DAVID YURMAN CELEBRATING THE CABLE

David YURMAN

Celebrating the cable: David Yurman's iconic design is still going strong

by William Norwich

" What we're doing is one long art project," David and Sybil Yurman will answer when asked the secret to their successful marriage and creative partnership.

This enduring relationship, enviable in itself, has created a living

masterpiece: the Yurman brand.

David sits in the Yurman atelier at a long table in his outer office. It

is a room filled with books, artwork, objects of inspiration and some

of the earliest pieces of their jewelry. He is happiest in his studio, per-

fecting new jewelry designs. "The work is in the future, not the past,"

he says, but he readily reminisces about cable, discussing its univer-

sal connectivity, its origins in ancient art and architecture and of

course, how it has forged "the river that runs through everything we

do at David Yurman."

Cable was introduced in 1982 and immediately became the

Yurmans' signature. Its first words were spoken as a bracelet with

gemstone-studded finial caps that David designed for Sybil as a gift.

Ancient Roman columns © Alexander Mazurkevich, Shutterstock She wore it every day. Amid the many compliments came even more

requests for cable from friends, collectors, gallery owners and espe-

cially retailers.

Sybil remembers, " A lot of what we did was informed by archi-

tecture." The spiraling twists of columns pointed to the strength

and beauty of the cable form in nature and manmade construc-

tions. Today, there are some 30 David Yurman collections with

cable as the vehicle through all of them. Over the course of nearly

40 years, cable unites an artistic body of work. Throughout every

David Yurman collection, cable is used in innovative and beautiful

ways—as a contrast to smooth polished metal or by flattening its

cylindrical shape so the cable becomes a relief and an experiment

in perspective. Cable is used as an accent, a bead, a setting, a

clasp and carved in stone. As a subtle signature, it often appears

on the inside of a ring or back of a pendant where only the wearer

will see it. David transforms cable into knots, referencing cable's

connection to rope. When David mixes gold and silver, the striking

combination of metals is united by cable.

"There's nothing I don't like about cable," David muses. "I feel

totally at home and embraced by the form. I know what it can do and

what I can do with it."

"The future," he says, smiling, "is wherever it takes me."