OAK BROOK, IL.- An exhibition of award-winning jeweler Mark Schneider’s one-of-a-kind pieces will open on view at the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art from November 7, 2026-March 28, 2027. The exhibition is guest curated by Elyse Zorn Karlin.
Jewelry designer Mark Schneider has won an amazing 68 prestigious jewelry industry awards, no doubt setting a record for an individual designer.
Mark ‘grew up’ in his family’s retail jewelry business. In 1981, he had an epiphany—he decided he should pivot into designing his own jewelry. What is special about Mark’s designs is how he begins them. Through his extensive network of gem dealers and gem carvers, he searches for stones that will evolve into his magnificent jewels.
As explained in the foreword to the book featuring his jewelry: “Mark’s starting point is the gemstone. He rarely comes up with a design and then finds a gemstone to fit it. Instead, he finds the gemstone and waits for ‘the stone to speak to him’. Sometimes this process is immediate; other times he will have a stone in his collection for ten or twenty years before the stone ‘speaks.’
Mark’s jewelry mostly fits into several categories: water, flora and fauna, architectonic, furniture-influenced, and the cosmos, and they are shown this way in the exhibition. In addition to the award-winning pieces there are an additional 22 pieces he designed for the American Jewelry Design Council Projects, the prestigious invitation-only group of which he is a member.
The exhibition will feature 40 pieces of Mark’s jewelry. The book Mark Schneider Contemporary Jewelry Design will be available for sale at the museum. Mark will give a public talk at 2 PM on Saturday, November 7, 2026.
The Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art is a museum dedicated to the lapidary arts with displays of gemstones, jewelry and bejeweled objects, and exhibits on earth science. The museum was founded in Elmhurst, Illinois, United States, in 1962, and moved to Oak Brook, Illinois, in 2019.
