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In this episode, we discuss whether or not indie authors should have ebooks, audiobooks, or paperbacks. The episode ends with a preview of the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: WRATH OF THE WARLOCK, as narrated by Brad Wills. TRANSCRIPT Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week! This week's coupon is for the audiobook of CLOAK OF IRON as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of CLOAK OF IRON for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: IRONFALL The coupon code is valid through December 2nd, 2023, so if you find yourself wanting to get caught up with Nadia's adventures before CLOAK OF EMBERS comes out (hopefully soon!), why not start with an audiobook? 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome. To episode 175 of. The pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 12th, 2023, and today we're going to talk about whether or not indie authors should have ebooks. We'll also have a few updates on my current writing projects. Before we get into that, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audio book of Cloak of Iron, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Cloak of Iron for 75% off in my Payhip store with this coupon code IRONFALL, and that's IRONFALL and you'll be able to see that in the link in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through December the 2nd, 2023. So if you find yourself wanting to get caught up with Nadia's adventures before Cloak of Embers comes out (hopefully soon), why not start with an audiobook? Speaking of Cloak of Embers, let's have an update on my current writing projects, of which Cloak of Embers is the main one. I am making good progress on editing it and I am very much hoping I can get the book out before American Thanksgiving, which I believe is November 23rd this year (off top of my head). It might slip past that, but I am optimistic I should be able to do that unless something seriously goes wrong. I am also just about 14,000 words into my next book which I will discuss more once the Cloak of Embers is out. We also have quite a bit of good audiobook news. Dragon Skull: Wrath of the Warlock is finished recording, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. We just have to get through quality assurance and we will end this episode with a preview from the audiobook as well. Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress is being recorded right now, as is Ghost in the Serpent, which will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy and so hopefully we will have quite a few new audiobooks for you to listen to very soon.   00:01:57 Reader Comments and Questions Before we get to our main topic, let's have a couple of questions from readers. Our first question is from Wayne, who writes in to ask: Hello, sorry to bother you, just have one question. I have begun the Frostborn series with the Grey Knight. Is there a series of books that lead up to Frostborn that I should read first? I did that with a different book series. I read the second series of books before realizing there was a series of books I should have read before it. Hope I explained that right. Really enjoy your work. I've read all the Cloak and Ghost series. Great stuff. Thanks. Thanks Wayne. I am glad you are enjoying the books. In answer to your question, Frostborn is indeed the first series you should read if you want to do it in chronological order. It would go Frostborn, then Sevenfold Sword, then Dragontiarna, and then Dragonskull. So that would be the appropriate order to read that series if you want to. I intended each series to be stand alone, but I've learned in the years since that it doesn't matter what I intended. Many people still want to read the series in chronological order. Our next question is from Brian, who writes in to ask: Good afternoon, Mr. Moeller. I have been a fan of your writing for some time. Like, especially during the Ghosts and the Cloak series. However, the Cloak and Ghosts crossover is hard to read as there are some discrepancies. For example, Andromache was killed but yet is alive in the crossover series. The coffee house- not too hard to explain, but it is there some books I miss to explain how the crossover comes to be and how the extremely two different time eras come to merge? That question is, kind of in a nutshell, why I didn't write any more Cloak and Ghost books after the first three.  Thanks for reading the books, Brian, and for enjoying them all. But Cloak and Ghost, the idea I had behind that was that Nadia meets a version of Caina who lives in her world, that's distinct from the main version of Caina in the series. And I thought why not do that? You know, superhero comics do that all the time. There's parallel universes and all that running around, but it turned out to just really confused people. It's been over four years since I wrote the last Cloak and Ghost book, and I still get the questions like the one Brian had on a fairly regular basis, which is why I stopped writing the Cloak and Ghost series, just because it was too confusing for people. And speaking of the multiverse stuff, it's no secret that the Marvel movies have suffered quite a downturn in revenues and viewers ever since they turned to doing more multiverse type stuff, so I think multiverses might be something that is more popular in the writers' heads than it actually is, which is a lesson I learned four years ago, with Cloak and Ghost and which Marvel and Disney seem to be learning the hard way now. Yeah, I'm not writing any more Cloak and Ghost books just for that reason because it just confuses things.   00:04:46 Main Topic: Ebooks and Paperbacks for Indie Authors? Now on to our main topic of this week: should indie authors have ebooks or paperbacks? Indie author Brian Cohen runs something he calls the Five Day Author Ad Challenge every quarter. It's a good experience for coming to the grips with the basics of Amazon ads, and I've recommended it to a lot of people who've had good results with it. I didn't do it myself this year, but I'm still in the Facebook group and see the posts that come up every quarter. One really caught my eye. A new author was resistant to the idea that she should have an ebook at all. She only wanted to sell paperbacks and not bother with ebooks, which leads to the obvious question. Should indie authors have ebooks? Well, yes, not to be harsh, but the answer will obviously almost always be yes. For any kind of genre fiction, it will be far easier to sell ebooks than paperbacks. The Five Day Author Ad Challenge does have a lot of very new authors and very new authors not infrequently have a clear idea in their heads about how they hope it will go. Often they will talk about how they want to hold their paperback book in their hands, see it on the shelf of the local bookstore and local library, maybe have a table at the local book fair where they can sign books. Sometimes there will be a digression about the smell and feel of a paper book. However, this romantic dream then runs into the cold reality of economics. It's very difficult to sell paperback books. Paperback books are expensive, and because of inflation and supply chains stuff with paper, they're getting even more expensive. The day of the $5 mass market paperback is long past. In the day of the mass market paperback, the author didn't get all that much money, like $0.10 to maybe $0.25 a copy, and sometimes even less than that. Granted, nowadays the margins are better for self-published authors, but the economics still aren't great for paper books. My most recent book, Ghost in the Serpent, is $13.99 in trade paperback on Amazon. If the reader buys a copy of the paperback on Amazon, I get about $3, and if they buy it through another platform, I get a little over $1.00. This is definitely better than the days of a $5 mass market paperback, but it's still very expensive for the reader. By contrast, the ebook of Ghost in the Serpent is only $4.99, and for every sale I get up around $3.50, which is the point. It is much, much easier to sell $4.99 ebook than a $13.99  trade paperback, and I get slightly more money from ebook sale than I do from a paperback one. So genre fiction will almost always be more profitable in ebooks than in paperback for the indie author. I really mean always, but I said almost always to include flukes of fate and acts of God. Outside of genre fiction, it's a little more varied, but still a good idea to have an ebook. Certain kinds of nonfiction sell more strongly in paperback than an ebook. Children's books, especially ones aimed at toddlers and younger children, do way better in paper than an ebook. The reason for this is logical enough. Toddlers and small children often like to throw things. And are you going to give a four-year-old a $399 iPad or a children's book? They're also various specialty forms of nonfiction, cookbooks, technical manuals, and so forth that do well in paperback. Or if you have a book that has a lot of interior