Art Smith

This necklace caused my heart to skip a beat.  Brass and tiger eye, I can feel how it would rest on my collar bones and the cold stone ball would bump against my skin.  Can you hear the noise the chain would make rubbing against the metal?  What's not to love?

As of that moment, I flipped for Art Smith.

Art Smith was a Modernist jeweler and artist who ran his store in Greenwich Village from 1946 until his death in the 1980s.  Born in Cuba to Jamaican parents, he was reared in Brooklyn and was 100% a New Yorker.  His jewelry in copper, brass, and silver (very little gold) is sculpture for the body and jewelry that can hang on the wall.  His interest in jazz and theater shines through his works- some of them are like seeing jazz, like the Ellington necklace below, named for The Duke.

I see these pieces and I swear a little voice in my head says, "OhGodohGodohGodohGod...."