Maria Wolff Volume 44.3
MARIA WOLFF
IÐUNN’S APPLE CASKET PENDANT of sterling silver, bronze, carved holly-wood, garnet, and twenty-three karat gold gilt interior, 2.5 x 1.9 centimeters, 2020. This piece was created for the MCA/Maine Craft Portland exhibition titled “The Holy Grail”. Photographs by Maria Wolff except where noted.
Knots & Roots
JÖRMUNGANDR of fine silver chain; handwoven, 48.3 x 0.9 centimeters, 2022.
In a 2022 interview, metalsmith Maria Wolff explained her need to fabricate every element in one of her creations. “If I’m going to create this whole piece, I should be making the clasp, I should be making the chain,” she says, referring to Jörmungandr, a whiplash hook-locking necklace inspired by Norse mythology’s great serpent. “Nobody ever should have to do all of those things,” she adds, but for a work to be “truly authentic” and “original,” she feels she must take the time to build it. “That’s kind of my creed right now in my work.”
That principle has led to some extraordinary pieces. Consider the drum necklace Trøllabundin, 2016, named after a shamanic drum piece performed by the Faroese singer Eivør Pálsdóttir. Eivør’s passionate delivery conjured “visions of warriors storytelling and reveling around a Viking fire” and left Wolff with a feeling of strength and “connection with the spirits of my ancestors.” She met Eivør on her first American tour and was able to show her the necklace and give her a pair of leather “raven-like” earrings, which the singer wore on stage that evening.
The necklace features a small drum made from reindeer hide acquired from Shaman Trommer, Danish drum makers. Other materials in the piece, which comes with a drum stick, include sterling silver, hemp, beech wood, ash, felted wool, steel, and Norwegian horse hair, the latter supplied by the Won Der Fjords [Editor’s Note: Misspelled as Wonder Fjords in print edition] horse farm in Wisconsin.
Wolff’s family is from Denmark, and the history of the Vikings and stories from Norse mythology handed down to her by her father fascinate her and have led to a number of creations. Iðunn’s Apple, 2020, an apple casket necklace, was inspired by its namesake, “maiden of the Norse gods and the goddess of eternal youth.” The goddess bore a wooden casket filled with magical apples that the gods would partake of when feeling weak or aged.
“During COVID,” Wolff recalls, “I found myself playing my musical instruments more, cooking fine meals of great nourishment and making time to play with my new love and his son.” Iðunn’s Apple reflects her desire to embrace the “Holy Grail” of life: the arts (including music—she plays various harp-zithers), unconditional love and healthy cooking.
Wolff, who recently moved from Portland, Maine to Center Conway, New Hampshire, first understood the art of fine craftsmanship through her father, Hans E. Wolff. A fifth-generation master joiner cabinet maker from Denmark, he operated a furniture manufacturing shop in a former New England textile mill. “I was intrigued by the sketches, machinery, apprentices, and raw parts of the shop,” Wolff recalls. Her father worked as an interpreter on the set of The Vikings, the 1958 film starring Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas that portrayed the saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, a Viking hero.
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MARIA IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, 2024. Photograph by Gail Wolff.
Wolff was also drawn to her mother, Lucille Wolff’s, small collection of jewelry, which included silver pieces by Henning Koppel (1918-1981), the Danish designer who created work for Georg Jensen. She remembers wondering how these “strange organic molten silver shapes” could have been created.
Taking up saw, file and torch in 1996, Wolff knew immediately that metalsmithing and jewelry would be her craft realm. She took every local class she could and then, in 1999, at age 29, entered the four-year Metalsmithing and Jewelry program at the Maine College of Art (now the Maine College of Art & Design, or MECA&D). She had the good fortune to study with some formidable jewelry designers, including Sharon Portelance, Klaus Burgel, Alan Perry, and Tim McCreight.
Other mentors include wax carver Kate Wolf, jeweler Jayne Redman and goldsmith Gary Roe, with whom she apprenticed for a short time after college. She has enjoyed ongoing relationships with all of these teachers and reaches out to them from time to time for guidance. “We are so fortunate to be in such an inclusive metals community in Maine and beyond,” writes Wolff.
In her initial jewelry work after college Wolff set real butterfly wings in jewelry designs “inspired by their precious nature and spiritual meaning throughout many cultures.” She wanted to create naturally beautiful precious objects that everyone could relate to, all the while honing her craft.
In 2004 Wolff moved to Chicago. For two years she served as an assistant to fine craft and art professionals represented in juried shows such as ACC Baltimore, Art Rider NYC, SOFA Chicago, Palm Beach, and SCOPE London.
Wanting to return to Maine, Wolff applied and landed a job with Springer’s Jewelry, a family-run company in Portland. As service manager, she was liaison between the sales force and the jewelers. She learned the history of jewelry and gained knowledge of fine craftsmanship and restoration work.
