ROBERT LEE MORRIS
GALLERY
PEBBLES from the late 80s were my split away from architecture to embrace soft flowing and organic stones. All wax carvings. The gunmetal plating was such a “thing” during the constructivist era in fashion and here the smooth stone forms are luscious in this matte charcoal finish. Just listed! So much work to list new pieces on my website😅
CROSS NECKLACES! The ultra iconic design that blew out of Artwear and my store for decades…these are the last of them. A silver, a gold plated and a brass one. Just listed! They brought me so much joy and I wore the silver bracelets wrapped many times around my wrists.
Beloved props. All my life I have collected these BELOVED pieces of wood or bone or fiber that continue to instruct and teach me, but work as divine props in my jewelry displays!
RLM CITY BLOCKS and RLM STONE AGE games I made out of solid bronze and nickel. They were prototypes of gift concepts I was developing for Neiman Marcus and Museum Stores. Each wooden box held a certain number of pieces. Boxes in many sizes so many price points. Desk play. I had so much fun carving the cartoon like waxes and then moving on to playing with them for hours.
A favorite collection: Donna Karan 1988 fall, black and gold Pebble theme. Backstage during the show.
A close up of the set of 3 Verdigris Vases I did in the early 90s after my license with Elisabeth Arden for lipstick and compact. I carved them out of wax and had molds made for glazed ceramic vases in 3 sizes.
All this is on its way to be sold through URBAN ZEN in NYC and Sag Harbor for the summer. It’s how the wheel turns, my link to DONNA KARAN just stays in place like a great fit. Visit UZ and see for yourself how her design genius flourishes.
Summer-Resort necklaces are dazzling punctuations while on a tropical vacation paired with flowing white caftans and oversized glamorous sunglasses.
My Knuckle Ring…Still going strong since 1975. Space age sexy
Easter 2025 looking back at some fun vintage pieces from my very early days.
I like ugly. The sparkly jewelry world has never grabbed me.
SAYOKO YAMAGUCHI, in the KANSAI YAMAMOTO wedding outfit 1982 Paris fall collection. This was my first collection with KANSAI and he wanted a breastplate for her and a spectacular headpiece as the finale for his runway show. I made it out of Chinese umbrellas and metal, and fashioned the breastplate to her body while the two of them sat for hours in my SoHo loft waiting for me to forge it. What a mind blowing experience for me after I had just won the 1981 Coty award for my jewelry for Calvin Klein. Fell in love with SAYOKO needless to say… world’s most beautiful model and most sought after from Paris shows.
Recent shot inside studio showing two gorgeous huge sheets of brass leaning against the drawers. Now I want an entire brass wall…..
Some of my fave bracelets over the years. Copper, silver, brass, leather, ebony, big ideas on display.
I made this Shakey Cuff today. I found these gold plated brass parts lying around the place so just thought I would finish this bagel cuff after waiting in a bin for 45 years.
Today I enlarged the Donna Karan section of my website to include many of the pearl pieces we did for her Spring 88 show. With Spring on the horizon I was moved to show what Spring jewelry looked like in the late 80s. Va va voom major bold style.Remember what Karl Lagerfeld was doing with pearls for CHANEL…over the top.
Having so much fun discovering more boxes of my scarf license. I seemed to be whipping up some strong emotional designs!! Intense entanglements of all my signature elements, all squiggling around into interlocking biological beings…doing scarf design on the early MAC with early Photoshop, and broadband internet, it took hours to wait for the computer to process my signals. But the process of re-working my sculptural forms on a digital screen was major hoot! What fun I was having 1993ish.
Just saw A Complete Unknown and now listening to Bob Dylan singing to my dancing scarves
Uncovering. Discovering. Remembering. Boxes of scarves I did with Collection 18 (Elaine Gold) in the early 90s, I’m having a ball steaming them and hanging them like banners in my studio mixed into the already chaotic mass of hanging sculptures. More to come on this new development…the process of steaming silk scarves and listening to vintage Joan Baez is very relaxing.
Most people have never seen my collection of games and toys. I developed several themes for building block sets :RLM City, RLM Prehistoric, RLM FARM all out of solid brass castings that I carved out of wax. This was part of a larger project I was concocting to raise funds for the Development office of BELOIT COLLEGE. I was on the board of trustees for ten years and had the idea to make products to sell in museum gift stores. That is a huge world I fell into, going to the Museum Shop Gift Shows at the Javits Center…1987ish. These were going to sell as sets of 7-8 pieces of a theme in a Japanese style wooden box. The weight of each box would be hefty & crazy cool. One box could sell for $250 and it becomes a great gift for executives’ desks. My fave is RLM CITY where there is funky fun assortment of skyscrapers and apartment buildings. The other fave is the RLM MEDIEVAL, with stone blocks, carved standing stones for making one’s own Stonehenge, arches and different size stone wall blocks, each one a solid polished chunk of gleaming brass. The RLM FARM was why I started casting plastic animals and mixing dinosaurs, stone walls and a barn. Tell me if you think I should continue to build this miniature world?
