Jewelry

Jewelry That Draws From a Japanese Technique — and Constructivist Sculpture - New York Times
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Coming from different, and multiple, milieus, the close friends Yolande Batteau and Randi Mates meet in the middle — that is, 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue. “We have a mutual devotion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, particularly the study rooms,” says Batteau, a painter and co-founder of the noted interiors studio Callidus Guild, of Mates (herself a classical goldsmith and Aesa jewelry founder). “The level of our mutuality is such that we can go to a museum together, separate to wander for an hour and then come together only to find we have taken photos of the same exact pieces,” Mates adds. “It’s a rare and thrilling experience to find another person who is as wholly enamored by history, the minutiae of objects and the deep physicality of materials as I am.”

To that end, Mates calls their first joint endeavor, a jewelry collection, years in the making. The gold, silver, bronze, pearl and wood pieces combine Mates’s metalworking with yakisugi, an 18th-century Japanese technique that uses fire to seal the wood — a technique that Batteau, a self-proclaimed “autodidact of finishes,” practices. The stark but wearable forms pull from early constructivist sculptures (with one exception, the Unity Pin, a portion of the proceeds from which will benefit the ACLU). Available for purchase online starting today, the jewelry line can also be viewed by appointment by those in the New York area tomorrow; it’ll be shown alongside Batteau’s and Mates’s solo works at, fittingly, an exhibition-style event.