Jewelry and Sculpture Through Unit Construction - Softcover

A new reprint of Patricia Meyerowitz's classic book detailing her approach to jewellery-making through 'unit construction.' Pieces of Meyerowitz's work are held in the V & A Collection in London and in The Hirshhorn Collection in the United States. This book, first published in 1967 remains relevant and useful, a practical guide for all those interested in making jewelry and those interested in the contructivist principles that she employed to such powerful and beautiful effect.

Patricia Meyerowitz was born in London in 1933. After marriage to Jacob Meyerowitz, architect and artist in 1957, Patricia enrolled on a course at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London (now Central St. Martins, University of the Arts) from 1959-1960. It was here in the late 50s that she came across the works of some of the leading edge jewellery designers in Britain at that time; people such as William Johnson, Head of the Central School and a leading proponent of the new ideas coming out of Europe. He brought a new energy to the school, recruiting artists and jewellery designers such as Victor Passmore, Mary Kessel, Patrick Heron, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton. These new recruits introduced a more improvisational technique to jewellery design. Patricia and her contemporaries, Helga Zahn, Emanual Raft, Peter Hauffe and Breon O’Casey became pioneers in jewellery design in the UK. Patricia’s deployment of Constructivist principles dominated both her jewellery and sculpture throughout her life. In 1967 Patricia published ‘Making Jewellery and Sculpture through Unit Construction’ – it is a step by step manual of how to make her jewellery and it remains a most comprehensive text for jewellers. The book explains her principles of jewellery as pieces of art: that it can be worn or not and that the piece, as an intrinsic piece of art, is its only reason for being. Patricia has had many exhibitions of her work, most notably at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 1984. Patricia and Jacob emigrated to the United States in 1969 where she did the majority of her work, continuing to exhibit and lecture until her death in 2012.