David Yurman Vintage Wire Twist Bracelet Circa 1990s

In 1983, David Yurman (b. 1942) twisted 50 feet of metal wire into a helix, shaped it into a cuff and made jewelry history. This was the birth of the Cable bracelet, a piece at once modern and historic, complex and strikingly simple, and a style that would beget a continuous collection of jewelry.

By the time of the Cable’s creation, Yurman and his wife, Sybil, chief brand officer at his eponymous brand, were deeply entrenched in the New York art world and the emerging craft scene: As a young man, David learned direct welding under Cuban artist Ernesto González. Later, he started his own sculpture studio after studying with modernist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and he met Sybil when they were both working for Hans Van de Bovenkamp in 1969. In the late 1970s, the couple decamped to Upstate New York, where they started Putnam Art Works, a sculpture and jewelry studio. And while they became regulars at certain craft fairs, the couple always had a foot in the urbane: “Everyone would show up in these old VW vans wearing tie-dye, and we were coming out of the city in a 1964 black Cadillac with the seats knocked out of the back. We were definitely still New Yorkers,” Yurman said in a 2017 interview.

Indeed, it’s this juxtaposition of handicraft and elegance that would come to define the Yurmans’ jewelry company — an aesthetic that’s exemplified with the Cable, whose simple metal twist is capped off by gold-set gems at either end. The design has widespread roots, from jewelry motifs of ancient Syria to natural formations of tree branches that captured Yurman’s attention as a child to the graceful fortitude of cable bridges and the flexibility of nautical rope.

“There’s nothing I don’t like about cable,” Yurman has said. “I feel totally at home and embraced by the form.”

Fittingly, given its helix shape, the cable motif has become the backbone of David Yurman’s aesthetic — so much so that its illustrious history was the subject of a 2017 book from Rizzoli, titled simply Cable. (Safe to assume anyone who’s anyone would know what that single word refers to.) In addition to the original Cable bracelet, the twisted metal has been turned into rings, pendants and chain links. It’s even sometimes added to the backs or undersides of jewelry, invisible to the wearer but still present, connecting the jewelry to its visual heritage.

“There is a life rhythm with cable,” Yurman says in Cable. “Like DNA, it brings form to life.”

Perhaps the ultimate artistic couple, sculptor David Yurman (b. 1942) and his wife, painter Sybil Kleinrock (b. 1942), couldn’t have imagined they’d build an internationally renowned fine jewelry empire when they met in 1969 at a sculpture studio in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

Eleven years later, in 1980, the duo established the David Yurman brand and it boomed almost instantly, a by-product of the pair’s love for and commitment to making art. (They’ve been known to call their business as well as their relationship “one big art project.”) In fact, Yurman’s most recognizable piece, the Cable bracelet, was inspired by his background in metalworking and direct welding, skills he learned when he was just a teenager. It is a marvelously modern accessory rooted in everything from jewelry motifs of ancient Syria to the natural formations of tree branches that would yield the Cable ring, earrings and other items.

When Long Island, New York–born Yurman was in high school, he spent a summer visiting his sister in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met Cuban sculptor Ernesto González, who taught him how to heat and fuse metals. After that fateful summer, Yurman experimented feverishly with bronze sculpture and, eventually, minimalist jewelry design.

Yurman studied briefly at New York University, opting to drop out after a year to hitchhike across the United States, ending up in an artist colony on California’s Big Sur coastline. The bustling artists’ scene in New York during the 1960s eventually drew him back to the East Coast. There, he trained under Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and, by 1969, he was a foreman in sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp’s Greenwich Village studio. It was in the studio that he met Kleinrock.

Kleinrock and Yurman began a romantic relationship, and he designed her a sculptural welded bronze necklace to wear to an art gallery opening. The gallery owner was so enchanted by the design — Yurman called it the Dante — that she wanted to buy it on the spot. Yurman refused because he considered the gift too personal, but his partner left it with the dealer. Within hours, four necklaces were sold and a brand was born.

A year after the two married in 1979 — the ceremony included simple gold rings Yurman had soldered from gold in his workshop — they officially launched David Yurman. Three years later, one of his most popular designs, the Cable bracelet, hit the market.

Today, David Yurman’s bracelets, rings, necklaces and earrings are widely treasured, distinctive works of American jewelry design.