Primarily self-taught in metalworking, merry renk was instrumental in the studio jewelry movement in the United States. In 1946, while still a student at Chicago’s Institute of Design, renk and two classmates opened the country’s first contemporary arts and crafts gallery, 750 Studio. The gallery exhibited the works of contemporary artists and craftspeople, including László Moholy-Nagy, Margaret De Patta, and Lenore Tawney. It included a studio where renk experimented with enamel and jewelry, creating linear ornaments made from wires that she bent, forged, cast, and arranged in groups. The hair comb, which went out of favor in the 1920s as fashionable hairstyles became shorter, witnessed a renaissance in the 1970s as long hair once again became popular with young women.