SOFA, the cutting-edge craft fair that takes place in Chicago and New York, is one of the best venues in which to see a wide range of contemporary jewelry. The next New York show, which runs May 29 through June 1 at the Park Avenue Armory, will have 13 such exhibitors, including Sienna Gallery, Ornamentum, the private New York dealer Charon Kransen Arts and Mobilia Gallery, from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jewelry dealers, however, are eager to attract new buyers and consider art collectors a natural audience. Sienna Patti, who runs Sienna Gallery, recently made progress in this regard, winning a spot for her gallery at March’s Bridge Art Fair in New York, where she presented conceptual jewelry, such as Lauren Kalman’s Tongue Gilding adornments, among the contemporary painting and sculpture brought by international dealers.

The budding art-world crossover is also evidenced by the launch of Crown Jewels, a joint venture among Salon 94’s founder Jeannie Greenberg Rohatyn, the arts publicist Andrea Schwan and the mid-century furniture gallery R 20th Century, whose purpose is to exhibit and sell handcrafted jewelry and other objects. The partnership’s first show, held at Salon 94’s Lower East Side outpost last December, targeted art collectors, featuring objects by makers known for their fine art, such as Kiki Smith, and by artist-jewelers such as Karl Fritsch, who nestles uncut diamonds in lavalike mounds of metal.

While reluctant to fully embrace contemporary studio jewelry, art collectors and the design community are more receptive to pieces made by well-known fine artists. Last December during Art Basel Miami Beach, the auction house Phillips de Pury & Company held a reception during which jewelry designed—but not handmade—by artists Anish Kapoor and Tim Noble & Sue Webster was sold.

Along similar lines, New York private dealer Sara Benda’s year-old venture Afsoun focuses on editioned production pieces by hot designers like Ron Arad and Michele Oka Doner. Arad’s earrings, for instance, from an edition of 100, are priced at $5,000. Benda’s background in Christie’s contemporary-art department and her marriage to the design dealer Marc Benda have helped her gain traction in the noncraft realm. She exhibited in the International Art + Design Fair in New York last October and has had talks with Art Miami’s fair organizers about participating there in the future. “It is easier to talk to art collectors about a piece by someone like Ron Arad,” Benda says, but she still fights the stigma that studio jewelry is too arty, splashy or strange. “I get the feeling that a lot of people think artist-designed jewelry is for eccentric old ladies, but that’s a thing of the past.”

The fact that this market is small might discourage dealers, but it helps connoisseurs. “You get to know things before you buy them,” says Susan Cummins, a Tiburon, California, collector, former dealer and now the chairwoman of the Art Jewelry Forum, a nonprofit group that supports the field. “You have time to study and dealers who will put things on hold. Compared with contemporary art, it’s much more humane.” Lower prices don’t hurt either. Her spending topped out at $40,000 for one piece, and $4,000 to $6,000 will still buy an important brooch or necklace. 

For the jewelry makers, their field’s obscurity allows them to focus on their work. Thomas Gentille, a 71-year-old New Yorker, is one of the most significant living art jewelers, according to the curators Adlin and Strauss. His dazzling eggshell-inlay bracelets and painterly brooches are found in the Drutt and Farago collections. Through its Schneier acquisition, the Met now owns six of his pieces, a fact that thrills Gentille, who nonetheless expresses frustration at American provincialism. “It’s a small group who buy, but most people here don’t have a clue,” he says.

For those already enamored of this jewelry, it’s baffling that art collectors haven’t embraced it. “It seems crazy that people who love aesthetic things wear boring jewelry,” says Cummins. “Traditional jewelry with big stones is mainstream stuff. It doesn’t say anything about your unusual viewpoint.”