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Object Timeline

2016	Work on this object began.
2017	We acquired this object. We photographed this object. We photographed this object.
2024	You found it!

Drawing, Study in Color and Form

This is a Drawing. It was designed by Thomas Gentille. It is dated 2016 and we acquired it in 2017. Its medium is brush and watercolor, pen and ink on vellum paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

Gentille considers each piece of jewelry as a one-off, and purposely dates it by the century in which it was made. His work is rightly celebrated as much for his emphasis on materials and process as for the striking aesthetic impact. To that end, his jewelry design drawings shed light on this important aspect of his practice.

It is credited The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

This four-sided brooch is shaped like a tall triangle with the top point trimmed off. The top left 'corner' is curved. The surface is smooth, inlaid with crackled pieces of white eggshell in varying sizes, creating a stone-like appearance. The spaces between the eggshell pieces and the fine cracks in the shells are colored dark red and black. These dark colors are split into two triangles, a dark red triangle on the left and a black triangle on the right. The dividing line runs between the top right and bottom left corners.

NOT TITLED 8 Brooch
eggshell inlay, metal.
The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
2016-34-36

A black circular brooch with a gritty ground texture decorated with six irregualry shaped gold squares with smooth surfaces arranged in two groups of three crescents at the upper left and lower right quadrants. The group on the lower right is dominated by a larger square with somewhat wavy edges. All of the other squares, though distinctive in their rough edges, are of roughly the same size, and appear to float in the black ground in relation to each other.

NOT TITLED Brooch
bronze, gold, industrial paint.
The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
2016-34-37

Its dimensions are

H x W: 35.6 × 27.9 cm (14 × 11 in.)

It is signed

Signed in graphite, lower right: T. GENTILLE / 2016

Cite this object as

Drawing, Study in Color and Form; Designed by Thomas Gentille (American, b. 1936); brush and watercolor, pen and ink on vellum paper; H x W: 35.6 × 27.9 cm (14 × 11 in.); The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; 2017-26-1

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/2kgsXF/
Accession Number 2017-26-1
Object ID 874387565