When jeweler Mary Hallam Pearse arrived at the University of Georgia in 2005, she found an odd collection of rings tucked away on glass shelves in a vintage wooden display case along a back wall in the jewelry and metalwork studio, largely obscured by dust. Inside were hundreds of rings with faded tags listing quirky titles and names of artists—many of whom are now considered leaders in the field, such as Jamie Bennett, Harlan Butt, the late Ken Cory, Robert Ebendorf, Susan Kingsley, Rod McCormick, Bruce Metcalf, Jim Meyer, Barbara Walter, and Nancy Worden. Her surprise elicited colorful tales from her friends and colleagues involved with their creation: University of Georgia jewelry and metalwork professor Rob Jackson, jeweler and gallery owner Jim Cotter, SUNY New Paltz metal/jewelry professor Jamie Bennett, and University of Georgia professor emeritus for jewelry and metalwork Gary Noffke. She learned that in the mid-1970s, Cotter and Noffke, with jewelers Lane Coulter and Elliott Pujol, decided over drinks at Summervail, a summer metalsmithing symposium at Colorado Mountain College held from 1975 to 1985, to organize a group jewelry exhibition and travel it to schools and galleries across the country. This would allow the artists involved to add a long list of exhibitions to their résumés. They thought it also would be a good idea to keep the objects as a collection so that the artists could add that to their résumés as well. Noffke, who arrived at the University of Georgia in 1971 (following Robert Ebendorf’s tenure there, from 1967-1971), took the lead and decided that the show should be limited to rings in order to encourage the artists to deal with content rather than just style and technique. Under his direction, the Jewelry and Metalwork area in the Department of Art (now the Lamar Dodd School of Art) organized the first of three annual National Ring Shows in 1977 and established the Phi Beata Heata National Ring Collection. Thirty years later, this remarkable collection remains as a document of that exciting episode in American craft history.

The format for the National Ring Shows was unconventional, and rather than submitting slides of their work with an entry fee, Noffke asked artists to mail actual rings as well as photographs of themselves, which became the property of the University of Georgia’s student jewelry and metals organization. Coulter, Pujol and Cotter served as jurors for all three National Ring Shows, and were joined in 1978 by Bill Helwig and in 1979 by Barry Merritt and Robert Ebendorf. The jurors and Noffke collaborated on the trophies. The first year they made three wall-mounted trophies, for the first, second and third place winners, in the form of halved metal chalices with rings on their stems attached to slices of Georgia pine. The second year they created four first-prize trophy awards that were plaque-mounted belt buckles, conceived by Cotter as “a combination of a rodeo and professional wrestling belt buckle for a ‘World Champion Ring Maker.’ ” For the third show the jurors presented desk sets of shellacked slabs of pine with a variety of sculptural elements loosely themed to match the show’s three categories: wedding rings, school rings and fancy rings.

Following their exhibition at the University of Georgia, the rings in the first two shows traveled the United States, unaccompanied, by Greyhound bus in a pair of old suitcases that accumulated layers of stickers, tags and decorations as they went from venue to venue. Stops included Kansas State University, Southern Illinois University, the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Colorado, Virginia Commonwealth University, State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz, the University of Wisconsin, Memphis Academy of Arts (now Memphis College of Art), and the Arts and Crafts Center in Pittsburgh. The least traditional venue for the show was the bus depot in Manhattan, Kansas, selected by Pujol because Manhattan did not have a gallery and spaces were not available at Kansas State University. The shows were met with enthusiasm and curiosity and were often hosted by artists whose work was included. The exhibition tours encountered a few setbacks, though—several rings were stolen and once the suitcases sat forgotten in a bus station in Kansas for several months—so the third show opened in Memphis and only traveled to the University of Georgia (by Winnebago).

By the time of the National Ring Shows, studio craftsmen were drawing upon a variety of influences beyond modernism, including Pop art, Abstract Expressionism, and the Funk and Punk movements. Jewelers were moving away from a strict emphasis on function and technique, exploring concept and the use of unconventional materials. The framework for the National Ring Shows heightened the expression of these trends toward individuality and non-precious materials. Andy Nasisse, then an assistant professor in ceramics at the University of Georgia, explained that, by keeping the rings submitted, the project promoted “a much more adventuresome approach to the idea of the ring, not only as a decorative object but as a phenomenon, or an experience.” Rather than spending a lot of money on supplies, the artists used inexpensive materials, and instead of expending large amounts of time preparing their submissions, many made rings just before the deadlines. The photographs they sent range from formal portraits to goofy snapshots to found imagery (Ken Cory submitted a magazine clipping of baseball player Jim Palmer modeling Jockey underwear), and many venues displayed the photographs with the rings, sometimes in the ziploc bags in which they were packed. Some of the artists used aliases and many incorporated humor in their designs and titles: there were an assortment of ear rings, toe rings, nose rings, and teething rings incorporating various interpretations of those body parts; rings with cumbersomely long titles such as I’m into fibers, you know. How am I supposed to relate to this ring stuff? and Last year I went conceptual, so I decided to be traditional this year; and funny rings like Pretty Cocky Stuff of peacock feathers and brass, Genuine Dime’un of silver, brass, a dime, and a rhinestone, and M-Bezel-Ring of silver and currency. Audrey Strohl, writing for the Memphis Press-Scimitar in 1979, described the rings as “examples of dry wit and piercing puns” and suggested that the photographs of the artists “would make a worthy exhibit for the Saturday Night Live TV series.

