Cummins / Skinner
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Her jewelry, which is playful and funny, is about the places she lives, and the landscapes that fill her imagination; about her family history, and different ideas of what it is to be an American. As a jeweler, Hall never plays it safe, preferring to fly by the seat of her pants, and push her skills and technical knowledge, having loads of fun. She amuses herself, and in the process amuses the wearer and viewer.
The Jewelry of Laurie Hall
For more than four decades, Laurie Hall has been making stories the subject of her work.
Susan Cummins and Damian Skinner
NORTH BY NORTH WEST The
Jewelry of Laurie Hall
This is the story of Laurie Hall’s jewelry.
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Laurie Hall. 1986. Photo: Keith Proctor
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C o nt e nt s Introduction 7 Gallery 12 Origin Stories / Camp Craft 17 Gallery 31 Living in the Northwest 36 Gallery 48 In the Classroom 55 Gallery 62 Pacific Northwest Jewelry 70 Gallery 88 Telling Tales 94 Gallery 101 Conclusion 106 Acknowledgments 109
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Intro duction Jewelry is often accompanied by stories. Family heirlooms, for example, are passed down through generations, and stories are passed down with them. The American contemporary jeweler Laurie Hall makes stories the subject of her work. For instance, she memorializes her parents in a neckpiece from 1987 called What a Pair! It takes the form of a playing card made from bronze wire, with the Q and queen’s crown at the top and the K and king’s crown at the bottom; a found bronze pear in an elaborate frame sits in the middle of the composition. The punning title, with its slippage between “pair” and “pear,” is the kind of wordplay that Laurie regularly uses to title her jewelry. Laurie’s mother grew up in Hood River, Oregon, which is known for its pear farms. Two hands holding olive branches and a series of hearts on a scroll represent the love that her parents had for each other. The hinges that join the upper and lower parts of the pendant perhaps reflect the flexibility of their working relationship in raising their three children. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ Laurie was born in 1944 in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in the Cedar Hills neighborhood of Beaverton, a suburb outside of Portland, with an older brother and a sister who was only thirteen months younger. Laurie’s mother, Frances, was a college graduate with a knowledge of art and culture; she was the main breadwinner in the family, though she also sewed their clothes and made cookies and cakes. Her father, William, was the fun one who sang, played the violin and the banjo, and sold real estate when he could. He had a small amount of schooling but loved designing landscapes, building fences, and remodeling their house. Perhaps because they made things, Laurie’s parents appreciated handmade objects and displayed them around their house. Laurie grew up loving the woven baskets and beaded pouches made by Indigenous artists from the Yakima region of Washington State and the slightly wonky longcase clock made by her maternal grandfather. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ Frances worked as a secretary at the school that Laurie and her siblings attended, and she walked the children home at the end of each day. For Laurie, excelling in school was extremely important. Though the family did not have much, somehow her mother was able to put all three kids through college on her secretarial salary. Frances Laurie Hall What a Pair! would describe her parenting style as a 1987. Found bronze pear, embossed bronze frame, sterling silver, and bronze wire. 3 ½ × 5 × ½ inches. Private collection. Photo: Richard Nichol
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Laurie Hall Either/Or 1996. Sterling silver and yew wood. 34 × 2 ½ × 1 ½ inches. Sandy and Lou Grotta collection. Photo: Richard Nichol
Either/Or is a neckpiece made by Laurie in 1996. Two miniature oars, hand carved from yew wood, are tipped with sterling silver at the ends of the blades to give them strength, capped with sterling silver at the end of the handles to provide a connection for the silver snake chain, and joined with a sterling silver fitting to form an X. The chain is long enough to fit over the wearer’s head, and the oars hang down in front of the wearer’s chest. Laurie first began carving oars when she made a series of boat brooches in the late 1980s. This piece recognizes the elegance of oars; the curves of the form and the subtle beauty of the materials (especially the yew wood) are put on display. The title, in typical Hall fashion, is a pun, which sounds like “either oar.” “Either-or” is used to name a situation in which it is necessary to decide between two alternatives, the choice of one making the other impossible. Here, both
oars are the same, and both are required if their function is to be fulfilled; in other words, this is not an either-or situation. ∎∎∎
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Laurie Hall Mow Bett’a 1989. Sterling silver (oxidized), found rubber wheels, and yew wood. 6 × 2 ½ × 1 ½ inches. Sandy and Lou Grotta collection. Photo: Richard Nichol
