SILVER BROOCH | SILVER "OK" GEORGIA O'KEEFFE INITIAL BROOCH

SILVER BROOCH

SILVER "OK" GEORGIA O'KEEFFE INITIAL BROOCH

Coiled ribbon of silver forming the initials "OK," 4 in. overall length

In the late 1930s Alexander Calder made for O'Keeffe a brass brooch featuring the first two letters of her last name. The pin immediately became her favorite piece of jewelry and she often wore it when being photographed. She preferred wearing the brooch with the letters oriented vertically, with the sideways K suspended below the O. Although the letters were more difficult to discern when the brooch was worn this way, O'Keeffe liked that the pin "read more like one of her own organic abstractions, a stylized plant form, rather than her initials" (Corn, Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern, p. 126). 

When, two decades later, O'Keeffe's hair had turned gray, she did not want to give up the brooch but thought that silver was a better color for her to wear. So, during a trip to India in 1959, she had a local artisan copy Calder's design in silver. O'Keeffe said that she paid five dollars for the replica, and this is the version that she wore exclusively for the rest of her life.