Designs Contemporary Presents
Jewelry by Margaret De Patta
[Oakland, CA: Designs Contemporary, 1949]. Original mailer. 8.125 x 13-inch uncoated black paper folder folded into thirds [as issued]. Offset lithograph sheet with 32 halftone reproductions and numbered price list of 39 designs glued to folder. Price list unglued with residue to tab. Edges toned, but a very good copy.
8.125 x 13-inch folded pricelist designed by Margaret De Patta and her husband Eugene Bielawski for her line of production jewelry marketed under the Designs Contemporary name staerting in 1949. Her production line included rings, pins, brooches, cuff links, and earrings made to order via molds created by Bielawski. These pricelists were sold to the early retailers of De Pattas jewelry, including Black-Star-Gorham in New York City, Boy-Britton in Chicago, Cabaniss in Denver, Crossroads in Portland, Ted Herreid in Tacoma, Mermod-Jaccard-King in St. Louis, Modern Center, Inc. in Minneapolis, The Pacific Shop in San Francisco, Van-Keppel-Green in Beverly Hills, and Zacho and Walter Wright, both in Los Angeles.
“I find work problems as set for myself fall into these main directions: space articulation, movement to a purpose, visual explorations with transparencies, reflective surfaces, negative positive relationships, structures and new materials. A single piece may incorporate one or many of these ideas. Problems common to sculpture and architecture are inherent in jewelry design, i.e.–space, form, tension, organic structure, scale, texture, interpenetration, superimposition and economy of means–each necessary element playing its role in a unified entity.” – Margaret De Patta
More than any other jewelry designer of the twentieth century, Margaret De Patta [United States, 1903–1964] unified the visual theories of early progressive movements with mid-century design sensibilities to create jewelry that, while seemingly minimal, is built upon studied, complex relationships of light, form and space. De Patta was one of the first jewelry designers to elevate nontraditional materials beyond their humble origins—metal elements were layered to create depth, convex and faceted quartz added an entrancing range of optical effects and overall compositions were meticulous, as though they were clear, clean answers to conundrums only De Patta could see. As a student of the New Bauhaus and its populist spirit in the 1940s, De Patta also led the charge on the debate over mass-producing art jewelry, arguing that good design should be accessible.
De Patta was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1903 and grew up in San Diego. She trained as a sculptor and painter at the California School of Fine Arts and in 1926, she received a scholarship to attend the Arts Students League in New York. There, she encountered the European avant-garde artistic theories that would influence her jewelry work to come. In 1929, she moved back to California, settling in San Francisco and began making jewelry (one of her first pieces was her very own wedding ring). She apprenticed with local jewelers and explored her own artistic voice throughout the 1930s.
From 1940 to 1941, she studied with László Moholy-Nagy at the School of Design in Chicago and was greatly influenced by the artistic and societal ideals of the school and her mentors.
In 1946, already well-regarded in the arts community, her work was featured in the MoMA's exhibition Modern Handmade Jewelry, alongside works by Alexander Calder. In the 1950s, she and her husband, Eugene Bielawski, who was also a metalsmith, embarked on scaling production of her designs to make them more accessible and affordable, but they struggled with the business realities of production. Though De Patta designed some spectacular works in this era, she ultimately went back to creating unique and commissioned pieces that were more technically challenging and creatively fulfilling.
De Patta passed away in Oakland (where she lived and had a studio) in 1964; she receveied her first major retrospective in 2012 at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Her work is held in institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of Contemporary Art, who holds her archives and the largest collection of her work.