Sunday Evening Art Gallery — John Paul Miller

John Paul Miller’s (1918 – 2013) fastidiously crafted jewelry depicts natural creatures both large and small, wearable forms in enamel and gold that are, at once, visually opulent and mildly unsettling. Miller is further recognized for having introduced granulation to the postwar studio jewelry field. This ancient technique of affixing small beads of gold or silver to a similarly corresponding substrate dates back to the third century BCE.Miller reinvigorated the technique in the mid-1940s and employed it as one tool in his vast arsenal, creating exceptionally beautiful forms in gold that dazzle the eye and celebrate nature’s tiniest creatures.Throughout his career Miller produced bold wearable forms that, while extraordinarily beautiful, were not – neither in their scale nor in their subject matter – for the timid or the faint of heart.“I was always fond of animals, all animals…animals and life in the wild, the natural world, were a really important part of my life,” Miller shared.“So when I got involved with jewelry…and with granulation, I began to think about things in nature.  There was something about their design that suggested the character of granules.” 

“Decorating with enamel an already almost revived creature, I always tried to show that play of light, those refractions of rays that so fascinated me in childhood.”More of John Paul Miller’s beautiful gold jewelry can be found at https://www.clevelandart.org/exhibitions/jewelry-john-paul-miller.