Art Smith (jeweler)

Style

Smith's jewelry has been described as:

Inspired by surrealism, biomorphicism, and primitivism ... dynamic in its size and form.

Many of his pieces were designed to be worn by avant-garde dancers, which influenced his style. The pieces were often large. Of his own work, he said:

A piece of jewelry is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form.

Alexander Calder was also an influence.

Biography

Smith was born in Cuba, after his parents emigrated there from Jamaica. They moved to New York City when he was three years old.

As an adult, Smith worked in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, running a shop there from 1946 until 1979 (shortly before his death). Smith was a gay Afro-Caribbean, and as a result was subject to attacks shortly after his store opened. A fan of jazz and modern dance, he was personally acquainted with musicians of the period including Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, and Talley Beatty.

Smith died in 1982 of heart disease.

Exhibitions and holdings

During his life, Smith's work was featured in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Posthumously, Smith's work was the subject of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008-2011, and is held in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Museum of Art and Design, and Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

One piece of Smith's sold for $22,000, and a cufflink collector told the New York Times that Smith's cufflinks were the most expensive pieces in his collection.