Mow Bett’a,, a brooch made by Laurie in 1989, comprises a model lawn mower made from oxidized sterling silver, with black rubber toy wheels that Laurie purchased from a hobby store and hand-carved strips of basswood that form the handle and part of the cutting mechanism. The silver blades rotate, although not when the mower is pushed. The brooch is designed to perch on the wearer’s shoulder, with the elegant arc of the handle contouring to the curve of the body. Laurie originally considered providing a strip of fake lawn but ultimately decided against any further embellishments. The story behind this piece is personal. Laurie made it during the summer for the Bellevue Art Museum’s exhibition that was held at the same time as the Annual Arts and Crafts Fair in Washington. At the time, Laurie was thinking about her father, an Englishman who used to mow the family lawn dressed in a suit, tie, and hat. In later years, he used a power mower, but here Laurie conjures up the mechanical beauty of a push mower powered by the movement of the wheels over grass. The title refers to the phrase “mo’ better,” slang for something that is the crème de la crème, the very best, and which was immortalized in Spike Lee’s 1990 movie Mo’ Better Blues. Laurie cannot resist the pun of
“mow” and “mo’,” which neatly captures the suburban showmanship of her dad, who made sure he looked tip-top before mowing the lawn. Mow better, indeed. ∎∎∎
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Laurie Hall She’s Got a Ticket to Ride 2016. Sterling silver (oxidized), yew wood, black jade, and bronze. 43 × 1 × 1 ¼ inches. Horace Luke collection. Photo: Dan Kvitka
She’s Got a Ticket to Ride is a neckpiece made by Laurie in 2016. The sections of railway track and the engine and freight cars are fabricated from oxidized sterling silver, with yewwood sleepers for the rails, a cargo of yew-wood logs, a lump of black jade standing in for coal, and a bronze cowcatcher and “8” on the engine. A sterling silver chain with the word “RIDE” hangs from the front of the piece, where the freight cars and the tracks meet, and the neckpiece is attached with a hook and hoop clasp around the neck. When it is worn, the train appears to chug its way up one side of the wearer’s body. A few different sources inspired Laurie to make this piece. One was her memory of the classic children’s book The Little Engine That Could, first published in 1930 to instill the value of optimism and hard work. Another was Hillary Clinton’s run for President of the United States, and the hope that she would shatter the glass ceiling as the country’s first female to be elected to that role. (The neckpiece was completed before the outcome of the November 2016 election was known.) “She’s got a ticket to ride” is a phrase from the Beatles’ song “Ticket to Ride,” which was released in 1965. For Laurie, the title declared that a
woman could write her own ticket in America.
∎∎∎
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Origin Stories / Camp Craft Laurie Hall is descended from early settlers in Oregon. She considers her family to be part of the state’s pioneer stock, giving her standing in the community and a strong sense of place. Her mother, Frances Acheson Hall, told Laurie stories about the family’s history. Laurie’s maternal great-grandfather, Mathew Acheson, bought a plot of land in the Willamette Valley in a town called Shedd. He had come with his brother-in-law, John Crawford, from Ainsworth, Iowa, in 1865 with a leather pouch containing five thousand dollars in gold coins to purchase land in the Willamette Valley. Laurie still has this pouch, along with an Indigenous beaded bag that he had been given along the way. After a long trip on horseback along the Oregon Trail to check out their new home, they returned to Iowa, and a few years later, in 1872, came back with their families. Acheson, his wife, and their children settled on a plot of land next to his brother-in-law near Shedd. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ Many stories have been told, and rich mythologies created, about the Oregon Trail journey from the Missouri River through the valleys and high plains, fields filled with rye grasses, the high desert, the mountains, and finally to Oregon. It was a difficult and exhausting trip through territory not yet confiscated from the Indigenous Peoples, who were understandably hostile to the new arrivals, and where water and food were often hard to find. Many of the wagons carried families with children, drawn by oxen or mules, and the settlers also drove cattle for food and milk along the way. They faced extreme weather conditions, fevers and cholera, the death of family members, buffalo stampedes, and attacks from Indigenous war parties. Their wagons got stuck in mud, and their animals strained to get them across the rivers. The stresses and hardships drained them, and by the time they arrived at the end of the trail they were exhausted. Subsequent generations of white Americans would regard their journey as a heroic adventure, and descen-
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Fiddling Around, a ring created by Laurie in 1988, is made from sterling silver and ebony. It replicates the scroll and tuning pegs at the top of a violin. The scroll sits on the side of the finger, and its shiny surfaces reflect the wearer’s hand. The pegs can be turned by the wearer. This ring was made in memory of Laurie’s father, who played violin with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. His broken violin hung on her wall for many years, and here she transforms the decorative volute and pegs into a wearable object. The title, Fiddling Around, is a phrase that means to fritter away your time doing unimportant things. Fiddle is an informal name for a violin; it also means to touch or fidget restlessly, as well as to falsify accounts for criminal gain. You can fiddle with this ring, which is itself based on a fiddle, yet it memorializes a man who had sung professionally, had played violin in a symphony orchestra, and had played banjo in a riverboat band. He did not fiddle around; he
made a life from his love of music.
