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CONTEMPORIZING TRADITIONAL JEWELRY, Transitioning From Conformity To Individuality
February 18 @ 6:45 pm - 8:00 pm
Speaker: Warren Feld
Presentation:
Many people, jewelry designers among them, draw inspirations from traditional jewelry styles. One thing they seek to create through jewelry is a feeling of connectedness, coupled with a desire to feel connected. Traditional jewelry provides clear clues about what society and culture consider appropriate, good and even necessary ideas about connectedness. But the core issue for jewelry designers today is how to achieve jewelry design which is more contemporary than merely a replay or reworking of traditional preferences and styles, that is, how to contemporize it. How to construct ideas into objects, challenge history and culture, produce that which typically ignores (or even is in opposition to) socio-cultural norms, standardization and monotony.
Contemporizing Traditional Jewelry has to do with how designers take these particular traditional forms and techniques, and by substituting their personal values for traditional socio-cultural ones, bring into being jewelry more connected and relevant to today’s sense of fashion, style, individuality and personal expression. The challenge for the designer, when contemporizing traditional jewelry, is how to marry personal artistic intent with traditional ideas, keeping jewelry design essential and alive for today’s audience. What helps here is understanding contemporary jewelry as a way of thinking through the design process, rather than something representative of a particular look.
Speaker Bio: For Warren Feld, Jewelry Designer, beading and jewelry making have been wonderful adventures. These adventures have taken Warren from the basics of bead stringing and bead weaving, to pearl knotting, micro-macramé, wire working, wire weaving and silversmithing, and onward to more complex jewelry designs which build on the strengths of a full range of technical skills and experiences.
What excites him is finding answers to such questions as:
– What does it mean to be fluent and literate in design?
– What are the implications for defining jewelry as an “object” versus as an “intent”?
– Why does some jewelry draw your attention, and others do not?
– How does jewelry design differ from art or craft?
– How do you judge a piece as finished and successful?
In 1987, Warren established the first bead store in Nashville, Tennessee called Land of Odds. In 1999, Land of Odds became an online bead catalog, and a new bricks-and-mortar store – Be Dazzled Beads – was established in Nashville.
In 2000, Warren founded The Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts (CBJA) as the educational program for Be Dazzled Beads-Land of Odds. The program approached education from a Design Perspective. There was a strong focus on skills development. There was a major emphasis on teaching how to make better choices when selecting beads, other parts and stringing materials, and how to bring these altogether into a beautiful, yet functional, piece of jewelry.
There were requirements for sequencing classes – that is, taking classes in a developmental order. Theory was tightly wedded to applications throughout the program, from beginner to advanced classes. Since jewelry, unlike painting and sculpture, must interrelate aesthetics, function and context, much attention is paid to how such relationships should influence the designer.
Jewelry Design was seen as an authentic performance task. As such, the student explored ideas about artistic intent, shared understandings among all audiences, and developing evidence in design sufficient for determining whether a piece is finished and successful. The design educational program was envisioned as preparing the student towards gaining a disciplinary literacy in design — one that began with how to decode the expressive attributes associated with Design Elements to a fluency in the management of Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation, as well as the systems management of the design process itself.
Warren led a group of instructors at Be Dazzled Beads. He taught many of the bead-weaving, beadstringing, wire weaving, jewelry design and business-oriented courses. He worked with people just getting started with beading and jewelry making, as well as those with more experience. His pieces have appeared in beading and jewelry magazines and books, including Perlen Posie (“Gwynian Ropes Bracelet”, No. 21, 2014), Showcase 500 Beaded Jewelry (“Little Tapestries: Ghindia”, Lark Publications, 2012). One piece (“Canyon Sunrise”), which won 4th place in Swarovski’s Naturally Inspired Competition (2008), is in the Swarovski museum in Innsbruck, Austria. His work has been written up in The Beader’s Guide to Jewelry Design (Margie Deeb, Lark Publications, 2014). He has been a faculty member at CraftArtEdu.com, developing video tutorials. He has been selected as an instructor for the Bead & Button Show, June, 2019, teaching 3 pieces – Japanese Garden Bracelet, Etruscan Square Stitch Bracelet, and ColorBlock Bracelet.
In March 2020, Warren organized a travel-enrichment program on Celebrity Cruise Lines, centered on jewelry making, beginning with a cruise from Miami to Cozumel and Key West.
Some of his pieces will be exhibited in the future at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
He has developed 7 comprehensive video tutorials about different aspects of jewelry and jewelry design.
Today, Warren concentrates on designing jewelry, primarily custom pieces, as well as developing jewelry-making kits (bead weaving, stringing, wire working) which have as their basis many of the theoretical and practical concepts he has developed over his 38+ years as a jewelry designer. He conducts workshops and webinars around the country and online. He coaches students in both the technical side of jewelry making, and well as the business side.
His personal style: multi-method, intricate color play, adaptive of traditions to contemporary design, experimental. Keen attention is paid to both architectural as well as artistic underpinnings of jewelry designs. He is probably best known for creating the international The Ugly Necklace Contest, where good jewelry designers attempt to overcome our pre-wired brains’ fear response for resisting anything Ugly. He has also sponsored All Dolled Up: Beaded Art Doll Competition and The Illustrative Beader: Beaded Tapestry Competition. Instructor, Bead & Button Show, Milwaukee, WI, 2019.
Speaker URL/Social Media: http://www.warrenfeldjewelry.com
DATE: February 18, 2025, 6:45-8pm
COST: Free to members; $5.00 for non-members or purchase an annual membership for $25.
Payment for Non-Members ($5.00):
To prepare, please go to https://zoom.us/ and follow the directions to access Zoom®. Sadly, BSNC can not provide tech support.
Please RSVP to judysinclair@beadsocietyofnorcal.org. She will send out the Zoom meeting information prior to each class/speaker event and follow up with a reminder email. Spaces are limited, so please RSVP early.