Private Commissions

Beaded Necktie and Box

2002

Commissioned by Jason Meyer, Brooklyn, New York
Medium: Glass beads, thread; Box – archival board, fiber, thread
Dimensions: Necktie: 58 5/8 × 2 1/8 × 1/8 in. Box: [Insert dimensions when available]
Photograph: Courtesy of the artists
Exhibition History: Function and Fantasy: Steven and William Ladd, Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California, 2014. Curator: Christine Knoke

Commission Overview
We first met Jason in Brooklyn. We dated briefly before evolving into lifelong family friends—most recently reconnecting in Michigan, where Jason now lives, and where he participated in the National Scrollathon. Early on, Jason had a deep respect for our work and wanted one of William’s hand-loomed beaded neckties.

Artistic Approach
This tie continues William’s evolving geometric language: a blackish gunmetal ground woven with blush-pink rectangles, bordered by a white perimeter.

It was loomed with straight sides and blunt ends, the natural result of working on a loom where vertical warp threads run in parallel columns and horizontal weft rows sit at right angles.

What makes this piece distinctive is its connection to one of our earliest branding experiments. The circular box, covered in fiber and stitched by hand, carries a rare silver logo plaque—one of the very few ever produced. The motif of that logo, a figure-eight “ergonomic base” we had developed for our handbags, also appears in the beadwork at the bottom of the tie, a subtle woven echo of the logo form.

Engagement and Impact
For Jason, the tie was both an artwork and a symbol of his closeness to us during those early years in New York. For us, it was part of a moment when collectors and friends were not only commissioning our work but also carrying pieces of our shared history forward.

Context and Legacy
The silver logo itself has its own story. While trying to establish ourselves in the fashion world, we met with a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology who believed in our work. He insisted we needed a logo and even wrote us a $300 check—money we desperately needed at the time—to commission one from professor Chie Teratini. The logo was based on our ergonomic base motif, textured with the surface of a lava rock, and stamped with our name. It was cost-prohibitive to produce, but this box remains one of the rare examples where it appears.

The Jason Meyer necktie and box together capture the convergence of friendship, survival, and experimentation that defined our early years in Brooklyn. Jason has remained a beloved friend and supporter, part of the constellation of relationships that sustained our practice and later grew into the broader community-building work of Scrollathon.

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