Designer Linda Kozloff-Turner discusses her coffee table book about 100 international jewelers, which showcases diverse creations while revealing shared challenges and visions. 

 Welcome to the Jewelry Connoisseur Podcast, and now your host Sonia Esther Soltani.

Welcome to this new episode of the Jewelry Connoisseur podcast. Today my guest is Linda Kozloff-Turner. Linda is a jewelry designer based in Colorado, but today she's coming on the podcast as the author of Women of Jewelry. a massive book about 100 women jewelry designer. people that you want to know about people who have fascinating personal stories that Linda has collected over the years. So we're going to discuss what it means to be a women designer, how these women were selected for this project how that work is very special and distinct. And we also going to see if they have different themes, different topics, different concerns. Linda has interviewed them over a period of seven years. So it's a really big testimony about being a women designer. I hope you enjoy.

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[00:00:22] Linda: Oh, yes. I looked at that and I think to myself, yes, the two most notable things Sonia are one, the women, because they wear the jewelry and they understand length of earring, the comfort, the weight, something that doesn't snag on clothing. They have a tendency, to design in a way that is, I think, more wearable in some cases. The other part of that is that I noticed the women significantly focusing on sustainability during these eight years that I've been working on [00:01:00] this project. And I thought that was profound because there was a lot of pioneering in that arena. So the two things I think that are significant are the fact that the women will design something and the other piece of that is convertibles. So maybe you don't always want to wear a long earring, but you like the little button stud that's on your ear. And the women notably would design more convertible type earrings, more convertible type pieces, as well as more sustainably focused. and extremely focused on comfort. Those are very important pieces of the design process for the artist. Just because I think women do have a tendency to wear jewelry more often, and it's more of a daily routine to wear jewelry, and we all know what it's like when something doesn't fit or feel right. And so I noticed that was a [00:02:00] very, big priority for most of the women designers. It had to be comfortable.

[00:02:23] Linda: That was very difficult, actually. I set out in 2016, and I naively typed into a Google search bar, Women Jewelry Designers. And ironically, I came up with a series of men who design jewelry for women. And I thought, I think I'm onto something here. But trying to find a hundred women that I felt really suited the project. And I have some criteria for the project that I know we'll discuss, But I wanted to include a global [00:03:00] representation. I wanted to include diversity in style. I wanted to include a diversity in age. Ageism is a real thing in the jewelry industry. And I'm proud to say that I broke that mold. I put everybody in there. And so after a while. Not only was I just, curating an exhibition, because originally that was the idea here, is to curate a sale exhibition and to write the book that is in tandem with the exhibition. And certainly as a curator, I wanted to make sure that everything in the world was represented. I was referred to several people, Yianni Melas definitely, helped me with that. After a while, I started asking the women at the end of their interview, Who do you think I should include? And I didn't promise to include them, but I definitely wanted to research. This is kind of how I got the ball rolling. And then I would look at the work and I would [00:04:00] review that person. It was like 10 D chess. Because I wanted to create something that was complete, that had all the moving parts, and that everybody and everything was included. It was very difficult. So I was referred to some of the women. I did research and found some of the women myself. I asked some of the women that I interviewed who they thought I should include. And this has been a very magical process. The women that should be in the book were there. I can't really explain that as much as. When you see the book, you'll see that it feels complete. It feels that I left nothing out. and I really hope that that's the case.

[00:04:49] Linda: A lot of people said that to me. I had a really funny moment in time. I got to 99 designers and I finally had 100 and I was just over the moon after 7 [00:05:00] years. And one dropped out because it was a conflict of interest with another publication. And I kept thinking, what's with the 99 100th woman? just couldn't even understand it. Somebody said to me, you know, maybe you're the 100th woman. And I really thought about that and I was going to be okay with it. But then I found, another artist that I felt was, really a good fit. As a grants writer, you talk about yourself all the time and I can't tell you what a refreshing, beautiful note it is to be able to uplift somebody else. I'm very confident in my skills after 50 years, I pretty much can do anything, but it feels really good to uplift everybody else, so I left it at 100, so if you will, it's 101, because I'm there, I'm in the book, for sure, I am the book.

