About the Authors of Radiant Echoes: The Metal Mastery of Victoria Lansford
Kate Bonansinga is Director, School of Art, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at University of Cincinnati, where she is also a professor and teaches courses about curatorial practice. She was the founding director of Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Art at The University of Texas at El Paso where she curated dozens of exhibitions and established an undergraduate minor in museum studies. She served as co-curator of Equilibrium: Body as Site, 2008 Metalsmith Exhibition in Print as well asguest curator of Staged Stories: 2009 Renwick Craft Invitational (Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and Tania Candiani: Sounding Labor, Silent Bodies (Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, OH) (2020-21). She is the author of Curating at the Edge: Artists Respond to the U.S./Mexico Border (University of Texas Press). Her recent publications include The Performing Jewelry of Rachelle Thiewes: Color, Feminism and the Body (Metal Museum, 2023) and “Art Market as Community Builder: Empowering the Makers of Welcome Editions,” in Vanessa Agnew, editor, What We Brought with Us: Things of Exile and Migration (Bielefeld University Press, 2024).
Cynthia Eid’s career has been diverse, ranging from designer and maker roles in goldsmith galleries to a modelmaker and supervisor in a gold jewelry factory to artist, educator, and author. Her award-winning approach to metalwork emphasizes the fluid movement, form, and joining of metal, along with colorful enamels – showcasing her skills through sculptural jewelry and hollowware.
A notable pioneer in working with Argentium Silver since 1999, Eid has contributed to its development since meeting its inventor, Peter Johns, in 2003. Her work with Argentium has earned her the title of Pioneer by Argentium International, Ltd. Eid is co-author of Creative Metal Forming with Betty Helen Longhi, a comprehensive book on synclastic and anticlastic forming which has been praised as the first comprehensive textbook on the subject. Eid is also involved in tool development for jewelers and metalsmiths, collaborating with Knew Concepts for jewelers’ saws and Bonny Doon for hydraulic press tools. Together with Longhi, she developed a set of four anticlastic stakes.
As an educator, Eid has taught across the USA, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Cynthia Eid’s multifaceted career bridges the gap between artistic creation and education, making her a pivotal figure in the world of contemporary metalsmithing. For more about her work and contributions, visit her official website, https://cynthiaeid.com.
Rauni Higson is a leading British Silversmith known for her distinctive sculptural work often responding to and inspired by the natural world and landscape. Much of her work is made to commission, for celebration and commemoration, contemporary designs created using traditional silversmithing techniques, principally by forging and hammer-forming sheet silver. She set up her studio in the dramatic landscape of Snowdonia in 1997, after training at Lahti Design Institute in Finland, her mother’s native country. Her work is in many collections, including the V&A Museum, six pieces in the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection, and the National Museum of Wales. Commissions include a Processional Cross for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and the Prince Phillip Challenge Trophy for Henley Royal Regatta. For more information, visit https://www.raunihigson.co.uk.
Elyse Zorn Karlin is a jewelry historian, freelance curator, author and lecturer. She is the co-director of the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts (ASJRA) and past president of the American Society of Jewelry Historians. She has a special interest in the jewelry of the American First Ladies.
Her publications include: Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts & Crafts Tradition (1990), Sally-Ann Weckstein: An Artist in the Studio (2022), International Art Jewelry, 1895-1920 (2011) and she edited Maker and Muse: Women and 20th Century Art Jewelry (2016). She co-authored Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry (2008) and Aletto: Five Generations of Jewelry with Yvonne J. Markowitz which was published in Fall 2024. She has also written several non-jewelry books.
Her most recent curatorial project was Chicago Collects: Jewelry in Perspective which was on view at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago in 2024.
Victoria Lansford is an artist and educator who combines historical metalsmithing and illumination processes with cutting edge technology to create contemporary interpretations of centuries-old craft forms. With a creative career spanning over 30 years, her genre-busting and award-winning art explores feminine power and ranges in scale from intricate art jewelry and miniatures to architectural metalwork.
Exhibitions and publications of Victoria’s artwork include the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Georgia Museum, the Lark 500 series, Metalsmith and Jewelry Artist magazines, and Home and Garden Television. Recent large-scale commissions include a copper room divider and Eastern repousse doors for one of the world’s largest superyachts and the digital/hardbound book Giving Voice, which she wrote, animated, and illustrated.
She has taught and mentored thousands of metalsmiths around the globe through her online school, sold-out workshops, instructional series Metal Techniques of Bronze Age Masters, and iPhoneTM app iMakeJewelry. As a result, she has created a renaissance for metal techniques, including Russian filigree, granulation, and Eastern repoussé. She is currently working to research the dissemination of metalsmithing techniques through ancient and Medieval cultures. Victoria lives in Atlanta, GA. See more of her work at https://victorialansford.com
Jane Milosch is Honorary Professor, School of Culture and Creative Arts, at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where she advises and lectures on provenance research and curatorial practice. She was previously the founding Director of the Provenance Research Initiative, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., advising on WWII-era provenance research, cultural heritage projects, and international museum training programs; Senior Program Officer for Art in the Office of the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, leading pan-institutional art programs and new interdisciplinary initiatives; and Chief Curator, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she organized many exhibitions, including Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic. Milosch has held curatorial positions at three museums in the Midwest and was a managing editor for Prestel Art books in Munich. She lectures and publishes widely on provenance research, contemporary art and craft, and most recently as editor of Chunghi Choo and Her Students: Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal (2022), and as a guest lecturer in the Silversmithing & Jewellery Programme, School of Design, Glasgow School of Art (2024).
Consulting Editor
Emily Zilber is a curator, educator, and consultant. As Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at the Wharton Esherick Museum, she stewards Esherick’s legacy, including by facilitating conversation between contemporary makers and the historic site. Upcoming projects include The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick, a traveling exhibition to open at the Brandywine Museum of Art with an accompanying full-length catalog. In addition to her work with WEM, Zilber maintains an independent artist consulting practice. She has also taught courses and workshops focused on craft and design history, curatorial studies, and professional practice at institutions including Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and served as guest curator for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. For almost a decade, she was the first Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she built an integrated curatorial program for craft and design within the museum’s contemporary art department. Prior, she held curatorial positions and fellowships at Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Radiant Echoes: The Metal Mastery of Victoria Lansford showcases the artist’s journey through over three decades of ground-breaking applications of historical metalsmithing techniques. This retrospective publication comprehensively not only explores Lansford’s endless ability with complex metalsmithing techniques including filigree, Eastern repoussé, and granulation, but also speaks to how her skill and vision marry in the creation of objects that filters tradition through a contemporary lens. Simultaneously an artist, alchemist, and shaman, Lansford brings together the familiar with the unexpected through creative work that rethinks the millennia-old practice of turning raw materials into precious objects.
The book features over 150 images of art jewelry, art objects, and large-scale metalwork drawn from across Lansford’s career as well as a comprehensive glossary of her techniques used, offering a unique opportunity for readers to explore the evolution of Lansford’s creativity and craftsmanship. Radiant Echoes will make a fantastic addition to the library of anyone who loves jewelry, sculpture, metalsmithing, or simply contemplating beautiful objects.
Radiant Echoes includes new essays by curators, scholars, and artists including Kate Bonansinga, Cynthia Eid, Rauni Higson, Elyse Zorn Karlin, Victoria Lansford, and Jane Milosch, with consulting editor Emily Zilber.
Full color, casebound, 186+ pages
ISBN 978-0-9821833-6-6
Ships mid-November, 2024
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