Ojai artist Elaine Unzicker makes chain mail. Not for Renaissance Faire enthusiasts or Society for Creative Anachronism members — at least, not specifically designed for them. Unzicker’s unique creations, constructed from carefully hand-welded stainless steel links that she calls “metal lace,” are designed with modernity in mind.
“It’s very contemporary,” Unzicker said of her work, which includes jewelry and accessories as well as unusual and inventive clothing. “It’s very fashion-oriented art. It has a crossover into other design categories — architects and engineers love my work. I’m creating something unusual out of a unique material.”
Unzicker Design will be one of several artists displaying and selling their handcrafted works at the Holiday Sip and Shop event at The Ojai Vineyard on Nov. 19.
Softness in Steel
Unzicker does not sew, and she did not start out as a jewelry designer. Instead she followed her creative muse into sculpture, which she studied as a grad student at Illinois State University in Bloomington (about an hour from her hometown of Champaign). She particularly liked working with metal, the way she could form and shape it. Her professor felt she needed to expand her skill set, which is how Unzicker found herself in the workshop with a soldering iron, putting steel rings together.
“I just gravitated toward it,” she recalled. “It’s very few tools — how simple it was really appealed to me.”
She also loved how linking small metal rings could turn a medium traditionally considered hard, cold and inflexible into something “soft and flowing and fluid.”
While sustainability was not at the front of her mind when she started making chain mail jewelry and clothing, Unzicker has found that to be a point of pride.
“My work is going to outlive you,” she explained. “It won’t fall apart. You can pass it down and it will become an heirloom piece.”
Chain of Events
After grad school she moved to Chicago, where she began a business designing and selling jewelry and met the man who would become her husband. They were both looking to get out of the city and into a more natural environment.
“I wanted more earth under me and he did, too,” she said.
They had a friend who lived in Ojai, and both of them immediately fell in love with the community’s mountains and nature. They moved there in 2001, and Unzicker found new inspiration for her chain mail-based art. She also started designing bigger pieces.
Part of Unzicker’s process is trying on her pieces to “see how they feel and move.” One piece, which she was originally designing as a top, immediately “demanded” to be something more.
“Something inside me said to keep going,” she remembered.
Following her intuition, she augmented that simple top into a dress with a draped V-neck and strips of silver, gold and red metal mesh. She called it “Shimmering Free” and it helped birth a new direction in her work.
“That first dress won an award, went on a show circuit and has been in a number of publications,” Unzicker explained.
Personal Connection
Unzicker’s work is crafted using a pattern of five metal rings, four attached individually to a central ring. This pattern is flexible, strong and highly adaptive. From her “metal lace” Unzicker makes necklaces, earrings, bracelets, scarves, purses, gloves, shawls, tops, jackets, dresses and even neckties. Some feature multicolored metal; others are embellished with pearls or other stones.
Despite the stainless steel construction, her pieces are surprisingly light and smooth to the touch. Textured but not rough, the mesh glides over the skin with an almost silky softness. Unzicker’s work is not heavy, but it has substance — she said that many of her clients describe the experience of wearing it as “like a hug.”
Even if you’re not a fan of metal or chain mail, it’s hard to deny the originality and eye-catching quality of an Unzicker design. And the artist has found that some people are particularly drawn to it.
“I had a booth in Milwaukee,” Unzicker related. “A woman walked in, looked at my work and saw this dress — and burst into tears. It just really spoke to her.”
Why any one person connects to an individual work of art is anyone’s guess. But Unzicker did speculate as to why some people are so powerfully drawn toward her metal lace.
“Beauty comes in all sorts of forms because we’re all different people,” she explained. “The emotion of being yourself in whatever you want to wear is really powerful. Sometimes people try these things on and feel more confident.”
The Holiday Sip and Shop takes place on Sunday, Nov. 19, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. in the tasting room of The Ojai Vineyard, 109 S. Montgomery St., Ojai, 805-649-1674, ojaivineyard.com/harvest-market-the-tasting-room/. For more information on Elaine Unzicker and Unzicker Design, visit unzickerdesign.com.