Necklace with Suspended Ball and Cone for Picasso’s “Portrait of a Young Woman”

Unlike commercial jewelers, studio jewelers do not focus on designing settings for precious gems, but experiment with a variety of materials in their investigation of meaning and expression of artistic ideas. The studio jeweler Wendy Ramshaw made a collection of objects over 10 years that she titled “Picasso’s Ladies.” She designed one or more pieces of jewelry for each of the 66 portraits that Picasso made of women with whom he was involved. Researching the women and their stories, Ramshaw was inspired by the emotion of the paintings, as well as the range of styles in which Picasso worked.