Left: Snake chain by Swiss jeweler Lucie Heskett-Brem. Photo courtesy Lucie Heskett-Brem. Right: Garnet and tourmaline bolo, by Michael David Sturlin, with an 18K yellow and white gold bolo with rhodolite garnet, green tourmaline, and diamonds, suspended on a hand-woven 18K gold chain. Photo: Ralph Gabriner.

Since ancient times, the chain has enjoyed a coveted place in jewelry. Universally, it represents eternal love and all the good things of human bonding: the eternity of the circle linked, without beginning or end, to other circles. Of course, chains also represent all the bad things of human bondage like restriction, imprisonment, and pain: chain gang, chain of fools, ball and chain. As we all know, one can quickly become the other. In short, the chain is a perfect symbol for the paradox that is love.

No wonder it’s been around so long - and altered so little. The oldest examples were found in ancient Babylonia (Iraq) in the Biblical city of Ur, where royal tombs hid magnificent gold jewelry dating to about 2500 B.C. Ur was the most powerful city-state in Mesopotamia at that time. Among Queen Pu-abi’s treasures were intricate gold chains, mainly variations on the perennial loop-in-loop, a technique that circulated throughout the Mediterranean, western Asia and, eventually, the world.

Chains have flourished ever since. Henry VIII presented heavy gold chains as signs of favor. In the early 16th century, even men, at least in Germany and Flanders, were fashionably draped in gold links as bulky as bicycle chains. A couple centuries later, chains were just as crucial to the well-dressed lady, only now they were long and delicate and held lorgnettes. In the 1930s, Coco Chanel had everyone draping them in waist-length profusion and, a decade later, they shrank and expanded during the war, resembling tank treads and gas pipe links.

You can find variations on all these themes in today’s fashion magazines — chains draped Chanel-like or bulky and industrial-looking cuffs and chokers, all reinventions of reinventions. A studio jeweler has to be determined and resourceful indeed to find a fresh interpretation of the chain. But there are always some who will try, drawn irresistibly to this perennial favorite.

Work by Swiss jeweler Lucie Heskett-Brem, who reinvents classic chains from the past, including delicate floral chains of the Victorian era. Photo courtesy Lucie Heskett-Brem.

Handmade chains are definitely a luxury in today’s world, admits Swiss jeweler Lucie Heskett-Brem. The first chain-making machine was invented in the mid-1700s, she points out, and jewelry chainmaking was mechanized about 100 years ago: “It’s not something that needs to be done by hand.” But, like connoisseurs and studio jewelers who specialize in handmade chains, she is dismissive of the machine-made variety. “Some of those chains they sell from catalogs cost practically nothing. They’re made of real gold but if you drop them, they sink to the ground like an autumn leaf — so delightfully light,” she says drily, then laughs.

Having entered the four-year goldsmithing apprenticeship in her homeland Switzerland at the ripe age (by European standards) of 30, Heskett-Brem quickly found a market for her exquisite old-style chains and now makes them from a studio overlooking Lake Lucerne. Although she studied a range of jewelry-making techniques, she fell in love with the meditative process of chainmaking, linking one piece to the next, and the idea of eternity and human bond that the chain has represented throughout history.

She does not consider herself a modern designer. Her specialty is reinventing the classic chain from eras past, including the very feminine, delicate floral chains of the Victorian era. “My chains are all recognizably made by a woman. I’ve tried to make jewelry for men and it never works out. Everything I make, I make because I would wear it.”

Lucie Heskett-Brem demonstrates the intricate and "meditative" process of shaping wire for chains. (Photo courtesy Lucie Heskett-Brem.)

She has time-traveled as far back as ancient Egypt for inspiration, when the height of chic was a slippery snake wrapped around a slender arm. “The snake chain has always fascinated me,” she says. “When I first saw one, I thought it was done with a continuous wire but I tried this and it doesn’t work. My snake is actually a loop-in-loop chain. A lot of people do it but my specialty is to take it further, as close as possible to being an animal. I spent months figuring out the optimum proportion between density and flexibility so that it moves like a snake. You can’t get any denser without losing movement. It’s not possible. Even the old Egyptian ones — they look the same but they’re not as flexible. I hand-cut all the edges so that it’s smooth to the touch. People sometimes scream when they touch it.”

