a dancer who turned to jewelry making while attending the University of Georgia. Combining metal with either enamel, powder coat or both, Wood’s jewelry are strong sculptural pieces bright with color.
OJIME UNIVERSE
Jamey D. Allen, a pioneer bead collector and researcher, has written about the specialized beads called ojime, that were a vital part of Japanese male dress during the Shogunate, Edo and Taisho periods of that country.
CONSTELLATIONS
Josephine Shea reviews the monumental contemporary jewelry exhibit currently showing at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, which covers over three hundred fifty objects.
The Process of Becoming
We Share with You the Jewelry Collection of the late Ornament Coeditor, Carolyn L.E. Benesh, who forged strong and intimate bonds with many of the artists whose work she purchased.
Articles, Past and Present
The Expression of the Handmade Makes Itself Felt through Genuineness.
What was Made Took a Combination of Skill and Ingenuity, Birthed From That Mysterious Dark Place of Imagination.
Wearable Art
It came about as a nexus in the 60s and 70s, referencing a freeform fusion of heretofore two-dimensional art and applying it to the canvas of the human being. These clothes as costume and costume as clothes birthed off a movement that still has its adherents even now, in the contemporary age.
Jewelry has had to find itself in the Modernist age, transcending the fine jewelry of wealth at the turn of the century, and reaching mid-century the abstracted explorations of material, composition, and storytelling that would yield to the contemporary art jewelry movement. Today, contemporary art jewelry remains a creatively vibrant field, a cross-disciplinary cooperation that branches off into academic work and that sold at craft shows.
We bring you the broad spectrum of human self-expression in wearable art, from the ancient and the ethnic, to the contemporary. Both here in the United States, and abroad.
Here are a few of the jewelers and clothing makers in the wearable art community for your enjoyment. We will continue to rotate this selection each month, so you will always find superlative new work to explore.
AMY NGUYEN, SHIBORI DYED CLOTHING
KEN LOEBER & DONA LOOK, JEWELRY
BIBA SCHUTZ, JEWELRY
JANICE KISSINGER, HAND-DYED FELTED CLOTHING
K. RILEY, HANDMADE BLOCK-PRINT CLOTHING
JUDITH KINGHORN, JEWELRY
Intelligent Reading.
Enter a world where experience and skill cooperate with imagination and materials to create astounding objects. The spectrum of human adornment extends from tribal and folk cultures around the globe, to the rarefied heights of the fashion industry, to contemporary art jewelry and craft which seeks to explore new boundaries.
SHOP EASILY.
Features
Thomas Gentille. Material Truth
The Process of Becoming. The Jewelry Collection of Carolyn L.E. Benesh
Melinda Risk. Secret Surprises
Early Roman Mosaic Face Bead Iconography. The Allure of the Courtesan Part I
Departments
Mid-Continent Modern. Danny Saathoff
Lights! Camera! Action! Craft in America: Jewelry Episode
Jewelry Showcase.
Message of the Medium. The Daphne Farago Collection. Jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Features
Iris Apfel. More is More
Yuka Saito. The Beauty of Floral Memories
Over the Rainbow. The New Academy Museum Puts its Best Foot Forward
Get a Bead On. Contemporary Beadwork Speaks
Departments
Pacific Northwest Community. Seattle Metals Guild
This New Digital Realm. Society of North American Goldsmiths Virtual Conference 2021
Features
Jeanie Pratt. A Fantastic Menagerie
Hey, Sailor! Haute Couture on the High Seas
Small Wonders. A Beautiful Tradition of Change
Paiwan Beads from Taiwan. Strands of Indigenous History
Ruth E. Carter. Cinema’s Vivid Imagination
Departments
Pacific Northwest Community. Seattle Metals Guild
This New Digital Realm. Society of North American Goldsmiths Virtual Conference 2021
Ashley Callahan investigates the colorful jewelry of Laura Wood, a dancer who turned to jewelry making while attending the University of Georgia. Combining metal with either enamel, powder coat or both, Wood’s jewelry are strong sculptural pieces bright with color.