Soon to be unveiled at the Jewish Museum, her one-of-a-kind take could hardly be described
like a ring in any ordinary sense. Nearly a foot tall, weighing more than a pound, and precariously
pointed, his version is a whole world of wrist bending in itself, with an intricately rendered castle atop a somewhat menacing brass knuckles, all in gold-plated sterling silver. “I wanted the piece to be a symbol of contemporary marriage, which is a complicated two-way street,” she notes, ruminating on tales of dueling marriage as a fight and a happy ending. Around a coffee at her home in Manhattan (itself a dream world by the firm AD100 Studio Peregalli) she develops her many landmarks, oscillating between Jungian analysis, fertility and 17th century folklore.
To realize the project, which also includes a series of smaller-scale limited-edition rings for sale, the artist enlisted his friend and former collaborator Ippolita Rostagno. The jeweler translated Feinstein’s model, rendered roughly in Sculpey, then in wax, into the final product. “Part of the fun was the evolution,” says Rostagno. “It became more and more refined, more and more complex.” For Feinstein, the results marked a departure on several levels. “I had never worked in precious metals,” she notes, adding that the precision of detail deliberately deviates from the hand-hewn quality of her carving practice.
But it all comes down to fairy tales. “Castles have always been in my work,” Feinstein muses, thinking of their phallic energy, universal aura of awe, and layered symbolism both as a palace and, for some anxious princesses, as a prison. “I wanted to adapt these ideas in an aggressively feminine way.”
