All through the month of December, to help you Novodeco converts to overthrow a perhaps overly stubborn reliance on ancient design, we will include a free necklace with any modern (okay, SLIGHTLY retro modern) purchase. These necklaces are nicely functional and perfectly fit the bale on the back of Novodeco Gemstone, Cat or Dog Collection pieces. There is no limit on the offer, that is to say for every pin/pendant you purchase, there will be a free necklace included in each gift box. And the gift boxes, if we do say so ourselves, have a lovely graphic (and typographic) design which will equally please the recipient. Even if you are only gifting yourself!

Also in December, for those of you living here in Northern California, Novodeco will be displaying its jewelry at the SFMade.org Holiday Event on Sunday Dec. 11 from 10 to sunset. Novodeco is a proud member of the SFMade.org community of local entrepeneurs (“Yes, we still make things here in San Francisco). Even if you are not in the market for jewelry, come and see what the vibrant, diverse and creative goods your Northern California neighbors have to offer. Look at it this way: If you support the home team, everybody wins.

When the first “Exhibition Des Artes Decoratifs” opened in Paris, there could be no doubt. But just as suddenly as the twenties ferment in Europe, with its social, political and economic upheaval provided heady material for artful creativity, the Wall St. crash, the Great Depression and even government repression (in the case of The Bauhaus) slammed the door shut on Modernism. Almost! The proverbial foot in the slammed door may have been hurting a bit, it may have had to wait out WWII, but it was back with the GI’s and the uneasy Cold War peace that followed. In jewelry, amongst the postwar explosion of glitzy gold and silvery plastics bristling with fake gemstones, a few pieces celebrated the wit and simplicity of early modernist line, form and content. Art Deco, Bauhaus, Constructivism, Objectivism and Cubism were too revolutionary, and ultimately, too valid and important to quietly fade away. Beyond the fifties, we see the Pop Art sixties and the Industrial Modern (and Post Modernism) ’80′s all referencing a modernist ideal, even if that ideal could no longer be so sharply defined back through the foggy lens of nostalgia.

So isn’t modernism going into the second decade of its second century as guilty of “a homage to past cultures” as designing, say, a colonial house with Roman colums? I say not. Why? Because most other schools of design didn’t have as brief and fleeting a life as early modernism. So many of its artists were interrupted (and many suffered much worse than interruption) that early modernism didn’t get much of a chance until, well, later. Novodeco is proud to play its incredibly small role in seeing where “modern”, “retro modern” and “post modern” might head in the near future. Hey, there’s a name we could call this continuing movement; “near futurism”. I don’t know how near we are, but it’s sure fun trying to get there.