Heskett-Brem frankly admits to being chain-obsessed and examines them wherever she goes. “I’m happy to report I haven’t seen any that I like better than mine,” she announces cheerfully. What makes a superior chain? “It can be a very simple loop-in-loop, the most basic chain there is, maybe twisted flat, which we call an anchor chain, but it needs to have proportion and it needs to flow. A simple design can work if the proportions are just right. Then it has to have some sort of soul. Some chains are all right but they don’t have that.”

A musician once showed her a chain he had bought for his wife, wanting to know if he had chosen well. “He was a great trumpet player. I looked at the chain and it wasn’t too bad. But I took one of mine off, put it in his hands and said, ‘Look, you’re a musician. Just listen.’ And when he did that, it was clear. The other one was tinny, it just sounded wrong.”

Michael David Sturlin, whose citrine repousse necklace (left) and peridot drop necklace (right) are shown here, creates his chains with a needle, using crochet techniques he learned from his grandmother. Photos by Ralph Gabriner.

Michael David Sturlin had been a goldsmith for about 15 years when he turned to chain-making a decade ago. Self-educated for the first decade of his career, he took some courses from European-trained goldsmiths at the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in San Francisco and absorbed their make-it-yourself ethos. He still mixes his own alloys from pure gold, producing 18-karat red, yellow, and white gold, then crochets 20" lengths of wire using a needle instead of the traditional crochet hook. For years, he even cut his own wire. Now he has it custom-made from sheet he supplies.

“This kind of crochet is impossible to manufacture with a machine,” he says. “The uniformity takes a great deal of patience and mindfulness. I don’t even pick up my crochet unless I have at least an hour to work on it and preferably several hours. If you start and stop you run the risk of small variations in tension or loop size.”

If this terminology sounds more like Grandma on the porch swing than a trained goldsmith, it may be because Sturlin learned that part of his craft from Grandma herself. “I make a round, hollow, tubular structure, similar to what my grandmother used to make out of small cut beads.”

Growing up on a horse ranch, Sturlin was exposed from an early age to braiding, weaving and rope. Both his grandmother and great-grandmother were skilled at traditional handicrafts like needlepoint and crochet and taught the curious boy their basic techniques. It took a while to incorporate this in his goldwork but when he hit on it, it felt very natural.

Chainmaking is a painstaking and meticulous process. Michael David Sturlin won't sit down to work unless he has at least an hour to himself. His cabochon necklaces with rubellite tourmaline and peridot is shown here. Photo by Jon Balinkie/Cameraworks

Michael David Sturlin's pearl drop earrings. Photo by Ralph Gabriner.

“I made other styles of chain before focusing on crochet but crochet has a unique feel. Most chains are some form of loop-in-loop and that can be manipulated in many different ways and given a variety of appearances. But loop-in-loop chains, even if drawn down to the point that they’re cord-like, still have a more segmented quality in the way they lay whereas crochet is a more-or-less continuous,
interlocking structure.”

Sturlin fabricates the pendants and elements he attaches to his cord-like chains, occasionally casting a piece; stone-setting is the final step. The finished chain has to be annealed to red-hot in order to soften it. “That part of the process is not at all forgiving,” he says, and yet another reason not a lot of people do it. A piece of Sturlin’s jewelry can take anywhere from 30 to 70 hours, the chain itself requiring one to three hours per inch.

“At first, some of my colleagues warned me that it might not be cost-effective but I thought the aesthetic value would be attractive enough, and I’ve found that’s true.” Often, he says, his work is not fully appreciated until a woman actually holds the necklace in her hands — and, better yet, tries it on. His chains can measure up to six millimeters in diameter and his braided necklaces of red, yellow, and white gold weigh as much as 126 grams.

Sturlin’s jewelry tends to be fairly minimalist in design but carefully balanced architecturally, which helps offset its bulk. “When a woman tries on one of my necklaces, within a minute or two, she’s hardly aware of it. People shouldn’t have to tug or reposition a necklace. My work has a strong tactile sense as well as a visual impact and I put a lot of thought into how it feels on the neck.”