[00:06:10] Linda: Interestingly enough, yes, and also I went through some things in tandem as I was listening to some of the women. Some of the things that I heard were about being overstepped, not listened to. You know, having you know, someone else's project be taken over and during that time I experienced some of that, with a partner in the project, not my current partners by any stretch that partner is no longer here. And I fought for that. And the reason I did is because I had to stay true to my vision. But as I was going through that, I was hearing parallel stories from other people and not just necessarily in the jewelry industry, many, many of these women came from other industries, particularly the financial sector. and publishing, and those sectors are [00:07:00] very, very male dominated and the women had left their jobs because of that. So I saw things go on at the same moment that I was experiencing my, situation. And I felt that their words of wisdom really gave me the strength to move forward, to stand up for myself. And it was hard, I promise. It was difficult.

[00:07:47] Linda: One of the things that I've noticed about big books like this is people put them on the shelf and nobody ever reads them. And I don't blame them. So I wanted to make this manageable in bits. And [00:08:00] at the time I was thinking a tweet, an Instagram, and a Facebook. But I'm a project based, artist and I usually see the project in its entirety. I don't really understand that part of the artistic process for me. I'm an incredibly ambitious artist that just keeps producing. And I saw this in its entirety. And the vision told me, it said, you need to have a black and white photo of the woman with, like, a tweet next to her. You really get that punch. It's just exactly what you're thinking. And I found myself saying those words of wisdom to myself over and over again for seven years. They become like mantras because they're short, but they really get to the point. I then noted that I had to write a little something about what it was like, and I think that's gonna be an upcoming piece. What it took to write this book. I stood in the rain to meet [00:09:00] people in Washington Square. I flew to Paris and got stood up. There was so many things that happened. And I just felt like everyone had a reason for being there. And, became an inherent part of the book. Then I saw that the work had to be in color. It had to be spectacular. And that did not disappoint. I asked all the women to submit their work to me in high resolution files. And then the interview had to be super manageable because nobody's going to sit down and read these, you know, 20, 30 pages on anything. So we knocked every interview back down to 1100 words. Every artist here is about a 15 minute -read. So you can go to the table of contents. You can say, I wonder what so and so is doing. You can read that person's work. And you're not committed for the rest of the evening. You can read a couple of [00:10:00] interviews and you can move on. So it came to me very specifically. So I thought the words of wisdom were like a tweet or whatever that is considered today. Meeting the artist is 275 words, their work speaks for itself, but it's also the byproduct of their life experience. I think that makes the work much more powerful I had interviews that were six hours long and we knocked those back to 1100 words. I am an unbelievable editor at this point and I just wanted it to be manageable, but I saw it exactly like that and the designer and I worked together and the entire team to create exactly that. It is exactly what I saw to the absolute letter.

[00:11:25] Linda: Well, I want to elevate all the designers so that people can access them independently. But I had originally tried to put together a hundred pieces or even three pieces per artist. Um, there were some technical difficulties with that. Things like shipping, things like taxes, import, insurance, that type of thing. So I, did run into some obstacles. I'm still working on that. Sotheby's has spoken to me about a possible virtual exhibition. [00:12:00] And I'm working towards that. I knew if I could pull the book off, I can pull an exhibition off. I'm a curator. I worked at the university I taught up there. And curated possibly close to a thousand exhibitions in my career just because I worked in the field for so many years. So I have a really good idea of how to put these things together. COVID kind of put a little bit of a cloud over that and everything became virtual. So I think my first step into that arena is to create a virtual exhibition of all 100 women's work where they can be shipping from their country or whatever. And we can figure that out. In the industry they call it an exhibition sale. these are difficult because most of these big houses sell posthumous exhibitions. And they become what you would consider to be collectible. [00:13:00] Fortunately, in my situation, all the women are still living and all the women are still working. I find that to be one of the most incredible pieces of this project. In all these years, with all these things, with COVID and everything, all the women are still working. I can hardly even believe that. So I'm working on that exhibition. There are some museums around the world that have expressed interest, but right now, just launching the book was a little overwhelming. We're almost sold out. And I just got purchased for the Rhode Island School of Design Library. And I tell people, money can't buy that. That's one of the most prestigious statements on this project there is. I'm working on it, but I've got to figure out exactly what the right thing is. And the project is so beautiful. It has this life of its own. It will facilitate the [00:14:00] right venue. I'm still working on that. It just became very tricky and I couldn't stop the process of the book. It was like a birth. The baby's coming. We have to move forward. And that's how we, continued, even without the exhibition. Although, albeit, I designed them both together.

