Speakers

Speaker's Biographies

Maggie Campbell Pedersen is a Fellow, and past President of Gem-A, the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, and joined the Board of Trustees in November 2022.  She is an Associate of the British Institute of Professional Photography. For sixteen years she was an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society (formerly NADFAS). 

Her work includes identifications, teaching, writing, and constant research into all aspects of the subject of organics. She has given lectures and seminars worldwide, Master Classes in museums, and has appeared on television. She has also worked in various places as a research assistant in animal conservation, studying elephants, turtles, and other animals.

Maggie is the author of the books Gem and Ornamental Materials of Organic Origin (2004, reprinted 2010), Ivory (2015), Tortoiseshell (2021).

Jo Anne and Libby Cooper are the founders and co-owners of Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge, MA. Since 1978 Mobilia Gallery has had longstanding relationships with institutions and individuals throughout the country, working closely with museum curators and collectors to place significant works of art in public and private collections. Mobilia Gallery features 20th and 21st century decorative and fine art, including sculpture, ceramics, paintings, glass, textiles, studio furniture and jewelry. The gallery presents innovative, curated exhibits showcasing American and international artists with lectures, symposiums, traveling exhibitions, and catalogs and books which provide a deeper understanding of the arts and the creative process.

Elyse Zorn Karlin, is the co-director of ASJRA and the publisher of Adornment, The Magazine of Jewelry & Related Arts. She is the author of Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts & Crafts Tradition, An Artist in the Studio: The Jewelry of Sally Ann Wekstein, and the catalog International Art Jewelry, 1895- 1925. She is also the co-author of Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry, Aletto: Five Generations of Jewelry, and editor of Maker & Muse: Women and 20th Century Art Jewelry.

Her curating credits include: Jewelers of the Hudson Valley and International Art Jewelry, 1895-1925 and Finer Things: Jewelry and Accessories from the 1880s-1930s. She also curated Out of this World! Jewelry in the Space Age, Maker & Muse: Women and 20th Century Art Jewelry,.and Chicago Collects: Jewelry in Perspective which opened at the Driehaus Museum and then moved to the Muskegan Museum of Art, MI, and travels to the Osh Kosh Public Museum in 2026. She is currently curating Adorned by the Sea: Jewelry from the Deep which opens at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT in March 2027. She is a consulting curator for The Magnificent Jewelry of Mark Schneider which opens at the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Arts in November 2026.

Sarah Nehama has been creating one-of-a-kind jewelry for the past 27 years. She has lived and worked in Boston, Los Angeles, and now has her studio in the Providence, RI area. She shows her jewelry locally and nationally, at juried shows, private sales, and online through Instagram and this website.

Sarah also collects antique mourning and sentimental jewelry, co-curated an exhibit with the Massachusetts Historical Society of mourning jewelry and art and authored a book on the subject. Over the past 12 years, she has lectured at numerous museums and historical societies both in the States and abroad, and has presented a webinar for the American Society of Appraisers on mourning and sentimental jewelry.

Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, based in England, is an international jewelry historian, author and lecturer. Her jewelry interests range from the classical world to the present day, and her extensive list of publications includes a doctoral thesis on the Italian goldsmith Antonio Gentili da Faebza (1980), the catalog for the jewelry collection of the Museum for Angewandte Kunst, Cologne (1985) and catalogues of the historical and contemporary rings in the Alice and Lewis Koch Collection, Switzerland (1994 and 2019). She has been curator for 35 years of the latter collection, and continues to advise the Swiss National Museum, Zurich, where it is housed today. A

At the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Beatriz was consultant curator for the redesign of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery, guest curator of the Pearls exhibition (2013-14) and regularly runs courses on jewelry history.

Jennifer Trask is an American artist. She received a BFA in Metalsmithing from the Massachusetts College of Art, and an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Her work is made from natural materials such as animal bones, antlers, and insect wings. She uses bone to help convey feelings of life and death, experiences, and environment. She is known for her wearable jewelry that is reminiscent of Art Nouveau/Rococo styles as well as large wall installations.

Examples of Trask’s work can be found in many public collections including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Museum of Art and Design in New York, NY; CODA Museum, Apeldoorn, Netherlands and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia. In 2011 Trask was named Sculpture Fellow by the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Trask’s work has been cited in many international books and periodicals including W, The New Yorker, the Financial Times, Modern magazine, the Lark Books series, Metalsmith Magazine, American Craft and The Sunday Boston Globe Arts section, among others.

Beth Carver Wees is Curator Emerita, The American Wing, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where for 20 years she oversaw the collections of American silver, jewelry, and other metalwork. Prior to joining The Met’s staff in 2000 she was Curator of Decorative Arts at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.

Beth lectures internationally and has written widely on the subjects of silver and jewelry. She holds degrees in art history from Smith College and the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. An alumna of the Attingham Summer School and Royal Collection Studies, she is the past President of the Board of the American Friends of Attingham.

She also sits on the Advisory Board of the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, and on the Advisory Board of The Silver Society in England. Beth was one of six organizing curators for The Met’s 2018-19 exhibition, Jewelry: The Body Transformed, as well as a contributor to its catalogue. Her exhibition Jewelry for America was on view at The Met from June 2019 to May 2021 The book she co-wrote with Sheila Smithie, Marcus & Co.: Three Generations of New York Jewelers, was recently published.

 

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