Sunday, February 8, 2009

Where Are All the Black Jewelry Designers?



Seek and you shall find...now as a general rule I don't discuss this subject with *ahem* non minority folks because it's just an accepted fact that designers within the jewelry industry are mainly non minority not just non-black. *shrug* For the most part most minority jewelry designers find success within their community. While other people are just famous people who make jewelry and happen to be black/minority. That's sorta different but that's an issue for another blog post.



Anyway, while reading my morning emails I saw a post from Angel, a black women also making jewelry. *waving at Angel* I was looking thru her links...cause I find black jewelry folks like to link to each other...when I saw a link for Etsy Artists of Color. Whaaaa? Where have I been to not know about this site!!! Right away I clicked, read, and of course signed up. =)

Then I started thinking...when was the last time I googled for black jewelry designers. A few seconds later my google search lead me to this link on the JCK blog titled Where Are All the Black Jewelry Designers? Well waddayaknow. The article as a whole was an interesting read but one of the points that stood out for me is
Jewelry assumes different qualities against varying skin tones, and looks lucious on all. Yet we only see jewels on white skin in ads. Why?

Need convincing? You have only to look at Meisel's VI images to see the intrinsic beauty of black women, and the (selling!) power of their skin.."

Selling power of our skin?! LOL, I don't know what to say about that sentence. Ah heck I'm just glad to see someone blog about this

8 comments:

Lucinda said...

Waves back enthusiastically!

MaricrisG said...

This is so true. I long for a group that are Asian but so hard to come by. Oh well, can I bond with you instead? :)

Unknown said...

I popped on for the gorgeous bracelet...
so so pretty ... so glad I did..
*very interesting...

being there for each other...
is why I'm here....oh and lots of fun
hope you saw some sunshine today...

mona & the gaffer girls

Beaded Zen said...

Zen Mama your more then welcome to bond with me. LOL

mona & the gaffer girls, thanks for surfing on in.

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I'm a white girl and it's true, almost all the jewelry designers I know are white. But that's also true for the astrologers and people in other metaphysics that I know. In fact, it's mostly white people comeing to the shows I've done, too. I'm always happy to see diversity - we have a colorful world!

Warmly,
Barbara

Unknown said...

HI

I'm Pete from "Inside the Artisan" Sunday issues. Thanks for your comments. It's good to know that over in NY youj are getting some decent weather - good because we seem to get your weather here in the Uk some 10 days later. Gives us some hope! Mustn't grumble, though, we're getting temperatures up into 10 degrees.
Like your blog and ctalogue pages. I've tried many crafts but never jewellery. We used to live in Namibia and that was a paradise for semi precious stones of all kinds. There were diamonds there as well but the authorities, for some reason, took a dim view of folk picking up diamonds from the desert floor whereas they were very relaxed about anyone picking up semi precious stones.
Have a good week

Anonymous said...

I have an in-progress blog post about black jewelry designers coming up (primarily metalsmiths, goldsmiths, etc. though). You'll be happy to know that there are quite a few of us out there! I know that when I started out a few years ago, we were VERY hard to find. I did all kinds of searches which yielded practically ZERO results. --Glad to see you know about Donna Chambers! I love her work, and I think she's a classic example of a "hidden gem."

Great post.

Anonymous said...

I like her quote...she's talking about advertising and telling people to use women (or men) of color in ads because the jewelry will sell just as well as on the non minority gals.