Dennis Higgins is a resident jewelry artist on the farm. Dennis’ studio is located in our old bullpen, a small outbuilding located behind our 1850s dairy barn. Dennis has an open-door policy: you’re welcome to stop in to see his work and say hello anytime that he’s there.
Artist’s Bio
I have been making jewelry-as-art for almost fifty years. I guess you could call it my very first love.
I was raised in New Britain, Connecticut, and studied fine art at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. I built my first foundry on Nantucket Island and began making objects and sculpture in 1975. I sold my first pieces of jewelry to Sculpture To Wear, a gallery located inside the historic Plaza Hotel in New York City. Sculpture To Wear carried pieces from Calder, Max Ernst, Picasso and yours truly, and it was the perfect gallery to begin my career in jewelry-as-art. Not long after, the Museum of Modern Art purchased some of my work, and a patron for the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought a collection of my jewelry and donated it to The Met for their permanent fashion collection.
I was one of the founders of Artwear, a prominent NYC gallery in the 1990s that evolved the esthetic of art jewelry from small pieces set with stones to large bold groundbreaking works of art that were meant to be worn. My work has been featured in the pages of prominent fashion publications including Vogue, Elle, W Magazine, the New York Times and many others. I have accessorized runway shows for well-known clothing designers Anne Klein, Ron Shamask, Andrew Fezza and more, and I did a host of private label designs for Coach, Cippriani and Robert Leighton, to name a few.
My love of large-scale pieces brought me naturally into the world of lighting and furniture design. I produced several lighting collections for George Kovacs, hardware collections for Robert Leighton Furniture and eventually opened my own showroom in High Point, North Carolina. My product iron beds tables, chairs, lighting and small metal objects have been sold by major retailers ABC Carpet, Pottery Barn, Room and Board, Macy’s, Z Gallerie and over one hundred small specialty stores across the country
But I’ve always loved making jewelry – my very first love - so now I am back at it. I hope you enjoy wearing my work as much as I enjoy creating it.