S
ome of today’s best-known revivalist jewelers have been designing in
classical style so long, they’re no longer consciously reviving anything.
They absorbed those forms into their own souls — and design vocabularies —
many years ago.
“I went to school to be a painter, not a jeweler,” says Lilly Fitzgerald, a goldsmith/
designer based in Massachusetts. “I was always interested in art history, always
looking at images in books.”Powerful Draw
When she began to make jewelry,
she spent a lot of time looking at
other jewelry, ancient to contempo-
rary. She found herself powerfully
drawn to the motifs and elegant
craftsmanship of 19th-century clas-
sical revival jewelry. “I don’t spend
much time looking at that anymore,”
Lilly says. “But I think I looked at itOld Souls
The past is ever-present for three contemporary
goldsmiths who’ve established their own classical
revival styles By Cathleen McCarthyLilly FitzgeraldBrooch
PHOTO: COURTESYGold, pearls
LILLY FITZGERALDso much, it worked its way into my
subconscious.”
She believes those early years of
studying the classical approach to jew-
elry are permanently stored. “I don’t
even go to it, it just comes out,” she
says. “Even when I’m doing something
a little less classical, it’s still there. It’s
behind the balance and symmetry of
nature that comes out in my work.”“Even when I try to go out of
the box, it always starts looking
classical,” she says. “Even when
I’m trying to be weird, it just
doesn’t come out that way. It’s
not in me.”
Goldsmith/designer Judith
Kaufman also creates high-karat
gold jewels with a strong con-
nection to Archaeological Revival56 LAPIDARY JOURNAL JEWELRY ARTIST