Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry

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From The Richard H. Driehaus Museum Exhibitions:

Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry celebrates the role of women, both as inspiration and as designers/makers, in the creation of exquisite pieces of handcrafted art jewelry at the turn of the twentieth century.

Accompanying a groundbreaking exhibition at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago, Maker & Muse showcases nearly two hundred stunning pieces from the Driehaus Collection and prominent national collections, many of which have never been seen by the public.

Women were not only the intended wearers of art jewelry during the early twentieth century, but also an essential part of its creation. Their workboldly artistic, exquisitely detailed, hand wrought, and inspired by natureis now widely sought after by collectors and museums alike. From the world's first independent female jewelry makers to the woman as artistic motif, this jewelry reflected rapid changes in definitions of femininity and social norms.

Maker & Muse explores five different areas of jewelry design and fabrication: the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, Art Nouveau in France, Jugendstil in Germany and Austria, Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York, and American Arts and Crafts in Chicago.  Essays by noted scholars discuss the important female figures and historic social milieu associated with these movements, illustrated by historic photographs and decorative arts of the period as well as the extraordinary pieces themselves.

Maker & Muse is the most extensive survey to date of the sheer diversity and beauty of art jewelry during this period, and it offers a new perspective on women's role within that world.

About the Curator | Elyse Zorn Karlin is a jewelry historian and co-director of the Association for the Study of Jewelry & Related Arts. She is a freelance curator and author of several books on historical jewelry.

Hardcover | 256 pages | 150 illustrations | 8.75 x 9.25