Brancusi, while another might have humorous, wide-eyed comic characters doing a belly-crawl.

A consummate beach comber, Nohl incorporated smooth Lake Michigan beach stones into her jewelry, hand-carving the hard, round, multi-colored pieces of basalt and rhyolite into tiny head forms, linking them like pearls on long strands, at once funny and chic. Under Nohl’s care, washed up bits of beach glass were transformed into crystalline filaments of light and geometric dynamism. Themes from a watery realm entered time and again: boats, fish and fishermen, wooden docks with tiny figures. Her creativity was fueled by curiosity and levity. One silver ring has pages that turn on hinges. Her mother’s once-pristine silver service was co-opted: spoons were melted and transformed into clownish faces and rotund characters dancing gleefully arm-in-arm.

By the end of the 1950s, Nohl had closed down her pottery studio and made a clean break with the structures of the market, artistic competition and, perhaps most importantly, the need for audience acceptance. The death of her parents a few years later altered Nohl’s path again, and she settled into the privacy of the cottage on the lake, where she began to transform the house and yard into her own artistic world. As the challenges of pleasing her father and mother receded, Nohl’s ease with full-time exploration grew. The beach stones and funny faces from her pocket-sized silver works emerged as larger-than-life concrete characters in the beachfront yard; the space developed an enchanting fairy tale atmosphere.