Auction / 12 February 2020
Structure & Ornament
Studio Jewelry: 1900 to the Present
Curated by Mark McDonald
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My initial exposure to the cool, elegant work of Eva Eisler was at the Brooklyn Museum in 2009. A small group of complementary jewelry from the museum’s collection was displayed with the exhibition From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith. The perfect balance and exacting technical execution of her brooch from 1988 in silver spoke to my strong sense of order.
M A R K M C D O N A L D
One month after Claire’s death in 1997, her studio assistant and personal confidant, Stefan, invited me to her home and studio in Venice, California to look in “Claire’s Box”. This amazing trove, her personal collection, formed the foundation of the brilliant exhibition of her jewelry at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 2004. When the exhibition closed, I was asked by her estate to find collectors and institutions to acquire these rare masterworks. Lot 135 was included in that exhibition.
M A R K M C D O N A L D
I met Irena Brynner in our original search for material for the first Fifty/50 exhibition in 1984 and acquired a number of excellent pieces from her personal collection including lot 151. She was a fascinating and rather glamorous character in the process of re-inventing herself as a cabaret singer, performing traditional Eastern European folksongs in a Greenwich Village piano café.
M A R K M C D O N A L D
