Cat Bates Volume 45.3
MOLARIS NECKLACE of bronze and stainless steel; lost-wax cast from die-extruded wax; 3.2 x 6.4 centimeters. Photograph by Cat Bates. Background photographs by Leah Newhouse.
BATES in his studio, 2023. Photograph by Nicole Hill.
Born in Bath, on Maine’s midcoast, Cat Bates grew up on Monhegan Island, then moved with his family to Palermo and then Kennebunkport. While in high school, he took weekend classes in the metals department at Maine College of Art (MECA) in Portland, studying with Ghana-born jeweler Ebenezer Akakpo and others. He also apprenticed with the mother-daughter team of Elizabeth and Judy Gilday at Sea Rose Design.
Bates’s parents encouraged his aspirations as a jewelry artist. His mother, Daphne Pulsifer, a wood carver and sculptor, taught him to take time “to do things just right, the way you want them.” His father, Daniel Bates, a psychiatrist, started out as a sculptor. “The very first metalsmithing that I ever had exposure to,” the son recalls, “was him showing me how to hit nails with a hammer to make little swords.”
Bates attended the Maine College of Art, studying jewelry design with Sharon Portelance, Tina Rath and Jeffrey Clancy. He considers himself fortunate to have had a competitive group of students around him, including his roommate, metalsmith and tool-maker Seth Gould.
Following graduation, Bates spent a year in Philadelphia doing a “kind of self-guided residency” before returning to his home state. While working as the technician in MECA’s metals department, he had a job at David’s Restaurant to help pay the bills. At this time, he envisioned himself as a gallery artist focusing on one-of-a-kind work. Then an epiphany occurred: with his skillset and casting experience, he could start a production line and create his “own day job.”
Bates subsequently developed a “quick line,” which fulfilled his dedication to accessibility and practicality. “It spoke to core elements of all of my work,” he said, “utility, durability and functionality.”
Over time he has sought to make jewelry that can be worn constantly—and be as accessible as possible cost-wise while still being handmade and beautiful.
Bates traces his love of braiding to learning about knots as a kid on Monhegan. Islander Frederick Faller introduced him to The Ashley Book of Knots, which he calls “an epic tome of information about sailor knotting, both practical and decorative.”
Bates began making traditional three-strand braided and grommet bracelets. The latter involve taking a piece of rope and untwisting it into its three individual strands then re-twisting one of those lines to create what appears to be a continuous loop of rope.
Today, Bates employs a variation on the kumihimo process. Threads on weighted bobbins attached to a wooden “donut” are moved around the perimeter in a specific pattern to create the braid. He loves the control he has over the gauge of the rope and the number of strands. “I’m able to splice clasps into the cordage to create really smooth transitions,” he reports.
SOFT SHACKLE BRAIDING PROCESS (kumihimo), 2023. Photograph by Nicole Hill.
SOFT SHACKLE BRACELET of polyester, sterling silver; lost-wax cast, handbraided; 6.4 x 6.4 x 0.6 centimeters. Photograph by Berlian Arts.
Kumihimo braiding is traditionally done sitting or kneeling but Bates stands—“My knees can’t handle it,” he says. The method is meditative and slow, but more ergonomic than doing it by hand.
Bates uses lost-wax and sand casting in producing his work. For the past ten years or so he has used Racecar Jewelry in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for his casts. Recently, using a wax extrusion method, he has been doing some of his own casting. Learning a new skill keeps him engaged and challenged.
That said, Bates is open to jobbing out “if someone else can hit a specific end point more economically and faster.” Case in point: he has been working with a laser company to cut certain clasp components for a chain bracelet. He makes the clasps himself; the only pre-manufactured jewelry elements in his work are things like the posts on earrings and the split rings on key chains.
Bates discovered sand casting while working in the metals studio at MECA. Aside from Tim McCreight’s The Complete Metalsmith and some industry sources, he could find little written about how this method was used in making jewelry, a fact that intrigued him.
PORTAL NECKLACE PROCESS: PREPARING THE GATE. FITTING GATE and sprue cup to pattern drag. FINISHING PATTERN PIECES on vise after brazing on gate and sprue cup. Photographs by Cat Bates.
Bates likes how distinctive the surface texture is in sand casting. He learned how the temperature of the metal and how tightly packed the sand is affect the quality of the casting. He now pours in the centrifuge, a method he came across while researching industrial casting techniques. He sand casts about a third of his work.
Most of Bates’s pieces are fabricated from one of three different metals: brass, sterling silver and shibuichi. The last-named, a copper alloy, is among his favorites.
A soft yet strong metal, it casts beautifully and takes a rich patina. He especially likes the fact that the material changes over time based on the wearer’s body chemistry.
PORTAL NECKLACE PROCESS: THE SAND CAST MOLD and the model. THE RAW BRASS CASTING. PORTAL NECKLACE, brass and nylon; sand cast, lost-wax cast clasp, hand-waxed cord; 1.9 x 1.9 x 55.9 centimeters, 2022. Photographs by Cat Bates. For a video on his work and process, visit www.vimeo.com/410425046.
