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Lot Essay
WEARABLE ART
AN IMPORTANT DESIGN FOR A NECKLACE
by Beverly H. Twitchell
Before Harry Bertoia enrolled at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1937 he had already mastered traditional jewelers’ techniques, but his engagement with Modernism led him to invent and use more direct methods. Instead of precious metals and gems, Bertoia made jewelry that appealed through its design, craftsmanship and the nature of its materials, as does this remarkable necklace. That approach would make Bertoia a direct predecessor of the American Studio Crafts movement.
So complex and cumulative are human perception and memory that we often do not know from where our own ideas came, and without firm evidence, it is impossible to think we can establish the origins of an artist’s ideas. While this necklace is entirely modern, chokers with multiple small pendants had come from ancient Mediterranean cultures: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Italy, even from Europe and America at the turn of the last century. Did Bertoia see works in books, journals or at the Detroit Institute of Arts that resonated with him, or did he invent this on his own, as he would so many other forms? Also at Cranbrook he made two necklaces in brass, one very similar to this, the other longer, with flatter, more open pendants.
Bertoia found inspiration in nature from an early age on a small farm in Italy and later in Cranbrook's woods, on the beaches of southern California and in the fields near the home in eastern Pennsylvania, where he lived after 1950. The fluidity and motion of the present lot's pendants characterize much of his art. In that spirit, too, he made jewelry that suited human anatomy and was animated by its wearer’s movement.
Bertoia had the instincts of an engineer, as the intricacy of the present lot's clasp and the overall construction of this piece demonstrate. Closed, the necklace sits on a table in a surprisingly conical shape, but it is so flexible that it conforms to its wearer from her neck nearly to her shoulders. Each handmade section is riveted to its neighbors, allowing it to adjust to the body while the pendants curve in many directions: one fits the left clavicle so precisely that Bertoia likely tried it on Brigitta Valentiner, who became his wife in 1943. Other pendants face toward or away from each other, bending up or down. Each element has been hammered into multiple curves and worked in Bertoia’s hands.
Large jewelry by Bertoia is very rare. A delight to the eye, this necklace no doubt caused a sensation in its day as it might at the 2022 Met Ball in ours, for like all of Harry Bertoia’s work, it is timeless.
– Beverly H. Twitchell, PhD, author of Bertoia: The Metalworker, London: Phaidon, 2019
AN IMPORTANT DESIGN FOR A NECKLACE
by Beverly H. Twitchell
Before Harry Bertoia enrolled at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1937 he had already mastered traditional jewelers’ techniques, but his engagement with Modernism led him to invent and use more direct methods. Instead of precious metals and gems, Bertoia made jewelry that appealed through its design, craftsmanship and the nature of its materials, as does this remarkable necklace. That approach would make Bertoia a direct predecessor of the American Studio Crafts movement.
So complex and cumulative are human perception and memory that we often do not know from where our own ideas came, and without firm evidence, it is impossible to think we can establish the origins of an artist’s ideas. While this necklace is entirely modern, chokers with multiple small pendants had come from ancient Mediterranean cultures: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Italy, even from Europe and America at the turn of the last century. Did Bertoia see works in books, journals or at the Detroit Institute of Arts that resonated with him, or did he invent this on his own, as he would so many other forms? Also at Cranbrook he made two necklaces in brass, one very similar to this, the other longer, with flatter, more open pendants.
Bertoia found inspiration in nature from an early age on a small farm in Italy and later in Cranbrook's woods, on the beaches of southern California and in the fields near the home in eastern Pennsylvania, where he lived after 1950. The fluidity and motion of the present lot's pendants characterize much of his art. In that spirit, too, he made jewelry that suited human anatomy and was animated by its wearer’s movement.
Bertoia had the instincts of an engineer, as the intricacy of the present lot's clasp and the overall construction of this piece demonstrate. Closed, the necklace sits on a table in a surprisingly conical shape, but it is so flexible that it conforms to its wearer from her neck nearly to her shoulders. Each handmade section is riveted to its neighbors, allowing it to adjust to the body while the pendants curve in many directions: one fits the left clavicle so precisely that Bertoia likely tried it on Brigitta Valentiner, who became his wife in 1943. Other pendants face toward or away from each other, bending up or down. Each element has been hammered into multiple curves and worked in Bertoia’s hands.
Large jewelry by Bertoia is very rare. A delight to the eye, this necklace no doubt caused a sensation in its day as it might at the 2022 Met Ball in ours, for like all of Harry Bertoia’s work, it is timeless.
– Beverly H. Twitchell, PhD, author of Bertoia: The Metalworker, London: Phaidon, 2019