Since I have been less than dili­gent with regard to my post­ing, I am try­ing to make up for it by adding two short but inter­est­ing entries this week. For those of you who have been log­ging on in the past month or so, I apol­o­gize. I am just fin­ish­ing up my book and have had some unex­pected but very wel­come assign­ments come my way and well, to be hon­est, when mak­ing a liv­ing as a free­lance writer, you can’t always con­trol your sched­ule. Anyway…I will have a story in the mag­a­zine sec­tion of the New York Times in the com­ing months and will keep you informed as to when it will be pub­lished; the images for this piece are truly amazing.

Ok, and now on with the good stuff…

Since about 1950, David Webb has had a fol­low­ing from New York to Cal­i­for­nia. Although he died in 1975, the com­pany is still run by the orig­i­nal co-founder, Nina Sil­ber­stein. They con­tinue to cre­ate many of the same fab­u­lous pieces that Webb designed as well as pro­duce fan­tas­tic new items that Silberstein’s daugh­ter, Sharon, dreams up. Whether we are talk­ing about vin­tage or con­tem­po­rary Webb, what I love most about their jew­els is its sculpted feel. When you hold a piece of it in your hand, it had a solid and lux­u­ri­ous weight to it. Some­times Webb uses col­or­ful enam­els or hefty gem­stones; the color here is added for empha­sis not drama because Webb designs are dynamic and have a life of their own. The com­pany is prob­a­bly best known for its crys­tal and dia­mond jew­elry which Webb devel­oped after his rock crys­tal chan­de­lier fell to the ground. He made jew­elry from the shards.

Take a good look at the fol­low­ing pen­dant neck­lace and ring.
They are vin­tage orna­ments from renowned anti­quar­ian jew­eler Alex Har­ris (Harrisgemstones.com)

Both the neck­lace and pendant/brooch can be worn sep­a­rately which is prac­ti­cal and sub­lime all at once.