Bates usually starts a new piece with a specific goal, either practical—a certain kind of mechanism, for example—or aesthetic: creating something that is understated, say. Both goals come together in his reliquary necklace. A commission led him to create this necklace that features a pendant with a simple shape “like a full moon or pocket watch.”
Bates wanted special packaging for these personal pieces, which might hold the ashes of a deceased loved one. He reached out to Rangeley Morton, a friend from college days, whose company, Drew Carpentry, works with medium density fiberboard. They work together to engineer the basic parameters of the boxes and then adjust proportions based on the contents. “When I think about packaging or website design or my business cards, any of that,” Bates avers, “I like to think of it as all part of the same art.”
The souvenir bracelet involved three collaborations, starting with leather artist Nicholas Hollows who asked Bates to help him design a magnetic clasp for a bracelet he was working on. He made several prototypes out of wax which Nick Thompson of Berlian Arts then converted via a CAD program so that it could be perfectly symmetrical.
RELIQUARY NECKLACE, sterling silver, polyester, MDF, and glass vial; sand cast, lost-wax casting, cold-connection, hand engraving, CNC machining; 10.2 x 11.4 x 1.9 centimeters, 2024. Photograph by Berlian Arts.
SOUVENIR BRACELET WITH DAPHNE PULSIFER of sterling silver, leather and magnets; lost-wax cast, threading, cold connections; 6.4 x 7.6 x 1.3 centimeters. Photograph by Cat Bates.
The most recent iteration of the bracelet features a tiny etched image of a bee in a flower by Bates’s mother. The bracelets are sold through the Edison Studio on Monhegan, named for Theodore Edison, the inventor’s son and founder of Monhegan Associates, which is dedicated to preserving the island’s wildlands.
By his own account, Bates has a light hand when it comes to finishing his work. He does virtually no polishing and little sanding, preferring processes that leave some marks along the way that are interesting. The souvenir bracelets, however, are carefully hand-sanded to preserve his mother’s etching.
A recent design, the molaris necklace, in Bates’s words, “looks like a cracked piece of crown molding or an architectural fragment, but is actually inspired by fossilized horse molars.” Using an extrusion method learned during a Pentaculum residency at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, he created the necklaces through a process that entails chilling the cast bars, either outside (winter in Maine works) or in a freezer, then holding them over his head and throwing them at the floor. He carefully retrieves the fragments, some of which become necklaces.
In designing the piece, Bates was thinking about heartbreak and “wanting to hold gratitude for that specific kind of hurt” which helps people grow and figure out what they want rather than “holding bitterness.”
For a time, Bates rented a studio in the Dana Warp Mill building in Westbrook. Today he works from his home in Biddeford where a 500-square-foot converted garage serves as his work space, with areas for fiber, sandblasting, and casting, plus a small office. He worked with the city to make sure he met all the code requirements, including a two-tier ventilation system.
Bates listens to a lot of hip-hop while he works, including Kendrick Lamar. He also enjoys more ambient music, including the “melodious and brooding” compositions of his friend, novelist Douglas Milliken and his band The Plaster Cramp. He and Milliken have collaborated on several projects, including the Saline Bandanna.
Bates feels fortunate to be able to make a living as an artist and acknowledges the advantages afforded him. He believes everyone deserves to be able to grow and thrive. That immigration is demonized disgusts him.
Each year Bates runs one or two fundraisers. The most recent one supported the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a U.S.-based nonprofit that provides medical services in the Gaza Strip. He added a surcharge to his web and in-person orders in December, one of his busiest months. He assumed he’d lose some sales—“No one likes to get charged more money”—but he wanted to “force people to pay attention.” He received one nasty email from someone accusing him of supporting terrorism, which, he says, was “confusing, considering this nonprofit specifically benefits children.” Most of the money he raised was additional voluntary donations.
Bates also participates in a tenants’ advocacy group helping folks understand their rights as renters. “We can’t necessarily change national politics as individuals,” the jeweler notes, “but we can certainly have an impact on local politics.” He encourages people to focus on “things we can do and then do them.” That goes for making jewelry, too.
CAT BATES OF MONHEGAN by Jamie Wyeth of oil, panel, 91.4 x 121.9 centimeters, 1995.
SUGGESTED READING
Belisle, Lisa. Cat Bates: Maine Jewelry Designer with Monhegan Island Roots. Youtube, uploaded by Radio Maine with Dr. Lisa Belisle, 12/2/23, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxeS4B59Uas.
Carl Little first knew of Cat Bates through a painting by the celebrated artist Jamie Wyeth. In the Dante-esque Cat Bates of Monhegan, 1995, now in Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, the shirtless boy stands next to a makeshift waste incinerator. Bates credits his childhood on this remote island with instilling in him the idea that one could make a living by one’s art—and for providing the inspiration and start to a successful career as a jeweler. Little’s most recent publications are Blanket of the Night: Poems and the monograph John Moore: Portals. In 2021 he received a lifetime achievement award for his art writing from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.
