about

Bio

Teresa Kiplinger is a studio jeweler, a poet, and a noted graphic designer. She combines sculpted precious metals, humble alloys, hand painted enameled images, and original verse to create haunting and expressive art jewelry. Inspired by personal narratives, ephemera, and loss, her modern memento mori jewelry calls us to consider the fragility of our existence. Her evocative work has been selected for the Society of North American Goldsmiths As Good as Gold exhibition (2020), the Enamel Guild North East Under Fire 3 exhibition (2020), and featured in Belle Armoire Jewelry magazine (2018, 2019, 2020). Most recently, she has been selected for inclusion in Linda Kozloff-Turner's forthcoming book 100 Women of Jewelry. She has a BFA in Graphic Design from Kent State University (1992). In 2004 she co-founded FORM, a design and marketing agency for arts organizations and nonprofits where she continues to serve as Partner and Creative Director. She sells her one-of-a-kind jewelry through her website with select pieces on offer at the Metal Museum. She works out of her studio near Cleveland, Ohio, USA.  

From the Artist

I came to metals in midlife to keep myself busy through the end of a painful marriage. ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣When my teen stepson died in 2015, I poured my grief into my fledgling metalwork. I forged a bracelet in his honor, and was comforted by its presence, weight, and permanence. From within this loss, I found my voice. Today, I create modern memento mori and narrative jewelry that revolves around themes of memory, grief, and the brevity of life.⁣⁣⁣⁣

At university, I trained in the aesthetic of the Swiss school of graphic design. Though my body of metalwork does not always reflect the minimal Swiss style of my training, its principles are ever-present in my jewelry work – from my obsessive sensitivity to typography to my attention to negative space.

Themes from my rural Ohio childhood are prevalent in my jewelry work. I was raised on my grandparents' defunct farm, playing in a dusty barn full of sheet-covered furniture. I waded in pastures that sighed with power lines and cornsilk. I explored my grandmother's farmhouse and its secret room that overflowed with 19th century poetry tomes, blurry snapshots of strangers, and letters penned by long-dead ancestors. Enchanted in this landscape of mysterious artifacts, I imagined the stories behind the abandoned beds, tintype lives, and lost loves.  
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My affinity for poetry and its power to express emotion has the most significant influence on my metalwork. All of my life, I have analyzed, memorized, recited and written verse. I often incorporate original poetry directly in my jewelry work, using the visual rhythm of etched text to create visual patterns that reveal, upon closer inspection, a deeper meaning.

How and When to Buy

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Interviews
Jewelery Maker's Guild Podcast
&TheyMake
Brenda Schweder

 
Notes from Teresa's Patrons