Art jewellery forum, space for opinion, debate and exchange. Access to conferences, articles and interviews about the art jewellery creation written by the most relevant figures on the world of art, jewellery and crafts.

Checking the temperature

The name From the Coolest Corner can be interpreted as a play with the prejudices of the Nordic area: cold, cool and not the centre of attention. The team behind this touring exhibition hope to change that fact by presenting the newest and most advanced of Nordic jewellery to a wide audience.

Sanna Svedestedt

Gothenburg , Sanna Svedestedt, 2013

Analysis of ‘Transplantation A sense of place and culture- British and Australian Narrative Jewellery’

Perhaps the most pressing, urgent and demanding pieces deal with more than a simple dialogue between two places. The narrative jewellery that acknowledges a constellation of location reveals to us that the distance between our homeland and ourselves increases with any looking back.

Samuel O’Hana

Manchester , Samuel O’Hana, 2012

Impressions of Schmuck 2012 in Munich

Munich in March seems to have become for jewellers what Milan is for designers. Besides the important Jewellery exhibition ‘Schmuck 2012’, many jewellers and galleries use this moment to present their jewellery all over Munich. Of the almost 50 exhibitions I managed to visit 15 of them in two and a half day!

Birgit Laken

Haarlem , Birgit Laken, 2012

The Left and the Right

(...) recently I have become less and less satisfied with my outcomes, struggling to develop my current body of work. How do you create good work, which is original and from the heart? I had heard rumours about Ruudt’s course. That it was tough, an intensive experience. I decided to throw myself in and see where I would land.  (...)

Laura Bradshaw-Heap

London , Laura Bradshaw-Heap, 2012

Commentary on ‘Transplantation A sense of place and culture- British and Australian Narrative Jewellery’

(...) I left the exhibition a number of hours later with a sense of fondness for the obvious intimacy portrayed in the work. (...)

Samuel O’Hana

Manchester , Samuel O’Hana, 2012

Master Class: David Bielander & Helen Britton: Authenticity in the age of style surfing

(...) It seems that some makers of contemporary jewellery may have forgotten their roots, in an attempt to make work to show at exhibitions such as Schmuck in Munich. (...)

Laura Bradshaw-Heap

London , Findings Magazine, 2011

Liana Pattihis case study for the Research Fellowship for Innovation in Vitreous Enamel Surfaces in Jewellery

The research project is based on the premise that there is huge and largely unexplored potential for innovation within the field of enamelled jewellery. By taking both a practice-led and theoretical approach the aim of the project has been to identify factors that might hinder innovation and present a series of alternative approaches that encourage a more experimental and open-minded approach to enamel.

Jessica Turrell

Bristol , Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2010

Jewellery talk

(...) In 2006 Daniela Hedman & Kajsa Lindberg took on the opportunity to travel around Europe and make an investigation about the field of contemporary jewellery. The suggestion came from Ruudt Peters, at that time their professor at Ädellab/Metallformgivning, Konstfack Sweden. (...)

Daniela Hedman, Kajsa Lindberg

Stockolm , Ädellab/ Metallformgiving, 2008

Lisa Walker’s speculations in glue

(...) Walker decided to assemble her pieces using glue, an idiosyncratic process that made her stand out in the field. Being considered the Anti-Christ of the jewellery world, glue is used ‘secretly’ in both traditional and contemporary jewellery. (...)

Dionea Rocha Watt

Oxford , Journal of Modern Craft website, 2010

TO THE LIGHT, THROUGH THE NIGHT: International Jewellery Exhibition JUST MUST

(...) Hope gives us courage to carry on. A gift involves hope. An artist’s gift is greater than that of other people, and as with any gift, the bearer must reciprocate. Somebody always needs to be saved. The artist speaks to all, even if only a few will listen. (...)

Vappu Thurlow

Tallinn , Kunst.ee magazine, 2008

Kadri Mälk and her inevitable imperative

(...) I have never understood why conceptualism is so often confused with communal propaganda in Estonian art. In Just Must, the conceptualization has been put in place very exactingly, and is zestfully well-tempered, it doesn’t do anything ostentatious but it certainly is dramatic. (...)

