The designer in his studio with his “Diminishing Spirals” necklace, designed c. 1958.
ART SMITH ARCHIVE, COLLECTION OF THE SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTUREIf an admirer of Art Smith’s jewelry found a piece stylistically hard to pin down, that’s exactly how the pioneering Black designer would have liked it: He claimed to have been inspired less by any particular person or aesthetic school than by the freedom of the creative process itself.
“In other words,” he said in a 1971 interview with art curator and publisher Paul Cummings, “there really is another sense, not only smell, taste, sight and all those things, but there is this thing that is just plain creative and it’s perfectly abstract. You don’t get your things out of books, you don’t get your things out of other cultures, you don’t get your things out of outside stimuli like liquor or drugs or anything. It’s a perfectly abstract place of its own, see, your sense of creation.”
Smith’s connection to music is best exemplified in his “New Orleans” necklace, c. 1962.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF CHARLES L. RUSSELL
The “Lava” bracelet, c. 1946, is one of Smith’s earliest and most iconic designs.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF CHARLES L. RUSSELL
The “Cluster Knuckles Ring,” in silver with turquoise, jade, zoisite, and rhodochrosite cabochons, designed c. 1965, was made to be worn over three fingers.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF CHARLES L. RUSSELLA man who was both Black and gay, born in Cuba to Jamaican parents and raised in Brooklyn, Smith faced everyday racism, exclusion, and even extortion throughout his career. In the 1920s, he received a scholarship to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he was one of the few Black students; after graduating with a degree in sculpture, he took night courses in jewelry design at New York University and struck up a friendship with an established Black jeweler, Winifred Mason, who encouraged him to pursue it as a profession. Faced with a lack of broader support in the field, he saw no alternative to entrepreneurship, and opened his own studio and shop on West 4th Street in Greenwich Village, where he would make and sell his work from 1949 to 1979.
A model activates a brass-and-copper “Modern” cuff bracelet, designed in 1948.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, SC03.2007.61.15 © ESTATE OF PETER BASCHThat work is varied, and includes mostly humble metals like copper and bronze, often at large scale: a necklace that appears closer to a breastplate, a cuff that shows more cuff than arm. They read first and foremost as artworks, meandering around the body, emphasizing space-voids, dancing around necks, surrounding arms. An expert solderer, Smith often experimented with biomorphic stacking, swirl formations, and patination. “A good piece of jewelry literally caresses the body and fondles it and as I say, plays with it,” Smith told Cummings. Adds jewelry historian Toni Greenbaum, “For him, a piece was really incomplete until it was worn.”
His work held deeper cultural meaning as well. “Art Smith created visibility for the Black body during the period of time when there was tremendous subjugation and oppression of the Black body,” explains Dr. Joanne Hyppolite, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, who is currently collaborating with Greenbaum on a book about the jeweler’s work. Smith often worked with Black models, collaborated with Black dance companies (most notably Talley Beatty and Pearl Primus), and mingled with luminaries like James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte. Lena Horne was a patron, and Duke Ellington’s sister, Ruth, reportedly commissioned a pair of cufflinks for her brother that incorporated the first notes of his 1930 song “Mood Indigo.”
The “Metallic Boa” necklace, c. 1964, evokes feathers and snakes.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF CHARLES L. RUSSELL
A patinated silver “Patina” necklace designed ca. 1959.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF CHARLES L. RUSSELLAs Smith’s health declined in later years, he found solace in traveling and teaching—a return to his early days working as an art teacher for the Children’s Aid Society Junior Achievement program based in Harlem—and passed away in 1982, just a few years after closing his Greenwich Village studio. His pieces were never reproduced; his jewelry and his life were so deeply intertwined that he was, in effect, his own signature.
Over the course of his career, Smith produced a volume of work large enough that it still circulates today among private collectors, museums, and the children and families of the original buyers. (Two major collections were recently acquired by the National Museum of African American History and Culture.) His innate understanding of the human body’s motion, vulnerability, and potential influenced a generation of Black artists—and continues to enrapture those lucky enough to wear his pieces.
“Last Necklace,” c. 1979, was Smith’s final work.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF CHARLES L. RUSSELLTHIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 13 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!
