Gaining the Upper Hand

JAMES CRADIT

ARTIST STATEMENT

This piece was originally inspired by a trip to a museum in Providence. While there, I discovered tea and coffee service sets that had been designed by the artist Erik Magnussen in 1927. All components of the service set are modeled to reflect the changing city environment and the architecture of the beginning Modern era. While discussing the image jewelry can express in a nonfunctional form with instructors, I had the idea of a ring that stretches over other fingers in the shape of a bridge. This is symbolic of the way jewelry is often used to express grandeur and class. The ring is meant to mock the style of jewelry studded with diamonds or precious stones. It's intentionally too large to be worn to any kind of classy event. In a sense, the wearer is gaining a bridge-like passage between a lower class of jewelry and the ability to silently mock jewelry that has little meaning behind it.

The ring is hollow formed brass. Each ring is completely hollow in order to keep the piece lighter than a solid cast ring would.