Published on: Thursday, March 18, 2010

By Mimi Kapiloff

Eugenie Benser started collecting jewelry 60 years ago.  At the age of 12, Benser scrubbed the steps of her Baltimore neighbors for nickels and dimes to purchase her first piece of jewelry, and so began a lifelong collection that now boasts 500 hundred pieces. Benser will speak of her collection now on display at Montgomery College in Rockville on March 22 at 5 p.m.

Benser was the only child of an alcoholic father and an uneducated mother. She said the streets “were my playground” and made friends with her neighbors of Greek, Russian, Polish, and Italian descent. She said these people influenced her eclectic taste in art and design. As a teenager, Benser befriended Baltimore antique dealers and jewelers who shared her interest in metals and gems. She said that these artists, collectors, and proprietors of fine things became her family.

“All my pieces are equally important to me,” Benser said. She refers to her pieces as “living things” and “her children.”

Benser, ever hungry to learn more, took courses in pottery and painting at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and in jewelry design and production at the Maryland Institute of Art. She travelled to Europe to study art nouveau, art deco, the Bauhaus movement, and to the Far East to better understand Asian design. Renowned artists like Thomas Mann fueled her interests in modern art jewelry forms with its 3-D sculptural form.

The collection of one woman’s passion and tribute to the art of jewelry and adornment matured and changed through 1960’s and 70’s, bringing it to the 500 piece collection that remains today. Benser said that the lack of “real craftsmanship” or reverence for the intrinsic and indigenous art form today has mass production and globalization to blame.

Benser hopes that by leaving her art jewelry collection to the Maryland Institute of Art as a working collection for students, they will gain this sense of devotion and love for fine craftsmanship.

The exhibit, housed in the Sarah Silberman Art Gallery, will close April 2.