Precious Grotesqueries: The Jewels of William Harper

Artist list

William Harper

Les Enluminures is honored to host an exhibition of twenty of William Harper’s artworks – precious grotesqueries he calls them. Yes, artworks. They are far more than jewelry. He himself says: I have always believed that jewelry can be about something, have content, be more substantive than mere ornament. In other words, exist as Art.

So, what is the art of William Harper about? Having worked as a practicing artist since the mid-1960s, Wiliam Harper (b. 1944) has an extensive corpus that defies simple definition. His objects combine the precious with the utilitarian, the natural with the industrial world, the medieval era with modern times. They display a deep personal immersion in art history, yet they are by no means dryly academic or remotely historicizing. They are vivid fantasies, adventures into hidden realms, autobiographical reveries, homages to artistic heroes. Like the grotesques in the margins of medieval manuscripts they are often strange and mysterious, yet comic and pleasing. Vibrant colors are ubiquitous, for William Harper is a supremely talented enameller. Numerous group and solo exhibitions, as well as countless awards and prizes, attest to the esteem with which William Harper’s work is now held. Signature pieces can be found in major museums in North America and abroad, including the Met, LACMA, the MFA in Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, the Vatican Museum, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, and many others.

Two themes emerge in the works selected for the exhibition. One group of objects is distinctly medieval in inspiration: saints and their reliquaries. The cover image, a brooch of The Temptation of Saint Anthony as the Artist (1986) shows the desert saint with one eye, holding a book in the form of a mirror, wearing a halo composed of a pearl, his hand and feet made up of teeth. Like Anthony, William Harper works with but one eye due to operations following detached retinas. The beautifully complex cloisonné enamel is a tribute to his immense talent. Some saints lie in their own caskets. The brooch of Archangel Michael (1996, another self-portrait) nestles in a box with wood, leather, nails, bottle caps, buttons, and other found objects.

He’s visible through the openwork lid. The other group of objects consists of tributes to artists he admires: Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns and Edgar Munch, and Joseph Cornell. William Harper has been called the “master of the box,” and the reliquaries and casks pay obvious homage to Cornell. Ever the colorist, William Harper takes Twombly’s 1989 Petals of Fire to create his own exercise of petals in smoldering red enamel on a large brooch.


About Les Enluminures:
Founded in 1991, with galleries in Paris, Chicago, and New York, Les Enluminures is an internationally recognized leader in the field of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, miniatures, rings and jewellery. Its Founder and President, Sandra Hindman, is Professor Emerita of Art History at Northwestern University. She has published dozens of academic books and articles on medieval manuscripts, early printing, the history of collecting, and historic jewellery. In 2023, the French Republic named Sandra Hindman Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters).

Les Enluminures is well-known for the level of its scholarship but also for the diversity, high quality, and provenance of the works it offers for sale. The gallery has forged long-standing relationships with major museums and prestigious private collections throughout the world. Among its institutional clients are the Musée du Louvre, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Library and others. The gallery exhibits at many international art fairs including TEFAF Maastricht, Frieze Seoul, the Winter Show and EXPO Chicago (2024).


VIP Preview: October 22 | 10 AM to noon.