∎∎∎
Laurie Hall Fiddling Around 1988. Sterling silver and ebony. 1 × 1 × 1 inches. Private collection. Photo: Rod Slemmons
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Laurie Hall Odds One in Ten 1989. Sterling silver, bronze, brass, copper, and found antique metal game pieces. 16 × 6 × ½ inches. Racine Museum of Art, gift of Drs. Judith and Martin Bloomfield. Photo: Roger Schreiber
Laurie made the neckpiece Odds One in Ten in 1989. While it may look like vintage folk art, only the circular game piece between the flags at the top of the pendant is a found object, purchased from a Seattle curio shop called Hat and Heart. Laurie fabricated the rest of it, punching the silhouettes of jockeys and racing horses at full gallop from sterling silver and copper sheet and attaching them to square silver tubing so that they can move back and forth. The flag on the left features an upside-down cross projecting down from the bronze border; the other flag is undecorated, apart from the copper border. Hand-carved and polychrome painted jockeys and horses with numbered saddle blankets were often made for carnival games and are now an established genre of American folk art. A widely shared statistic was the inspiration for this piece—namely, the odds of a single woman in America getting married. A shock article in Newsweek, published in 1986, reported that white, college-educated women born in the mid-1950s who were still single at the age of thirty had only a 20 percent chance of finding a husband, and by the age of thirty-five, that dropped to a one-in-ten chance. If you were over forty, as Laurie was in 1989, you were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than meet “the one” at the altar. These statistics were later thoroughly debunked, but Laurie, receiving the bad news, used her Christmas break to make this funny and sad horse race that can never be won. The hand on the game piece, with its accusatory finger, spins
ineffectually, pointing to random numbers between zero and nine that ultimately make no difference, as the game is rigged. ∎∎∎
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Living in the Northwest The Pacific Northwest, where Laurie Hall has lived all her life, is a magnificent but damp region, with abundant forests and bodies of water for entertainment and livelihood. It exists in a kind of mythical mist, stories of its past filling the place with visitations. Laurie uses her environment as a stimulus for her work, which is filled with references to trees, boats, fishing, and other signs of life in Washington and Oregon. Place matters to her, and over the decades she has absorbed her surroundings into her jewelry. She is very aware of where she lives and where she sends her work, and of what might intrigue viewers and buyers in other parts of the country. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ In 1988 Laurie received a bunch of buttons made of yew wood from a former student who had attended her art class at Mercer Island High School. The student, Allyson Ringgenberg Spencer, had gone on to study at Parsons School of Design and then obtained a job designing sweaters at Donna Karan in New York City. The yew-wood buttons were unfinished circles of wood still waiting for the holes that would transform them into buttons. The rounds with their ring markings were stand-ins for the stumps that Laurie frequently encountered on her hikes in the forests around Seattle, a legacy of the lumber trade that had shaped the local economy and the landscape. Not sure what to do with them, Laurie stashed them away in her studio among her abundant collection of found objects and interesting materials that might prove useful in the future. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ In the summer of 1988, Laurie was preparing to send a piece to an exhibition at The Elements gallery in New York City. As usual, she was behind in producing enough work and in a panic to get the show finished. Looking over the possibilities, she realized that the yew buttons were about the same size as a collection of compasses that she also had in the studio. She was a hiker and had experience using a compass in the woods. The stump-like rounds of wood with the addition of a compass had the makings of an interesting story; remembering a time in the mid-1970s when she was momentarily lost in the Laurie Hall Stumped North Cascades, she called the fin1988. Yew wood, sterling silver (oxidized), and antique compass. ished neckpiece Stumped. A com13 (diameter?) × ¼ × ⁄ inches. The Museum of Fine Arts, 3
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Houston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection, museum purchase funded by the Morgan Foundation in honor of Catherine Asher Morgan, 2002.3793
