Hi, I’m Kate, the designer and maker of Clouds+Ladders Jewelry. C+L jewelry is handmade in my solar-powered studio tucked in a redwood forest in Northern California.
These are just some of the collections I've made in collaboration with amazing art museums. I've always loved art, so this has been a dream come true for me!
The collections are made in limited editions- once they're sold out they are no longer available.
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deYoung Museum of Art
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Ruth Asawa’s hanging sculptures in the deYoung Museum were the inspiration for this custom collection I created.
From sketches, to 3d printed, to cast in bronze! My original proposal for a jewelry collection included inspiration from the silhouettes as well as looking up close at the knitted wire sculptures. The final collection was made cohesive by focusing solely on the silhouettes and interior shapes. CLOUDS+LADDERS x DE YOUNG is engraved on each of the frames.
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The colors I used were inspired by plants and flowers, drawn from Asawa’s and my shared love of gardening, with metallics added into the clay to reflect the wire she used to knit her sculptures.
The final collection included 4 earring styles, 2 necklaces, and one brooch, and was available exclusively at the de Young Museum Store in San Francisco.
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This collection has sold out.
Vladem Contemporary - New Mexico Museum of Art
The buyer for the Santa Fe Museum Stores commissioned me to create a collection of necklace and earring designs inspired both directly and loosely on the Vladem Museum’s logo (shown left). She requested that I use my own choice of colors, so I chose the 4 Sacred Colors of the Navajo, Jet (black), Shell (White), Turquoise, and Abalone (Yellow), informed by a custom necklace I had created for a member of the Navajo Nation.
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If you look closely, you can see that by rotating one of the half circles in their logo about 15 degrees, the new custom design has the letters V C M A hidden in the outlines!
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This collection has sold out.
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Philadelphia Museum of Art, Matisse in the 1930s Exhibit
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Drip Drop Earrings are one of C+L's most popular designs. For this collection, I filled Drip Drop frames with custom clay inlays inspired by fabrics in 2 paintings in the exhibit. ​
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This collection has sold out.
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Baltimore Museum of Art Custom Collection to accompany the Joan Mitchell Exhibit included popular C+L designs handmade in a custom color palette to coordinate with paintings in the exhibit.
Photos coming soon
Craft Contemporary Museum’s 60th Anniversary Celebration ​Craft Contemporary originally was an art gallery that served omelets called The Egg and the Eye, opened by Edith Wyle in Los Angeles in the 1960s. For their 60th anniversary, the museum’s director re-branded the museum shop as “The Egg and the Eye” to honor the museum’s history. He asked me to create a collection blending that theme and the designs of Gere Kavanaugh, which were featured in their anniversary celebration materials, into a custom collection of jewelry.