Holiday Shopping? Here Are All the Jewelry Happenings in NYC This Month
Jewelry enthusiasts, start your engines. The holiday season begins in earnest this month with scores of jewelry-themed events and store openings taking place across New York City. Below we offer our cherrypicked guide to November’s most notable jewelry happenings.
Events
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The 13th edition of Salon Art + Design takes over the Park Avenue Armory on the Upper Eastside from Nov. 7-11. Featuring nearly 50 exhibitors, the fair, a leading destination for collectible art and design, is now emerging as a destination for important jewels thanks to gallerists and designers such as London-based jeweler Fernando Jorge, who is making his debut at the fair this year with a trove of important pieces from past collections, as well as brand new work.
“I will bring pieces from the Surround and Brilliant collections, but the focus will be on Stream, which is one of my most recognized collections that just completed 10 years from its launch,” Jorge tells Robb Report. “I’ll be introducing Deep Stream, a series of pieces that utilizes Brazilian Red Louro wood and brown diamonds, as well as new additions to the Stream collection in gold and jade.”
Elsewhere at the fair, “jewelry has become an increasingly exciting attraction,” Nicky Dessources, the fair’s executive director, says. “The jewelry gallery cohort includes first time exhibitor Elisabetta Cipriani, who will present the work of Michele Oka Doner; DK Farnum showing important vintage material; and Rosier and Yvel with their seductive and brilliant colored gemstones. In addition, galleries that are known for other specialties will add jewelry to their offerings.”
For example, Phoenix Ancient Art will be showing “Aphrodite and Her Jewelry,” a selection of bronze and marble statuettes of the goddess of love alongside gold Greek and Roman rings, necklaces and intaglios.
Finally, don’t miss the Weinberg Modern booth. The gallerists have designed an immersive home library/studio to conjure an office space once inhabited by Fran Hosken, the 20th century American designer, writer and social activist. In addition to featuring a nearly 20-foot wall of design and architecture books, the space will also highlight the Viennese heiress’s jewelry collection, presented for the first time ever.
On Nov. 11, jeweler Tim McClelland is staging a solo exhibition at the Tamsen Z Gallery on the Upper East Side, where he’ll showcase a new body of work called Botanical Astronomy. While the event is private, viewings are available by appointment during the week of Nov. 11.
“I have often wondered how cosmology relates to the microscopic world,” McClelland says. “They share many similarities visually. But it is most evident in the relation to stars, galaxies and flower forms. I like to think how the sun shines on a field of flowers, but also the flowers face toward the sun. They actually shine on each other!”
In addition to showing his Cosmos collection, a selection of stylized flower forms in paper thin gold, large but lightweight, McClelland will also display an array of astronomical-themed jewels as well as narrative pieces like his ornate Owl and the Pussycat gold bracelet, named after the 1870 poem by Edward Lear.
Last but not least, NYC Jewelry Week (NYCJW) returns for its seventh edition from Nov. 18-24. Themed “Wonder & Wander,” this year’s event will feature more than 100 immersive experiences that celebrate jewelry’s artistry and societal influence. Explore artists’ studios, witness exclusive designer reveals, sit in on panel discussions and hear expert discourse on the trends shaping the jewelry conversation — and feel free to bring the kids. “We have three workshops for kids,” Bella Neyman, founder of NYC Jewelry Week, tells Robb Report. “We believe in starting them young.”
On Tuesday, Nov. 19, a day of talks at the Museum of Arts and Designat 2 Columbus Circle includes a conversation about “The Journey and Joy of Creation” between fellow New Zealanders Rosena Sammi, founder of the The Jewelry Edit, and Michael Robinson, a jewelry artist who creates his work entirely by hand from his studio in Boston; a panel discussion on maximalist adornment; and a panel discussion featuring jewelry designers who are charting their own course, moderated by Hodinkee’s Malaika Crawford.
Other highlights include an opportunity to see a wide selection of tourmalines from the Cruzeiro Mine in Brazil, from rough crystals to finished jewelry by top designers; a conversation focused on why designers choose platinum, moderated by The Adventurine’s Marion Fasel and featuring David Rees and Ron Anderson, co-founders of TENTHOUSANDTHINGS and Greg Kwiat, CEO of Kwiat; and an exhibition at the Aaron Faber Gallery dedicated to the designs of Philipp Munsteiner, fifth-generation gem sculptor and youngest member of the world-renowned Munsteiner family of gem artists.
The week also includes a robust virtual program for anyone who wishes to join the festivities from afar, including a discussion of how ancient elements make their way into contemporary jewelry designs and a look at the enduring power of charms.
At its core, the events are designed to connect “both jewelry consumers and makers through a shared sense of awe—the “how did they do that?” wonder moments that are often experienced with jewelry,” Neyman says.
