Belle

For the woman who doesn’t need to be loved. Only respected.

Belle Kogan was one of the first professional female industrial designers in America — working in New York in the 1930s and 40s, designing silverware, ceramics, and decorative objects with a geometric precision her male contemporaries could not ignore. She called herself “the lady with the hammer.” She was the second woman ever to receive the Industrial Designers Society of America award. Most people have never heard her name.

Her glory days overlapped with the final years of Art Deco — and its vocabulary is all over her work: strict geometry, repetition as principle, the baguette form, decoration inseparable from structure. This piece speaks that language fluently.

The arch components were found at an estate sale — not assembled, just potential. The necklace you see was designed and built from those parts. Each arch is white gold-toned, a precise U-form with two vertical arms. From each arm hangs a single baguette-cut drop in a bezel setting, alternating in strict rhythm: smoky grey faceted crystal, blush enamel rectangle, dark and light, dark and light, uniform across the full sweep of the collar. Repetition as design principle. The same form, modulated. Belle Kogan thought exactly this way.

The strand is rose quartz barrel beads separated by pewter spacers — the only warmth in the piece, and deliberately restrained.

The earrings do not flutter. A large square lampwork glass bead — smoky, textured, its interior like hammered pewter captured in glass — flanked above and below by small rose quartz barrel beads. They sit against the face like an architectural detail. 

Materials: Estate-sourced white gold-toned arch components with alternating baguette-cut smoky grey crystal and blush enamel drops · Rose quartz barrel beads · Pewter spacers · 18k gold-plated sterling silver findings · Matching earrings: smoky textured lampwork glass square beads with rose quartz barrel beads · 18k gold-plated sterling silver ear wires

A tribute to a singular age — and the untameable women who made it.