Mahnaz Collection presented the exhibition ‘Materials in Play,’ at our Madison Avenue gallery, which opened April 24, 2023, and ended on May 5, 2023. The jewelry on view focused on the specific ways in which a material is explored, by an international group of contemporary jewelry artists and several inspired jewelers of an earlier era. The jewelry artists explored their chosen materials with specific conceptual and metallurgical approaches to ideas, design and process. Each artist shown works intensively with their material of choice: hardstones, yellow gold, silver, steel, zirconium, titanium, and glass. Their work conversed with vintage jewels from Mahnaz Collection, selected by the artists as speaking to their work.
The exhibition opened with an artist’s panel discussion on April 24, 2023, introduced by Mahnaz, Founder and CEO of Mahnaz Collection, and then moderated by Bella Neyman, contemporary art curator and co-founder of New York City Jewelry Week—several additional talks followed during the show via Zoom and IG Live at the gallery.
Christopher Thompson Royds (London, England), Pat Pruitt (Laguna Pueblo, US), Amy Lemaire (New York, US), Carmen Tapia (Taxco, Mexico), and Julia Obermaier (Kempten, Germany) were the stellar contemporary jewelry artists, each at different stages of their careers, who showed their work.
Mahnaz Collection also introduced a new line in development - Beads - using the earliest material ever used in jewelry and very much in keeping with its specialization in the 1960s/1970s jewelry and High Boho style.
INTRODUCING THE JEWELERS
“Gemstones are the force that drive me in my creative work. On the one hand, it is the exploration of the materiality and the approach to the limits and secrets of the stones... My playing hands are the tools for my ideas and thinking. Through them I feel and touch the surface and the outlines of the material."
Julia Obermaier works in her atelier in Kempten, near Munich, Germany. She started her jewelry career by apprenticing with a goldsmith at the State Vocational School for Glass and Jewelry in Kaufbeuren-Neugablonz after which she studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Trier, Idar Oberstein, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in gemstones and Jewelry. Following an Exchange Semester at the Royal Melbourne institute of Technology in Melbourne Australia, Julia went on to study for and receive her Master of Advanced Design at Munich’s University of Applied Sciences.
Julia has exhibited her work at galleries across Europe since 2014 and twice been a finalist for the BVK-Prize in Munich (2020 and 2023) awarded “to works that show unique artistic creation based on fine craftsmanship” for artists under 35. In 2022 she was a finalist and awarded the Special Mention prize in the prestigious Loewe Craft prize competition and showed in the Hauser and Wirth exhibit “Within. Without” in Zurich, Switzerland. Her jewelry has also been shown in exhibits in contemporary art museums in Japan and Lithuania.
I’m an artist, a fabricator, a designer, a teacher, an administrator and a documentarian. I think all of this really connects to flameworking as a form because historically, flame workers have been more mobile than those pursuing other art forms in glass.
Amy Lemaire is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in New York. An explorer at heart, she makes work that reveals an interest in currency systems, material language poetics, and the production of histories. Lemaire studied at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and Pratt Institute (MFA). She has taught at institutions nationally, including the Penland School of Crafts (NC), Pilchuck Glass School (WA), and UrbanGlass (NY). She is a specialist in flameworking, a type of glass working traditionally employed to manufacture handmade glass beads, and through her work reinterprets traditions of craft in a contemporary context.
Amy was most recently the Keynote speaker at the 2022 International Society of Glass Beadmakers conference. Residencies include University of the Arts, Tyler School of Art, UrbanGlass and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was the recipient of a Visionary Scholarship from the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass in support of her 2015 fellowship at the Creative Glass Center of America at Wheaton Arts (NJ). Her essay, "Flame Grows Up" was published in Glass Quarterly magazine in the Summer 2018 issue. She delivered a commissioned lecture, "Flameworking in the Context of Contemporary Art" at the 2018 International Flameworking Conference at Salem Community College, and Amy’s work has been included in exhibitions at SARAHCROWN (NY), the Delaware Contemporary (DE), Heller Gallery (NY), Traver Gallery (WA), and Helena Anrather (NY) . Her work "Pollen Flow" won the Acquisition Prize at Mad About Jewelry 2021 and is now included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art and Design in NYC.
There is a lot of technology available now which allows you to make several copies of the same piece, but we continue to do it the old way on purpose. The lost wax process is a very old technique. We work with sheets of wax and using my hands or also by heating it, we give it a shape...