Peeter Laurits

Tallinn , Eesti Ekspress Areen, 2008

Where? Wear? Worn?

(...) Walker is clever. She has recognised jewellery’s capacity to provoke and to critique notions of the ‘decorative’. In her practice she challenges the fundamental premise of the craft, one that historically has preference for skill, technique, preciousness and glamour. (...)

Roseanne Bartley

Melbourne , Roseanne Bartley, 2009

For an ecumenical communication within Contemporary Jewellery

Did we need two youngsters from Barcelona in order to be able to create a new and pioneering resource which would throw open windows and throw down blond plaits, take biblical doors off their hinges and build Brooklyn-type bridges between jewellery lovers around the globe, workers in the sector and all the curious Ulysses’ navigators gravitating around the world of Contemporary Jewellery? Obviously we did. (...)

Bianca Cappello

Milan , AGC, 2008

Repeat after me

(...) if an object is good once, it will be good 20 times over, is what fuels this essay. My more seasoned conviction, that contemporary jewelry needs the visibility that editions would provide, also plays a part. (...)

Benjamin Lignel

Bethel , Metalsmith Magazine, 2008

New Graduate: Liana Pattihis

Having evolved her own style of enamelling right from the beginning, Liana Pattihis describes the processes involved in discovering her new techniques.

Pat Johnson

London , British Society of Enamellers, 2007

Objects to show off.

(...)
What makes the work of these artists valid? Their concept of jewellery as an artistic language, and the transformation of its discourse.
(...)

Silvia Micolau, text

Barcelona , b-guided#22,

What does Contemporary Jewellery mean?

(...) Contemporary Jewellery is a type of practice - understood as the contemporary offspring of a craft-based design activity that finds its origin in medieval workshops. (...)

Benjamin Lignel

Bethel , Metalsmith Magazine, 2006

Architectonics, Foundations in Jewellery

(...) While architecture defines the spaces where we interact with one another jewellery defines who we are as individuals within these defined spaces. (...)

Heather Skowood

Liverpool , architectonicsjewellery, 2006

A few words about Perception

(...) Being inside a car you can see only a projection of the outside world on the windshield of the car. (...)

Micha Maslennikov

Moscow , Mi-Mi Moscow, 2006

Polish designer's jewellery

I belong to these who are of the opinion that Polish goldsmithing after the WW II has really recovered as late as in 1990 (...)

Andrzej Bielak

Krakow , STFZ Goldsmithing Artists' Association, 2006

Dutch Jubilees

Three celebrating jewellery galleries in one year – this is only possible in Holland.

Liesbeth den Besten

Amsterdam , Klimt02, 2006

Lisa Walker & Karl Fritsch. New Zealand Tour

(...) Their work is as much provocative and challenging to a maker of jewellery such as myself as it is to a wearer. (...)

Kate Ewing

Auckland: A Treasury of New Zealand Craft Resources Trust, 2001 , A Treasury of New Zealand Craft Resources Trust,

The Wedding Band, The (ir)refutable symbol of union

(...) The rings, preferentially valuable, that continue to seal unions are piled up in the gutter and the circle that previously represented infinitely perfect love, now finds itself empty and lifeless (...)

Jose Carlos Marques

Porto 2006

Coming into view

(...) There is an ongoing discussion in the crafts community about how craft works can reach out to a broader audience and redefine the cultural relevance of this embattled discipline of creativity. (...)

Sakurako Shimizu

New York 2006

People Don’t Care About Ideas, They Just Like Cool Objects

(...) Is jewelry an art form? ‘Jewelry’ is no doubt a confusing term. Simple words like ‘ornament’, ‘design’ and ‘craft’ all seem to fail in describing this highly hybrid discipline. (...)

Sakurako Shimizu

New York 2005

The joy of making the invisible visual by utilising the hand

(...) And what about a young jeweller like Suska Mackert who hardly makes any jewellery at all, and still considers herself a jeweller? (...)

