Beyond Beauty: Artisanal Jewelry – Florida Weekly

Jewelry is personal. Whether made from precious metals or synthetic substances, the shiny baubles we wear — brooches, earrings, necklaces, rings and so forth — aren’t just fashion statements. They can signal wealth, religion, relationship status and belonging. For some, personal adornments serve as mementos or protective amulets.

“It tells people who you are, where you come from,” muses artist Angela Bulich, who maintains a jewelry studio in downtown Delray Beach that’s open by appointment. “I think jewelry obviously is very intrinsically romantic. I always think about that, because a lot of my jewelry is inspired by the shapes of botanicals or shells, and I think of how shells used to be something very precious. They were symbolic of places and things far away, exotic.”

Bulich fashions delicate earrings, pendants, rings and necklaces that could just as easily be worn for a day at the beach or to an evening gala. Her materials include natural gemstones, pearls, diamonds, gold and silver. She’s partial to using the lost-wax process to cast hand-carved objects and she also fabricates some of her jewelry from sheets of metal that she cuts and shapes by hand using a variety of tools such as hammers and files.

Her shapes are light and graceful. For instance, Bulich’s “drift diamond ring” consists of a single diamond suspended atop an open, curving gold band that has a subtle sense of movement to it. She also loves creating collections inspired by special places. A recent one stems from her artist’s residency in the Iguazu Falls area on the border of Argentina and Brazil. There she explored the verdant rainforest that covers the land and visited a local mine where amethysts and other gemstones are extracted from the ground.

The resulting jewelry collection from her visit is called “In situ: Iguazu.” It features necklaces that take the shape of plant specimens and blossoms that Bulich collected on her journey. There are pieces that replicate the details of ferns, mate and cassava leaves as well as foliage from the medicinal ambai tree. “I can’t escape being obsessed with the natural world,” she says with a smile.

“The fact that you can create something that comes from the earth, start to finish, from the minerality of the soil that creates a crystal to the design inspired by the trees that grow from that soil, I just think it is really powerful,” says Bulich, who studied biology before becoming an artist; she has a degree in biological science from the University of California at Riverside.

Bold Designs

Over in Naples, Oliver and Christiane Hampel also create jewelry inspired by nature. Their pieces exude a very different vibe, though. Their rings, pendants and earrings are bold and striking. Exquisitely crafted, their hand-made objects bring to mind underwater creatures like starfish and sea anemones without being too literal. Their work also alludes to a wide variety of other natural phenomena, ranging from sunbursts and sand dunes to bamboo shoots, birds and flowers.

“It’s not for everyone,” says Oliver Hampel, who does most of the design work. He creates the shapes and Christiane does the fine finishing and stone setting. She was trained in her native Germany and holds a master’s degree in metalsmithing and metal design. He absorbed most of his knowledge from years spent helping her sell her pieces at outdoor shows locally and around the country. “I was her tent monkey,” he jokes.

Now, he takes the lead artistically, and their line is called Oliver Jewelry. “I come up with the shapes, the silhouettes, the look, and Christiane breathes life into it” during the finishing process, he says, and he’s not exaggerating. Her touches at the end add refinement and sparkle to each piece. It’s a seamless partnership that draws on both their skill sets.

Rings are especially meaningful for the Hampels. Among her early pieces, made while she was working independently in Europe, are heavy, industrial looking metal rings that look like they could be defensive weapons. And, talk about romance, the first piece of jewelry he ever made on his own was the engagement ring he presented to her 18 years ago.

For them, a new collection often starts with the design of a ring. Crafted from sterling silver, 18-karat gold and gemstones, their finger adornments are substantial, assertive objects that demand attention. One ring, appropriately named “Otherworldly,” projects about two inches from its band, making it more of a miniature sculpture than a ring. The tiny biomorphic globe revolves on its axis, so it is kinetic as well.

“I want the person who ends up owning our jewelry to feel empowered and beautiful,” Oliver muses. “I want somebody to feel as unique wearing the pieces as the jewelry itself. I think that’s what jewelry is all about, you know, to be expressive and unique.”

The couple developed an intriguing line of nylon jewelry several years ago in response to a traumatic hand injury that Oliver suffered in 2019, just before the Covid shutdown kept them from traveling as widely as usual to market their work.

It’s much lighter in weight than their precious metal jewelry. The process is a fusion of traditional and modern technologies. Rather than being hand crafted, the nylon pieces are designed on screen and transmitted to a manufacturer to be produced on a 3-D laser printer. The process is called selective laser sintering, abbreviated as SLS. Some of the pieces are then embellished with 18-karat gold electroplating for an added touch of luxury.

