An object can arrive at the bench with a history before we make a single connection. Jack Cunningham’s narrative jewelry asks us to consider what changes when that object becomes part of something worn.

We often think of surface as something added after the jewelry has been built. Jamie Bennett’s work asks us to reconsider that order. What happens when color, pattern, drawing, and surface are not decoration—but part of the structure of the piece itself?

A setting is more than a way to hold a stone. John Cogswell's work as a maker, illustrator, and educator offers a useful lens for understanding how careful process creates room for original design.

Marjorie Schick asks us to consider the space around the wearer as part of a jewelry design. Her work offers a useful lesson in scale, color, and making bold forms respond to the body.

Arline Fisch did more than knit and weave with metal wire. She showed jewelers how the logic of one medium can unlock entirely new possibilities in another.

Heikki Seppä did more than develop new ways to form metal. He gave metalsmiths a language for imagining volume before the first hammer blow—a lesson that still changes how we design at the bench.

Wendy Ramshaw’s iconic ring sets demonstrate how repetition, gemstones, modularity, and wearer participation can turn jewelry from a single object into an entire design system.

Eleanor Moty's jewelry offers an important design lesson: sometimes the strongest piece begins when we stop forcing a stone into a preconceived idea and let the material lead.

Mary Lee Hu transformed woven metal wire into a distinctive jewelry language. Her work offers an important lesson for metalsmiths: sometimes growth comes not from learning another technique, but from exploring how much possibility exists inside one you already know.

Kiff Slemmons’ jewelry reminds us that materials can carry ideas just as powerfully as words. In this installment of Makers Who Shaped Me, I explore how her poetic approach to material, imperfection, memory, and meaning has influenced the way I think about jewelry as more than decoration—as a language all its own.

Mark Fenn’s work reminds us that jewelry can do more than decorate the body—it can carry memory, emotion, symbolism, and story. In this Makers Who Shaped Me article, I explore how his approach to narrative jewelry helped shape the way I think about meaning, personal expression, and the stories we choose to make in metal.

Charles Lewton-Brain is celebrated for revolutionizing Foldforming, but his greatest influence on me went far beyond a single technique. In this personal reflection, I share how his philosophy of curiosity and experimentation shaped my work—and what it was like to meet and discuss my MFA thesis with one of my lifelong metalsmithing heroes.