Editor’s Picks
NATIVE VISIONARIES
“Future Imaginaries: Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology” at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California, where Native futurism uses fashion and traditional craft to envision a better tomorrow for Native Americans. The exhibition is currently open through June 21, 2026.
TRANSFORMATION MASK by Shawn Hunt (Heiltsuk) of mixed media including acrylic, resin, LED lights, and Microsoft HoloLens, 2017. Photograph by Patrick R. Benesh-Liu.
Volume 46, No. 4
Table of Contents
Features
Xinia Guan
The Weight of Time
Smithsonian Craft Show
A Capitol Ovation
Shae Bishop
“I See by Your Outfit that You are a Cowboy”
Vintage Feather Arts
Chinese Kingfisher Jewelry
Departments
Wearable Art in Handwork.
Second Skin. Exploring Adornment as an Extension of the Self.
Shae Bishop Showcase.
Cycles of Life.
Unsettling Beauty. Anna Johnson’s (Intimate) Improvisations
with the Natural World
Beads International
Recent East Asian Beads
In Memoriam
Billy Steinberg
Pillars of the Community
Thomas Gentille & James “Wally” Wallace
SHAE BISHOP
D Wood brings the wild, wonderful world of Shae Bishop to Ornament. A ceramicist who refuses to be pigeonholed into any one discipline, Bishop makes his living through workshops and adjunct classes, whilst his labor produces beautiful, funny, and insightful critiques on American masculinity and culture. They’re wearable to boot! Slipcast cowboy hats and handsewn glazed tile chaps for the bad hombre!
XINIA GUAN
Glen R. Brown finds a deep philosophical undertone in Inner Mongolian immigrant Xinia Guan, who has come to America to pursue her career as a professional craftsperson. With passion and impeccable technique, she uses a fusion of technology and old-fashioned grit to make jewelry patterned with thousands of individual saw cuts.
ANNA JOHNSON
A delicate exploration between the boundaries of life and death informs the jewelry of Anna Johnson.
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
Glen R. Brown finds a deep philosophical undertone in Inner Mongolian immigrant Xinia Guan, who has come to America to pursue her career as a professional craftsperson. With passion and impeccable technique, she uses a fusion of technology and old-fashioned grit to make jewelry patterned with thousands of individual saw cuts.