Janet Payne Bowles

Janet Payne Bowles (June 29, 1872 or 1873 – July 18, 1948) was an American art educator, metalsmith, and jewelry designer from Indianapolis, Indiana, who is best known for creating intricate Arts-and-Crafts-style jewelry, flatware, and other small objects. Although the self-taught artisan had little commercial success during her lifetime, she became famous after designing a jewelry collection for actress Maude Adams to wear in a stage production of As You Like It. Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke and J. P. Morgan commissioned Payne Bowles to make several pieces of metalwork and jewelry for their collections. She also regularly exhibited her art in the United States and Europe and taught art classes at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis from 1912 until her retirement in 1942. Examples of Payne Bowles's work are included in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She also wrote book reviews for Modern Art in the early years of her career and contributed articles to The Craftsman in 1904, Handicraft in 1909 and in 1910, and Jewelers' Circular Weekly in 1911. In addition, Payne Bowles provided illumination paintings for limited-edition books such as The Second Epistle of John. Her novel, Gossamer to Steel, was published in 1917.

Early life and education

Janet Payne, the daughter of John Godman Payne (c. 1847 – c. 1889) and Mary Byfield (born c. 1846), was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on June 29, 1872 or 1873. Janet trained as a pianist for much of her youth, studying under Clarence Forsyth, the founder of the Indianapolis School of Music. As a student at Indianapolis High School (later renamed Shortridge High School), she studied art under Roda E. Selleck, who was influential in the Arts and Crafts movement in the Indianapolis area. After graduating from Indianapolis High School in 1890, The publication was later described as "one of the most influential art journals to spread the Arts and Crafts message." In November 1906, the Bowles family moved to Helicon Hall, part of novelist Upton Sinclair's experimental community on the outskirts of Englewood, New Jersey. After the building where they were living burned in March 1907, the family relocated to New York City.

Career Early years After Payne Bowles's piano was ruined in a housemoving accident during a move to Boston in 1895, she decided to give up a potential career in music to pursue other interests. Payne Bowles sought out the source of the sound and met a young Russian metalsmith who agreed to let her help him in his shop. He was soon arrested and jailed for a plot to overthrow the U.S. government, but Payne Bowles's training in his shop led to her decision to become a metalsmith and jeweler. She regularly visited the anarchist in prison and he encouraged her to use his now abandoned equipment to set up a metalwork studio in her home. While continuing to write, Payne Bowles also began to study metalworking more intentionally. She apprenticed as a metalworker, a jeweler, and a stonecutter, as well as studying the work of various artisans, but had no additional formal art training.

In 1909, Payne Bowles earned a commission from painter and theatrical designer John Alexander to design a jewelry collection for Maude Adams to wear on stage for her role as "Rosalind" in William Shakespeare's As You Like It. The work increased awareness of Payne Bowles's work and launched her career as a metalsmith and jewelry designer. As her reputation grew, she began to accept commissions from notable people in the city.

Art educator After separating from her husband and returning to Indianapolis with her two children in 1912, Payne Bowles took a position teaching craftwork courses at her alma mater, now called Shortridge High School.

In the 1920s, Payne Bowles entered a gold chalice in an art competition sponsored by Italian art patron J. Bossilini and won first place. Her notoriety from winning the competition led to commissions several Catholic churches in Italy. In addition, Payne Bowles visited Paris, France, in 1925 as a delegate to the International Exhibit of Decorative Arts. She also took classes at the Sorbonne and worked with metalsmiths at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Other trips included visits to Russia and South America.

Payne Bowles's unique metalwork and jewelry have been described as "bizarre but compelling," as well as "decidedly unconventional." She avoided preparatory sketches in her work, preferring to form the metalwork as she proceeded, and encouraged her art students to do the same. Art historians Judith Vale Newton and Carol Ann Weiss commented in their book, Skirting the Issue: Stories of Indiana's Historical Women Artists, that her free-form pieces also showed "a controlled engagement with her medium"

In 1968 Payne Bowles's two children donated more than 120 pieces of her metalwork, which were part of Payne Bowles's estate, to the present-day Indianapolis Museum of Art. Payne Bowles's work was included in the exhibition, "Independent Spirit: Art by Indiana Women, 1890–1950" at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1991–92. In addition, a retrospective exhibition of her work, "The Arts and Crafts Metalwork of Jante Payne Bowles" was hosted at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art in Utica, New York, in 1993–94 and at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1994.

Honors and tributes Awarded the Spencer Trask Award, circa 1909, from the National Society of Craftsmen.