CBH Talk | Nameplates, Identity, and Adornment in Brooklyn
Nameplate jewelry has long served as a bold statement of identity, style, and self-definition. From scripted pendants to doorknocker earrings, bejeweled rings, belts, and bracelets wrought in gold, silver, or acrylic, nameplates speak volumes about individuality and belonging.
Join us during NYC Jewelry Week for a Brooklyn-centered conversation about how this multifaceted design tradition embodies personal and collective expression and pride. CBH Chief Historian Dominique Jean-Louis is joined by Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Attyah Flower, authors of The Nameplate: Jewelry, Culture, and Identity (Penguin Random House, 2023), to uncover some of the rich cultural and material histories behind the ways nameplate jewelry is made and worn. She’ll also take us into the archives to explore the work of Matthew Lewandowski, a Brooklyn-based tool and die maker whose steel “hubs” were essential to the production of hollow-form earrings, which in the 1980s and ’90s became one of the most popular formats for nameplates.
Finally, the program features photographs of ’80s and ’90s Brooklyn by Jamel Shabazz, drawn from the CBH collection, that capture the people, places, and culture whose spirit continues to evolve today. Examples of nameplate jewelry will be on display.
Pictured above clockwise from left: Book cover, “The Nameplate”; Jamel Shabazz still image, Downtown Brooklyn, 1984; SHBZ_0035; Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History; Interior page from “The Nameplate”
Participants
Marcel Rosa-Salas is a cultural anthropologist, documentarian, and speaker who hails from Brooklyn, New York. She is cohost of the Top Rank podcast, coauthor of The Nameplate: Jewelry, Culture and Identity, and author of Total Market American: Race, Data and Advertising (2025).
Isabel Attyah Flower is a writer and editor based in New York City. She is executive editor of Deem, editorial director of Foundwork, and leads the public discourse program at re:arc institute. She is cohost of the Top Rank podcast and coauthor of The Nameplate: Jewelry, Culture, and Identity.
Dominique Jean-Louis, Ph.D, is the Chief Historian of the Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public Library where she has most recently curated the exhibitions Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn, Centering Collections: Recent Work at CBH. Previously, she held the position of Associate Curator of History Exhibitions at the New York Historical. She received her Ph.D in US History from New York University, with her doctoral research focusing on race, ethnicity, and immigration in post-Civil Rights Era Brooklyn schools. Dominique regularly writes and lectures on Blackness in America, schools and education, and New York City history.
