A wonderful Modernist necklace, made in 14k yellow gold, by the beloved American designer Betty Cooke. This necklace is composed of 14k yellow gold tube, which has been cut to various lengths. These long gold tube "beads" are strung alongside vibrant-blue, round, turquoise beads— the turquoise beads are arranged in stations of 1-4 beads. We love the casual (playful) composition here, considered alongside the rigid, structural quality of the gold tubes. This necklace is both challenging and cheerful! It announces itself as different, while referencing a common form. This simply slips over the head. It is marked Cooke, 14k.

Materials

14k gold
Turquoise

Age

c. 1980

Dimensions

Total length measures approx 26"; tube width is approx 2.1 mm; turquoise beads (18) measure approx 5.9 mm.

About the Artist

Betty Cooke was born in Baltimore in 1924 and attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 1946 and teaching there until 1968. Betty Cooke began her career designing furniture, handbags, and household accessories. When she began designing jewelry, she drove around the country trying to sell her jewelry designs to museums and shops that carried the designs of Knoll and Herman Miller, as very few boutiques for modernist jewelry existed at the time. Her works have much in common with the clean, organic simplicity and “good design” ethos of American modernism; the influences of the New Bauhaus, Harry Bertoia, Isamu Noguchi and fellow jewelry designer Margaret De Patta are felt in Cooke’s stylish, approachable works, which often feature kinetic elements and combinations of different metals and woods. The Store Ltd., which Cooke established with her husband in 1965, still exists today in Baltimore. Her work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.