Handmade Designer Necklaces of Modernist Betty Cook

A friend from Baltimore Maryland introduced me to the necklaces of Betty Cook. My friend lived near her shop called The Store Ltd. in the village of Cross Keys, and  purchased many necklaces there.  The necklaces my friend owns are geometric structures made from silver and gold tubes.  They are light of scale and wander asymmetrically over the neck and torso.

The Betty Cook necklace above is on sale on the website http://www.auerbachmaffia.com. It is item 683462.  This is a website  with  an extensive collection of modernist jewelry and art for sale. I highly recommend it.

Marbeth Schon, an authority on Modernist and contemporary jewelry, calls Betty Cook an "icon within the tradition of Modernist Jewelry".  The sculptural  Betty Cook necklace shown  above is wood and silver on leather cord. It is an example of the adage less is more. More of her necklaces can be seen on M. Schon 's website, www.mschon.com.  Betty Cook's store in Baltimore, The Store Ltd. is still in Business.  I like her aesthetic.

The Design of a Handmade Necklace Using African beads, Turquoise, and Vintage Murano Glass

A friend found the large black ceramic beads with incised pattern shown above when she was working in
 Liberia. I went to work on the beads hoping to create a necklace worthy of them. The result is the necklace above which combines ebony and silver rondelles with turquoise spacers from the Kingman mine in Arizona, blackish ceramic beads, and frosted white vintage Murano glass. An exotic combination to say the least. However, I am not happy with it.  Although I tried many renditions, this is the best of my attempts.

The interesting thing about a design is you know when it is right. I might give it one more try with larger stronger beads.  Maybe big round recycled beads from Ghana.  Any suggestions?   

Zipper Necklaces

What is it?  One has to look hard to identify the composition of this striking necklace!

My friend Louise makes fabulous handmade designer necklaces out of zippers.  She is a weaver and became interested in using utilitarian materials such as plastic plumbing tubes, pieces of metal, and rubber cord in her baskets. Always on the lookout for recycled or useful materials she stumbled upon a necklace made of zippers in South Africa and the rest is history! You can see she has developed her zipper necklaces into an art form.

There was a movement in the period between World War I and World War II called The Machine Age. It was a time when ordinary materials such as chrome, nickel, glass and plastics such as galalith and bakelite were used to make interesting geometric jewelry, furniture, etc.. The Jakob Bengel Factory described in my last post was an important producer of necklaces made from these materials. Louise's zipper jewelry is a descendant of the Machine Age thinking. Louise sells her necklaces in many Museum stores in the US and Europe. To contact her or see her creative and original jewelry, check out her website at zipblingjewelry.com.

Art Deco Handmade Designer Necklaces

I first learned about Jakob Bengel jewelry from an article in Modernism Magazine, www.modernismmagazine.com titled "An Art Deco Treasure Trove" written by Christianne Weber-Stober. Jakob Bengel was the name of a trinket manufacturer in small German town. Influenced by the Bauhaus in the late 1920's they began to produce handmade designer necklaces of Art Deco style which were made from chrome, nickel, glass and plastic. Geometric shapes of cones,circles, parallelograms and triangles formed components of the jewelry.

"The Union of Artistes Modernes" in France, founded in 1929 wrote " To be beautiful, a material does not have to be rare or costly"..."A material is beautiful when it is aesthetically gratifying to the eye and sense of touch simply because of the way it has been worked and used with forthought".

If you want to see some stunning necklaces of more typical Jakob Bengel jewelry, I encourage you to click on the Modernism Magazine website above. Another resource are the books "Art Deco Jewelry: Jakob Bengel", and " Bengel Art Deco Jewelry: Jewelry and Industrial Monumennt in Idar-Oberstein" They can be found at www.arnoldsche.com .

Finding African trade beads

About 40 years ago I was in Tangiers for a day or so. At that time, in the souk, there were barrels of old millifiore murano glass beads now known as African trade beads. I had no idea what to do with them, but I liked the way they looked. You could buy a huge scoop of beads from a big barrel and it cost a few dollars. Oh how I wish I had I purchased several scoops of beads. Now they are worth a lot of money.

I knew a psychologist who said you only regret the things you don't buy.

Many years later they served their purpose. They started my necklace passion. I made my first necklace combining those beads with semi precious stones from an old necklace my Aunt had given me, and now Andrea Bergart and I are making handmade designer necklaces from her old African beads, and my collection of old Murano glass beads.

They can be seen on our website adner-bergart.com.