Painted Jewels

Jewelry designer Julie Bartone is an expert on the making and portrayal of antique jewelry.

Painted Jewels

By Christine GraunasPhotos By NORA LEWIS

How do you take a basic career in the costume jewelry industry and expand it to encompass in-depth knowledge of the making and portrayal of antique jewelry? Ask Julie Bartone.

"I looked at jewelry today and thought, where did it come from? What was the source?" The search for these answers has led Bartone down some unexpected paths.

Bartone studied jewelry design at the Worcester (Mass.) Center for Crafts, the oldest craft school in the country. From there she went on to design work in the Rhode Island costume jewelry business.

"At one time," she explains, "there were at least 1,000 separate costume jewelry firms in Rhode Island." Such firms were a source of employment for many groups of immigrants, and continue to be for one of the latest groups, Cambodians. Yet changing tastes plus a decrease in gold and silver prices, which have encouraged people to buy "fine" rather than "costume" jewelry, have led to a decline in recent years. In addition, Bartone herself was looking for a more challenging way to use her skills.

So she began to study art history at URI, completing her degree in 1998. Wendy Roworth, head of the Art Department's art history section and one of Bartone's advisors, says that "Julie always showed terrific initiative. She did wonderful research and had real critical awareness." As someone with a background in both design and the commercial world, Bartone would look at portraits and ask questions regarding matters art historians usually don't think about, such as the sources of the jewelry worn. She was especially interested in the ways in which the jewelry was portrayed.

With the Art Department's support, Bartone applied for, and received, a Metcalfe Fellowship. Four of these fellowships are awarded to Rhode Island students annually for special projects extending beyond their undergraduate studies, and the competition is fierce. Bartone's winning of a Metcalfe was, says Roworth, a "real coup" for URI.

The fellowship enabled Bartone to travel to London to study original pieces of jewelry and jewelry design sketches, primarily at the famed Victoria and Albert Museum, which holds the world's largest collection of Renaissance jewelry. She was intrigued to find how many basic principles that applied in the Renaissance still apply today. For example, the orientation of a piece of jewelry as it appears in a portrait or display was, and continues to be, from the viewer's left to their right. She also discovered, not surprisingly, that the Rhode Island jewelry industry has tended to follow styles that appear in Italian rather than German or other art.

Bartone was thrilled to receive access to the original notebooks of such artists as Hans Holbein. While many of us know Holbein for his famous depiction of Henry VIII, fewer may know that he was also a goldsmith--a fact that helps to explain the level of detail in the decoration in his paintings. Looking at the notebooks, Bartone says, was amazing: "You could feel the artists thinking on paper." And she found that many of the principles of jewelry design have not changed in the intervening 500 or so years.

With her special interest in Renaissance jewelry and art, Bartone is full of fascinating information that enriches our understanding. For example, diamonds in Renaissance portraits often appear black. This is because faceting did not develop until the 18th century, and flat-cut diamonds do not reflect light as brilliantly as faceted stones do. Renaissance jewelers thus preferred to work with pearls or colored stones such as rubies.

While at URI, Bartone was also awarded grants to travel to New York to study the jewelry collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also attended a seminar in Newport sponsored by the Philadelphia Decorative Arts Trust (jewelry design tends to closely reflect styles in other decorative arts). In addition, she completed an internship at the Museum of Natural History at Roger Williams Park that involved cataloging the collection--a skill of which she has made use in several of her endeavors.

Armed with her extensive background, Bartone has brought new perspectives to her own jewelry design. She has designed pieces for names such as Givenchy, Lagerfeld, and Joan Rivers' jewelry line. While copyright limitations prevent the making of direct copies of jewelry that appears in works of art--such pieces are created by or for the museums that own the original works--Bartone is an expert in creating works inspired by or in the style of historical pieces.

Such jewelry is increasingly popularity today. Bartone believes that in a culture where so much is disposable, historically inspired pieces have "more meaning, more detail. They have a history, and we enjoy the romance." Such jewelry has "built-in credibility."

In addition to her design work, Bartone has other plans. She has just completed a two-year stint as art reference librarian at the Rhode Island School of Design. This experience plus a solid computer background (supported by her husband, a programmer) has led Bartone to set up a Web site, justaboutart.com, that includes information on various kinds of art and art history related sources, materials, and interchanges.

Several other projects also call on Bartone's time. She is working on a book, to be called The Painted Jewel, on her discoveries and theories regarding the depiction of jewelry in art. There is in her home in Jamestown a catalog of decorative items from a family collection that stretches back for many years, as well as a plan for further study and consulting work on authenticity in historical jewelry design. Bartone was called in for comment at the beginning of the planned jewelry exhibit for the Providence Heritage Harbor Museum, and an article she wrote on "The Narragansett Planters" is to appear shortly in conjunction with the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Julie Bartone's expertise is based on her experience, her training, and her inquiring mind. There is no indication that she intends to stop where she is, either. It seems very likely that more fresh insights and original work are to come from this enterprising and creative young woman. v

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