James Cleland sits at his bench every day, crafting inlaid stone lizards munching on ruby berries, a perky pair of Bing cherries made from shiny silver and an intricate dandelion in the fuzz ball stage, with leaves modeled from a wayward plant found outside his door. He also pays homage to the tiger beetle, the honey mushroom and the mighty triceratops.
Cleland (pronounced “Clelland”) is a jeweler, but he also is a visionary, a dreamer, and his work reflects that. “I try to duplicate natural forms and designs, and apply them to art,” he said. “My work is a re-expression, more of a celebration, of natural forms. After all, natural forms stimulate emotions, and artists want their work to elicit emotions.”
Cleland and his wife, Ginger, own Designs In Gold at 11006 Olive Boulevard in Creve Coeur. They opened the shop in 1995, after moving it from the Central West End, where they were in business for almost seven years. They have three sons: Albert, 8; Andrew, 10; and Zach, 17, from Cleland’s first marriage. The family lives in Olivette. Some of Cleland’s work is available at Componere at 6509 Delmar Boulevard in the Loop in University City and at Clayton Jewelers, 16 North Central Avenue in Clayton.
Almost all of it is remarkable. Consider, for example, a gold pin featuring a monkey stealing corn from a field. The animal has one ear in a front paw and another tucked in a back paw. An intricate bird’s nest bracelet features three pearl eggs in a delicate nest of what appears to be spun gold.
The four seasons are represented in details on either side of the nest – bare branches for winter, blossoms for spring, ripe fruit for summer and leaves for fall. A simple silver pin perfectly expresses Cleland’s whimsy – the pin is the tip of a dragon’s tail, no doubt whacked off by some knight in shining armor or maybe an angry, well-armed maiden.
The crafting of that dragon’s tail was not intentional, Cleland said. He was working on a form to cap a crystal, a custom order. As he worked, he was thinking about how to elongate the form and suddenly there was a dragon’s tail.
Cleland specializes in custom-designed wedding rings. He crafts ancient Celtic patterns, modern designs and everything in between. He is particularly proud of a ring he made for a gentleman with a penchant for Harleys – it was a nude woman with long flowing hair and a bull, head lowered, with its horns caught in her hair. Cleland said tears of joy ran down the customer’s face when he first saw it.
Cleland grew up in Mascoutah. His eighth-grade graduation present was a rock grinder, and he kept his interest in stones and rocks throughout college, earning degrees in geology and biological sciences at Southern Illinois University, both at Carbondale and Edwardsville. While in graduate school, he opened a jewelry store with a friend.
“We hired a metal smith, but after about nine months he left, I sat down and started working on the bench,” said Cleland. Since then he has attended classes and workshops in design, metal arts, and wax working at the Revere Academy in San Francisco and the Colonial Workshops.
About four years ago, he designed and crafted a series of fish pins, including the striped gourami, black tetra, carp, angelfish and Argentine pearlfish, made with such stones as agate, red jasper, black onyx and quartz. The pins were a big hit, and were featured in Smithsonian and Accent magazines.
More recently, a friend mentioned in passing to Cleland that she has always liked the form of eggplants. Cleland headed for the grocery to buy a bag of produce, and began making silver pins. “Texture makes all the difference,” he said, holding up a striated eggplant, a molded avocado and a ready-to-pop pea pod pendant. Pointing to a mushroom pin, Cleland said, “Usually I only make edible mushrooms, but once a customer did request the deadly Amanita verna.”
Insects also fascinate Cleland, who uses a diamond tool to rough up the delicate wings on a butterfly pin and a round punch to get the clicker beetle’s carapace just right. And the pin representing the all-too-familiar cicada flashes red eyes, just like the real thing. “I’ve been known to include the mouth parts and leg appendages on pins where they don’t even show,” said Cleland. “I’m trying to learn to scale back a little on the details, so the pins stay affordable.” His silver pins range in price from $125 to $300.
Cleland also has fashioned earrings, pins and pendants inspired by the crocus, fuchsia, iris and passion flower.
He even took the liberty of gifting the two-lobed ginkgo leaf with two additional lobes on a gold pendant inlaid with black jade and green jade.Now that’s a celebration of natural form.
This article was written by Patricia Corrigan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.