Mary Lee Hu — Woven Gold as a Studio-Jewellery Practice
Mary Lee Hu — Woven Gold as a Studio-Jewellery Practice
American metalsmith and educator whose constructed gold-wire forms are held in major museum collections
Mary Lee Hu (born 1943) is an American studio jeweller and metalsmith whose woven and constructed gold-wire jewellery has, since the early 1970s, established her as one of the principal figures in the American studio-jewellery tradition. Her work — bracelets, neckpieces, brooches, and earrings constructed from fine gold wire interlaced or interwoven into three-dimensional textile-like forms — is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), among others.
Training
Hu trained in metalwork and jewellery at Miami University of Ohio (BFA, 1965) and at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (MFA, 1967), studying with the metalsmith Brent Kington. The training emphasised the combination of traditional bench technique with the studio-craft sensibility that was central to American art-jewellery education in the post-war period. After completing her MFA she travelled in Asia, including study in Taiwan, where she encountered the textile-based metalwork traditions that informed her subsequent direction toward woven gold-wire construction.
The technique
Hu's signature technique is the construction of jewellery from interlaced or interwoven fine gold wire — typically 22-, 23-, or 24-karat gold drawn to gauges in the range of 0.1 to 0.5 mm — built up into three-dimensional forms through a hand-process closer to textile-weaving than to conventional bench jewellery. The resulting pieces have a textile quality of drape and surface but the structural integrity and material gravity of fine metalwork. The construction is entirely hand-built; no soldering or casting is involved in the woven sections. The technique requires extensive practice and physical patience — major neckpieces involve weeks of work — and the gold gauges and weave patterns are calibrated to produce specific structural and visual properties.
The work
Hu's jewellery is generally architectural in scale and idiom — neckpieces are substantial, bracelets are wide, the work has presence on the wearer. The colour palette is the warm yellow of high-karat gold, occasionally with accents of contrasting metal or with set stones (rare in her work, which generally relies on the gold construction itself for visual effect). The forms reference both organic structures (basket-weave, fish-scale, lattice patterns) and the textile traditions of the Asian metalworking traditions that informed her development.
Teaching career
Hu taught at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1980 until her retirement in 2006, building one of the principal American studio-jewellery programmes of the period. Her teaching influenced a generation of contemporary American metalsmiths and helped to establish the Pacific Northwest as a centre of American studio jewellery alongside the more established East Coast and Midwestern programmes. Her former students include a number of practising studio jewellers whose work draws on her technical and conceptual influence.
Recognition
Hu's work has been recognised with major awards in American metalwork and craft, including the American Craft Council College of Fellows induction (1991), the Society of North American Goldsmiths Lifetime Achievement Award (2008), and the Artist as Visionary Award (2013) from the American Craft Council. Her pieces are held in the major museum collections cited above and have been exhibited in retrospective form, including a 2012–2013 retrospective at the Bellevue Arts Museum.
Position in American studio jewellery
Hu belongs to the central generation of post-war American studio jewellers who established the field as an independent craft and art tradition — alongside Margaret De Patta (earlier generation), Robert Lee Morris, Linda MacNeil, Mary Ann Scherr, Nancy Worden, and the wider community of makers connected to the Society of North American Goldsmiths. Her position within that tradition is as the maker who established woven and constructed gold-wire jewellery as a distinctive American studio practice, and as one of the educators who built the institutional infrastructure that supports contemporary American studio jewellery.
In the trade
Hu's pieces are signed (typically with her stamp or signature on the reverse) and are documented in the museum collection catalogues and the standard references on contemporary American studio jewellery. Pieces from her studio that appear in the secondary market trade in the four- to five-figure range, with major neckpieces and significant works reaching higher.