Alyssa Norton began her career as a fine artist at Cornell University, where she studied painting. She continued her training by earning a second degree in jewelry from Instituto Allende in Mexico. Alyssa soon began migrating influences culled from the minimal light sculptures of Dan Flavin and James Turrell and the tonal palettes of Richard Diebenkorn to the sphere of adornment. Her inaugural collection drew seamlessly on her training in both fine art and artisanal craft. Featuring delicate perspex forms riveted to impeccably forged silver, Alyssa’s work immediately gained a devoted following of NY collectors. 

Alyssa’s collections began to explore a more dystopian version of this airy, futuristic aesthetic. Her experimentation with the most elementary forms of craftsmanship—weaving, tying, and wrapping—produced intricate compositions of metal, leather, silks, and other natural materials, such as feathers. The more densely constructed each piece became, the more it hinted at the deconstruction of the norms of both jewelry making and jewelry wearing. Her pieces begged to travel around the body as necklaces, lariats, bracelets, belts or headpieces. 

Alyssa’s signature pieces of woven silk, chain and rhinestone changed the course of contemporary jewelry. A generation of designers appropriated her aesthetic and her techniques, which are now visible around the world. 

Alyssa Norton’s work is a study in tensions between the future and the past, between the functional and the sculptural. In every collection, Alyssa has always mined that place where modernism plays with punk, creating thought-provoking and wearable pieces coveted by editors, designers, stylists and collectors. Whether weaving silk and suede into heavy silver chain, or lacquering and airbrushing the brass panels of a wrist cuff, Alyssa invites us to rethink how we adorn our bodies with materials and ideas.