pictures, which is often true of cookbooks and other specialty nonfiction. That said, most indie writers will have an easier time selling ebooks than paperbacks, which leads to the next question: should indie authors have paperbacks? Especially the writers of genre fiction I just described above, the ones who will probably sell more ebooks than in paperback? The answer to that is yes, if possible, and it's usually quite possible. It used to be quite a bit harder to make paperback books, especially the interior. You needed to copy and paste the chapters of your book into a specially prepared Word document and formatting it was a serious pain. Now several software programs have come along that can automate the process for you. The one I use is Vellum, which automatically generates nicely formatted ebook and paperback book files for you. I believe you can do the same thing in Atticus and Scrivener, but I've never tried it. You can either make a wrap around cover for your book or you can use the automated tools included with KDP Print and Draft to Digital Print to make a cover. Most indies use either KDP Print or Draft to Digital Print to make their paperbacks. You can also use Ingram Spark and several other services, but Ingram Spark has a way sharper learning curve and tends to be more expensive. You almost certainly will not sell as many print books than ebooks, especially if you're writing genre fiction. But paperbacks can be a nice bit of bonus income, especially since it isn't all that much additional work to set up a paperback. But that leads to the next question. You've got an ebook and the paperback of your book, should you have an audiobook? The answer to that is, it depends. You know how sometimes you ask an accountant or a lawyer a tax question, and the answer is no, except yes, but sometimes maybe? The reason for that is that U.S. tax law is so immensely complicated that the answer to any question about it can vary wildly depending upon an individual's or company's particular circumstances. The same thing is true with indie authors and audiobooks. If you want to sell an audiobook, you will almost certainly need to pay for a human narrator. At the moment, I think Google Play is the only storefront that allows the sale of AI narrated audiobooks, so long as you do it with Google Play's built-in tools, which I've tested and is actually pretty good. Amazon just started testing AI generated audiobooks for sale, though they only just announced it in the first week of November 2023. That said, I suspect you realistically aren't going to be able to charge very much for it. Imagine the reviews along the lines of, I paid $13.99 or an entire Audible credit for this computer voice. One star, do not recommend. People generally don't like AI narrated audiobooks. My experiment with AI narrated audiobooks on YouTube generated a lot of comments along the lines of I like the story, but this voice sucks. That will almost certainly be true for any AI generated audiobook for fiction or nonfiction with a lot of emotion in it, like a memoir. It would probably work for something very dry book about tax law or real estate licensure. Realistically, if you want to make any money from a fiction audiobook, you will almost certainly need a human narrator, and I mean almost certainly in the same sense I meant it above. So when I say it depends on whether or not you should pursue an audiobook, what it depends on is your financial status and business requirements. To get a good narrator, you will expect to pay in the $200 to $400 per finished hour range. You can also get a narrator via royalty share where you don't pay the narrator up front, but then you and the narrator split any royalties from the book for seven years. Generally I found the more experienced and qualified narrators prefer to be paid in the $200 to $400 per finished hour range. If you do pay upfront, depending on your business structure, there's a very good chance that this will be deductible and may help you greatly at tax time, though, as always, this website and podcast is not financial advice and for tax advice, you should consult an accountant qualified for your taxing jurisdiction. It's also important to know that self-publishing audio is bit like regular self-publishing but on hard mode: the mechanics are the same but everything is more difficult. Whether to pursue audio or not is a question that must be left up to the individual author and publisher. So to sum up, should indie authors have ebooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks? For ebooks and paperbacks, definitely yes. For audiobooks, if your circumstances allow for it and it's the kind of work you're interested in pursuing. When I talked about this on Facebook and my blog, I had some interesting comments. So let's read a few of them here. Our first comment is from Jesse, who asks: does make me wonder how many indie authors take a crack at narrating their book themselves these days. Home studios aren't anywhere near as hard as to get set up as they once were, and even a good to mid high end and vocal workhorse microphone can be had for around $300.00 and last you for years. I guess it depends on motivation, but it seems like it'd be doable from equipment standpoint to at least (source: been doing home studio work for a long time). Jesse is right, it is in fact quite possible to put together a pretty good audiobook recording setup for not a significant amount of money. Obviously you need the microphone. You would need a computer with enough storage to handle the audio files and you would need some method of blocking out exterior sound and getting through the good the sound level you're supposed to have. I know during COVID many narrators, who usually go to a studio, and because of COVID, the studios were closed, set up home recording setups where they found they could record successfully in their closet because all the hanging clothes prevented echoes or they were able to build like a wooden framework over their desk and then hang blankets over it and that would prevent echoes enough to the point where they could record. Obviously that would get hot in summer, but that meant you could still work, and some indie authors do record their own audiobooks. The difficulty is that recording your 10 to 12 hour long audiobook is a lot harder than most people think it is. I mean, think about this like twenty minute podcast episode you're listening to right now and think how many words I've flubbed or I've said the wrong word, or I sort of trail off randomly (exaggerated pause for comedic effect) in the middle of a sentence like that. Think of how many mistakes I've made just in this twenty minute podcast episode with my speech, and then imagine having to maintain absolutely perfect speech for like 8 to 12 hours at a consistent tone, not speeding up, not slowing down randomly, just being an acceptable level of audiobook narration is a lot harder and more physically and mentally demanding than many people think it is, so that's the big hurdle, not the equipment. I mean, you probably get the equipment to record your own audio book for around $1000 (maybe less if you get some of it secondhand), which while is a significant outlay of money, it's not like you know, capital gains kind of investment, but the hard part is not the equipment. The hard part is being able to physically do it and record the audiobook at an appropriate speed for 12 hours or more. The next comment was from M., who writes to say that $200 to $400 range for a narrator seems low to me. I have no experience whatsoever in the field, though. How many hours of work does that translate to? I think the SAG-AFTRA minimum rate for narrator is $325, where if you're a member of SAG-AFTRA Guild, you have to charge a minimum of $325 per finished hour, though that may have changed in the aftermath of the strike this year. Obviously celebrity narrators can command much higher prices. If you see an audiobook that was narrated by a famous actor, you can be pretty sure that his or her agent negotiated a higher rate than $200 to $400 per finished hour. Usually the rule of thumb is that for every finished hour, about two to three hours of prep work goes into it. Because you have all the editing and the corrections you need to do and you just can't sit down with a, you know, a book, open it up and start reading. You need to go through it first, make sure that you know how to pronounce everything and know what the structure of the sentences are and so forth. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found this show useful and interesting. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com and many of the older episodes now have transcripts attached. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. Since we just spent a lot of time talking about audiobooks, it seems only appropriate that we close out the show with a sample from Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock as excellent narrated by Brad Wills, and that should hopefully be out before the end of November.