Controlled Chaos

Pittsburgh native Karyn Warner Hammock is hooked on the improvisational nature of fuse

forming. She wields her acetylene torch almost like an abstract painter dragging a brush over canvas. “It’s controlled chaos,” she says delightedly while describing how she layers and fuses pieces of metal together to create her exuberantly textured silver and gold jewelry. Metal fusing involves joining metals by heat alone, she explains, without using any solder. And, metal forming refers to shaping the material by techniques like bending, hammering, forging and folding it.

Rather than evoking specific objects in nature, her jewelry leans into abstraction. Her earrings, bracelets and pendants feature geometric shapes, irregular surfaces and asymmetrical compositions, as in her fuse-formed turquoise earrings. She often employs a traditional Korean technique called keum boo, which permanently bonds thin sheets of pure gold to fine silver by using both heat and pressure.

Years ago, Hammock left a career in the banking world to focus on her growing interest in metalsmithing. Meanwhile, her husband’s work took them to live in diverse locales around the country. For about three decades, she studied with master metalsmiths, taught jewelry making and exhibited and sold her pieces in places like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Delaware, North Carolina and Wyoming. After moving to Port Charlotte five years ago, Hammock worked for two years as exhibits coordinator at the Visual Arts Center in Punta Gorda. She recently became affiliated with the Sea Grape Gallery, a well-established artists’ cooperative in downtown Punta Gorda.

“I’m a creator,” says Hammock, who holds an undergraduate degree in creative writing. “It’s all about creating and learning. With metal smithing, it never ends. There’s so many different techniques.” In her artist’s statement, she adds, “I use a mix of metals to fabricate my jewelry and my clocks. I hand texture the metals and apply different patinas to add contrast and color. I employ many different traditional jewelry techniques such as roller printing, corrugating, stamping, fold forming, enameling and hydraulic press forming to create further interest. You can see my jeweler’s influence through embellishments such as gem stones, pearls and shells.”

Several of her recent creations incorporate stones known as druzies. Defined as a crust of tiny crystals that form on a host rock or mineral, druzies create texture and sparkle at an affordable price point. For example, Hammock’s “black druzy brooch” incorporates the dark stone into a free-form metal composition that has a soft, liquid quality to it. The stone brings another type of texture and sense of natural imperfection to the piece.

Earthy and Organic

Many contemporary artisans across the country have turned to fabricating jewelry from unconventional materials like recycled plastic, bits of fabric and handmade paper, or even scavenged computer chips and electronic waste.

Others don’t stray quite so far from the reservation in terms of unusual components. Florida Gulf Coast University art graduate Jordan Blankenship is primarily a ceramic artist. She holds a master of fine arts degree in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and teaches ceramics courses at FGCU as an adjunct faculty member.

So, it was a natural progression for her to turn to her favorite medium about six years ago, when she decided to add jewelry to her line of handmade functional goods for the home that she produces in her Estero studio. “I was being experimental and playing with the material. I was thinking about how people dress and style themselves every day,” she recalls.

Right now, her jewelry production consists entirely of earrings, although she might add other forms in the near future. Her designs are both earthy and refined. Blankenship appears to be a minimalist at heart, focused on creating jewelry that is insistently ceramic in nature. Many of her ear adornments consist of thin discs of clay that dangle from brass ear wires. Blankenship uses several types of clay, including porcelain, stoneware, speckled and black clays to create these pieces. They are embellished with the simplest of decorative touches, including hand-brushed glazes and underglazes.

“I want them to feel like little pieces of my larger ceramic practice that you can actually wear,” notes Blankenship. “A lot of my work is about the relationship we build with functional objects through use, and I think the earrings bring that idea into an even more personal space. They still show the qualities I love about clay – the raw material, the glaze, slight variations, and evidence of the hand – but instead of living on a table or in your home, they become something you carry with you.”

The natural qualities of clay and the simple elegance of Blankenship’s designs bring to mind the timeless charm of ancient jewelry. But today, artisanal jewelry is more than just adornment. It has evolved into wearable art that communicates something about the personalities of its individual makers and wearers. From playful and experimental creations to meticulously crafted pieces, modern artisanal jewelry can be a powerful way to express oneself and connect with others.

In The KNOW:

Angela Bulich: www.metalstoneleather.com
Oliver and Christiane Hampel: www.oliverjewelry.com
Karyn Warner Hammock: seagrapegallery.com/warner-hammoock-karyn/
Jordan Blankenship: www.jordanbceramics.com