JewelryAdventureClub.com
Title
Jewelry Adventure Club
Description
About Ruthie & Mike Cohen
Ruthie & Mike Cohen's handcrafted jewelry designs are a collaboration of work done in sterling silver, vermeil, and 14 and 18 karat gold. The use of unusual stones and their original, one-of-a-kind, constructed settings gives their designs a very distinctive, recognizable style. Ruthie is the senior jeweler with 19 years of experience and Mike has been an active partner in the jewelry studio for the past 10 years. Ruthie first spent 10 years creating large macramé and woven wall hangings for decorators and custom orders for individuals. Still utilizing her finely tuned sense of color and pattern, she started to miniaturize those designs into sterling silver and gold wire jewelry accented with semi-precious beads. Primarily self-taught, Ruthie expanded her metalsmithing skills by accepting challenging commissions. Mike worked for 20 years as a sculptural and functional potter before taking up jewelry. He settled into the studio and began to acquire the proficiency needed to become an integral part of the process. This cooperative effort that developed relied heavily on the skills that each excelled in to create their contemporary classical jewelry designs. It has been no surprise to anyone that knows him or her as individual artisans, that the work they create together is greater than the sum of the parts.
For the past few years, Ruthie and Mike have taken their fascination with color into the world of art glass. They have been developing a line of jewelry in 14 and 18 karat gold, vermeil, and sterling silver that frames and illuminates the beauty of the glass while utilizing semi-precious stones and pearls to accentuate the colors. First exploring the space-age technology of dichroic glass by Robert Stephan, and the fused and dichroic glass of Timothy Lewis, Ruthie and Mike were soon drawn to the surrealistic murrini work of Richard Ritter and the jewel-toned millifiori glass of Gary Beecham and Mary Lynn White. Various pieces of lapidary equipment are used to polish the undersides of the millifiori glass cabochons to bring up the depth and glow of their jewel tones. Richard Ritter. s murrini slices are the most difficult to prepare. They arrive in a raw state with jagged saw marks and scratches like a "rough" slab of stone. After many polishing stages on a flat lap machine, the slices are ready to have a bezel hand-crafted for them. The Ritter murrini glass has also proved to be challenging to work with while bezel setting, the last step in creating a finished piece of jewelry. Uneven pressure applied during setting can cause chipping, much like watermelon tourmaline. Once protected by the bezels, the finished work is ready for wear.
This union of glass and metal gives the collector the uniquely exciting opportunity to wear art glass designs that previously were only available for display on a shelf or tabletop.
Contact
- Ruthie & Mike Cohen
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- Arden NC
- US 28704-2904
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