Today's story, The Golden Cob, is a folktale from Spain about a very hardworking mother. Free activity sheet available at www.rituvaish.com/the-golden-cobSend your artwork to rituvaish@gmail.com.Transcript:Once upon a time in a small town in Spain, there was a very humble farmer family. There was a father, a mother and five children. Unfortunately, that family was so poor that they barely had anything to eat. Their only way to sustain was a small field of corn. Even though they only had one type of food, they managed to make different recipes to feed and make the little ones happy. They made cakes, and breads from the corn... and they still had some corn left over to be able to sell in the market.Guess who did all the work? All of this was done by the mother of the family, who was in charge of all the functions that had to be done related to corn and even go to the market to sell the corn. She was extremely hardworking.Children, what all has to be done at a farm to grow anything?Yes indeed, at any farm the farmer needs to, plant the seeds, take care of the plants, and then harvest the crop.The mother did all that and then cooked food. After that, she prepared different types of corn dishes so that her children would not get bored of eating the same thing again and again.Then she went to the market and sold the leftover corn. She was also the one in charge of maintaining and taking care of the house and ensuring that her children went to school. And guess what the father did?The father enjoyed comfortable and endless naps.One day the mother was so tired from working that she didn't have the energy to do each of her daily tasks and sell what was left over in the market to earn some coins. The mother then cried inconsolably.She thought, “Who would feed my children and sell the corn in the market?”Then she saw her husband merrily sleeping, unaware that she was unwell.She thought, “All this would not happen if my husband helps me.”However, she knew that her husband would never lift a finger and do any work. He was a very stubborn and selfish person who only enjoyed sleeping and walking in the countryside.The mother was so tired that she decided to stop thinking and go to sleep so she could rest and collect more corn the next day.Just as she was heading to her room, she saw something that was very shiny. Believing that it was the result of fatigue, she decided to continue on her way to the room. But again her eyes noticed the flashes. What was that? It couldn't be a ray of sunlight because it was already night, although it was undoubtedly coming through the window, so she decided to go out to see what that intense reflection could be... Children, any guesses on what was the shiny thing?“It's a golden cob! OMG! I can't believe it!" The farmer woman said excitedly when she finally realized that the flashes were coming from the cornfield.After picking up the golden cob, the woman ran to the house to tell her husband, who was already asleep.“What is it? I am tired, let me sleep,” said the farmer angrily.He opened his eyes a tiny bit, and was startled to see a golden cob. He immediately sprang up from the bed. The farmer couldn't believe what he saw.He thought that his wife was so good and so hardworking that the gods would undoubtedly have wanted to reward her. Then the farmer realised his mistake of being lazy and not extending a helping hand. He knelt down and promised to help her with everything.The next day the farmers decided to go sell that ear of gold, and with the money they got they bought more corn, some new clothes and fixed up their humble house. The father stopped lazing around and worked very hard since then with his wife, so the profits from the corn only grew and grew and they never went hungry again. The father of that beautiful family understood that all that had happened was the result of teamwork.He indeed was never lazy after that and helped the mother. 

Before I take you on a journey today, let me tell you something exciting. You and I can now meet at clever.fm/storyprism and have fun discussing various aspects of the story. Here, you can answer a question from the story, ask me something about the story, or even share what you liked or didn't like about it.The link to the website is: https://clever.fm/storyprism'The Town Musicians' is an adapted folktale from Germany. We all have heard humans play music. But this story is about a group of animals forming an orchestra. Their statue was constructed and is still standing tall in Bremen town.Free activity sheet available at www.rituvaish.com/the-town-musiciansSend your artwork to rituvaish@gmail.com.Transcript:Once upon a time, there was a donkey, who lived on a farm with his master. The donkey had become old and one day he got fed up on working on the farm and decided to leave his master. He thought he would become a musician.He set off for the nearby town of Bremen.On his way, the donkey met a dog, who had also left his home and master. “Will you come with me to Bremen?” asked the donkey. "Let's become musicians in the town orchestra. You can play the drums and I will play the guitar.” The dog agreed and they continued on their way together.With dreams of playing in the town orchestra, they walked towards Bremen. A little bit further they met a cat and invited him to go with them to Breman and invited him to go with them to Breman. They also requested him to join the town orchestra as a lead vocalist.The cat meowed in agreement and the three animals hurried on to Bremen.As they were passing by a castle, the three saw a cockerel, crowing as loudly as he could, so they asked him why he was singing so loudly. “They are going to cook me and eat me tomorrow," he said, “so I am saying goodbye to life.”But the donkey said, “Don't be silly! Come with us! You can play the saxophone and you could be in the Bremen orchestra. That is where we are all going.”The cockerel, who really didn't want to be cooked, jumped on the donkey's back and the four continued on their way.Children, do you think this animal team would make good music? Why? Why not?Let's listen ahead.The sun had started to go down and the four friends were looking for shelter for the night. They came across a house which was being burgled. The donkey looked through the window and saw a table, which had been generously laid with food and drinks. Since the four friends were very hungry, they decided to drive the men away, not knowing that they were burglars away so that they could eat the food.The dog climbed on the donkey's back, the cat stood on the dog's head and the rooster perched on the cat's back. They started their concert on three: “Hee-haw!” brayed the donkey, “Woof-woof!” barked the dog, “Meoooowww!” said the cat, and “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed the cockerel. At all the noise the burglars started shouting in fear, “Help! Ghosts are coming to get us!” The men ran out of the door as fast as they could. They left the house that very second, thinking that the house was haunted by millions of terrifying ghosts.The four friends made sure that the burglars had run a long way away and then went into the house. They sat down for dinner, ate, drank, and were merry.Full from the delicious meal, they looked for a place to sleep and turned off the lights. The dog curled up behind the door, the cat snuggled in by the fireplace, the rooster perched on the back of a chair, and the donkey settled in one of the kitchen nooks. They soon fell fast asleep.Meanwhile, the burglars gathered and the ringleader decided to send one of them to check whether the ghosts were still in the house as it was dark. The man who was sent approached the house quietly, shaking with fear. He reached the door and stood to listen. Since there was no noise, he went into the kitchen. He wanted to light a fire. So, thinking the cat's glowing eyes were burning coals, he held a candle next to them, hoping it would catch the light.The cat jumped on his face and started scratching him. In a panic, he stepped back, stepping on the dog, who bit the man's leg fiercely. The man couldn't see anything and began to run around in the dark in a blind panic. He was kicked by the donkey. Then the cockerel crowed and started flying around.The burglar ran to the ringleader and said “It's not just ghosts! Now there are witches in the house! Some of them scratch, others bite, others kick… It would be better for us if we moved somewhere else.” When the rest of the burglars heard him, they left the place as quickly as they could.For the rest of their days, the saxophone-playing rooster, Cat, the lead singing cat, the drum playing, dog, and the guitar-playing donkey, lived in the cottage and played for the animals that lived around the daisy-filled clearing.Children, do you play any musical instruments?Soon they became the best city musicians Bremen ever had. After the animals had died, the citizens erected a statue in memory of them. - It still stands next to the town hall.  

