posted 07-23-2009 04:05 PM            

3" long and wears well on a shirt.

posted 07-24-2009 12:07 AM            

I have seen a few of her pieces with pearls and I like the simplicity of this particular design.

posted 07-24-2009 05:09 AM            

quote:

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Modernist Jewelers in Los Angeles, 1940-1970
by Toni Greenbaum
Metalsmith Magazine - Winter 2002
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Of the modernist jewelers working in and around Los Angeles , Esther Lewittes emerges as one of the most engaging. According to Bernard Kesler, chief installation designer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who worked on the "California Design" exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum in the 1960, and 1970s, [19] "Esther was loads of fun ... a real `nut.' [20] Like Al Pine, Lewittes came from New York City , where she received a degree from Columbia University 's Teachers' College. While in New York , she also studied industrial design at the Art Students League and jewelry making with a staff jeweler at Cartier. She began making jewelry in the early 1950s and sold her work through stores such as Georg Jensen and America House in New York and Nanny's in San Francisco . Around 1961 she opened a gallery on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, moving to Melrose Avenue after about a year. She showed her own jewelry as well as other artists' work, in many media. Her stele was mostly three-dimensional and restrained, utilizing both forging and casting, and sometimes incorporating semiprecious stones and wood or ivory. Lewittes sometimes experimented with cutting- edge modes, as is illustrated by a sculptural ring from 1965, which cantilevers over the adjacent finger. Other jewelers who ran their own galleries included Everett Macdonald, whose Laguna Beach shop opened in 1947. Macdonald created open sculptural silver and gold jewelry, often utilizing nylon monofilament within the negative spaces of his pendants and earrings, reminiscent of sculpture by Henry Moors and Naum Gabo.
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