Space, light, structure: the jewellery of Margaret de Patta

Pin, 1956, by Margaret De Patta

(Image credit: Lee Fatherree)

last updated 17 October 2022

The words 'contemporary jewellery' so often point to 'futuristic' pieces made from hard metals and clean, sharp lines that it's good to be reminded of the quiet Surrealist quality and softer, irregular contours that typified the American Wearable Art Movement. Nothing embodies its timeless Bauhaus aesthetic more than jeweller and artist Margaret De Patta, whose work is currently the subject of a major retrospective in the US.

The exhibition 'Space, light, structure: The Jewellery of Margaret De Patta' is at the Oakland Museum of California until May 13 and will transfer to New York's Museum of Arts and Design in June.

De Patta was born in California in 1903 and trained as a sculptor and painter at the California School of Fine Arts. By the age of 23 she had taken up a scholarship at the Arts Students League in New York where the pervading principles and methods of the experimental European art scene - Constructivism, the Bauhaus - began to infiltrate her design sensibilities and inform her aesthetic. But it was only when she couldn't find a wedding ring that echoed her taste for modernist design that she set her sights on jewellery design.

The correlation between jewellery, sculpture and architecture - in that all involved 'space, form, tension, organic structure, scale, texture, interpenetration, superimposition, and economy of means' - was obvious to her.

De Patta's brooches, rings and pendants, then, work like wearable sculpture: pieces move, apposite materials integrate and negative space becomes positive. It's not often that jewellery is awarded the same cultural status as art but, as Ursula Ilse-Neuman, MAD's Curator of Jewelry points out, 'Her cerebral jewellery expresses her own evolving aesthetic and social philosophy as it unfolded over four decades of enormous change in American society.'

Margaret De Patta died in 1964. As a homage to one of its own, the San Francisco jewellery and metal work gallery Velvet da Vinci also pays homage to de Patta this month. Having acquired stones and beach pebbles found by De Patta from her estate, the gallery asked 16 jewellers, including Petra Class and Deborah Lozier, to contribute to its De Patta Project. By reinterpreting her work and ways of thinking into their own, the De Patta legacy is carried on in an organic form of which she surely would have approved.

Pendant in white gold and crystal, with five inlaid diamonds, 1960, by Margaret De Patta

Yellow gold pendant — Pendant in yellow gold and rutilated quartz crystal, 1948, by Margaret De Patta

Abstract pendant resembling a guitar — Pin in sterling silver, coral and malachite, 1947-50, by Margaret De Patta

White gold ring with brown pins inlaid — Ring in white gold and rutilated quartz crystal, 1949, by Margaret De Patta

Silver pin with beach pebbles attached against black background — Pin in sterling silver, beach stones and pebbles, 1964, by Margaret De Patta

Transparent ring with black pins inlaid — Ring, 1947 by Margaret De Patta

Silver ring with black face and pearl inlaid — Ring in sterling silver, with pearl, 1947-50, by Margaret De Patta

White gold wire pendant — Pendant in 14k yellow gold and wire, 1976, by Margaret De Patta

Double black stone ring in silver — In homage to Margaret De Patta, who died in 1964, the San Francisco jewellery and metal work gallery, Velvet da Vinci (who acquired stones and beach pebbles found by De Patta from her estate) have asked 16 jewellers to reinterpret her work. Pictured is: Double Stone Ring, in sterling silver with river pebbles, 2012, by Sandra Enterline

Gold brooch with amber and orange quartz stones — Brooch, in 18k and 22k gold with rutillated quartz stones, 2012, by Petra Class

Copper brooch resembling fossil with pebbles — Brooch in copper with fossil dinosaur bone and river pebbles, 2012, by Deborah Lozier

Silver rings with quartz stone tops — Rings in sterling silver with rutillated quartz stones cut by Francis Sperisen, 2012, by Geoffrey Giles

Brooch with black onyx and a black diamond — Brooch in sterling silver, 18k gold and enamel with black onyx and a black diamond, 2012, by April Higashi

Silver window pendant with quarts — 'Window' brooch in sterling silver and 18k gold with quartz, opal and pebble, cut by Francis Sperisen, 2012, by Brigid O'Hanrahan

Silver necklace pendant with quartz and onyx — Pendant in sterling silver with quartz and onyx, 2012, by Julia Turner

Necklace pendant with black stones — Necklace in sterling silver with De Patta pebbles, 2012, by Terri Logan

Silver and copper ring with green stone — Nautilaus Ring, in sterling silver and copper with De Patta green stone, 2012 by David Jones

ADDRESS

Oakland Museum of California
1000 Oak St.
Oakland, CA 94607
USA

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Caragh McKay is a contributing editor at Wallpaper* and was watches & jewellery director at the magazine between 2011 and 2019. Caragh’s current remit is cross-cultural and her recent stories include the curious tale of how Muhammad Ali met his poetic match in Robert Burns and how a Martin Scorsese Martin film revived a forgotten Osage art.