The Phi Beata Heata National Ring Collection comprises more than four hundred rings made between 1977 and 1979. The collection includes Jamie Bennett’s silver and enamel Tack and Shade Ring in which the enamel creates a permanent shadow beneath the tack, Steuart Bremner’s Polaroid photographs documenting his rings of snow and fire, Linda Hesh’s photo collage resembling an antique ring, a painted wood construction by Marjorie Schick, Lynda Ross’s reconfigured high school ring, and a glass bug ring by Robert Levin. The materials used in the rings in the collection include the traditional precious metals and gemstones but also unexpected materials such as resins, chewing gum, film, animal parts, dried garbage, hair, rice, and aluminum foil. The rings reflect, to varying degrees, their makers’ technical skills, creativity, daring and general cheekiness, as well as the stylistic and conceptual trends of the time. The artists whose work is represented in the collection were students, professors and independent artists in the late 1970s and came from a variety of disciplines in addition to jewelry and metalsmithing.

Mary Hallam Pearse and Rob Jackson, the current Jewelry and Metalwork faculty at the University of Georgia, decided to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the shows and the collection by organizing two new exhibitions. For the first, The Ring Show: Then & Now, they invited selected artists involved in the original exhibitions to create new rings to be shown with their work from the 1970s, and the resulting group of rings was presented at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of the opening for the 3rd National Ring Show. Many of the artists referenced their old rings through format, technique or title, often maintaining their original humorous attitude. Jamie Bennett’s new ring, Stung, is enamel on silver and square, like his winning entry in the first show. Steuart Bremner again made a conceptual ring—this one of light that forms a ring as it passes through a stencil and projects onto a finger. Marjorie Schick made Hayman Island Experience, another large, brightly colored, sculptural wooden ring based on partial circles, and renamed her early ring The Forerunner because it “was so prophetic of what was to happen in [her] work.”

Pearse and Jackson also organized a new international juried ring exhibition, Putting the Band Back Together, displayed in Savannah during the thirty-seventh annual Society of North American Goldsmiths Conference in March 2008. Following in the tradition of the National Ring Shows, for Putting the Band Back Together Pearse and Jackson invited artists to submit actual rings rather than images of their work for consideration. Jim Cotter, Jamie Bennett and I (Ashley Callahan) served as jurors. The rings in Putting the Band Back Together encompass a great diversity of materials and techniques, and, as with the National Ring Shows, the participants include students, recent graduates, well-established faculty, and independent artists. Sarah Jane Airgood captured the spirit of the show by transforming the mailing package itself into a ring, one of the largest in the exhibition; the smallest rings are by Sergey Jivetin who skillfully transformed jeweler’s saw blades into a pair of delicate, serrated wedding bands. Allyson Bone won first place with Pierced #2, an oxidized silver ring with intricate ornamental cutouts; Barbara Cohen, who has a background in sculptural textiles, won second place for her untitled ring of silver, pearl, nylon mesh, and feathers; and Jamie Jo Fisher won third place with Cake Pillow Ring, an oxidized silver ring that features graduated stacked pillows of bright pink plastic from a rain poncho with green stitching, capitalizing on her interest in using repurposed materials and her experience as a cake decorator. Other artists include James Madison University associate professor Mark Rooker, who offered the sci-fi–influenced Entopus pseudoexorbitans debeeriae; Dutch conceptual jewelry designer Ted Noten, who contributed the plastic political Liberate a Pig Ring; Israeli-born Canadian artist Yael Krakowski, who presented her colorful beaded Flower Ring; Pennsylvania State University assistant professor and Cranbrook Academy of Art graduate James Thurman, who submitted the subtle Tectonic Ring 08-0120 of laminated paper and silver; and Canadian jeweler Claudio Pino, who entered the extraordinarily lavish Mystical Flowering.

Cindi Strauss, curator of modern and contemporary decorative arts and design at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and author of the exhibition catalog Ornament as Art, notes in her essay A Brief History of Contemporary Jewelry, 1960-2006, that emerging trends in the early twenty-first century include a return to concept and ideas as well as a return to wearability. These trends are present in both the rings selected for Putting the Band Back Together and the new rings created for Then & Now. Jim Cotter, who runs J. Cotter Gallery in Vail, notes that the original shows were “about the idea of materials and how concepts can define jewelry” and that he still sees the same concepts expressed in jewelry today. He adds, “Today’s work is more refined, but the ideas, materials, and contemporary processes date back to the work of the makers of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Annual Ring Shows.”

Another influence evident in the new rings is that of the computer. A number of the artists use digital technology, including rapid prototyping and CAD programs, to develop or execute their ideas. Many of the artists in Putting the Band Back Together use digital technology as part of their practice, and many maintain websites. A few of them even host blogs on which they discuss trends in metals and jewelry, and several make their work available for sale through e-commerce websites such as Etsy. Jon Ryan provides a step-by-step illustrated explanation of the creation of his Cylinder Ring on his blog Blue Aluminum. While Greyhound buses and creative venues made the work in the National Ring Shows publicly available, the internet allows the artists in Putting the Band Back Together to achieve a much greater level of accessibility.

Though many similar exhibitions of renegade craft took place in the late 1970s, few remain as intact collections, making the Phi Beata Heata National Ring Collection especially important as a snapshot
of jewelrymaking at that time and a great treasure for the University of Georgia. The rings in Putting the Band Back Together provide an interesting foil to the earlier rings, allowing observers to consider the changes and consistencies in jewelrymaking and to appreciate how the field has matured over the past thirty years.