ew metal artists are as comfortable with uncertainty and surprise in their work as Cynthia Eid. It is the delight in the spontaneous and unexpected that fuels Bid's passion —and it is this same delight that is felt upon encountering her extraordinarily complex and compelling jewelry. Eid, who works from her home studio in Lexington, Massachusetts, is an award-winning metal artist. She creates jewelry, hollowware and Judaica, and is a respected jewelry and metalsmithing instructor. She is also a master hammerer (with a collection of close to one hundred hammers), and her jewelry reveals the astounding possibilities of texture and form that hammering can achieve. Eid is able to create intricate, almost brocade-like patterns, waves, bends and twists, hollows and pockets, and almost impossibly tiny folds that often challenge your sense of the material.

Many of her pieces, though wrought in sterling silver or sterling and eighteen karat gold bi-metal, have a distinctly paper- or fabric-like quality. Her Brocatelle bracelet is reminiscent of tapestry—the silver is so densely and evenly patterned that you could swear that Eid had woven it (she did not). Sampler, a silver and fourteen karat gold brooch, is similarly evocative; it could be a swatch from a woven rug. In Two Pods, No Peas, a pair of silver earrings, the metal is crepe-thin and corrugated.