#MJSA Vision Awards - Announcing the 2016 Winners #AwardWinners

Vision Award Categories(For the entire list of winners, second place and more see the MJSA website)


The competition provides designers with several opportunities for deserved recognition. The winning entries will be acknowledged and on display at MJSA Expo.

Professional Design Excellence 
Open to all independent or company-employed designers, the Professional Design Excellence Category celebrates work that exemplifies the best of contemporary jewelry design. The winners show a thorough grounding in the tradition of fine design, along with an eagerness for experimentation and innovation by meeting the highest standards of craftsmanship and creativity.


Professional Design Excellence (4 years in business): Honors designs that exhibit exceptional creativity, craftsmanship, and marketability by jewelers in business for 4 or more years.

Klaus Kutter, A Jour Jewelry Inc., Bristol, Rhode Island
First Place Winner

Professional Design Excellence (1-3 years in business): 

Honors designs that exhibit exceptional creativity, craftsmanship, and marketability by jewelers in business for 1-3 years.

Baiyang Qiu, BQ Jewelry, Milpitas, California

First Place Winner

Laser Distinction: 

Honors entries in which the design relied upon the use of a laser and any technical challenges that were overcome to take the piece from concept to completion.

Baiyang Qiu, BQ Jewelry, Milpitas, California

 

CAD/CAM Distinction: 

Honors designs that were created with the use of CAD/CAM technologies and the challenges that were overcome to take the piece from concept to completion.

Gregoré Morin, Gregoré Joailliers, Santa Barbara, California

Custom Design Distinction: 

Honors designs that met a client’s request and the challenges encountered during the design process and how they were overcome.

Cynthia Renée, Cynthia Renée Inc., Chapel Hill, North Carolina

(NEW for 2016) Responsible Practices Distinction: 

Honors designs that use responsibly sourced materials, including recycled metals and fair-trade gems, and were created using environmentally sensitive manufacturing processes.

Sandy Leong, Sandy Leong Fine Jewelry, New York City

Future of the Industry Award: 

This award recognizes the work of students in jewelry-related programs who exhibit exceptional design talent and creativity.

Seung Jeon Paik, Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia

Future of the Industry - First Place Winner

NEW Gallery Exhibit - Summer at Reinstein|Ross!

From a Press Release

Above: Fleur Bleue Necklace, Julie Decubber.

Compared to a Summer's Day - conjures up a natural world of inherent beauty. On view today through August 28th, this international group exhibition showcases the work of six jewelry artists who look to the natural world for inspiration. The title of the exhibition is a playful twist on Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, an ode to his beloved:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date......

One-of-a-kind pieces, including delicate floral enamel earrings, porcelain brooches with cicadas and butterflies, hand-pierced steel necklaces with painted botanical images, golden butterflies...... all come together to form this summer fantasy.

Above: Red Dragonfly and Red Underwing Moth Pendant from the Hexapoda Collection, Mielle Harvey.

Compared to a Summer's Day features the work of Nicolette Absil, Julie Decubber, Mielle Harvey, Judith Hoetker, Sarah Hood, and Helen Shirk - and includes select work from Reinstein|Ross, Goldsmiths and Gaetano Pesce.

The Gallery is open everyday, and the exhibition will run from June 23rd through August 28th.

Unable to make it to the gallery? Contact them for a "Skype tour" of the exhibition with their gallery director.

The Gallery at Reinstein|Ross - 30 Gansevoort Street - New York, NY 10014

  Gallery@ReinsteinRoss.com -  212.226.4513

Website    http://www.reinsteinross.com/gallery

#JWLV DEF'S DIAMONDS DO GOOD AWARDS GALA SHINES LIGHT ON GIVING BACK #DiamondsDoGood

From a Press Release:

DIAMOND EMPOWERMENT FUND’S DIAMONDS DO GOOD 

AWARDS GALA SHINES LIGHT ON GIVING BACK 

Nate Light, Dorothée Gizenga and Chow Tai Fook Receive Honors

Three global industry leaders were honored for their outstanding leadership and service at the Diamond Empowerment Fund’s Diamonds Do Good Awards Gala, just one of several evening events held during Jewelry Week in Las Vegas.  

How can you support DEF's Diamonds Do Good Initiative?  The new Diamonds Do Good Bracelet
designed by Jewelry Designer, Mark Patterson, will be available at retail this Fall.

Nate Light, former CEO of Sterling Jewelers, Dorothée Gizenga, executive director of the Diamond Development Initiative, and Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group were recognized for their actions, which have left a positive impact on communities from the United States to China to Africa. 

An inspirational beat of African drummers kicked off the program that highlighted the Diamond Empowerment Fund’s mission of education empowerment for youth from diamond communities around the world and demonstrating how Diamonds Do Good. 

Honoree and Award Recipient, Nate E. Light, Former CEO of Sterling,
at the Diamonds Do Good Gala, Four Seasons Hotel, Las Vegas, Thursday, June 2, 2016

Nate Light, who received the Diamonds Do Good Lifetime Achievement Award for his influence in  spearheading the “Party With a Purpose” and inspiring what is now called Jewelers For Children said “This honor is truly a wonderful and symbolic highlight of my career. I want kids as they grow up not to have to suffer. We need to keep raising money to create a better life and a better world for them. I challenge you to use this as a call to action to do even more for kids and for your community”. 