Karen Gilbert's Clear bracelet, of sterling silver and cut glass. Even when Gilbert works with manufactured chain, she treats them as raw materals, rather than finished products - cutting them apart, weaving them together, or fusing them. Photo: Doug Yaple.

Karen Gilbert doesn’t consider herself a chainmaker in the traditional sense, even though she has been obsessed with exploring the creative potential of links since she began making jewelry. She doesn’t use the word “chainmaker,” she says, because it implies that she knows the basic types and techniques of that historical category and she purposefully avoids just that.

“I’m not technique-driven,” Gilbert says. “I like to learn skills, then forget them and play around as much as possible to see where it takes me. I try not to look at other people’s work too much.”

After studying for a while at the California College of Arts & Crafts, she moved to Seattle and began dabbling in “a little of everything” including stone-cutting, glass- and jewelry-making. Soon after settling on jewelry, she made an elaborate sculptural pendant and put a manufactured chain on it. “It drove me nuts,” she recalls. “My work tends to be very loose, so the extreme mechanical forms of the machine-made chains didn’t look right. Some designers can pull it off better than others but for me it didn’t work. The contrast between handmade and manufactured elements was very obvious.”

As her designs evolved, ironically, manufactured chains became an integral part. But in Gilbert’s work, you can’t see the chain itself, it serves merely as an armature. “The chains are my structure. I buy them, then take them as far as I can. I weave them together, fuse them, I cut them into parts, I put wires through every hole I can possibly find, exploring the minuteness of the chain.”

The results are without a doubt chain-like but more like a molecular chain or microorganism viewed through a microscope, growths and filaments exposed. Gilbert’s primary process is not building links but trapping things in links. She chooses chains with very specific patterns, then loops very thin sterling silver wire through the links, then beads one or both ends in order to trap it. Sometimes she forms a jump ring around the links. The overriding principle is that “nothing is really attached.”

Karen Gilbert's Clear bracelet, of sterling silver and cut glass. Even when Gilbert works with manufactured chain, she treats them as raw materals, rather than finished products - cutting them apart, weaving them together, or fusing them. Photo: Doug Yaple.

Some of her necklaces and bracelets resemble that furry yarn college students knit into scarves. Others are more compact, more beaded. But all look vaguely familiar. “I’m very interested in microbiology, all these minute things in our world that we don’t even see. I’m making forms and creatures that don’t exist in our consciousness but are everywhere. So when you look at it, you recognize it but don’t know why. We’re built of little organisms and cell structures. That’s who we are. We have an inherent knowledge of these things but we can’t pinpoint why it’s familiar.”

The only text Gilbert relies on for inspiration is a collection of vintage science books from the ‘20s and ‘30s. “They were published before photos were used in science books. They’re full of old etchings of plant life. I look at those if I’m struggling with a piece, wondering if it’s working aesthetically or trying to figure out how to finish it. If you go to nature and science, everything works perfectly. It has all the answers. What’s pleasing to our eyes is in science.”

Recently, Gilbert was invited to teach a workshop to a group of traditional chainmakers in Arizona. “I was brought in as the inspirational art workshop,” she says. “I talked about fusing, melting, and trapping. People were blown away by the idea that you don’t have to follow the rules.”

---

Cathleen McCarthy is a journalist based in Philadelphia who writes about jewelry, art, and travel. She has been a regular contributor to Lapidary Journal since 1992.

To contact the artists in this article:

Lucie Heskett-Brem, Lucerne, Switzerland, www.thegoldweaver.com, phone 011-41-41-377-5277, e-mail lucie@econophone.ch. See more work in our Designer Gallery. Michael Sturlin Studio, Scottsdale, Arizona, phone (480) 941-4105, e-mail michaelsturlinstudio@cox.net. See more work in our Designer Gallery. Karen Gilbert, New York, NY, www.karengilbert.com, phone (651) 283-5397, e-mail karengilbert30@hotmail.com. See more work in our Designer Gallery.