Winning art in a wee package

A Florida couple create complex, detailed cloisonne masterpieces, usually no more than 1 inch by 1 inch, that wow art show judges.

By MARY ANN MARGER Times Art Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 16, 1999

Gael and Howard Silverblatt must be doing something right.

Black Water, tanzanite, 18 and 22 karat gold; 24 karat gold cloisonne; 11/2 by 3/4 by 1/8 inches

The "something" is cloisonne jewelry, tiny, intricate scenes that take between 70 hours (pendant) and 300 hours (bracelet) to complete.

Acknowledgment of their art has come in the form of back-to-back best of show awards at Mainsail Arts Festival in 1997 and 1998. They also copped first place in 1991. And in six of the 10 shows they entered in 1998, they won either best of show or best of category.

That's quite a record, considering that more than 200 artists exhibit, different judges each year pick the winners, and the judging of art is based not on universal standards but on the individual judge's concept of what is good art.

Occasionally an artist does win a best of show award a second time, but only once before in a major bay area show did an artist win two consecutive years. That was Bruce Marsh, a University of South Florida art professor, who won at Tampa's Gasparilla in 1971 and 1972.

What do judges see in the Silverblatts' work? Former museum director Paul Perrot, who chose winners at last year's Mainsail, says he selected them for "the mastery of their detail, their technique. There is no sign of finickiness. There aren't highs and lows of quality. There is consistency."

Perrot was unaware at the time that the couple had won the year before, when Charles Desmarais, director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, was the judge.

The Silverblatts, who live in Lake Worth near Palm Beach, have been making cloisonne since 1974, the year they were married. Gael fashions the cloisonne enamel into little stories; Howard, the goldsmith, sets them in 18-karat gold.

She learned her craft at Kent State University in Ohio, where she studied with William Harper, who later taught at Florida State University. Howard learned metalsmithing in Key West after graduating from Kent State with a degree in sociology.

Cloisonne is an ancient art, existing as far back as 600 B.C. in Greece. The term comes from the French, meaning cell, or cloister, for the cell built with wires. Most cloisonne today comes from Asia; much of it is inexpensively mass-produced in a factory.

What makes the Silverblatts' cloisonne distinctive is not only the skilled handwork but the miniature scale and Gael's technique of using some wires cut in half. That practice gives the enamel an encased look, as though it were under or within a layer of glass.

Gael's stories are suggested by the pieces themselves or are dream images. They are little narratives without beginning or end, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous. "If I'm going to spend so much time on it, it has to say something," she says.

Working in separate rooms in their studio, the two pass a piece back and forth as it goes through successive stages. Howard solders a border to both sides and cleans and prepares it for enameling.

Gael lays out the design using tweezers to bend the 24 karat gold wires. She then grinds lumps of enamel to the consistency of course sand. With dental tools, she applies the enamel in thin layers, firing after each layer.

Gael and Howard Silverblatt [Times files]

"You fire 45 seconds and it's right. You fire 48 seconds and you burn it up," she says.

After as many as 20 firings, the surface is sanded and polished. Reversible pieces are fired onto the same sheet of metal, not mounted back-to-back. Howard then sets the piece as he might a fine stone and finishes it into an 18-karat pendant, ring, pin or, once a year, a bracelet.

They enter about 10 shows a year. That's all their work schedule allows. "It takes so long to do the work, we can't do more shows," Gael says. A normal workday, seven days a week, is 2 to 10 p.m., though this past year, thanks to a few commissions including wedding rings, it has been more often noon to midnight.

Their works sell for an average of $1,000 and are their sole source of income. "We're not rich," Gael says. "There aren't rich artists."

Because sales and prizes fluctuate, and they do not exhibit at all in winter months, the couple budget carefully.

The Silverblatts won a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in 1994 and best of show at the 1992 Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, generally considered the best in the nation. As if to prove the capriciousness of judging, they have not been accepted in that show since.

Despite their recognition, the Silverblatts strive to make their work even better. Gael is trying to create a sense of space in current pieces. "Like if I'm doing a swamp, I really want it to be that wet, damp feeling of a swamp," she says. They also want to make their work more finely detailed, to give a sense of climbing into the piece -- all within the confines of an object that rarely measures more than 1 inch by 1 inch.

Little work in a big show -- but it stands out.