Neckpiece

Comprised of a hammered collar with four vertical, gold and ebony pendants, this neckpiece was made by the modernist jeweler Ed Wiener. Wiener’s career started in the 1940s in the bohemian hot bed of Greenwich Village, where he produced hand-hammered silver jewelry alongside other artists such as Sam Kramer and Art Smith. Although his early jewelry found formal inspiration in Alexander Calder, as he progressed, Wiener evolved his own vocabulary, often shaped by his interest in adopting new materials and techniques in casting, setting, and joining. By the 1950s, Wiener produced organic and dynamic shapes identified with ergonomic form and the new optimism on the progress of the atomic age. This neckpiece is part of a collection of twelve pieces donated by Wiener’s daughter which show the development his own language of modernist forms.