Navah Langmeyer

Statement

A mathematician by training and employment, I took up metalwork and jewellery making at the Baltimore Jewelry Center in 2016 where I discovered my particular passion for enamelling in the winter of 2019. My work is largely material-driven and incorporates traditional, experimental, and unconventional approaches to enamels, metals, and alternative elements to yield sculptural effects. I’m fascinated by the characteristics of enamel and the widely-varied results possible with the medium. All my construction uses cold connections, which adds an additional, appealing aspect of puzzle-solving to my process; every piece is a one-of-a-kind experiment. I retired in June 2025 and am now focusing on my art.

Artworks

The two pieces included in this submission are based on basic mathematical concepts from complex analysis, the area of my doctoral work. The Möbius Brooch reflects Möbius transformations, which are the projective transformations of the complex projective line. These transformations preserve angles, map every straight line to a line or circle, and map every circle to a line or circle. Both pieces are cloisonné enamel on copper with beaded wire embellishments and handpierced brass settings.

The two pieces included in this submission are based on basic mathematical concepts from complex analysis, the area of my doctoral work. The Hyperbolic Ellipse Brooch is a modified illustration of the Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane in which geodesics are diameters of or circular arcs orthogonal to the unit circle. Both pieces are cloisonné enamel on copper with beaded wire embellishments and handpierced brass settings.