Store Openings
The beloved gold jewelry brand FoundRae recently opened a new showroom at 777 Madison Ave, its second NYC outpost. “Before I ever set foot in the space, I had a feeling it would be FoundRae’s newest home, because of its auspicious address,” says founder and creative director Beth Hutchens. “Seven is my favorite number and has often appeared in my life as a sign that I’m on the right path.”
Visitors to the red-hued space—which draws inspiration from Diana Vreeland’s iconic Park Avenue apartment, located just a few blocks away—can expect to discover plenty of emblems and symbols, a FoundRae signature, as well as loads of mesmerizing books and ephemera.
Look to the book shelves, which are stacked with an eclectic array of vintage and antique books, 1970s brass figurines, Victorian collectibles, mid-century modern furniture, and neo-classical ormolu and milagros, as well as kaleidoscopes of FoundRae medallions. Hanging throughout the store are solid gold chains in a variety of lengths, links, and weights, inviting guests to customize their own jewelry looks.
The Danish jeweler Sophie Bille Brahe is bringing her minimalist, pearl-centric designs to 1000 Madison Avenue, where on Nov. 13 she is opening her first showroom outside of her hometown of Copenhagen. Located on the second floor, above the Italian trattoria Saint Ambroeus, the space, which will also feature a selection of new homewares, reflects Brahe’s intentional desire to remain somewhat hidden from public view.
“My boutique in Copenhagen is located the same way,” she tells Robb Report. “Talking to Americans, a lot of people said to me, ‘You can’t open the store unless it’s on the ground floor.’ But for me, I need to do it in the concept that fits my jewelry. You make an effort to visit and then you will be welcomed.
“I’ve wanted to do this for more than three years,” Brahe adds. “I’ve been looking and watching places. When I found it, I thought, ‘I don’t want to leave, I just want to stay.’”
The same week that Fernando Jorge is debuting at Salon Art + Design, he is opening his first U.S. showroom at 210 11th Ave.
“The space in New York is coming to life as an organic development,” Jorge says. “We already have a strong client base here due to our wholesale presence and years of coming to trunk shows. My experience with our London showroom has also encouraged me to make this move. Our space in London has brought us so much closer to our clients and changed the way we interact. It was just a matter of finding the right space and time to do something equivalent in New York. Like London, our space in New York will be run by appointment only and there will be a comprehensive selection of jewelry on display for our clients and friends to immerse themselves in a way that they could not experience yet through our retailers. The space also means I will be spending more time in New York!”
Trove, the premium jewelry care and storage brand, is celebrating on Nov. 8 the grand opening of its first U.S. flagship store in New York City’s West Village at 301 West 4th Street. In addition to Trove’s exquisite handcrafted boxes, the store will also feature a curated selection of fine jewelry from designers like Tabayer, Pamela Zamore and Sophie Keegan.
Books
Sybil and David Yurman: Artists and Jewelers, a monograph from the iconic jewelry brand’s co-founders and chief designers, tells the story of how two artists devoted to making beautiful objects created, over the course of five decades, one of America’s best known and most sought-after jewelry brands.
Published by Phaidon, the book combines personal writings with more than 400 images of the Yurmans’ most memorable designs, jewelry portraits, original design sketches, family photographs, and behind-the-scenes shots of global campaigns featuring the brand’s bold-faced name ambassadors, including Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bündchen.
Since the birth of the Cable bracelet in 1983, the David Yurman brand has reflected both Sybil’s influence as a painter and David’s work as a sculptor, inspiring the colors and forms of their creations, respectively. The book cover, which features one of Sybil’s paintings beneath a title type designed to resemble David’s welding in embossed gold foil, itself pays homage to their remarkable five-decade-long collaboration.
A new coffee table book, Paraiba: The Legacy of a Color, written by gem consultant Kevin Ferreira and jewelry influencer Katerina Perez, and creative director Carlos Torres, explores the fascinating history of paraiba tourmaline, a gem whose neon blue hue has set the gem market on fire.
The book, which Ferreira says is intended to generate awareness of the stone, includes pages of extraordinary jewels by the likes of Martin Katz, Erica Courtney and Lydia Courteille, among others, all equally besotted with a tourmaline like no other.
BOW by Katey Brunini, a monograph of the Southern California jeweler’s eclectic body of work, is a coffee table book that doubles as a philosophical ode to the anthropological, cultural and spiritual power of jewelry, rife with sumptuous images of her past collections, including Spirit Animals, Brutalism, Body Armor, and AeZeus Baldwin.
“Archaeologists continue to discover ever-older evidence for jewelry making,” Brunini writes in the book’s introduction. “At a Neanderthal site in Croatia, estimated at 130,000 years old, an assemblage of white-tailed eagle claws and foot bones was excavated. Carefully made notches along the joints, worn down, and facet polishing suggests that these bones (which must have been difficult to collect) were strung together on a necklace. Tens of thousands of years before a modern human even set foot on that continent, our mysterious relatives were conceptualizing their own spirit animals.”
The book, not to mention the trove of events and store openings noted above, makes clear that in the intervening eons, our love for adornment shows no signs of waning.
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