What you'll learn in this episode: Why the best modernist pieces are fetching record prices at auction today How “Messengers of Modernism” helped legitimize modernist jewelry as an art form The difference between modern jewelry and modernist jewelry Who the most influential modernist jewelers were and where they drew their inspiration from Why modernist jewelry was a source of empowerment for women About Toni Greenbaum Toni Greenbaum is a New York-based art historian specializing in twentieth and twenty-first century jewelry and metalwork. She wrote Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry 1940-1960 (Montréal: Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Flammarion, 1996), Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2019) and “Jewelers in Wonderland,” an essay on Sam Kramer and Karl Fritsch for Jewelry Stories: Highlights from the Collection 1947-2019 (New York: Museum of Arts and Design and Arnoldsche, 2021), along with numerous book chapters, exhibition catalogues, and essays for arts publications. Greenbaum has lectured internationally at institutions such as the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah. She has worked on exhibitions for several museums, including the Victoria and Albert in London, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York. Additional Resources: Link to Purchase Books Toni's Instagram The Jewelry Library  Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Once misunderstood as an illegitimate art form, modernist jewelry has come into its own, now fetching five and six-figure prices at auction. Modernist jewelry likely wouldn't have come this far without the work of Toni Greenbaum, an art historian, professor and author of “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history of modernist jewelry; why it sets the women who wear it apart; and where collectors should start if they want to add modernist pieces to their collections. Read the episode transcript here.     Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today my guest is art historian, professor and author Toni Greenbaum. She is the author of the iconic tome, “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960,” which analyzes the output of America's modernist jewelers. Welcome back.    Do you think that if you had looked up and seen Sam Kramer's shop, would you have been attracted?   Toni: Oh, my god, I would have been up in a shot. Are you kidding? I would have tumbled up those stairs had I known it was there. I never even knew what it was, but I was always seeking out that aesthetic, that kind of thing. Like I said, my mother would buy handmade jewelry, silver jewelry, and I loved what she bought. I would go to galleries with her. When I say gallery, they were more like shops; they were like shop-galleries, multimedia boutiques, not specifically jewelry, that would carry handmade jewelry. I loved it. Had I seen Sam Kramer's shop, I would have been up like a shot. The same thing with Art Smith. I would have been down those steps like a shot, but I didn't know they were there, and I was too busy running after boys and going to the coffee shops in Greenwich Village to look carefully.   Sharon: Out here, I don't know if you would have had those influences.   Toni: You had a few shops. You're in the Los Angeles area?   Sharon: Yeah.   Toni: There were a few shops in L.A., not so much in Northern California. There was Nanny's in San Francisco, which was a craft gallery that carried a lot of jewelers. In Southern California there were a few studio shops, but I don't know how prominent they were. I don't know how obvious they were. I don't think that they were as much on people's radar as the ones in New York.   Sharon: When you say studio jewelers, was everything one-off, handmade?   Toni: Yes—well, not necessarily one-off. Generally, what these jewelers would do—this is the best generalization—for the larger, more expensive, more involved pieces, they would make one. When they sold it, they'd make another one, and when they sold that, they'd make another one. If the style was popular, they would also have what they would think of as production lines—earrings, cuff links, tie bars that they would replicate, but they were not cast usually. At that time, very little of it was cast. It was hand-wrought, so there were minor differences in each of the examples. But unless we get into the business records of these jewelers, we don't really know exactly how many they made of each design.   Sharon: Why is it, do you think, that modernist jewelry has been so popular today?   Toni: Oh, that's a good question. That's a very good question. I think a lot has to do with Fifty/50 Gallery's promotion. Fifty/50 was on Broadway at 12th Street, and it was a multimedia gallery that specialized in mid-20th century material. There were three very smart, very savvy, very charismatic owners who truly loved the material like I love it, and when you love something so much, when you have a passion, it's very easy to make other people love it also. I think a lot of the answer to that question is Fifty/50's promotion. They were also a very educative gallery. They were smart, and they knew how to give people the information they needed to know they were buying something special. I think it appeals to a certain kind of person.    Blanche Brown was an art historian in the midcentury who was married to Arthur Danto, who was a philosopher who taught art history at Columbia. His wife, Blanche Brown, was also an art historian. She did a lot of writing, and she would talk about the modernist jewelry, which she loved. It was a badge that she and her cohort would wear with pride because it showed them to be aesthetically aware, politically progressive. It made them stand apart from women who were wearing diamonds and precious jewelry just to show how wealthy their husbands were, which was in the 1940s and 1950s, the women who would wear this jewelry. So, for women like Blanche Brown and women through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and even now—well, now it's different because we have all the contemporary jewelers—but I think it set these women apart. It made them special in a way. It set them apart from the women who were wearing the Cartier and the Van Cleef and Arpels.    You dress for your peers. You dress to make your peers admire you, if not be envious. Within the Bohemian subculture of the 1950s, within the Beat Generation of the 1950s and through the 1960s and the hippies in the 1970s, it set apart that kind of woman. Remember, also, feminism was starting to become a very important aspect of lifestyle. I think when “The Feminine Mystique” came out around 1963—I would have to check it—women were starting to feel empowered. They wanted to show themselves to be intelligent and secure and powerful, and I think modernist jewelry imparted that message when one wore it. It's not that different than people who wear the contemporary jewelry we love so much now. Art Jewelry Forum says it's jewelry that makes you think, and that is what I think a lot of us relate to in that jewelry. It's jewelry with a real concept behind it.   Sharon: That leads me to the next question. I know the biographies repeat themselves. When I was looking up information about you, they said you're an expert in modernist and contemporary jewelry. Contemporary can mean anything. Would you agree with the contemporary aspect?   Toni: I don't view myself as an expert in contemporary. I think I know more than a lot of people about it only because I study it. It's very hard to keep up because there are so many new jewelers popping up all the time. The name of my course that I teach at Pratt is Theory and Criticism of Contemporary Jewelry. Because of that, I do have to keep up to the day because it's a required course for the juniors majoring in jewelry studies, and I feel a responsibility to make them aware of what's happening right at that point I'm teaching it. Things are changing so much in our field, but I don't view myself as an expert. I just think I know a lot about it. It's not my field of expertise, and there's so much. You've got German jewelers, and you've got Chinese jewelers, and you've got Australian and New Zealand jewelers, and you've got Swedish jewelers. All over the world. You've got Estonia, a little, small country, as these major jewelers. They are each individual disciplines in and of themselves.   