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Her house was surrounded by woods, and every day, before she made her way downstairs to her jewelry studio in the garage, she would look out her windows to the trees. This new neckpiece, with its combination of wood and citrines, added the kind of sparkle she felt about the mystery and magic of the Pacific Northwest forests, and the beauty of the wood that she often used in her jewelry. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ In the Woods is more complex than Stumped, with the buttons clustering together in some places to form small groupings. The visual effect ebbs and flows as the viewer’s eye travels around the neckpiece. Each round has a small circle drilled into it, sometimes in the center and sometimes slightly off-center, each lined with silver. These are the pegs that hold the buttons in place, and this technique leaves the wooden edges of the rounds visible. Laurie has also added a sprinkling of faceted citrine stones set in gold bezels. The bright lemon-colored stones twinkle among the tree stumps like the sun shining between the leaves in a forest canopy. The title is unusually straightforward, simply referencing her place in the world and expressing her love of nature. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ Another reference to trees appears in Log Rule (2011). One of Laurie’s friends, the textile artist Gloria Crouse, had asked her to make a special piece as a memorial. Crouse’s house had burned down, and loggers came to remove the trees around the house before she rebuilt it. Crouse’s husband, who had been the head of the Game Department in Olympia, had died a few years earlier, so the necklace was a memorial to both the man and the house. In response, Laurie made a necklace in which she incorporated logging tools, including three axes, a crosscut saw, and a carpenter saw, as well as a ruler, small pocketknife, part of a vintage chain from a toilet left by one of her students in a desk drawer, a slab of ebony, and a round of wood. Crouse had provided Laurie with most of the objects to use in the necklace. The title, Log Rule, refers not only to a method used by the logging industry to calculate the volume of standing trees but also to the section of boxwood ruler used in the necklace, a material that turns up frequently in Laurie’s jewelry. Certainly, logs rule in Stumptown, as the history of Portland proves. The Pacific Northwest is wet. Water in the form of rain, rivers, lakes, and ocean is a constant presence. Two rivers define the layout of the city of Portland, where Laurie was born and now lives. Along the northern edge is the Columbia River, a body of water that loomed large in the stories of her family’s pioneering history told by her mother and in her own memories of Indigenous villages, where she watched the locals fishing for salmon. Running through the middle of Portland is the Willamette River, which divides the west and east parts of town. Numerous bridges cross the river to join the two halves of the city. ∎∎∎∎∎ In Seattle, where Laurie taught from 1966 to 2001, Puget Laurie Hall Log Rule 2011. Found objects furnished by Gloria Crouse (small pocketSound laps at the western shores knife, carpenter saw, top and second ax), found ax, ebony, boxwood ruler, wood, sterling silver, and vintage toilet chain. 13 × 5 ½ × ½ inches. Tacoma Art Museum, gift of the artist in honor of Gloria Crouse. Photo: Doug Yaple
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Laurie Hall Nautical Mile 1994. Found WWII boat model, sea glass, iron wire, and sterling silver (oxidized). 16 × 3 ½ × 1 ¼ inches. Ronald C. Margolis collection. Photo: Richard Nichol
the Bush School in Seattle asked her to be chair of its art department; since it was a private school, she could work there and still receive her retirement benefits. She was delighted. Change had come. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ Laurie has used boats frequently in her jewelry for a variety of reasons. Often, she has made work to suit the theme of a show or the tastes of a particular audience. Sometimes works were inspired by the materials at hand, like the two model boats that she used in Nautical Mile and About a Boat (both 1994) that she acquired from a toy collector and vendor whose home in the Roosevelt district of Seattle was open to walk-in customers. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ Nautical Mile was motivated by a book given to Laurie by Mia McEldowney, the owner of Mia Gallery in Seattle. The Ashley Book of Knots is an encyclopedia of knots used by many sailors, boaters, and fishermen. Laurie loved the book and used some of its examples on this neckpiece. A knotted oxidized silver wire forms the chain, from which the boat pendant hangs, with a piece of found sea glass as an anchor. The boat, like the Laurie Hall About a Boat other that she purchased at the 1994. Found WWII Boy Scout or Cub Scout boat model, sterling silver (oxidized and flame-colored), foxtail chain, and beach pebble. 16 × 3 ½ × 1 ¼ inches. Ann McEldowney collection. Photo: Richard Nichol
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Laurie made the neckpiece No. 2, Please! in 1988. The title is a nod to Laurie’s working life as a teacher, and to the school environment, where generations of students were instructed to use a No. 2 pencil when taking exams, as the lead is perfectly balanced: not too hard or soft, not too dark or light. The pencils in this work are classic No. 2s, in a variety of colors (including the common yellow) and lengths. Although a few still have their erasers at one end, only one of the pencils has a sharpened tip. The rest are capped with bronze and linked to form a chain. The eye is carved from basswood and painted, and the various No. 2, Please! is best under2s are made from bronze and black color core. stood as a sly boast about why Laurie was so pleased to be an art teacher rather than an educator in other subjects. The neckpiece conveys the rigmarole and rules of exams and the need for surveillance. The eye might represent a student’s gaze straying onto another student’s paper or the teacher at the front of the room making sure no one cheats. Laurie ex-
