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Volume 29 No.1 2005


Ornament Magazine volume 29 no.1, 2006

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Bellevue Arts Museum. 2005 Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show. Terri Logan The Art of Silver and Stone. Dressing a Galaxy The Costumes of Star Wars.Kevin Coates A Glorious Obsession. Tutankhamun’s Broadcollars Unusual and Otherwise. Amy Kahn Russell Fusion Jewelry Artist. Exhibition Opulent Splendor. Ethnographic Arts Ornaments of the Marquesas. Bead Arts Venetian Bead Sample Cards. Marketplace Leekan Designs. Museum News Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. Ancient Arts Salmon Ruins Museum and Research Library.
Bellevue Arts Museum
by Robin Updike

Bellevue Arts Museum as featured in Ornament Magazine

Founded thirty years ago as a showcase for craft, the museum drifted away from its roots in recent years and flirted, disastrously as it turned out, with contemporary art and a watered-down version of the avant-garde. After running out of money, due in part to poorly defined programming and an uninterested public, the Museum in September 2003 closed its doors and spent the next year re-thinking its purpose. This June it reopened as the Bellevue Arts Museum dedicated to craft and design. The museum’s current major exhibition is David Chatt: Two Hands, Twenty Years and a Billion Beads. The exhibition is a twenty year retrospective of Seattle-based bead artist Chatt, who was profiled in Ornament in Spring 2005. Photograph by Lara Swimmer Photography.

 

 
Philadelphia Museum Of Art
Craft Show 2005
by Jennifer Dong

Philadelphia Museum Of Art  as featured in Ornament Magazine

On approach to its thirtieth anniversary in 2006, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show’s enduring standard in more palpable this year, as it continues to honor the artistry of the handmade. The traditional categories of media encompass basketry, ceramics, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, paper, wood, and decorative and wearable fiber. Craft Show Manager Nancy O’Meara says that Show Management “is concerned that we are not reaching all of the talent out there in our art world.” In 2001, the Craft Show added an additional component to the show designated as the Guest Artist Program. This year’s Guest Artists are from Germany and are given the opportunity to dazzle the Show’s spectators. The Craft Show’s esteemed jurors include Mira Nakashima, Katya Heller, Kathleen Foster, Kenneth Trapp and Bruce Hoffman.

 

 

Terri Logan

by Leslie Clark
Terri Logan as featured in Ornament Magazine Terri Logan as featured in Ornament Magazine

THE ART OF SILVER AND STONE
In the small, turn-of-the-century town of Richmond, Indiana, Terri Logan creates some of contemporary art’s most soulful modern jewelry, embodying a pitch-perfect, abstract elegance. Fabricated by hand in slim, sculptural yet sinuous forms of sterling and fine silver, her brooches, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings frame river rocks, virtually the only stone she uses. “I really think I’m a frustrated cubist,” Logan observes ruefully, “because I get the cleanest, strongest lines I can in my work. But I like a little ornamentation; I can’t go completely stark or Spartan because a piece has to have something engaging. That’s usually the rock, which has character and natural embellishment within it. Clearly I love the organic, and I live the industrial and the architectural, and those are reflected in what I do.” Photographs by Jerry Anthony.

 

 
Dressing a Galaxy
by Patt Diroll

COSTUMES OF STAR WARS as featured in Ornament Magazine COSTUMES OF STAR WARS as featured in Ornament Magazine

THE COSTUMES OF STAR WARS
Costumer designer Trisha Biggar went all over the world to collect the raw ingredients for her magical combinations, with visible results in the finished garments. Preparing for each episode, Biggar spent time every three months at Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in hear of Northern California’s Marin County, planning the design concepts and then hopping on a plane to scout fairs and markets around the world for exotic materials. When she discovers the perfect fabric, she traces its source and works directly with the manufacturer. “It is one thing to be able to draw something on a sheet of paper and another thing to make it three-dimensional and work,” says George Lucas. In Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, Biggar had twelve planets, each with twelve different species, environments and characters. The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum (FIDM) provides a wonderful venue for viewing the fruition of these labors. Photographs courtesy of © 2005 Lucafilm Ltd. & TM.

 

 
Kevin Coates
by Beth Frankl
 

Kevin Coates as featured in Ornament Magazine Kevin Coates as featured in Ornament Magazine Kevin Coates as featured in Ornament Magazine

 

A GLORIOUS OBSESSION
He has been hailed as Britain’s leading artist-goldsmith, a true master who, for over thirty years, has created not only jewelry, but also tablepieces, trophies, medals, and sculptures, all of which are well represented in numerous prestigious public and private collections. Understanding this passion, this glorious obsession with music, particularly Mozart, is the key to truly appreciating the inspiration for, and poetry of, Coates’ work. Coates’ work has always been intimately linked to his musical sensibility, and the Alphabet collection makes the connection blissfully obvious. Some of his pieces are more directly inspired by music than others, but Coates says, music and art have always been so intertwined in his life that one automatically influences the other. Photographs by Clarissa Bruce. Courtesy of Mobilia Gallery.

 

  Tutankhamun’s Broadcollars
by Robert K. Liu
  Tutankhamun’s Broadcollars as featured in Ornament Magazine Tutankhamun’s Broadcollars
 

UNUSUAL AND OTHERWISE
Over one hundred fifty items alone were buried with the mummy or within the wrappings (James 2005: 72); these and the other extant jewelry and artifacts recovered in his multi-chambered burial site makes Tutankhamun the richest and consequently the best studied of the dynastic rulers. Each of Tutankhamun’s coffins and the gold mask on his mummy bore representations of Broadcollars, with that on his mask virtually identical to the Horus of falcon broadcollar, all utilizing imitation bead plaques. Of seventeen actual collars found in his mummy wrappings, either four or six were falcon collars, depending on the author’s interpretations (Hawass 2005: 277; James 2005; 205). Even the four miniature canopic coffins holding Tutankhamun’s organs wore identical Broadcollars, although no falcon terminals were visible (Benesh-Liu 2005: 26). It is puzzling why this falcon broadcollar is so different. A comparison of the contemporary broadcollar being worn would differ little from what one sees in dynastic portrayals of such personal adornment. Photographs by Robert K. Liu and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

  Amy Kahn Russell
by Carl Little
  Amy Kahn Russell as featured in Ornament Magazine Amy Kahn Russell as featured in Ornament Magazine
  FUSION JEWELRY ARTIST
Her agenda is wonderfully ambitious. Some of her pieces are bold and brash, yet she also produces smaller scale jewelry for the more conservative customer. More significant to her growth as a jeweler, Russell absorbed the art and culture of her surroundings, falling in love with temples and complex carvings. She also became a collector and remains one to this day. In creating an ornament Russell begins by arranging various elements on a worktable, moving them around, eventually taping them is place. “It’s a question of colors and shapes,” she says. Another specialty of this multi-threat jeweler consists of necklaces made from many strands of beads in different colors. A recent piece features handcarved vesuvianite with peridot, freshwater pearls and citrine, all bezel-set on a clasp. Photographs by Gordon Bernstein.

Our upcoming issue 37.4 contains

 

Nubian Jewelry

Kate Mensah

Philadelphia Craft Show

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