While Kate Taylor is best known as a singer-songwriter with a soulful voice and a folk/country/blues sensibility, the longtime Vineyard resident has also been making and selling wampum jewelry for more than 40 years. Her designs go far beyond the wampum beads and polished pendants that we generally see scattered across the Island. Each of Ms. Taylor’s designs is a miniature work of art. Her pieces often incorporate semiprecious stones and intricately carved shells and sea glass, set against a unique piece of striated clamshell that serves as a canvas to tell a story.
These beautiful one-of-a-kind designs are understandably cost-prohibitive for many potential buyers, due to the use of expensive materials and the labor required by the work. Luckily for the masses, Ms. Taylor is now reproducing some of her favorite designs as metal-backed resin-print pendants. For only $43, you can now sport one of Ms. Taylor’s custom works of Native American-inspired art.
Among the available designs are a sunrise, a full moon reflected on the ocean, a pine tree in a snowy forest, a view of the campfire lit inside a teepee, a turtle totem, and a cross design made up of tiny dots of wampum.
The six pieces are actually copied from the front and back designs of three different original pendants. Each work, painstakingly put together, is a mini marvel created from tiny carved polished bits of stones and shells. The ocean at night is made up of two different colors of wampum to delineate the sea and the sky, and the reflection of the full moon in shimmering abalone. The forest scene features an evergreen tree of sea pottery with petrified wood trunk, a dark blue sea-glass sky, a scallop shell setting sun, and a tiny crescent moon carved from wampum. The turtle is made from an intricately carved piece of wampum decorated with a Native American pattern in turquoise.
Even as two-dimensional reproductions, the images are striking, colorful designs that incorporate traditional ethnic art and a fun contemporary style.
Ms. Taylor started making wampum jewelry with her husband, the late Charlie Witham, in 1971. She had become fascinated with Native American culture and art and started informally studying the history at museums and elsewhere. “I realized that the wampum beads were made from the same shell that was on the Island,” she says. “I read up on how they used to make the wampum and what the traditions were. There is a wonderful and rich history.”
Among the things Ms. Taylor discovered is that much of the art was used as a means of communication. “I was drawn to the style, the artistic sensibility, and the materials that they used,” she says. “But what was really fascinating was that the traditional uses of it were so deep and important. They didn’t have any written language, so they used the bead as a mnemonic device to record important events and treaties. If you wanted to invite someone to a meeting, you sent them beads.”
Although Ms. Taylor and her husband started out making decorative pieces, the work eventually evolved into little scenes created with sea glass, abalone, scallop and conch shells, and semiprecious stones. Each piece is a little story in itself — often inspired by Martha’s Vineyard.
For years Ms. Taylor made pieces on commission and sold her work through a couple of local jewelry stores. “In 2002 I released my first record in 20 years,” she says; “I was doing more performing. I couldn’t keep the stores stocked.”
Fortunately Ms. Taylor’s designs are enjoying a second life as reproductions, and the pendants — hung on leather or silk cords — have become quite popular. “It’s nice to do something that doesn’t have to cost so much,” she says.
You can find Ms. Taylor’s necklaces for sale on her web site, katetaylor.com.
Other recent works of art available on Ms. Taylor’s site are puffy hearts made of Swarovski crystals by women in Africa. At the request of her longtime friend Ellen Ratner, the musician/artist travelled to Africa and taught the Heart Women of South Sudan to construct small heart necklaces made up of 73 Swarovski crystals. The sale of the necklaces will benefit those suffering from PTSD. They can be purchased for $35 at katetaylor.com and goatsfortheoldgoat.com.