Sharon: How is it that you wrote the catalogue that became “Messengers of Modernism”? Were you asked to write the catalogue?    Toni: Yeah, I was hired by David Hanks and Associates, which was and still is the curatorial firm. They're American, but they work for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. At that time, there was a separate Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts, and that's really where Messengers of Modernism—it came under the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts. Now, it has been absorbed into the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It's just one building. It was a separate building. Basically I was hired by the museum to write the catalogue.   Sharon: And how did it become a book?    Toni: It is a book.    Sharon: Yes, but how did it become—it was a catalogue.   Toni: It's a book, but it functions as the catalogue in the next edition.   Sharon: Right, but I was saying that you wrote the catalogue, and then you said it was published by Flammarion in Paris. Did they say, “Oh, let's take it and make it a book?” How did it transform?   Toni: It was always a book, but it functioned as the catalogue for a particular collection, which is their collection of modernist jewelry. Many exhibitions, even painting exhibitions, when you go to a museum and view a painting exhibition and you buy the accompanying text, it's the catalogue of the exhibition.   Sharon: Yes, but a lot of those don't become books per se. That's why I was wondering, did somebody at the publishers see your catalogue and say, “This would make a great book?” I have never seen the exhibition, but I have the book.   Toni: I think this is a semantic conversation more than anything else. It has become, as I said, the standard text, mostly because nothing else really exists, except I believe Marbeth Schon wrote a book on the modernist jewelers which is more encyclopedic. This book, “Messengers of Modernism,” first of all, it puts the collection in the context of studio craft from the turn of the century up until then, which was then the present. The book was published in 1996. I think what you're saying is it's more important than what we think of as a museum catalogue and it's become a standard text.   Sharon: Yeah.   Toni: It was always conceived as a book about modernist jewelry; it was just focusing on this one collection. What I'm saying is people would say, “Well, why isn't this one in the book? Why did you leave this one out?” and I said, “Well, I didn't leave this one out. This is a book about a finite collection that's in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.” If I were writing a book about modernist jewelry, of course I would have included Claire Falkenstein, but she wasn't in their collection, so it's not in that book. That was basically what I meant.   Sharon: Is there a volume two that's going to be coming out with the ones that weren't in the collection that you think should be in the book?   Toni: That book was published in 1996. We're already in 2022. People are always asking me, but one never knows.    Sharon: I guess you don't need an exhibition to write a catalogue.    Toni: No, to write a book, of course you don't.   Sharon: To write a book. What's on your radar? What do you think you have next? Is it in the realm of modernism that you would be writing about?   Toni: That's really what I write about. I lecture about contemporary jewelry to my students and occasionally to the public, but my area of expertise is modernism. There are cardiologists that have a part of their practice in general medicine, but if somebody has a gastrointestinal problem, they're going to send them to a gastroenterologist. I can deal with the broad strokes, which I do, but unless it's one specific jeweler that I would write about, I would not attempt a book about contemporary jewelry. I would stick with modernism, what I feel very confident and comfortable with.   Sharon: If somebody who's passionate about jewelry but not wealthy said they want to start building a modernist collection, where would they start?   Toni: That is another good question. First of all, they would really have to comb the auctions. If they were very serious about collecting important works, I would send them to Mark McDonald, who's the premier dealer in this material. He was one of the partners of Fifty/50.   Sharon: Right, does he still work in that area? Didn't they close the store? Yeah, they closed the store.   Toni: Yeah, two of the partners tragically died. Mark had Gansevoort Gallery after. That was on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District here in New York, which was a wonderful gallery also specializing in modernist material, multimedia. Then he had a shop up in Hudson, New York, for many years, right opposite Ornamentum Gallery. That closed, but he still deals privately. He is the most knowledgeable dealer in the period that I know of. If anybody was really serious about starting to collect modernist jewelry, he would be the person I recommend they go to.   Sharon: It sounds like somebody to collaborate with if you're writing your next book.   Toni: We always collaborate. We're good friends and we always collaborate.   Sharon: Where do you see the market for modernist jewelry? Do you see it continuing to grow? Is it flat? Is it growing?   Toni: Yes, the best of it will continue to grow. There was an auction right before the pandemic hit. I think it was February of 2020, right before we got slammed. It was an auction that was organized by David Rago Auction in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and Wright, which is also an auction gallery specializing in modern and modernism from Chicago. Mark McDonald curated the collection, and the idea behind that exhibition was it was going to go from modernist jewelry from the mid-20th century up to the present and show the lineage and the inheritance from the modernist jewelers. It also included Europeans, and there was some wonderful modernist jewelry in that exhibition that sold very well—the move star pieces, the big pieces.    Then there was—I guess a year ago, no more than that—there was an auction at Bonhams auction house which was one couple's collection of modernist jewelry, artist jewelry—and by artists, I mean Picasso and Max Ernst, modernist artists. They collected a lot of Mexican jewelry and two of Art Smith's most major bracelets, his modern cuff and his lava cuff. I always forget which sold for what, but these were copper and brass cuffs. One sold for $18,000 and one sold for $13,000. I think the modern cuff was $18,000 and the lava cuff was $13,000. If anybody comes to my lecture tomorrow for GemEx, I talk about both of them in detail. This is big money. Five figures is very big money for these items, but these are the best of the best, the majors of the major by Art Smith. Art Smith is currently very, very coveted.   Sharon: Who's your favorite of the modernist jewelers? Who would you say?   Toni: Well, I have two favorites. There are three that are the most important, so let's say three favorites. One is Art Smith, and the reason is because the designs are just brilliant. They really take the body into consideration, negative space into consideration, and they're just spectacularly designed and beautiful to wear. Sam Kramer, the best of his work, the really weird, crazy, surrealist pieces like the one that's on the cover and the back of the Sam Kramer book. Margaret de Patta, who was from the San Francisco Bay area, and she was diametrically opposite to these two because her work was based upon constructivism. She had studied under Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian constructivist painter, sculptor, photographer. Her work is architectural based upon these eccentrically cut stones. She would be inspired by the rutilations, which are the inclusions within quartz, and she would design her structures around them. I would say those are my three favorites.   Sharon: That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought of Margaret de Patta. I guess I think of her in a different category. I don't know why.   