Architects Are Building a New Image : Seven Respond to Request for Jewelry Designs
Architect Stanley Tigerman isn’t one to gush.
“Most jewelry is gaudy, gauche and nouveau riche,” says Chicago-based Tigerman, who, along with some of his peers, has been toying with the craft he maligns most.
“Since we’re all egocentric,” Tigerman says, “we think we can do it too.”
Acme Studio thought he could also. The Los Angeles-based design firm coaxed Tigerman, Richard Meier, Robert A.M. Stern and other prominent architects to design a line of cloisonne jewelry, under the label Architects for Acme. Seven agreed, and turned out precise little drawings of baubles from an architect’s vantage. In Tigerman’s case, that meant earrings covered with images of stairways or aerial views of rooms.
“I think the stuff we did is very pretty, thank you,” he says.
His and the others’ works form a 50-piece collection, priced $15 to $90, of earrings, bolo ties, necklaces and brooches, which are new for spring in the L.A. area at the Museum of Contemporary Art and at Malibu Art and Design. Not the usual outlets for fashion jewelry.
“We’re more into making design history than a fashion statement,” says Adrian Olabuenaga, the Argentina-born jewelry designer who founded Acme Studio in late 1984.
From Acme’s start, Olabuenaga hoped to collaborate with major names from the design world. His first project involved 14 members of Memphis, a Milan-based design group, known for its colorful, post-modern style.
“The logical next step” was to work with American architects, 32-year-old Olabuenaga says. “These are the people who are creating the look of post-modernism and neo-modernism.” And not just through buildings but furnishings and interiors. Olabuenaga figured some would be willing to try another medium.
Richard Meier scribbled his drawings for Acme on airline stationery, while flying somewhere over the Midwest.
“After you read all the magazines you can read, it’s a long trip between New York and L.A.,” says Meier, who, in addition to $20 earrings, is designing the new $100 million J. Paul Getty Fine Arts Center in the Santa Monica Mountains.
“I like the idea of doing something very quickly, and people can say: ‘I like it,’ ‘I don’t like it,’ or ‘I’d like to wear it.’
“I don’t take it very seriously,” he adds. “I don’t think it’s serious jewelry.”
But Acme’s Olabuenaga calls the work “a collectible, relevant part of design history.
“If you look back to the ‘20s or the ‘40s, whenever there’s any serious design movement, there’s always a collection of jewelry that is representative of that style. These are the antiques of the future.”
He says the architects’ styles are as visible in the new baubles, which were produced in the Far East, as in their buildings. Meier’s white, silver and blue grid-pattern earrings echo his clean-line buildings. Stern’s cloisonne pieces, shaped like miniature curtains and apartment buildings, show his more classic bent. Tigerman, who calls himself “America’s ultimate pluralist,” created busy, flamboyant pieces.
Florida architect Laurinda Spear, New Jersey-based Michael Graves, New York’s Peter Eisenman and Argentine architect Alberto Olabuenaga (the jeweler’s father) also are designing for the project.
The younger Olabuenaga has lived in Los Angeles since childhood, working in and out of the jewelry and gift trades for 15 years.
Five years ago, he met New Zealander Lesley Bailey, 33, who shared a background in jewelry and marketing. They formed a studio named Acme, he says, “because it sounds like you’re working out of a factory that’s two blocks long.” (The studio, just west of Downtown Los Angeles, is really a 2,200-square-foot apartment.)
“But between you and me,” he admits, “the name came out of ‘The Road Runner’ cartoon. Everything the coyote buys to do away with the Road Runner is by Acme.”
This month Acme also introduces a third jewelry line called Artists for Acme, designed by painters Billy Al Bengston, Laddie John Dill and Peter Alexander, among others. Meantime, the architects are talking about an encore.
Stern, contacted at his New York office, calls the jewelry “a miniaturized form of architecture”--but without the consequence. “It’s much more of a responsibility to make a building,” he says, “than an earring.”
