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Treasures of The National Museum of African American History & Culture, Part 2: Jewelers of Note [1]
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Date: 2025-05-18
This series is dedicated to shining a light on the National Museum of African American History and Culture and all it represents.
Part 2 focuses on three jewelers of note: Winifred Mason Chenet (1912-1993), Art Smith (1917-1982), who was mentored by Winifred Mason Chenet, and Joyce J. Scott (1948-present), who was mentored by Art Smith.
Winifred Mason Chenet
Winifred Mason Chenet, Art Smith’s mentor, was born in 1918 in Manhattan to West Indian parents and is considered by many to be the first commercial Black jeweler in the U.S.
By the late 1940s her jewelry had been featured at 10 exhibitions, including one-woman-shows in Milwaukee, WI, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her custom work attracted interest and commissions by well-known names, Billie Holiday among them.
Silverplate earrings designed by Winifred Mason Chenet. The pendant design symbolizes a Haitian drum.
Producing pieces from her studio in Greenwich Village, New York, Winifred quickly rose in notoriety. By the late 1940s her jewelry had been featured at 10 exhibitions, including one-woman-shows in Milwaukee, WI, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her custom work attracted interest and commissions by well-known names, Billie Holiday among them.
Winifred received a B.S. in English Literature in 1934 and an M.A. in Education from New York University in 1936. In the years leading to her career in jewelry she spent time instructing metalworking at youth program Junior Achievement, where she befriended and mentored jewelry visionary Art Smith.
Art Smith
Modernist jewelry designer Art Smith was one of the major 20th century jewelry artists. Smith was born to Jamaican parents in Cuba in 1917, but his family settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1920. He received a scholarship to Cooper Union, where he was one of only a handful of Black students. After college, he also took a night course in jewelry making at New York University, and around that time he struck up a friendship with Winifred Mason Chenet, who became his mentor.
Art Smith holding “Spiral Necklace,” ca. 1958. From the Estate of Art Smith
Art Smith, Ellington Necklace, Courtesy of the Estate of Art Smith, Craft in America, PBS
Art Smith, Lady Day Necklace, ca. 1971, National Museum of African American History and Culture. This necklace has Billie Holiday, often called Lady Day, as its namesake.
Art Smith, Model wearing “Modern Cuff” bracelet, ca. 1948, from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. The flattened ends of the brass rods recall the brass keys of a saxophone or trumpet.
As Smith’s artistry grew, so did his association with some of this country’s most prominent Black artists including James Baldwin, composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, Lena Horne (who wore his jewelry), and Harry Belafonte. He opened a store in Greenwich Village on West Fourth in 1946, which operated until 1979, shortly before his death in 1982.
Joyce J. Scott, Born 1948, Baltimore, MD
The glass sculpture at the top of the piece, “Buddha (Fire & Water)” is not a piece of jewelry, but it is the only piece of art by Joyce Scott held by the National Museum of African American History & Culture. The rest of these pieces By Joyce Scott are held by other museums and galleries.
This necklace, “We Too,” was forged by the fusion of two creative spirits: the experimental artist Joyce J. Scott and her mentor, the avant-garde jeweler Art Smith, shortly after their time at the multidisciplinary Haystack Mountain School in Maine.
During the time Art Smith mentored Joyce Scott at the Haystack Mountain School in Maine, he told her “I don’t know what you’re doing, but don’t stop.” This piece is more visually understated than is typical of Scott’s jewelry, due to the iconic form of Smith’s Half and Half necklace, which serves as the substrate for Scott’s beadwork. But it, too, is unmistakably hers. The necklace is beautiful, but it stands out as exceptional for reasons beyond its beauty. We Two links the practices and narratives of present-day Black jewelry artists to Smith, a leading figure in 20th-century modernist jewelry.
Joyce Scott Necklace, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Joyce Scott, “Harriet Tubman as Buddha," 2017, Courtesy the artist, Goya Contemporary, and Peter Blum.
“I chose Harriet Tubman because she is a great light for me, and she shows me what you can be through all kinds of adversity."
Joyce Scott wearing some of her own beadwork, photo: John Dean.
Here is a short 10 minute clip from PBS’s “Craft in America” which features Winifred Mason Chenet, Joyce Scott, and Art Smith.
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