plained that she taught art because she could imagine much better uses for the pencil. The neckpiece also recalls the work of Kiff Slemmons, who often used pencils in her own jewelry pieces. ∎∎∎
Laurie Hall No. 2, Please! 1988. Bronze, found No. 2 pencils, basswood, and color core. 16 × 4 ¾ × ¾ inches. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection, museum purchase funded by the Morgan Foundation in honor of Catherine Asher Morgan, 2002.3791
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Laurie Hall Left-Right 1992. Sterling silver (oxidized), foxtail chain, and grosgrain ribbon. 32 × 5 × ½ inches. Alida Latham collection. Photo: Richard Nichol
Left-Right, a neckpiece made by Laurie in 1992, is a design that Laurie first produced for an exhibition called Ubiquitous Bead, curated by Ramona Solberg in 1985. Not sure what to make for that show, she had looked up the definition of “bead” in the dictionary, which said that a bead was an object with a hole that enabled it to be threaded on a cord. Inspiration struck in the form of shoes, which are ubiquitous and come ready-made with eye holes for the laces, making them a kind of bead. Laurie has produced at least five versions of this neckpiece, making by hand the fifteen to eighteen pairs of shoes that are required and playing around with different ways of arranging the footwear. This version, with the shoes neatly lined up, is her favorite. For Laurie, it conjures memories of being in first
grade, standing in line with the other kids at school, shyly staring at her feet, walking with one foot in front of the other, left-right, left-right. ∎∎∎
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government. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ In the 1970s, Ken Cory also took on this theme, although, unlike Woell, his jewelry often appropriated the forms of Indigenous adornment, like the squash blossom necklace or the silver buckles and jewelry made in the Southwest. Cory used found consumer items, sometimes recast in metal, to ask questions. For instance, he incorporated bronze pencils and used rifle shells in a necklace, possibly commenting on broken treaties and genocidal policies. He also used pieces of resin-coated candy corn in a silver belt buckle, perhaps pointing to the effects of American consumer culture on Indigenous populations and certainly gesturing to the commercialization of Hopi artistic traditions. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ However, Laurie’s jewelry is different in its commitment to disguise, to “playing Indian,” as seen in certain periods of her work. She transformed a magazine photograph of a tipi painted with an image of a bear into neckpieces in which the bear becomes a standin for herself. In Chief Bone Gone Fishin’ Bone Fish (1981), a Native American wearing a feathered headdress and paddling a canoe represents Laurie’s boyfriend and her thwarted hopes for the future; the neckpiece even has a title that mimics the pidgin English that Native Americans speak in so much American popular culture. A group of her works from the 1970s and early 1980s adopt the styles and materials of Indigenous art to provide a way for Laurie to articulate her complicated sense of personal and family identity, her belonging to a specific place. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ In the 1980s, when Laurie was making many of these works, conversations about cultural appropriation were unsettling the fine art world. Yet for Laurie, the issue did not become personal until the mid-1990s, when she told fellow jeweler Micki Lippe about her intentions to make another necklace with an Indigenous theme. Lippe responded, “You are not Native American. You shouldn’t make it.” Laurie replied that if she wanted to make it, she would do so, but in the end she did not. It was not that she made a conscious decision that such subjects and aesthetic borrowings were wrong; rather, her jewelry was moving in a different direction by this time. ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ In 2000, Mia McEldowney from the Mia Gallery in Seattle curated an exhibition about cultural appropriation at the Tacoma Art Museum called Under the Influence: Northwest Jewelry and Ethnographic Objects, which paired the work of contemporary jewelers like Ramona Solberg, Ken Cory, Ron Ho, and Kiff Slemmons with what were described as “ethnographic influences.” The exhibition juxtaposed several of Laurie’s pieces, including Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! (1981), Umiak (1989), and North by Northwest (1995), with a baby hammock from the Philippines, four bone nose ornaments from the Asmat people in Indonesia, and four objects made by the Inuit and Yupik peoples of Alaska. (One of them, a twentieth-century mask made of wood, feathers, and gut, was owned by Ramona Solberg.) These compariKen Cory Squash Blossom Necklace sons were based on the innate sense 1974. Shells, light bulbs, cast bronze, leather, sterling silver, copper, and found objects. 15 ¾ × 4 × 5⁄8 inches. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection, promised gift of Helen Williams Drutt English
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