9/11 attack happened during Fall Fashion week. Donna and I had not worked together for ten years..But when she got the urge to call me back it was to help build this collection called The Urban Warrior. I am showing the zeroxed copies of the work in progress which today I find fascinating…how much work I would make for a fashion show! The quantities of each design were hefty, and they were killer cool. While we were still all in shock after 9/11 the show had to go on anyway but to see and feel the dramatic dark collection come out on the runway, these gorgeous fearsome woman stomping out in big hard leather boots and black headbands !!!! And then wearing g my curved wedge in khaki colored brass, like modern sci fi armor. What a feeling of rage and determination poured off that runway It became a turning point for America. September 2001 collections went off fine but Donna managed to make the perfect statement for us all. I went wild re-working these large hollow forms with curving wedges, like blades or strong masculine metal gestures, tapered TUSK pins became hair pins and daggers that slipped beneath the wrapped leather belt. Wow. I just love this family of forms. So architectural-perfect for buildings and all things wherever!
I love this one of a kind silver neckpiece I did for my license with the Andy Warhol Foundation. It is quite massive and bold. The outline layer is meant to be a shifting register layer like Andy did with his silk screens.
1979 the Copper Tusk Sling made for Geoffrey Beene’s fall runway show..the beginning of my fashion career, this vintage neckpiece caught the attention of Pricilla Tucker the fashion editor of the DAILY NEWS who wrote a scathing review of his runway collection..she wrote that his presentation didn’t come alive until the Robert Lee Morris jewelry came out and chastised him because he didn’t give me any credit in the program! He banned her from attending any future shows. But her calling him out for his overwhelming ego is what helped propel me into the thick of NYC fashion 1979.
WELCOME TO MY MUSEUM & GALLERY OF COLLECTIBLE WOMEN’S AND MEN’S JEWELRY
Herein you will find the archives from the Robert Lee Morris personal collection that has been slowly gathered over a 52 year range, containing works of art to wear and adore. These are all original handmade pieces of stunning women and men’s jewelry that have been created to sell through ARTWEAR jewelry gallery. These pieces come from the many collections that Robert made for fashion designers such as Geoffrey Beene, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Karl Lagerfeld, Michael Kors and Kansai Yamamoto. Many of the archives have now been selling through fine art auctions and it is exciting to see how the original values have soared.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Review of THE POWER OF JEWELRY by Robert Lee Morris on AMAZON
Robert Lee Morris is unquestioningly one of the most innovative designers of body ornament of our time. Long noted for his distinctive fusion of primal forms, hand workmanship, and cutting edge sensibility, his organic pieces are enthusiastically sought by connoisseurs of high fashion around the world. This book written by the artist himself and profusely illustrated with examples of his work, presents the varied production of his design genius over the course of his career. The many images of Morris’s work in metal and stone will fascinate anyone interested in the history if design and will be an inspiration and will be an inspiration to collectors, designers and students alike.
From Publishers Weekly
By the time he was 31, Morris had become one of the most influential jewelry designers in North America: his creations appeared all over fashion magazines like Vogue; his Manhattan jewelry store had become a favorite spot of celebrities like Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol; and his work was marching down the runways of Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Kansai Yamamoto and Donna Karan. In this coffee-table book cum memoir, Morris explains “how he grew from a self-taught jewelry designer to a recognizable brand name in such a relatively short time.” The designer, who is known for his “edgy blend of modern and tribal effects,” attributes his global sensibility to his college courses in anthropology and to his upbringing as an “Airforce brat.” He moved 23 times before he was 18 and lived for several years in Japan and Brazil. But its clear that the mainsprings of Morris’ success are his joyful, single-minded focus on his work and his savvy entrepreneurial spirit. Though his book contains asides on his marriage, his travels and his study of shamanism, it centers mostly on the origins of his signature creations, the development of the “designer jewelry” consumer niche in the 1970s and 80s, and the way he managed his brand “as if it were a wild horse in a rodeo.” Morris now designs up to 10 jewelry collections a year, and though the name-dropping can be a bit heavy-handed in spots, his memoir is full of friendly advice for young artists. Morris fans will appreciate this careful history, but readers unfamiliar with his designs may find themselves skipping pages to stare at the large, full-color photos of his smooth knuckle rings, gently bulging necklaces, mesh belts, herringbone collars and sensual bracelets. They are unlike anything else.
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