7 Brooklyn Artisans Join Craft Show @ Brooklyn Museum Nov. 18-19

Three jewelers, three furniture makers and one ceramist from Brooklyn join 83 other handpicked exhibitors at the fifth annual American Fine Craft Show Brooklyn in the majestic Beaux-Arts Court at the Brooklyn Museum Nov. 18-19, perfectly timed for gift-giving. The seven Brooklyn-based artisans will join fashion designers, art glass makers, fine artists, milliners and sculptors from around the country. Their studios are in Gowanus [2], Bedford Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Red Hook and Bay Ridge.

JEWELERS

• Prospect Heights-based jeweler Michal Lando, Michal Lando Design, fell in love with the properties of nylon mesh, a supple, dramatic, lightweight material once used as a structural element in hats and clothing. Her latest pieces are “based on a kind of controlled unraveling.” She developed a technique of applying heat to shape the material into new forms for an ethereal, delicate and otherworldly effect.

• Yuko Matsumur, Ariko Jewelry, creates one-of-a-kind pieces of recycled precious metals--gold, platinum, sterling silver, diamonds, sapphires, rubies and semi-precious stones--in her Bay Ridge studio. Her signature style has an organic aesthetic, expressing the forces of nature: weathering of volcanic rocks; the surface of the earth and the beauty of natural materials.

• Sonja Fries uses recycled metals and diamonds in her rings, cuffs, bracelets and necklaces. She said: “Jewelry is architecture for the human body. Much like an architect, I set out with a unique vision, carefully select my materials, design a piece and then start constructing, layer by layer.” The Bedford Stuyvesant jeweler uses traditional jewelry-making methods: sawing, forging and soldering.

FURNITURE MAKERS

§ Custom furniture designer Steven Bennett, Keep Furniture, Gowanus, hand makes tables, cabinets, stools and centerpieces from locally sourced, sustainable hardwood. His distinctive, ergonomic, minimalist designs showcase the wood’s beauty.

§ “We design and make unique handcrafted furniture featuring marquetry and inlay to create imaginative visual stories,” say Michael and Alexandra Miller of Everyman Works, LLC, Gowanus, sharing “a love of good design and humor.” Their first challenge was to “rescue the humble side table from obscurity and re-imagine it with imagery and wit.” They also make cabinets and mirrors.

§ Luke Malaney, Red Hook., enjoys making coffee tables “as people usually hang out around them the most,” but also “mixes it up,” designing chairs, daybeds, couches and desks as well. He works in American hardwoods, harvested locally from reclaimed/dead or fallen trees. First intrigued in high school shop, Malaney studied carpentry/woodworking in the Catskills and for five years, with an “old time” Italian woodworker in Long Island. “I focus on lightness—inspired by the Japanese aesthetic--and negative space, adding subtle details for cohesiveness.”

CERAMIST

§ Ming Yuen-Schat, Mings Monsters, hand-shapes, then alters each ceramic, marking every monster with his finger. The spirit of each appears in the wood kiln where most of his work is fired. There flames, smoke and ash paint the pots with color and texture. In addition to attending workshops with internationally recognized artist, the Taiwan-born Fort Greene-based artist earned a BFA in ceramics and architecture design from the Massachusetts College of Art and a Master of Architecture from MIT. He embraces the imperfect, asymmetrical, and deliberately crude, diametrically opposed to the influence of commercialized modernism which values slick, high-tech, machine-made objects.

Some concurrent exhibitions include: “Rodin at the Brooklyn Museum: The Body in Bronze,” opening November 17; “Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt;” and “Arts of Korea.”

For more information visit www.brooklyncraftshow.com.

Where: Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238.

Directions: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org...

Hours: Saturday Nov. 19: 11 am – 6 pm. Sunday, Nov. 20: 11 am-6 pm