Jewelry of Ideas
The consummate Susan Grant Lewin Collection - recently donated to Cooper Hewitt - captures the diversity and achievements of contemporary art jewellery with nearly 150 significant works from the last 15 years by designers from the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. The brooches, necklaces and rings reveal how these contemporary jewellers have revolutionised the medium in transforming jewellery conventions as expressions of our time. Descriptions of specific works demonstrate that while the mastery of materials and techniques is critical to the creative process, it is not an end in itself, but only the means to accomplish an aesthetic vision. Process statements from each designer and a full gallery of the jewellery accompany the narrative sequence of extraordinary, stirring, unique pieces.
Published to accompany the Exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (US), 17 November 2017-28 May 2018.
Ursula-Ilse Neuman is an independent curator, author and lecturer specialising in contemporary art jewellery. She is former curator of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (1992-2014). Author of Linda MacNeil. Jewels of Glass (ISBN 9783897904712). With over 20 years as a journalist, Susan Grant Lewin cut her design teeth as Design Editor of Home Furnishings Daily and then as Senior Editor of Design and Architecture at House Beautiful Magazine. She then segued seamlessly into her position as Global Creative Director of Formica Corporation. Her strategy to reposition the 75-year- old company was to commission new works utilising the talents of the leading designers of the time. Lewin curated several exhibitions. Two of the winners of the "Surface and Ornament" competition initiated by Lewin were jewellers Bob Ebendorf and Ivy Ross. They charted the course of Lewin's interest in American jewellery. Today Lewin is director of her own public relations firm.