Blingin’ it at Villa Terrace

 

In the early 50s I sold Eisenberg Ice, a line of jewelry designed to dazzle. Beautifully constructed of rhinestones big enough to grab attention, it suited the upscale Vogue-reading women who had money to burn. Meant to be worn with genuine Chanel suits and expensive furs, the fakery conjured an opulent era when ladies of certain means decorated themselves impulsively.

Which brings us to The Decorative Impulse, Feb. 17-May 20 at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum.

Warning: Do NOT call the  exhibition a “jewelry show.” And don’t go there thinking you’ll see rings and things and buttons and bows. To the six metalsmiths: Jamie Bennett, Gesine Hackenberg, Rory Hooper, Anya Kivarkis, Amelia Toelke, and Jonathan Wahl, thank you thank you. Yevgeniya Kaganovich, who heads the jewelry and metal-smithing department at the UWM Peck School of the Arts, guest-curated, and I’d sure like to hang one of Amelia Toelke’s medals around her sensational curatorial neck.

A row of Toelke’s outsized medals, perfect for (perhaps) the Cowardly Lion or his likes, hang from satiny ribbons of shades of red, waiting to be draped around the necks of winners. Olympian best describes them. Nearby, a row of charming brooches remind me of badges worn at an R.Crumb-Dr. Seuss convention. The little scrolls beg to be endorsed with a wearer’s signature. I want one. Badly.

 

The Zuber Room, covered with over-the-top wallpaper, gets a hefty shot of even more decorative impulse(s). Holes cut from the decorative faces of formal dinner plates are used to fashion necklaces; there are glorious slender bangles for wrists, and a huge heart (meant to be worn about his or her neck?) that suggests crushed hopes. A glass finger ring stabs the center, but see, no blood. It’s a fairytale grabbed from the metalsmith’s Cracker Jack box ‘O tricks.

I have to say, that, generally, there’s an air of whimsy in the exhibition. Oh and some danger too. Look for it.

If you go online, you can purchase ($135) a repro of Jackie O’s triple strand pearl necklace, but the “pearls” are made of painted glass beads. The Cartier Tank Watch she wore while mourning JFK. Our culture has a web site where you can acquire fake jewelry from almost any historical era. So what’s the point of The Decorative Impulse? And further, is the decorative worth discussing in the same breath as “art?” When design borrows from history, when does it cease being original?

In the intimate lobby of the Villa, a pair of  Piranesi (1720-1778) etchings stopped me dead in my tracks. Their titles suggest the many ways of adorning, or adornment. Was this a coincidental stroke of brilliance in an already dazzling exhibition?