Ornament Print Edition Volume 42.1

With our newest issue, Ashley Callahan presents the career of costume designer Freddy Wittop, known for his highly successful and flamboyant theatre craft, as well as being a Spanish dancer. Producing costumes for the Paris music halls, ice skating performances, Broadway, the New York City Opera and ballet, Wittop transformed many a stage into a magical wonderland.

Sue Heaser investigates Anglo-Saxon glass beadmaking in Great Britain, through her own replicas of these ancient ornaments. Through her research and illustrations, she attempts to reconstruct whole strands of beaded necklaces, giving us a sense of what people from over fifteen hundred years ago wore and valued.

Glen R. Brown examines the jewelry and message of Harriete Estel Berman. With a mindfulness of our finite Earth and of the destructive impact from disposable plastics, Berman uses her sense of humor to transform trash into treasure. Her bracelets, brooches and boas are made from reused non-biodegradable plastics, recycled litho-printed tin cans and UPC bar codes.

Martha J. Egan describes in detail the Christian practice of wearing relics of saints, usually as elaborate two-sided framed lockets bearing some tiny remnant related to a particular saint. These pendants, known as relicarios, have a long and complicated history in the Americas as the result of Spanish colonialism, having evolved from the days of the first Spanish invaders through Mexican independence.