Thomas Gentille, Contemporary Art Jewelry Master, Dies

By Karen Dybis | April 03, 2026

Thomas Gentille, regarded as one of the most influential figures in contemporary art jewelry, died March 6 of leukemia. He was 89.

Gentille’s jewelry is in the permanent collections of leading museums worldwide, including nine pieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City—more than any other contemporary jeweler, according to an online obituary. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum also hold some of his work.

Gentille was the author of Step-by-Step Jewelry, published in 1968 and still considered a resource for young jewelers. He also is credited with helping to create the jewelry program at New York’s 92nd Street Y in in the late 1960s and serving as a director and mentor to many there.

In 2016, Gentille became the only American to ever have a solo exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne art museum in Munich, Germany. To appreciate that honor is to understand Gentille’s accomplishments, says Bryna Pomp, curator and director of the annual MAD About Jewelry show in New York.

“Every March, the city of Munich becomes the global centerpiece for the entire field of contemporary jewelry with its Munich Jewellery Week event, and everyone there knows that the only place to be on Friday night is at the Pinakothek for the vernissage of the master jeweler who has been selected for the show on the second floor rotunda,” she says. “In 2016, that master jeweler was Thomas Gentille.

“Thomas’ work, almost exclusively brooches, can be described as succinctly as they are: exquisite, exacting, elegant, precise, concise, and crisp. Focusing on materials not previously considered worthy enough for jewelry, he magically transformed acrylic, plywood, eggshell, and laminate into jewelry that for the cognoscenti quietly conveyed that they got it, that they understood the beauty, power, and daringness of their ‘simplicity,’” says Pomp.

Born in Mansfield, Ohio, Gentille was studying painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the late 1950s when he took a jewelry elective during his senior year and on the first day of class became enchanted with the jeweler’s saw, according to his New York Times obituary. He would later write, in the catalog for his 2010 show at Gallery Loupe, of how if the tension of the saw’s blade was right, “it resists, it sings, it makes wondrous music.”

Gentille was named a fellow of the American Craft Council in 2018. To date, he is the only American artist to receive both the Bavarian State Prize and the Herbert Hoffmann Prize—two of the most prestigious honors in contemporary jewelry.

“His legacy is one of innovation, challenging artistic boundaries, and inspiring new generations of designers to explore the poetic and sculptural possibilities of jewelry,” the online obituary said.

Last June, Gentille received the lifetime achievement award from metalsmithing organization SNAG. In the group’s announcement of the award, Museum of Arts and Design curator emerita Ursula Ilse-Neuman wrote of Gentille’s innovation: “Materials such as wood, pigments, egg tempera, pumice, ColorCore, and Surell—unusual in the context of jewelry—become, in his hands, vehicles for profound artistic expression.

“A defining example of his technical and conceptual rigor is the six-year journey he spent perfecting his own method of eggshell inlay, revitalizing an ancient, nearly forgotten technique and bringing it into the realm of contemporary jewelry-making.”

(Photo courtesy of Patti Bleicher)