"The Remains of the Gay": Samuel Gassman Opens at Ornamentum
Hand-sewn flags, antique jewel assemblages, and an artist talk on the politics embedded in salvaged objects.
Jewel 105 (flower pot), 2026, by Samuel Glassman
June 25–July 20 | Hudson, NY | Artist talk June 27, 4pm
Ornamentum Gallery opens "The Remains of the Gay," a new exhibition by Samuel Gassman, on June 25 during Upstate Art Weekend. On view are hand-sewn flags, "Rag Jewels," and a new series of antique jewel assemblages—work built from objects Gassman describes as charged with the politics and labor of how they were made and for whom.
Gassman is a New York City-based artist and antiquarian with expertise across historic jewelry, architecture, bookbinding, and decorative arts spanning the Mesopotamian period through the 20th century.
He's a graduate gemologist from the Gemological Institute of America, owns an international antique jewelry and decorative arts business, and has done historic jewelry consulting for the Emmy-winning "John Adams" miniseries. He spent 12 years as a visiting scholar at the University of Iowa working alongside silversmith Chunghi Choo, where he also earned a BA in English and Italian.
His work sits in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Grassi Museum in Leipzig, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago.
His "Rag Jewels" materials list like archaeological inventories: 1850s carved mother-of-pearl, Victorian mourning jewelry made from bog oak and jet, conch shell cameos, Japanese cloisonné, boar's hair, antique buttons, 18-karat gold. The resulting wearable pieces, often housed in elaborate handmade boxes, evoke the Grand Tour and foreign markets refracted through a kind of fantastical time travel. Ornamentum, which first introduced Gassman's work in 2018, has described him as an outsider-artist whose place in the contemporary jewelry world resists easy categorization.
The artist talk on June 27 at 4pm features Jennifer Blue, the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery, in conversation with Gassman about the new work.
Ornamentum Gallery, 506 Warren St., Hudson, NY. More at ornamentumgallery.com.
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After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
