Distinctly American
From the American Revolution to the present day, metal has played an important role in our country’s history – from commercial to fashion. The look, the feel, the substance of American metal is clearly identifiable to the American spirit. Consider:

• Paul Revere our premier silversmith, who created hundreds of functional pieces for dining and food service, as well as apparel, such as shoe buckles.
• Cranbrook Academy of Art, where scores of jewelry makers and metalsmiths learned the skills to create groundbreaking designs that are today’s classics.
• Philip Simmons, whose exquisite, wrought-iron gates in historic Charleston, South Carolina, capture the character of a community.
• Ramona Solberg, whose found-art jewelry was influenced by the things she found in her travels – from coins to buttons to folding rulers.
• Jan Yager, drawing inspiration for her jewelry from the streets and vacant lots outside her inner-city Philadelphia studio. The work has ranged from necklaces made from crack vials to tiaras based on local weeds and wildflowers.
• Kit Carson, combining imagery from his native Arizona with 60’s curvilinear art to make jewelry redolent of the romance of the Wild West.
• Timberline Lodge, the massive WPA project on the slopes of Oregon’s Mt. Hood, where native ironwork can be seen in ram’s-head fireplace pokers, chairs, and massive candelabrum.

Left: Door with ironwork at Timberline Lodge, Courtesy of Craft In America, Inc

Right: Detail of Ironwork at Timberline Lodge, Courtesy of Craft In America, Inc

• Dave and Roberta Williamson, whose Victorian-era ephemera and personal remembrances of family and friends build to make necklaces and pins evoking a kinder, gentler past.

David and Roberta Williamson, Pin from Insect Collection, 2004, Courtesy of the artists

• Albert Paley, whose work ranges from gates for the Renwick Gallery in an intricate, swirling shape reminiscent of Hector Guimard’s Paris Metro stations, and the whimsical Animals Always archway at the St. Louis Zoo, to candlesticks and menorahs.
• Ken Loeber, a master gold and silversmith who hasn’t let a stroke interfere with creating powerful objects whose beauty is borne of extraordinary simplicity.

Ken Loeber, Brooch, 2006, Robert Liu photograph

• Denise and Samuel Wallace, whose pins, pendants, and belts are windows into the culture of the Arctic people through stories of transformation.
• Tom Joyce, MacArthur genius grant winner, whose work includes a baptismal font forged from a community's cast-offs and museum gates fashioned from trash from the banks of the Rio Grande.
• 92nd Street Y in New York City, for 75 years a place where the incipient and experienced come together to learn and perfect under the tutelage of expert craftspeople.


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