About Margo

Margo Csipő is a jeweler, illustrator, educator and writer working and teaching out of the Baltimore Jewelry Center. Her practice explores jewelry and masks as vessels for meaning to be emptied and filled by the creator and wearer, both physically and metaphorically. This fabrication-heavy, illustrative jewelry is done with the ancient technique scrimshaw, where images are hand scribed or engraved into materials such as mother of pearl, bone, or amber. Processing time and growth through… more

Little Cups Around the Large Void

2025 Necklace

Baltic amber, mother of pearl, sterling silver, fine silver, pigmented ink, beeswax, adhesive.

  • Little Cups Around the Big Void
    Little Cups Around the Big Void

    Necklace constructed of 52 silver basket settings linked together. 37 of the settings contain baltic amber scrimshawed with images of cupped hands. 14 contain mother of pearl with scrimshawed images depicting glassware. One setting is a hand-chased silver mouth with carved mother of pearl teeth.

  • Little Cups Around the Big Void
    Little Cups Around the Big Void

    Backside of Little Cups Around the Large Void necklace, showcasing scrimshawed drips on the backs of the mother of pearl and amber pieces.

  • Little Cups Around the Big Void
    Little Cups Around the Big Void

    Detail shot of necklace showing scrimshawed hands on amber and cups on mother of pearl. On slight right side of necklace is the hand-chased lips with the carved mother of pearl teeth

Buffet Thief

Necklace/purse 2025
Sterling silver, fine silver, bone, mother of pearl, amber, pigmented ink, beeswax, glass beads, silk cord

  • Buffet Thief
    Buffet Thief

    A glamorous little pouch to bring to the all-you-can-eat buffet. You can use it to pilfer little tea cakes and cocktail shrimp to have a nice snack later. No one will suspect you are a thief with such a luxurious looking bag.

  • Buffet Thief
    Buffet Thief
  • Buffet Thief
    Buffet Thief
  • Buffet Thief
    Buffet Thief

Foreign in the Fiber

2025, Brooch

Mother of pearl, sterling silver, Baltic amber, pigmented ink, beeswax, adhesive, stainless steel

  • Foreign in the Fiber
    Foreign in the Fiber

    This brooch plays with the metaphor of the pin by depicting various scenes of piercing and penetrating. The technique of scrimshaw is not too dissimilar from this phenomenon, as it involves a steel tool entering the matrix of the material to make a cut, and then introducing another material by trapping pigment in the engraved lines. It asks how identity changes when something foreign enters, and the impermanence of that identity.

  • Foreign in the Fiber
    Foreign in the Fiber