Toni: She's one of the most important modernist jewelers. She founded that whole San Francisco Bay Area MAG, the Metal Arts Guild. She was their guru.    Sharon: When I think of San Francisco at that time, I think of all the jewelry I bought when I was 16 and then I said, “What did I want this for?” Now I see it in the flea markets for 14 times the price I paid for it.   Toni: Right.   Sharon: But who knew. Anyway, Toni, thank you so much. It's been so great to have you. We really learned a lot. It's a real treat. Thank you.   Toni: I had a great time also. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.   Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why the best modernist pieces are fetching record prices at auction today How “Messengers of Modernism” helped legitimize modernist jewelry as an art form The difference between modern jewelry and modernist jewelry Who the most influential modernist jewelers were and where they drew their inspiration from Why modernist jewelry was a source of empowerment for women About Toni Greenbaum Toni Greenbaum is a New York-based art historian specializing in twentieth and twenty-first century jewelry and metalwork. She wrote Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry 1940-1960 (Montréal: Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Flammarion, 1996), Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2019) and “Jewelers in Wonderland,” an essay on Sam Kramer and Karl Fritsch for Jewelry Stories: Highlights from the Collection 1947-2019 (New York: Museum of Arts and Design and Arnoldsche, 2021), along with numerous book chapters, exhibition catalogues, and essays for arts publications. Greenbaum has lectured internationally at institutions such as the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah. She has worked on exhibitions for several museums, including the Victoria and Albert in London, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York. Additional Resources: Link to Purchase Books Toni's Instagram The Jewelry Library  Photos Available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Once misunderstood as an illegitimate art form, modernist jewelry has come into its own, now fetching five and six-figure prices at auction. Modernist jewelry likely wouldn't have come this far without the work of Toni Greenbaum, an art historian, professor and author of “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960.” She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the history of modernist jewelry; why it sets the women who wear it apart; and where collectors should start if they want to add modernist pieces to their collections. Read the episode transcript here.   Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.    Today my guest is art historian, professor and author Toni Greenbaum. She is the author of the iconic tome, “Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940 to 1960,” which analyzes the output of America's modernist jewelers. Most recently, she authored “Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge,” a biography of the jeweler Sam Kramer. Every time I say jeweler I think I'm using the world a little loosely, but we're so glad to have you here today. Thank you so much.   Toni: I am so glad to be here, Sharon. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been many years coming.   Sharon: I'm glad we connected. Tell me about your jewelry journey. It sounds very interesting.   Toni: Well, there's a lot you don't know about my jewelry journey. My jewelry journey began when I was a preteen. I just became fascinated with Native American, particularly Navajo, jewelry that I would see in museum gift shops. I started to buy it when I was a teenager, what I could afford. In those days, I have to say museum gift shops were fabulous, particularly the Museum of Natural History gift shop, the Brooklyn Museum gift shop. They had a lot of ethnographic material of very high quality. So, I continued to buy Native American jewelry. My mother used to love handcrafted jewelry, and she would buy it in whatever craft shops or galleries she could find.    Then eventually in my 20s and 30s, I got outpriced. Native American jewelry was becoming very, very fashionable, particularly in the late 60s, 1970s. I started to see something that looked, to me, very much like Native American jewelry, but it was signed. It had names on it, and some of them sounded kind of Mexican—in fact, they were Mexican. So, I started to buy Mexican jewelry because I could afford it. Then that became very popular when names like William Spratling and Los Castillo and Hector Aguilar became known. I saw something that looked like Mexican jewelry and Navajo jewelry, but it wasn't; it was made by Americans. In fact, it would come to be known as modernist jewelry. Then I got outpriced with that, but that's the start of my jewelry journey.   Sharon: So, you liked jewelry from when you were a youth.    Toni: Oh, from when I was a child. I was one of these little three, four-year-olds that was all decked out. My mother loved jewelry. I was an only child, and I was, at that time, the only grandchild. My grandparents spoiled me, and my parents spoiled me, and I loved jewelry, so I got a lot of jewelry. That and Frankie Avalon records.   Sharon: Do you still collect modernist? You said you were getting outpriced. You write about it. Do you still collect it?   Toni: Not really. The best of the modernist jewelry is extraordinarily expensive, and unfortunately, I want the best. If I see something when my husband and I are antiquing or at a flea market or at a show that has style and that's affordable, occasionally I'll buy it, but I would not say that I can buy the kind of jewelry I want in the modernist category any longer. I did buy several pieces in the early 1980s from Fifty/50 Gallery, when they were first putting modernist jewelry on the map in the commercial aspect. I was writing about it; they were selling it. They were always and still are. Mark McDonald still is so generous with me as far as getting images and aiding my research immeasurably. Back then, the modernist jewelry was affordable, and luckily I did buy some major pieces for a tenth of what they would get today.   Sharon: Wow! When you say the best of modernist jewelry today, Calder was just astronomical. We'll put that aside.   Toni: Even more astronomical: there's a Harry Bertoia necklace that somebody called my attention to that is coming up at an auction at Christie's. If they don't put that in their jewelry auctions, they'll put it in their design auctions. I think it's coming up at the end of June; I forget the exact day. The estimate on the Harry Bertoia necklace is $200,000 to $300,000—and this is a Harry Bertoia necklace. I'm just chomping at the bit to find out what it, in fact, is going to bring, but that's the estimate they put, at $200,000 to $300,000.   Sharon: That's a lot of money. What holds your interest in modernist jewelry?   Toni: The incredible but very subtle design aspect of it. Actually, tomorrow I'm going to be giving a talk on Art Smith for GemEx. Because my background is art history, one of the things I always do when I talk about these objects is to show how they were inspired by the modern art movements. This is, I think, what sets modernist jewelry apart from other categories of modern and contemporary jewelry. There are many inspirations, but it is that they are very much inspired by Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Biomorphism, etc., depending on the artist. Some are influenced by all of the above, and I think I saw that. I saw it implicitly before I began to analyze it in the jewelry.    This jewelry is extraordinarily well-conceived. A lot of the craftsmanship is not pristine, but I have never been one for pristine craftsmanship. I love rough surfaces, and I love the process to show in the jewelry. Much of the modernist jewelry is irreverent—I use the word irreverent instead of sloppy—as far as the process is concerned. It was that hands-on, very direct approach, in addition to this wonderful design sense, which, again, came from the modern art movements. Most of the jewelers—not all of them, but most of them—lived either in New York or in Northern or Southern California and had access to museums, and these people were aesthetes. They would go to museums. They would see Miro's work; they would see Picasso's work, and they would definitely infuse their designs with that sensibility.   