Ornament Digital Volume 39.4

In our latest issue, David Updike reveals the extraordinary capacity of jeweler Barbara Heinrich to bring forth objects of refined beauty and wearability. Heinrich sees her jewelry as a “design opportunity,” and her success manifests in each distinctive piece being a catalyst for her own path to creative results.

Leslie Clark takes us into the heart and soul of the handmade in her perceptive interviews with ten artists exhibiting at this year’s Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D.C. In its thirty-fifth year, the Smithsonian Craft Show honors the craft legacy that informs our life today and the contemporary artists who continue to create works of beauty and function.

Ashley Callahan traces the career of a modernist artist who worked in many media, but was best known for her award-winning enamels during the 1950s. While Virginia Dudley’s life is not well-documented, Callahan still shapes a fascinating study of an artist passionate about her vocation.

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell recounts an extraordinary period in nineteenth-century art. Impressionism was a fertile development in the long and revered history of French art. But what fascinates is the role hats played in assisting the artistic muse, finding their way into painters’ works as they recorded life of the times. 

Glen R. Brown illuminates how Dallas, Texas-based Tamar Navama chooses to focus her energies on the challenges and opportunities that a particular substance brings to her ability to create jewelry, in this case, leather. Her solutions are a unique twist on a material that goes back to earliest human use.