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Anne Kirkwood’s jewelry has been designed in order to create
beautiful, high-quality work that ignores short-term fads, and instead
offers stylistic longevity; in other words, jewelry to be
cherished for years and even passed along in time.
Her jewelry relies on very few elements: semi-precious stones,
rare or exotic art glass (including the incomparable Venetian art
glass), an occasional object from the sea, such as pearls or abalone,
sterling silver and 14 karat gold or gold Vermeil.
Kirkwood is noted for her work with Venetian art glass. It is
incredible to realize that the ancient art of making glass beads is
still, in the year 2007, completely done by hand. Usually
it is older women, who knowledgeably work with foil and glass over
flaming small stoves to produce one of a kind objects of enormous
beauty. Kirkwood selects these beads herself--always with an eye
toward quality, beauty and uniqueness. Her necklaces are
distinctive; the results speak for themselves.
Kirkwood also creates multi-strand necklaces, favoring particularly the
cascading allure of the triple strand, which falls in a most graceful
way upon the neck of a woman at any age.
Perhaps most interesting to a jewelry lover will be Kirkwood’s use of
the rare and extremely difficult-to-find ”steel-cut” beads which
hearken back to the 18th century. These beads--a finite and
shrinking quantity--have been culled from the garments and pocketbooks
of ladies from that era. The beads--tiny and sparkling--produce
magnificent necklaces, distinguishable from other “seed beads.”
Kirkwood has taken the qualities inherent in “steel cuts” and designed
necklaces that seem to float on the wearer’s neck.
For people interested in knowing more about Kirkwood’s creative work,
artspan.com features her art, some of which was featured in a
single-person show at the Metropolitan Opera’s art gallery at Lincoln
Center.
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