Dear Ornament Reader,

Spring has come to Ornament. All over California rain has been saturating the earth, nourishing the growth of a burst of flowers, not seen to many in memory. It is a glorious time and our deserts have blossomed into fields filled with lively, lush hues—ocotillo in bloom, poppy and brittlebush covered slopes, pink to purple-colored sand verbena, desert sunflowers, evening primrose, Spanish needles, desert dandelion, cholla, beavertail, and blue lupine. Nature’s palette is a riotous cacophony of color. Not a mirage, suddenly, lakes fill thousands of dry, dusty acres in Death Valley, to be readily populated with urban-dwelling kayakers happily splashing through the waters, along with birds and other fowl. (They will, of course, evanescent states that they are, disappear like a mirage.) Literally tens of excited thousands are making pilgrimages to nature’s churches, synagogues and temples. It is a peaceful, joyous time—if only these wonderful feelings could endure beyond springtime and sink ever more deeply into our hearts, giving root and flower to a rich, warm, loving view of life that we all long to experience.

Our Spring issue includes artists from the twenty-third annual Smithsonian Craft Show, which now has invited thirty-five percent more new artists than previous shows. “The field refreshes itself with new talent,” juror Reed McMillan states. Robin Updike notes an important consideration about David Chatt in describing his work. “It is no surprise that Chatt has taken a standard technique, applied some aesthetic and technical bravura and turned it into a part of his artistic signature,” she writes. “He is an artist who enjoys breaking down boundaries and stretching the limits of both medium and what people expect from a beadworker.”

Chiori Santiago details how Catherine Bacon begins work on her next collection immediately after a buying trip and her returning home. “The current line, dubbed Poetry of Nature, was inspired by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau— ‘the transcendental poets of the nineteenth century, the avant garde of the time,’ she says. ‘They wrote about the transformative quality of nature.’ ” Author Carl Little illuminates the work of Michael Good and his search to understand the fundamental nature of a process. “The movements he has discovered through the development of non-definitive forms,” Little writes, “are extraordinarily elegant (an analogous artform might be the choreography of Martha Graham).”

Jewelry has carried a sacred protective value in most world cultures. “Among Berber-speakers across North Africa, jewelry was meant not only to complement a woman’s costume or enhance her appearance; it also often served as protection from malevolent forces,” writes Lisa Bernasek in her article on the Imazighen. Coeditor Robert Liu demonstrates how the genus Spondylus (thorny or spiny oyster) has been important in jewelry or for ritual purposes from precolumbian to contemporary times. Although found worldwide in tropical waters its use has dominated the precolumbian American Southwest, West Mexico, along the Pacific coast from Mexico to Peru.

Like the myriad embellishments that nature brings to our world, the art of personal adornment brings to Ornament and to its thousands of readers a profusion of bounty that also brings pleasure and thoughtfulness to our lives. Relax and enjoy Spring and Ornament’s delicious moments, dear readers. Summer is up next.