If you’ve ever browsed our store displays or shopped online, you might have noticed that we have quite a few pieces by David Yurman — and there’s a good reason for that! As contemporary designers go, David Yurman is one of the most famous, with stunning designs that have been embraced by the likes of Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Barbra Streisand.
In honor of our upcoming sale, taking place between September 2-5, we’ve decided to do a deep dive into David Yurman and highlight what exactly makes David Yurman designs so special.
Before there was a David Yurman Company, there was David Yurman and Sybil Kleinrock. Both born in New York City in 1942, they wouldn’t meet for another 27 years, long after they’d both embraced a love of art. David spent much of the 1960s immersed in the counterculture of New York’s Greenwich Village and California’s Venice Beach and Big Sur, hitchhiking back and forth across the country a total of eleven times. By this point, he had begun experimenting with welding and selling small sculptures.
Sybil, on the other hand, was fully immersed in San Francisco’s Beat Generation, where she lived and worked as an artist. She experimented with painting, poetry, and ceramics, eventually focusing on pottery as an artform and a career. By the time the two of them meet in 1969, their art has taken the form of wearable art, leading them to become major figures in the American Craft Movement — not to mention in one another’s lives. Though they wouldn’t get married until 1979, their partnership would create the foundation for what eventually became the David Yurman Company.
Most notably, when Sybil wears a special necklace to an art opening that David has sculpted for her, known as the Dante necklace, orders began to follow. A common refrain they would hear from collectors is, “I don’t like jewelry, but I like this.” Their sculptural approach to craftsmanship forged the way for a new type of American jewelry, one that would help shape the jewelry industry for years to come.
As David and Sybil put it, their company is “one long art project,” one which fuses fashion, art, and jewelry into signature design concepts. In 1982, they welcomed both their son and future collaborator, Evan Yurman, and what would become known as one of their signature designs — the Cable bracelet.
Inspired by the architecture of the Brooklyn Bridge’s twisted metal ropes used to suspend the bridge, combined with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of ancient jewels, the bracelet was a twisted helix with gemstones on the end caps. This would become a common motif throughout all their designs, along with setting diamonds in sterling silver — another innovation that set the signed jewelry industry on pins and needles.
Today, Evan, Sybil, and David all work together on the David Yurman brand, which recently celebrated 50 years of innovative jewelry design. Exuding luxury, craftsmanship, and timeliness, pieces from David Yurman collections continue to fetch top prices and make an excellent addition to any jewelry investment.
And that, in a nutshell, is why we love David Yurman jewelry.
If you like David Yurman as much as we do, join us for our sale, taking place between September 2-5! We’ll have 20% off all David Yurman jewelry, along with other notable designers. We hope to see you there!
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