enigmatically, to the challenges presented by the themes. One also soon discovers that each of these pieces tells a story. Some are drawn from mythology, or from personal experience, or from some idiosyncratic mix of the two. Others are tales about when and where the artist discovered some treasure that made its way into a project. For jewelry makers truly are the magpies of the art world— obsessive hunters and collectors of beautiful things whose greatest joy comes in bringing out the inner intensity of those objects for all to see. ICE As a natural crystalline formation, as well as the street name for diamonds, ICE offered itself to a very literal interpretation, and several AJDC artists took this route with their designs. Kent Raible’s Snowflake with Icicle Bail pendant plays on the geometrical affinity between transient snowflakes and enduring gemstones, in this case, diamonds and aquamarines set into a hand-fabricated gold pendant. “While their growing conditions are very different,” the artist notes, “the same thing happens—identical molecular units attach and build upon each other in a geometric matrix.” Mark Patterson’s Confluence ring similarly features a dendritic quartz whose dark, branching fractal patterns resemble a Japanese ink drawing of trees in a winter landscape. ICE DETAIL BY GEORGE SAWYER