Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale

Author:Patrick Gale
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780007292356
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2007-08-24T07:00:00+00:00

HAIR CLASP (1964?).

Silver, tungsten florist wire and steel.

This ornament is said to have been made by Dame Barbara Hepworth as a bracelet for a fancy dress party. It was part of Kelly’s strong signature ‘look’ when worn as a hair clasp to keep her hair out of her eyes as she worked. The story of its origins seems unlikely. Hepworth was not known as a jeweller even of occasional pieces and there is no documentary evidence of her having known Kelly, let alone liked her well enough to make her gifts. If the story is true then it seems Hepworth made (or acquired) the piece as part of her costume for the St Ives Borough’s Artists’ Ball of 1964. A fundraising event, this set out to ape the more genuinely bohemian Arts Balls organized a decade earlier by Hepworth and colleagues to raise funds for the Penwith Society of Arts they had formed in 1949 as a modernist rival to the traditionalist St Ives Society of Artists. The two semicircular plates are made of silver (not hallmarked) bound together with what appears to be the thicker grade of florist’s wire. On closer examination, the hoop-ended steel pin which then fixes the two halves together around hair or wrist, is a kitchen skewer of a type then commonly available, with its pointed end sawn off.

(From the collection of Morwenna Middleton)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.