Carmen Tapia was born and lives in the famed silversmithing city of Taxco, Mexico. Educated in a family of goldsmiths, with studies in Plastic Arts and Philosophy, Carmen has built up a solid theoretical, formal and technical scaffolding, which has allowed her to synthesize her aesthetic ideas in the language of the contemporary jewelry. Her work has won the National Silver Award given by the Mexican government three times, and has been exhibited in museums, galleries and art fairs. She is also a professor at the Faculty of Arts and Design of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Her creative process starts from investigating and manipulating the topological and plasticity properties of two-dimensional surfaces; by means of folds and pleats, she creates three-dimensional forms to which she applies dynamic forces such as torsion, elongation or contraction, thereby obtaining a harmonic geometric order very similar to the order of natural organic forms. Carmen works with models made of flexible and malleable materials, such as paper and wax, which then are transferred to silver by techniques such as lost wax casting and forging. These techniques, and the ability of silver to reflect the light, allow her to create luminous laminar surfaces and organic membranes, resulting in the creation of comfortable and easy-to-use pieces in large formats.
A variant in the research and production of Carmen's contemporary jewelry is based on her own biography. Due to her early relationship with the world of minerals, rocks and philosophical conceptual problems derived from the tension between reality and language, which she skillfully condenses, she directs the gaze and the reading of these jewels through the optical refraction caused by the natural and carved forms of quartz, calcite, glass and texts printed on paper.
My work is the creation of aesthetically pleasing objects of adornment for the discerning individual with non-traditional materials and fabrication technique utilizing evolving technology, equipment, and software. My designs reflect an influence of a modern traditional lifestyle, both on and off the reservation.
Pat Pruitt is a contemporary jewelry artist of Laguna, Chiricahua Apache and Anglo descent who lives in the village of Paguate in Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico. Here, he has served for many years on the Lugana Tribal Council. Pat is known for his precise, cutting- edge craftsmanship, using innovative materials, design and fabrication techniques.
Pat first learned jewelry-making by apprenticing with Laguna jewelers Greg Lewis and Charlie Bird between 1988 and 1990; he developed a solid foundation in traditional materials like silver and techniques such as inlay, silver polishing, and southwestern repoussé. Pruitt studied mechanical engineering at Southern Methodist University, and then worked as a machinist, an experience that led him to open and run Custom Steel Body Jewelry. With his knowledge of machining technology and his love of working in stainless steel, he developed his distinctive style of jewelry - deeply rooted in his Native American heritage yet with a contemporary, industrial edge -that has opened the boundaries of imagining what Native American jewelry can be. Men’s jewelry, with its traditionally limited repertoire, has benefited from Pat’s work. He also partners with Native American women artists such as Jamie Okuma to design cuffs and earrings; available today at Mahnaz Collection.
Pat is a jewelry maker of recognized distinction, having won all the most important Native American juried art competitions for his vessels and his jewelry, repeatedly. Most recently, in 2023, he won 1st place at the Heard Indian Market, one of the two most important juried shows. He has also won a gold medal at the Couture Jewelry Awards and the American Craft Council. In 2011-2012 He showed his work at LOOT at the MAD. Pat’s work can be found in the permanent collections of The British Museum (UK), Museum of Art and Design (USA), Museum Art, Plus (Germany), Heard Museum (USA), Albuquerque Museum (USA), The Newark Museum of Art (USA), Peabody Essex Museum (USA), The National Museum of Scotland (UK), and in numerous personal collections worldwide.
Pat is currently a college student again, studying for his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Studio Arts program, at renowned Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
The first thing I made, was a Greek Love knot, and I found I had an affinity with metal, which soon became a passion… I remember sitting in fields making daisy chains when I was little. Years later, I am still doing this, albeit in 18k gold.
Christopher Thompson Royds is an artist and jeweler whose work is included in several prominent collections in Europe and the US, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; CODA Museum, NL; Schmuckmuseum, DE; National Museum Zurich, CH; and Museum of Fine Art Houston, US; and the Rotasa Collection Trust, US. He is represented by Louisa Guinness Gallery in London, Mahnaz Collection in New York, Irene Belfi Gallery in Milan, and Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, and shows with them in these cities, as well as at fairs such as Collect, PAD, and Design Miami. His work has been featured in Vogue, the Financial Times, Town & Country, and the Telegraph, amongst others. Two series of jewel works by Christopher, from the Nature Morta and Against Nature series are described in a Forbes interview by the artist: "In their own way, both address slowed time and the unnoticed becoming noticed. "Both series use wildflowers found in the margins between the wild and the cultivated, both celebrate often overlooked survivors…. In the delicate force of the daisies that reach for the sky on fine stems of gold - detachable earrings and a pendant - there is also resilience and a quiet strength which feel very appropriate.”
Christopher has an MA in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewelry from the Royal College of Art, London, prior to which he studied at London Metropolitan University. He first became passionate about making jewelry while at school, and attributes his interest in nature - and the depiction of it in his work - to his upbringing in the English countryside.
Click on the graphic below to watch Bella Neyman’s conversation with Julia Obermaier.
Click on the graphic below to watch Bella Neyman’s conversation with Pat Pruitt.
