Un peu de terre sur la peau - A Bit of Clay on the Skin: Contemporary Ceramic Jewellery.

This year the Fondation Bernardaud plans an exhibition around an art form that is not well recognized in France: contemporary jewellery. The exhibit will present one hundred fifty compelling ceramic creations on loan from the various artists. The works revisit ancestral forms of artistic expression as a means of casting them in new perspectives.

The exhibition is curated by Monika Brugger.

Participating artists: 
Yasar Aydin, Sweden | Carole Deltenre, France | Willemijn de Greef, The Netherlands | Andi Gut, Switzerland | Gésine Hackenberg, Germany | Peter Hoogeboom, The Netherlands | Rian de Jong, The Netherlands | Manon van Kouswijk, The Netherlands | Natalie Luder, Switzerland | Evert Nijland, The Netherlands | Ted Noten, The Netherlands | Marie Pendariès, France | Katja Prins, The Netherlands | Tiina Rajakallio, Finland | Terhi Tolvanen, Finland | Luzia Vogt, Switzerland | Shu-lin Wu, Taïwan | Christoph Zellweger, Switzerland

Un peu de terre sur la peau
While traditional jewellery is linked with precious metal craftwork of the applied arts, since the 1970’s contemporary jewellery has become a field of experimentation in new arenas of art, design and artisanal creation. Through the works of the 18 international artists (French, Swiss, German, Finnish, Dutch, Swedish and Taïwanese) we are offered a revitalized and personal vision. Certain pieces in the exhibit reference the history of the arts and traditions associated with jewellery while others totally reinvent their place, significance and materials. 

Jewellery has always played a role as a gauge of social status within a group as well as a means of differentiation or protest of the social order. Jewellery is the singular personal ornament worn against the skin that evokes a connection between human beings and the natural world. As this exhibition will demonstrate, as have others in the history of jewellery, body ornaments can be created with diverse materials and possibilities of assembly depending on the techniques, symbols and prevailing culture at a given time. While the Egyptians produced seal rings from faience, and the Greeks and Romans gilded terra cotta to imitate gold during ancient times, the use of ceramics in the fabrication of jewellery was abandoned and forgotten for centuries. The resurgence of ceramics occurred in 1773 when Joshiah Wedgwood of England invents a fine stoneware paste with strata of colors that perfectly resemble jasper used to produce neoclassic or romantic cameo-like subjects. 

Today it is the Dutch designer Peter Hoogeboom who, since 1994, has distinguished himself through the innovative incorporation of stoneware and porcelain with jewellery. This notable revival led to an admirable initiative by the European Keramiek Work Centre in the Netherlands (EKWC). The EKWC extended artist-inresidency offers to a number of contemporary precious metal-crafters that would allow them to explore the possibilities of incorporating ceramics in the creation of jewellery. Among the array of ceramic materials available today, some artists prefer porcelain when making jewellery. Porcelain can be modeled or cast, used alone or in combination with metal, wood or stone. It can vary in appearance, color and texture. Smooth and pure, fragile yet highly resistant, porcelain adopts any shape on the condition that one is cognizant of the techniques and constraints - particularly the one linked to its significant shrinkage during firing. Still associated in our collective consciousness with tableware or clinical applications as a scientific material, porcelain can today become an object of desire: a catalyst of visual and physical sensations adapting to the conceptual and poetic demands of contemporary jewellery. As evidenced with A Bit on Clay on the Skin.

Monika Brugger, exhibition curator

Download the complete pdf with information about the jewellers and the exhibition:
Un peu de terre sur la peau

La Fondation d’entreprise Bernardaud
Reinventing porcelain - this is the idea which in 2003 inspired Michel Bernardaud to establish the Bernardaud Foundation, with the aim of discovering for this amazing, underestimated material, with all its unsuspected qualities and properties, horizons beyond that of pure tableware. By this initiative, the head of the company was expressing his keenness for artists and designers to come and explore the richnesses of porcelain, and reveal to the public eye the spirit and the power of a company which, since 1863, has centered its philosophy around three values – expertise, innovation and creativity. 

The mission of the Bernardaud Foundation, overseen by Helene Huret, rests on three tenets:
- To welcome artists whose projects offer new perspectives on porcelain
- To heighten public awareness about the “wisdom of the hand” or artisan techniques of fabrication
- To host an annual exhibition of contemporary ceramics (i.e. terra cotta, stoneware, faience and porcelain). This summer exhibition has become a not-to-be-missed event that allows one to discover works by artists that are not often displayed in France but yet bear witness to the prolific and global activity with ceramics that the Bernardaud Foundation strives to promote.

Opening hours:
June 16th to October 16th 2010, everyday (including holidays) except sunday
From 9:45 am to 11:15 am and from 1:30 pm à 4:30 pm. 
In october, by appointments 

Admission
Guided tour including the summer exhibit
adults : 4,50€
Group of 10 or more: 4€
Free for children under 12

Hélène Huret | Director
phone: +33 (0)1 43 12 52 06 
email: hhuret@bernardaud.fr