Just as a reminder: I’m hold­ing a brief lec­ture and book sign­ing at Barnes and Noble in Man­has­set, Long Island, on Tues­day, May 6, 2008 at 7 pm. Since this will be just before Mother’s Day, it is an oppor­tu­nity to get a signed, first edi­tion copy of Brooches: Time­less Adorn­ment. I think it will make a great gift, so I hope you will stop by, pick up a book, and say hi.
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Met­al­smith Jiwon Han of JHan Design weaves threads of gold wire into other-worldly designs. Each one-of-a-kind cre­ation is made entirely by hand; the par­tic­u­lar tech­nique she uses can also be done by machine, how­ever the loops are big­ger, and the weave not as fine. The orna­ments look as though some­one got clever with a cro­chet hook. She works in eigh­teen karat gold because the fine­ness is per­fect for manip­u­lat­ing the wire; twenty-two karat is too soft, and four­teen karat doesn’t have the same forgiveness.

The process is time con­sum­ing and much patience is nec­es­sary. Oh, and by the way, a sin­gle mis­take will ruin the weave. The result is a lacy del­i­cacy that catches both wind and light in the most flat­ter­ing way. There is also a resiliency that, accord­ing to the artist, will sur­vive even the crush­ing weight of a car tire. Appar­ently such pli­ancy was recently and unin­ten­tion­ally tested by one of her clients. The jewel was fully restored.

Ms. Han teaches sil­ver­smithing and gold­smithing at the 92^nd Y in Man­hat­tan. She is already at work on a brand new col­lec­tion, inspired by ocean waves. Her jew­elry can be found at Frag­ments in New York City.