...AND ALL THAT GOLD

I'm a goldsmith and a jewelery designer and maker. In fact I am starting this blog because hey, you out there, I want you to buy my jewelry!

I work directly in gold, fabricating pieces directly out of the metal. As in: melt the gold, alloy it, mill it, make sheet, make wire, make your jewelry. This is the way the ancients made their jewelry - as in the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans. A good site to see some of this glorious legacy of gold is Ancient Roman Jewelry. The Metropolitan Museum also has stunning examples of classical jewelry, and their shop has many reproductions.

Nowadays jewelers like Reinstein & Ross and Mallary Marks (you can find her jewelry at Barneys ) create jewelry using these classical techniques. So if you like what they do, you'll like what I do. Only I'm way cheaper.

I studied classical jewelry with master goldsmith Cecelia Bauer, who teaches here in New York. If you've ever had a hankering to learn this arcane but glorious art, contact Cecelia and sign up for one of her wonderful classes.

I also carve models in wax. This is an entirely different process which lets you create very different designs. I think of it this way: working in metal is kind of 'engineering' - you have a certain creative vocabulary. Carving wax is more like sculpture - it's freer, with fewer constraints. A piece of wax is kind of like a blank canvas. (Okay I'm mixing my metaphors, but you get the idea.) In wax you can carve intricate bas relief (check out my VENICE bracelet ). My teacher, Boris Goynatsky, originally studied engineering in his native Ukraine (he was a poet, too!) and his work is masterful.

I also like to work in glass - I make glass beads and fused glass pieces - but it's hard to pursue glass in New York. I gave Urban Glass a whirl but it was very expensive and frankly, not very gemutlich. So now I only do glass when I find some fabulous workshop in some fabulous location - Kristina Logan's class in Provence, and a bead class in a wonderful town in Le Marche, Italy, called Coldigiocco. Kristina Logan is an extraordinary glass bead artist (her work is in the Smithsonian). Kristina teaches all over the US and overseas as well.

And I'm an enamalist. (Enameling? what's enameling?) Enamel is glass on metal. We work with finely powdered glass which we use as a painter would use oils. We can make enamel paintings - check out the Frick Museum if you want to see some breathtaking masterpieces of enamel portraiture - but we also can create jewelry and objects. Enamel techniques include cloiosonne enamel, where you use fine wires to create small cells and fill the cells with enamel; and champs l'evee ('raised fields', I believe is the translation) where you have lowered areas in the metal which are then filled with enamel. Check out The Enamelist Society to find out more about this simply extraordinary art. The Aaron Faber Gallery in New York carries some beautiful examples of contemporary enamel artists.