Maker & Muse Exhibition Preview Party
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Special evening reception was hosted before the opening day for the special
exhibition Maker & Muse. The night featured cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and
remarks by Museum founder and collector Richard H. Driehaus, exhibition curator
Elyse Zorn Karlin, and executive director Lise Dubé-Scherr.
Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry features more
than 250 exemplary works of art jewelry between the Victorian Era and theFirst
World War, including cloak clasps, hair ornaments, pins, brooches, rings,
bracelets, pendants, necklaces, and several tiaras. This groundbreaking exhibition
illuminates the international proliferation of art jewelry through the lens of woman
as its maker and muse. For the first time during this period, women emerged as
prominent jewelry makers in their own right, establishing independent studios
amid changing social norms. In other regions, the female figure acted as a
powerful muse, appearing in jewelry as audacious and novel motifs.
Drawn from the Driehaus Collection’s extensive jewelry holdings and prominent
national collections, many of these stunning pieces have never been seen by the
public. The exhibition upholds the same ideals of beauty as did its makers, who in
the early decades of the twentieth century were inspired by broader art
movements of the day to create audacious pieces of jewelry with dramatic forms,
intricate craftsmanship, saturated colors, and semiprecious stones.
Maker & Muse explores five different areas of jewelry design and fabrication: the
Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain, Art Nouveau in France, Jugendstil in
Germany and Austria, Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York, and American Arts and
Crafts in Chicago. Each section explores the important female figures and historic
social milieu associated with these movements, and is accompanied by historic
photographs and immersive decorative arts of the period, including furnishings,
posters, and stained glass. www.driehausmuseum.org