Wolff returned to the bench and reconnected with her metalsmithing community. In 2010 she and Holly Gooch cofounded the Metals Collective with a forthright mission: to highlight the work of metalsmithing jewelry artists in the greater Portland area through special thematic exhibitions in diverse venues.
METALS COLLECTIVE MEETING, 2017. From left to right: Simonne Feeney, Gabriel McNeill, Naomi Grace McNeill, Mary Forst, Holly Gooch, Michael Hoffheimer, Cat Bates, Maria Wolff, Shelby Goldsmith, Adam Joy. Photograph by Emily Percival.
In the thirteen years the collective was active, they organized more than fifteen group shows, encouraging artists to create work outside the bounds of their regular studio practice. For each show, members were invited to respond to a theme or historical object. Their first exhibition, held in The Bar of Chocolate, a watering hole in Portland’s Old Port, featured absinthe spoons. The last show, “20/20 Visionary,” offering creative eyewear and “visionary themes,” took place in 2020, mid-pandemic, in the Bob Crewe Gallery at the MECA&D. Crewe (1930-2014) produced the rock-n-roll/doo-wop band the Four Seasons and co-wrote many hit songs; he was also a fine artist.
SEEING IS BELIEVING: JACKALOPE GLASSES of hand-cut Lexan, neon 90s acrylic, bronze, twenty-three karat gold gilt, rabbit fur, 21.6 x 8.9 x 20.3 centimeters, 2020. Photography by Naomi Grace McNeill. Model: Cat.
For that last show, Wolff created Seeing Is Believing, jackalope-adorned safety glasses made from UV Lexan (a thermoplastic), acrylic, sterling silver, twenty-three karat gold, and rabbit fur. Inspired by the fictitious Wyoming creature, the tongue-in-cheek antlered spectacles also offered an oblique commentary on Americans voting that year for a man who peddled in lies.
Wolff further supported the craft artist scene through her management of the Maine Crafts Association’s gallery in Portland, which opened in 2018. For four years she helped keep craft alive for local makers, curating and organizing solo and group exhibitions for MCA members, including “The Craft Maker’s Gambit,” an exhibition of chess-inspired work.
Having grown up playing the game with her father, Wolff wanted to highlight this craft, but she found it hard to find chess set makers in Maine. The challenge, which was inspired by the popular Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, led to the creation of fifteen chess sets, including her own that features hand-forged copper pieces. Fine furniture maker David Masury designed the chess board. They won best in show.
Wolff invited the Maine Chess Association to be part of the event. They flew in Chess Woman Grandmaster Sabina-Francesca Foisor to play with the chess sets in the show. “They wanted to push the support of female chess players,” Wolff notes, “and ‘The Craft Maker’s Gambit’ was perfect for it: a ticketed event where one could have the opportunity to play a female champion.”
These days, Wolff continues to explore her Scandinavian themes while treading new territory. She is apprenticing with a leather craft worker, Mike Bajger of Beggar’s Pouch Leather in North Conway, to expand her repertoire. She also hopes to help fill what she feels is a gap in fine leather workers in the region. Leather’s easily carvable nature and the crossover of tools and techniques to metalsmithing have revealed new exciting “material marriages” for her future work.
Her father’s memory has been a driving force behind Wolff’s passion for her work. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease in his forties and died at age sixty-five. “He never fulfilled his dream of becoming a remarkable craftsman in the U.S., having been the first of his craft lineage in Denmark to do so,” she notes. “In Viking folklore,” she explains, “one’s greatest goal would be to become ‘remarkable’ in life with something, honoring one’s family name through the ages.”
Wolff feels a responsibility to extend this craft lineage and story, carrying the torch of her father’s efforts while expressing a passion for fine craft, its history and supporting its present-day survival. It is a brilliant mission.
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Maria Wolff will be showing her work in a 2025 group show on themes of “ancestry” copresented by the Lights Out Gallery and Waterville Creates. She also plans to organize a fundraiser exhibition to create awareness of the mental health issues in young people, which were exacerbated during the pandemic. You can see more of Wolff’s work at www.mwolffjewelry.com and follow her on Instagram @smithingmaria.
Carl Little was introduced to Maria Wolff’s work through a video interview produced by Lights Out Gallery in Norway, Maine, in 2022. “I was taken by Wolff’s remarkable work, her background and her interest in the Vikings and Norse mythology,” he relates. Little has written about several of Wolff’s teachers for Ornament, including Sharon Portelance, Tim McCreight and Jayne Redman. Seeing how their student has embraced her exploration of her cultural origins has been a delight. Little’s fourth collaboration with his brother David, Art of Penobscot Bay (Islandport Press), comes out in February 2024. Little has been a longtime contributor to Ornament, and is always on the lookout for regional artists who deserve attention.
