Good Morning POU!
Today’s featured jeweler is a true artist and I am determined to own one of his vintage pieces before the year is over.
Art Smith (1917–1982) was one of the leading modernist jewelers of the mid-20th century.
Smith’s jewelry has been described as:
Inspired by surrealism, biomorphicism, and primitivism … dynamic in its size and form.
Many of his pieces were extremely large, and designed to be worn by avant-garde dancers. This influenced his style. Of his own work, he said:
A piece of jewelry is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form.
Born in Cuba to Jamaican parents in 1917 his family settled in Brooklyn, NY, in 1920, where he honed his artistic talents. He was awarded a scholarship to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Due to his artistic ability, his advisors tried to steer him towards Architecture, but his lack of proclivity for mathematics forced him to switch to commercial art and a major in sculpture.
Mr. Smith earned his degree in 1940, and instantly began taking jewelry making classes at NYU. He would take classes at night and work for Winifred Mason, an up and coming jewelry designer from Haiti. It was here that he learned how to transform metal and copper into such artistic pieces that women from NY to LA would love to wear.
In 1946, he opened his first shop on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village. An important early influence on Smith’s career was Tally Beatty, a young black dancer and choreographer. Beatty introduced Smith to the dance world “salon” of Frank and Dorcas Neal, where he became acquainted with some of the city’s leading black artists including writer James Baldwin, composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, singers Lena Horne and Harry Belfonte, actor Brock Peters, and expressionist painter Charles Sebree. Through Beatty, Smith also began to design jewelry for several avant-garde black dance companies, including, in addition to Beatty’s own, those of Pearl Primus and Claude Marchant. These commissions encouraged him to design on a grander scale than he might otherwise have done, and the theatricality of many of his larger pieces may well reflect this experience.
Soon after, he moved to 140 West Fourth Street just 1/2 block from Washington Square park, the heart of Greenwich Village where as an openly gay black artist he felt more at home. The new store was better located business-wise and socially, and Smith’s career began to take off. Not only was he selling his pieces from his own store front; he was selling to boutiques in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. His biggest clients however, were Bloomingdales and Milton Heffing in Manhattan.
Mr. Smith was experiencing huge success. By the 1950’s, his unique jewelry pieces were featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and The New Yorker. In the New Yorker he was mentioned in their shoppers guide “On The Avenue.” After that feature he ran a small add in The New Yorker for several years. These advertisement and press coverage gave him prestige amongst notable actors, singers and dancers.
In 1960, his notoriety had flourished. He began using silver more in his growing collection. But one of his biggest achievements was designing a brooch for Eleanor Roosevelt and designing cuff links for Duke Ellington that included notes from Ellington’s 1930 song “Mood Indigo.”
In 1969 he was honored with a one-man exhibition at New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Art and Design), and in 1970 he was included in Objects: USA, a large traveling exhibition organized by Lee Nordness, an influential early dealer in craft objects.
Art Smith closed his shop in 1979, and died of heart failure in 1982.
In 2011, The Brooklyn Museum honored Smith’s work with an exhibit entitled: From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith.
From the Village to Vogue was organized by Barry R. Harwood, Curator of Decorative Arts, Brooklyn Museum:
The exhibition honors the gift of twenty-one pieces of silver and gold jewelry created by the Brooklyn-reared modernist jeweler Arthur Smith (1917–1982), primarily from Charles Russell, Smith’s companion and heir.
The presentation of Art Smith jewelry is enhanced by archival material from the artist’s estate, such as sketches, the original shop sign, Smith’s tools, and period photographs of models wearing the jewelry, along with thirty pieces of modernist jewelry from the permanent collection by such artists as Elsa Freund, Claire Falkenstein, Ed Weiner, and Frank Rebajes.
Inspired by surrealism, biomorphicism, and primitivism, Art Smith’s jewelry is dynamic in its size and form. Although sometimes massive in scale, his jewelry remains lightweight and wearable. The jewelry dates from the late 1940s to the 1970s and includes his most famous pieces, such as a “Patina” necklace inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder; a “Lava” bracelet, or cuff, that extends over the entire lower arm in undulating and overlapping forms; and a massive ring with three semi-precious stones that stretches over three fingers.
Smith’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Museum of Art and Design, and Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
His artistic style can still be seen in jewelry today. His love for shapes and patterns truly showed through his unique jewelry.