Just Say the WORD
Consider how many times you have uttered “It’s surreal” over the past two years. It’s no coincidence that there have been two big museum shows in the last 12 months dedicated to that post–WWI movement of melting clocks and floating eyes. Now here we are again, reckoning reality with imagination. Like then, the mission of Surrealism still inspires the visions of artists in all realms. (See: Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s and Daniel Roseberry’s line for Schiaparelli in 2022.) The work of jewelers, as with all decorative art, reflects the time in which it was created. The Surrealist era inspired Dalí and Man Ray to translate their abstract ideas into ruby and pearl lips and floating glass and diamond eyes, to try to reconcile some of the absurdity of a postwar reality. In this issue we consider the need for escape and fantasy in our own chaotic world. We single out the work of some of the jewelers who brought a dose of the fantastical into our lives when we needed it. We salute the bold creativity that often comes out of cultural shock (see also: Art Deco). And we thank Beekman New York, the sponsor of our jewelry awards (page 47), whose site is committed to sharing the history of jewelry and whose lending-library approach allows everyone to indulge the dream of owning that enormous domed cocktail ring from the 1950s—even if just for a while.