Honoree and Award Recipient, Chow Tai Fook CEO, was represented by Kent Wong
at Diamonds Do Good Gala, Four Seasons Hotel, Las Vegas, Thursday, June 2, 2016

Accepting Chow Tai Fook’s Diamonds Do Good Community Development Award was Managing Director, Kent Wong. “For 87 years we have been upholding our belief ‘From the Society, For the Society’ and have been devoted to supporting charitable activities and social services for the betterment of future generations”. 

Dorothée Gizenga, who received the Diamonds Do Good Award for Sustainable Practices for her work with the Diamond Development Initiative, gave an impassioned speech on the need to keep encouraging these practices throughout the mining industry. “The very livelihood of millions of people in some of the poorest countries in the world, survive because of diamonds. We must maintain consumer confidence in the industry to keep the industry thriving. And to do so means the practices we all embrace must be sustainable and embody integrity”.

Honoree and Award Recipient, Dorothee Gizenga at the Diamonds Do Good Gala,
Four Seasons Hotel, Las Vegas, Thursday, June 2, 2016

Six Diamond Empowerment Fund Student Scholars were on hand to give the awards to the recipients. Androulla Markus, graduate of the African Leadership Academy and recent graduate of Columbia University said “Diamonds have played a pivotal role in who I am today and who and where I will be in the future. My plan is to complete medical school, earn a degree in Public Health and return to Botswana and effect change both at the individual and public level.”

Group Shot of students who have benefitted from the Diamond Empowerment Fund's
Diamonds Do Good initiative Four Seasons Hotel, Las Vegas, Thursday, June 2, 2016

Board President and CEO of Mercury Ring, Phyllis Bergman summed up the evening “as colleagues in the industry we are all driven by a shared desire to do well and to do good. Tonight we raised over one million dollars that will go towards scholarships for deserving young people around the world. We need to share our good stories with others outside the diamond industry and raise even more money so that thousands more deserving young people will benefit from the Diamond Empowerment Fund’s global mission.

Premier Presenting Sponsors of the Diamonds Do Gala included Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, Inc., De Beers Group of Companies, Signet Jewelers Limited (Kay Jewelers, Jared the Galleria of Jewelry, Zales Jewelers) Patron Sponsors were JCK and Rosy Blue Group, and Partner Sponsors included ALROSA, Exelco and Le Vian Group. 

 About the Diamond Empowerment Fund:

The Diamond Empowerment Fund is a global non-profit based in New York City and co-founded by Russell Simmons and leaders in the diamond industry in 2007 to empower diamond communities around the world.  Its beneficiaries include: the African Leadership Academy, a university preparatory school in Johannesburg, South Africa, founded on the belief that ethical leadership is the key to sustainable development on the continent and drawing students from all 54 countries in Africa, the Botswana Top Achievers program that provides the top high school students countrywide the opportunity to study at a university of their choice worldwide. Graduates then return to Botswana to contribute to its economic, social and political development; Veerayatan, a model for encouraging development of responsible citizens who are educated, have strong integrity and a motivation to give back to their community. D.E.F  supports students attending its colleges of Pharmacy, Business Administration and Engineering.  D.E.F also supports the Diamond Development Initiative’s mobile school program in the Democratic Republic of Congo and high school scholars in Tanzania through the Flaviana Matata Foundation    www.diamondempowerment.org.

#FaberGallery Aaron Faber Gallery Spotlight: Jennifer Trask – Cabinet of Curiosities #GallerySpotlight #NewYork

Aaron Faber Gallery Spotlight: 

Jennifer Trask – Cabinet of Curiosities

For the summer 2016 season, Aaron Faber Gallery invites you to enter jewelry artist Jennifer Trask’s Cabinet of Curiosities. Like the wunderkammern for which her early 2000s collection references, Trask marshals together a divergent assortment of crushed gems, peacock feathers, butterfly wings, powdered pigments and curiously unidentifiable objects to create artist jewelry as fantastically atypical as the women they adorn.

18K and 22K gold and silver crystal-covered round cases are locked together and redefined as wearable cabinets to lock away Trask’s miscellany of nature’s marvels – which include dyed beetles, Salamis parhassus wings, crushed shells, sulfur, leaf skeleton, and the occasional eyeshadow. 

“Like that cabinet of curiosities, these colorful, wearable and inviting jewels provoke a range of responses upon close examination, from delight to caution to discomfort, that tell-tale frisson of our not-always-easy relationship with nature and our role in it,” says Patricia Faber, curator and co-owner of Aaron Faber Gallery.

“This is the territory that Trask explores in her jewelry collections: yes, breathtakingly beautiful…but is it ours to see, to have, to own? Judging from the many avid private collectors and public collections that have acquired Trask’s work, the answer is yes.”

Jennifer Trask’s Wunderkammern Collection 

featured at Aaron Faber Gallery 

July and August. 2016.

JENNIFER TRASK PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

• Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC
• Museum of Arts + Design, New York, NY
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• CODA Museum, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
• Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia
• Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX
• Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
• Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz, NY
• Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
• Rotasa Foundation, Tiburon, CA