Sharon: Do you think that jumped out at you, the fact that they were inspired by different art movements, because you studied art history? You teach it, or you did teach it at one time?    Toni: No, just history of jewelry. I majored in art history, but I've never taught art history. I've taught history of jewelry. We can argue about whether jewelry is art or not, but history of jewelry is what I've taught.   Sharon: I've taken basic art history, but I couldn't tell you some of the movements you're talking about. I can't identify the different movements. Do you think it jumped out at you because you're knowledgeable?   Toni: Yes, definitely, because I would look at Art Smith and I would say, “That's Biomorphism.” I would see it. It was obvious. I would look at Sam Kramer and I would say, “This is Surrealism.” He was called a surrealist jeweler back in his day, when he was practicing and when he had his shop on 8th Street. I would look at Rebajes and I would see Cubism. Of course, it was because I was well-versed in those movements, because what I was always most interested in when I was studying art history were the more modern movements.   Sharon: Did you think you would segue to jewelry in general? Was that something on your radar?   Toni: That's a very interesting question because when I was in college, I had a nucleus of professors who happened to have come from Cranbrook.   Sharon: I'm sorry, from where?   Toni: Cranbrook School of Art.   Sharon: O.K., Cranbrook.   Toni: I actually took a metalsmithing class as an elective, just to see what it was because I was so interested in jewelry, although I was studying what I call legitimate art history. I was so interested in jewelry that I wanted to see what the process was. I probably was the worst jeweler that ever tried to make jewelry, but I learned what it is to make. I will tell you something else, Sharon, it is what has given me such respect for the jewelers, because when you try to do it yourself and you see how challenging it is, you really respect the people who do it miraculously even more.    So, I took this class just to see what it was, and the teacher—I still remember his name. His name was Cunningham; I don't remember his first name. He was from Cranbrook, and he sent the class to a retail store in New York on 53rd Street, right opposite MOMA, called America House.   Sharon: Called American House?   Toni: America House. America House was the retail enterprise of the American Craft Council. They had the museum, which was then called the Museum of Contemporary Crafts; now it's called MAD, Museum of Arts and Design. They had the museum, and they had a magazine, Craft Horizons, which then became American Craft, and then they had this retail store. I went into America House—and this was the late 1960s—and I knew I had found my calling. I looked at this jewelry, which was really fine studio jewelry. It was done by Ronald Pearson; it was done by Jack Kripp. These were the people that America House carried. I couldn't afford to buy it. I did buy some of the jewelry when they went out of business and had a big sale in the early 1970s. At that time I couldn't, but I looked at the jewelry and the holloware, and I had never seen anything like it. Yes, I had seen Native American that I loved, and I had seen Mexican that I loved. I hadn't yet seen modernist; that wasn't going to come until the early 1980s. But here I saw this second generation of studio jewelers, and I said, “I don't know what I'm going to do with this professionally, but I know I've got to do something with it because this is who I am. This is what I love.”    Back in the late 1960s, it was called applied arts. Anything that was not painting and sculpture was applied art. Ceramics was applied art; furniture was applied art; textiles, jewelry, any kind of metalwork was applied art. Nobody took it seriously as an academic discipline in America, here in this country. Then I went on to graduate school, still in art history. I was specializing in what was then contemporary art, particularly color field painting, but I just loved what was called the crafts, particularly the metalwork. I started to go to the library and research books on jewelry. I found books on jewelry, but they were all published in Europe, mostly England. There were things in other languages other than French, which I could read with a dictionary. There were books on jewelry history, but they were not written in America; everything was in Europe. So, I started to read voraciously about the history of jewelry, mostly the books that came out of the Victoria & Albert Museum. I read all about ancient jewelry and medieval jewelry and Renaissance jewelry. Graham Hughes, who was then the director of the V&A, had written a book, “Modern Jewelry,” and it had jewelry by artists, designed by Picasso and Max Ernst and Brach, including things that were handmade in England and all over Europe. I think even some of the early jewelers in our discipline were in that book. If I remember correctly, I think Friedrich Becker, for example, might have been in Graham Hughes' “Modern Jewelry,” because that was published, I believe, in the late 1960s.    So, I saw there was a literature in studio jewelry; it just wasn't in America. Then I found a book on William Spratling, this Mexican jeweler whose work I had collected. It was not a book about his jewelry; it was an autobiography about himself that obviously he had written, but it was so rich in talking about the metalsmithing community in Taxco, Mexico, which is where he, as an American, went to study the colonial architecture. He wound up staying and renovating the silver mines that had been dormant since the 18th century. It was such a great story, and I said, “There's something here,” but no graduate advisor at that time, in the early 70s, was going to support you in wanting to do a thesis on applied art, no matter what the medium. But in the back of my mind, I always said, “I'm going to do something with this at some point.”    Honestly, Sharon, I never thought I would live to see the day that this discipline is as rich as it is, with so much literature, with our publishers publishing all of these fantastic jewelry books, and other publishers, like Flammarion in Paris, which published “Messengers of Modernism.” Then there's the interest in Montreal at the Museum of Fine Arts, which is the museum that has the “Messengers of Modernism” collection. It has filtered into the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, obviously MAD. So many museums are welcoming. I never thought I would live to see the day. It really is so heartening. I don't have words to express how important this is, but I just started to do it. In the early 1970s or mid-1970s—I don't think my daughter was born yet. My son was a toddler. I would sit in my free moments and write an article about William Spratling, because he was American. He went to Mexico, but he was American. He was the only American I knew of that I could write about. Not that that article was published at that time, but I was doing the research and I was writing it.   Sharon: That's interesting. If there had been a discipline of jewelry history or something in the applied arts, if an advisor had said, “Yes, I'll support you,” or “Why don't you go ahead and get your doctorate or your master's,” that's something you would have done?   Toni: Totally, without even a thought, yes. Because when I was studying art history, I would look at Hans Holbein's paintings of Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More, and all I would do was look at the jewelry they were wearing, the chains and the badges on their berets. I said, “Oh my god, that is so spectacular.” Then I learned that Holbein actually designed the jewelry, which a lot of people don't know. I said, “There is something to this.” I would look at 18th century paintings with women, with their pearls and rings and bracelets, and all I would do was look at the jewelry. I would have in a heartbeat. If I could have had a graduate advisor, I would have definitely pursued that.   