Quiet Elegance: The Jewelry of Eleanor Moty

This monograph is the first comprehensive publication on the work of Eleanor Moty, from her beginnings in 1967 to the present day

American artist Eleanor Moty (b. 1945) is a larger than life personality - not least in the area of studio jewellery. This extraordinary artist and devoted teacher can look back on a career spanning fifty years, during which she inspired subsequent generations.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Eleanor Moty began experimenting with electroforming jewellery. Influenced by the optimistic mood of the American counterculture, she began to be interested in new technology and alternative materials. She successfully reproduced images on metal through photoetching and thus created a series of biographically inspired works which enriched narrative-driven American jewellery art and garnered vast national attention. The increasing focus on material and her talent for absolute precision would ultimately lead to abstract, geometric-architectural pieces of jewellery and to an aesthetic which fundamentally defines her work to this day. The forms of the quartzes and crystals she uses continue to inspire her designs; the structures of the natural inclusions found in the stones flow into the designs of her jewellery. In her hands, nature and art unite in a Quiet Elegance.