Jonathan Lee Rutledge is an emerging goldsmith and jewelry designer. Although always interested in art, he did not begin a formal art education until late in his college career. A metals and jewelry class caught his eye in the course catalog his junior year. This class was for fine arts majors only, but he refused to take “no” for an answer, and a passion for design and metalwork was born.

Jon’s first experience working with metals had been in the military. After high school, he enlisted in the Air Force, where he repaired F-16 jets at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. As Jonathan remembers it, “We basically patched and painted all day.” When he was honorably discharged, Jonathan received the Air Force Achievement Award for his work with sheet metal.

On returning home, Jon enrolled at Illinois State University. His talent for jewelry design became evident in that first class late in his junior year, and three more undergraduate metals courses got packed into the remaining time. Jon’s jewelry professor was impressed enough with his work to invite him to enroll as a jewelry design major in the MFA program.

After a few weeks of thought, Jonathan recalls, “everything just clicked”…I was sitting in a coffee shop and I thought to myself, “Of course that’s what I want to do. I have to make this happen!’” Jonathan was successful in graduate school, under the watchful eye of his mentor and professor, Dennis French.

Jon has another career as well: he’s worked as a firefighter with the Rolling Meadows Fire Department since May, 2001. Six weeks training in such areas as fire suppression, search and rescue, and auto extraction were followed by four months in paramedic school, where he learned the ins and outs of advanced life support.

Like yin and yang, these two rolls—jewelry designer and firefighter—create balance in his life. As a firefighter, Jon has to be quick and make split-second decisions; as a jewelry designer, he can take the time to really think things over and experiment with options. In firefighting, things happen at an accelerated pace; in jewelry design, work is done at a methodical pace with attention given to every minuscule detail. In spite of these differences, both careers are fundamentally about decision-making.

A firefighter’s schedule of 24 hours on, 48 hours off, is another way that these two careers fit together. When he’s not at the firehouse, almost every moment is spent at his bench with his tools, creating.

Jonathan works primarily in high karat gold for its deep, rich, yellow color, the warmth of the metal, and the visual contrast between the gold and the other materials that he incorporates into his jewelry.

Jon draws on his love of history and the history of jewelry as he brings his designs to life. In doing so, he relies on gemstones together with the ancient technique of granulation, a process in which tiny gold spheres are fused onto gold forms. His jewelry is classical in both style and technique, yet with a contemporary flare.

Jonathan lives and creates in Evanston, IL, and can be reached at:

Jonathan Lee Rutledge
P.O. Box 5043
Evanston, IL 60204-5043
847 738-4418
jonathanlrutledge@hotmail.com