Sharon: When you say you never thought you'd live to see the day when modernist jewelry is so popular—not that it's so surprising, but you are one of the leaders of the movement. When I mentioned to somebody, “Oh, I like modernist jewelry,” the first thing they said was, “Well, have you read ‘Messengers of Modernism?'” As soon as I came home—I was on a trip—I got it. So, you are one of the leaders.   Toni: Well, it is interesting. It is sort of the standard text, but people will say, “Well, why isn't Claire Falkenstein in the book? She's so important,” and I say, “It's looked upon as a standard text, but the fact is it's a catalogue to an exhibition. That was the collection.” Fifty/50 Gallery had a private collection. As I said before, they were at the forefront of promoting and selling modernist jewelry, but they did have a private collection. That collection went to Montreal in the 1990s because at that time, there wasn't an American museum that was interested in taking that collection. That book is the catalogue of that finite collection. So, there are people who are major modernist jewelers—Claire Falkenstein is one that comes to mind—that are not in that collection, so they're not in the book. There's a lot more to be said and written about that movement.   Sharon: I'm sure you've been asked this a million times: What's the difference between modern and modernist jewelry?   Toni: Modern is something that's up to date at a point in time, but modernist jewelry is—this is a word we adopted. The word existed, but we adopted it to define the mid-20th century studio jewelry, the post-war jewelry. It really goes from 1940 to the 1960s. That's it; that's the time limit of modernist jewelry. Again, it's a word we appropriated. We took that word and said, “We're going to call this category modernist jewelry because we have to call it something, so that's the term.” Modern means up to date. That's just a general word.   Sharon: When you go to a show and see things that are in the modernist style, it's not truly modernist if it was done today, it wasn't done before 1960.   Toni: Right, no. Modernist jewelry is work that's done in that particular timeframe and that also subscribes to what I was saying, this appropriation of motifs from the modern art movement. There was plenty of costume jewelry and fine jewelry being done post-war, and that is jewelry that is mid-20th century. You can call it mid-20th century modern, which confuses the issue even more, but it's not modernist jewelry. Modernist jewelry is jewelry that was done in the studio by a silversmith and was inspired by the great movements in modern art and some other inspirations. Art Smith was extremely motivated by African motifs, but also by Calder and by Biomorphism. It's not religious. There are certainly gray areas, but in general, that's modernist jewelry.    Sharon: I feel envious when you talk about everything that was going in on New York. I have a passion, but there's no place on the West Coast that I would go to look at some of this stuff.   Toni: I'll tell you one of the ironies, Sharon. Post-war, definitely through the 1950s and early 1960s, there must have been 13 to 15 studio shops by modernist jewelers. You had Sam Kramer on 8th Street and Art Smith on 4th Street and Polo Bell, who was on 4th Street and then he was on 8th Street, and Bill Tendler, and you had Jules Brenner, and Henry Steig was Uptown. Ed Wiener was all over the place. There were so many jewelers in New York, and I never knew about them. I never went to any of their shops. I used to hang out in the Village when I was a young teenager, walked on 4th Street; never saw Art Smith's shop. He was there from 1949 until 1977. I used to walk on 8th Street, and Sam Kramer was on the second floor. I never looked up, and I didn't know this kind of jewelry existed. In those days, like I said, I was still collecting Navajo.

Once upon a time there was a small paper clip curious about the world. This episode is made for kids. Written, performed and produced by Karin Heimdahl Karin is the creator of audio drama Y2K. In 2019, she won an Audioverse award for writing a spoken word monologue. She is also a voice actor, podcaster and drama teacher turned project manager. Voice acting credits include Mirrors, Vampires of White Chapel, Copperheart and Hit the Bricks. She produces and co-hosts Det nya svarta, a pop culture podcast in Swedish. Karin lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. y2kpod.com TRANSCRIPT Once upon a time, there was a prince. No wait, princes are dull. There was a farm girl. Nah… All right, once upon a time there was a small paper clip curious about the world. One day, the small paper clip was selected to hold a report together. The paper clip (along with the report) was sent on a journey across the vast office landscape, seeing enormous desks and computers, chairs and coffee mugs along the way. That night, the small paper clip lay on a tray among their new friends and looked up at the ceiling high above. ”Tomorrow”, they thought, ”tomorrow I might go on a new adventure”. Happy and tired, they settled in to sleep. Shh. Don’t wake ’em now… Good night. Credits This episode of Listen Rinse Repeat was written, performed and produced by Karin Heimdahl of Y2K. Sound effects and music from freesound.org under the Creative Commons 0 license.

This is Part 1 of a special series on the “True Vine”, where Denver answers the question, “Why is Christ referred to as the ‘True Vine’ in scripture, and what can we learn from this analogy?” Transcript Once again, Joseph is called by name. This is verse 33. He was afraid. The fear soon left … Continue reading 116: True Vine → The post 116: True Vine appeared first on Denver Snuffer.

There is a place in Singapore known as Bukit Merah, or Redhill. Listen to find out how the place got its name. Transcript: Once upon a time, there was a king, who ruled the island of Singapura. The king was very proud and evil-hearted, and could not stand anyone who is cleverer than him. One day, many swordfish came to the shores of Singapura and began leaping out from the sea attacking the villagers living near the shores. The swordfish were strong and they had long hard mouths and razor sharp teeth, and they killed many villagers. The king and his advisers were up to their wits end and does not know what to do. Then one day, a boy came to see the king. "Your majesty, why dont you line the shores with banana stems, so that the swordfish will be stuck and you can kill them?" Upon hearing the boy's suggestion, the king said to his men: "Do as the boy has said." And they lined the shores with banana stems. When the swordfish jumped up, the men began to kill each and every swordfish. Everybody soon heard about the boy and began to praise him for his cleverness. The king began to feel angry and jealous. That night, he ordered his man: "Look for the boy and kill him!" The men went up to the hill where the boy lived and pulled out their daggers to stab the boy. As the boy died, his blood began to flow down the hill and covered the hill in red. As time passed, people began to call the hill "Bukit Merah", or Redhill, in memory of the boy.

[TRANSCRIPT] Once upon a time there was a BOOK… [INTRO MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Well, we’ve come pretty far in eleven short podcasts, and today we’re looking at a unique and beloved bible text called “Ruth.” The scroll of Joshua resolved the storyline of the […]

Transcript -- Once the dot.com market started to crack, investors soon realised that these internet companies weren't really worth anything at all, but was this enough for them sell up before the bubble burst?

Transcript -- Once more reacting against the Enlightenment, Romantic philosophy eschewed traditional religion, rejecting historical claims in favour of modern reason and re-appraisal of biblical texts.

Transcript -- Once the polymer disks are formulated. The lenses change from their fluid state to hard polymer.

Transcript -- Once the polymer disks are formulated. The lenses change from their fluid state to hard polymer.