[00:14:37] Linda: Yes, I've already started my second book, maybe my third and my fourth. So the little siblings are, more of a fun piece, and I thought it would be fun to tell it what it took to write this book. So I spoke about that. But the next big project is 100 Women of Gems. I'm interviewing faceters, miners. and traders [00:15:00] and I want to learn more about that because it's such a hot topic right now, but always my projects take a different spin. They are not as focused on the product as they are focused on the person that produces that. And I think this could be a very, very exciting exhibition as well. And I've just interviewed some people. I can't even believe they're out there, Sonia. I just had no idea. I'm coming from somewhat of a naive point of view. I don't know everybody. I've been working and raising a family my whole life. I've been a project based artist. I have dozens of other projects that I've been working on and books and one thing or another. And, this project has been, such a powerful one. And now I'm seeing my whole life planned out as a series of 100 women books. Some of them in the future, I foresee, will not be necessarily. based on jewelry, but [00:16:00] I also think that creating a community, that's the one thing that I had no idea I didn't see how that was going to be. I sometimes I work very naively and perhaps blindly. I'm just moving forward moving forward I had no idea the community that I was about to create These women all are now connected to one another. That was so powerful, but it wasn't my intention. I think if I can connect the gems industry with these women designers, that should be like a bolt of lightning. And I can't wait. And I've already started interviewing, and my mind is already blown. Certainly the conditions for women in the gems industry The types of things that we talk about are very, very different than we did as designers.

[00:16:57] Linda: Absolutely. in the designer world, [00:17:00] I heard stories like, I built two million dollars worth of inventory and it got, held up at customs just before the show. I mean, just devastating things. I'm not laughing because they did actually resolve that. But what I think I see between the two projects is we're seaming something very beautiful together, like a quilt. It's being stitched together, and it's how these gems are being sourced, and our focus on their sourcing, and how they're being used, inevitably, in design. And I think that's a very important heritage, a very important lineage.

[00:18:14] Linda: Yes. And I promise it won't take eight years. I think I've designed a template. And I have a much better grasp of, how this is going to go. Just a quick, funny story. When I first started, I went to New York and I had all these interviews all lined up and I went to New York, like, I'm just going to go to everyone's studio and meet with them. And interview them. True story. I get there and no one has a studio. People gave up studios like 15 years ago. I was like, no studios. I interviewed these women in my Airbnb. Oh my God. It was so awkward. And yet we had a ball. But I just, I stumble into things, but I [00:19:00] seem to be able to manage through, but the learning curve has been steep. I will say that. I have certainly misunderstood things and made my mistakes. So I think the second book's going to go a little bit easier. We'll see. We'll see.

[00:19:29] Linda: Uh, You can purchase the book at www. womenofjewelry. com and also I'm, I think I'm going to rerun the fancy edition again, just because it was so successful. The first one was a trial. it's a challenge to sell a very fancy book like this. we spared nothing from the weight of the paper to the weight of the font, and so I believe we're gonna, rerun it, so no [00:20:00] worries. And I did want to let you know that I received a grant from New York City Jewelry Week and I just interviewed five of the women again, and I wanted to talk about something different this time. And project came to me, it said, five women from the four corners of the earth. I really need to get a global representation so that we can all have a place, And so, I will be featured on the New York City Jewelry Week platform this year, 2023. I did a video per day, I pre recorded Zoom, Monday through Friday. And I look forward to having you see that and, I can send you links and, uh, we can take a look at that. But that's NewYorkCityJewelryWeek. com. N Y C J W 23.com

[00:21:19] Linda: well you can always look at the website, but also Instagram is the presence that I think works the best. If you go down, I've got thousands of posts, but I have an image of all the women there as well as images of their jewelry. And I do three ups so that you can really get a nice sense. I basically put that exhibition online anyway, so people can understand when they see the jewelry, how different it is, how diverse it is, how interesting it is, and then you get a chance to see the person who makes it. So Instagram is @womenofjewelry, which is my handle. And I would be honored [00:22:00] for anyone to follow me or take a look at that project. It would be, great honor for us.

[00:22:40] Linda: Thank you. It's been a pleasure and I wish you and everyone at Rapaport the absolute best. I send you all my love.

Thank you for listening to the Jewelry Connoisseur podcast by Rapaport Jewelry Pro. This episode was hosted by Sonia Ester Soltani and produced and edited by Vanina Pikholc. You can find all our episodes on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and read more about diamonds, colored gemstones, high jewelry designers, estate jewelry, and the latest jewelry trends on Rapaport.com/JewelryConnoisseur. Please subscribe to get all our new episodes and if you liked this one, leave us a review.