Cooper Hewitt says...
William Harper, is an American jewelry designer who creates exciting jewelry in abstract and organic forms. He was born in 1944 in Bucyrus, Ohio. He enrolled in 1962 in a five year program offered jointly between Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Institute of Art. He received his B.S. in 1966 and his M.S. in 1967 with certificates recognizing advanced work in enameling and teaching. While in school he was mentored by two pre-eminent artists; Kenneth Bates who Harper refers to as the father of American enameling and John Paul Miller an expert in jewelry and design.
Trained as both a painter and enamellist, he started his career as an abstract painter, but by the early 1970s he switched to solely enamel work, originally making creations that related to mythology and ritual, which was representative of his interest in and study of diverse cultures, and in particular African art. Well into the decade he moved on from amulets and rattles to jewelry, creating provocative wearable forms that combined skillfully applied enamel with fine gold and non-traditional materials such as scarabs, baroque pearls, feathers and bones. This endowed his pieces with a rich narrative content.