Liesbeth den Besten

Stockholm: Craft in Dialogue, 2005 , Craft in Dialogue, 2005

The Padua School of jewellery, considered from inside

(...)
The emphasis lies on stylistic developments, from Mario Pinton’s “primitivistic figuration” of the post-war period through the influence of Programmatic, Kinetic and Minimal Art in the period which reaches from the sixties till the eighties, and the experimental Post Modern work of Francesco Pavan and Giampaolo Babetto in the eighties, till the work of the younger generation which started in the nineties and the “new logics in the use of geometry” in the work of Babetto, Visintin and Pavan in the period from the 1990s to the present
(...)

Liesbeth den Besten

Holland , Klimt02,

Images, codes and poetry: the jewellery of Suska Mackert

(...)
Making use of a variety of media, she underlines that jewellery’s complex grid of relationships between maker, object, message, wearer and spectator cannot be analysed solely from the viewpoint of the physical encounter.
(...)

Love Jönsson

Munich 2005

Reading jewellery. Comments on narrative jewellery

(...) Till now, not much attention has been paid to the narrative in jewellery and this is strange. We are living in a culture in which the narrative is omnipresent and jewellery is treated in terms of material, style and concept, not in terms of the process of viewing and interpreting (...)

Liesbeth den Besten

, Norway, 2006

Culturing the Body: a social experience

(...)
Jewellery is a communication device, a cultural signifier through which notions of individuality or communal identity can be transmitted. It is an intimate broadcaster, often employed as a decorative lure, or an indication of social consequence.
(...)

Roseanne Bartley

Letter to Graziella Folchini about the book review The Padua School of jewellery, considered from inside.

(...)
what would have interested me as a reader,
is the question of meaning.
What does a material represent to an artist? In the short history of contemporary art jewellery, the semiotic function of certain materials, the values (beyond the economical) and meanings which are attached to materials by artists, is very interesting.
(...)

Liesbeth den Besten

Amstelveen 2005

Letter to Ms. Liesbeth den Besten about the book review The Padua School of jewellery, considered from inside.

(...)
I agree with you about the radical minimalism
of Emmy van Leersum, but I confirm the original expression of Babetto’s minimalist works.
In fact, I do not think that the use of gold
contradicts the concept of minimalism.
(...)

Graziella Folchini Grassetto

Semantics of the word "jewel"

(...)
It addresses the work we do as artist-jewellers and the conotations the word "jewellery" has for the public in general and to some extent to ourselves. By changing that concept, we would be able to present a larger audience with a different perception of what we do. Unfortunately, up to now, no new name has been coined. Maybe it will, maybe not. This is a seed for change.
(...)

Manuel Vilhena

Amber Jewelry of Sigitas Virpilaitis: Postmodern Approach.

(...)
he puts forward intellectual, but not decorative aspects of the artwork. Amber is seen through a new prism and is considered not as a unique stone from the Baltic region or national symbol, but as a material, that could invoke various cultural associations, oftentimes having nothing to do with national identity.
(...)

Ruta Pileckaite

Contemporary Jewellery:
Georg Dobler, Winfried Krüger, Karen Pontoppidan, Marianne Schliwinski.

(...)
For all their diversity, these four artists have in common a tendency to draw their inspiration from the natural world, even if they approach such themes in very different ways and express them in their own individual stylistic languages.
(...)

Graziella Folchini Grassetto

Photo-Sensitive Cities.

(...)
But the most attentive citizen to the reality of his city is aware that a city’s cultural memory also depends on his commitment, energy and awoken movement.
(...)

Carla Castiajo

Mah Rana: Between Remembering and Forgetting.

(...)
It is our consciousness that gives
these objects real potency
(...)

Augustus Casely-Hayford

Stefano Marchetti. The New Generation in the Padua School and the European Postavanguardia.

(...)
the individual component is emphasised,
isolated, and thus distinguished
as an autonomous entity
(...)

Graziella Folchini Grassetto

The created Jewel.

(...)
What will define what a jewel is
or isn't will be the will,
the intention of its creator
(...)

Ramon Puig Cuyàs

Suite on David Watkins.

(...)
in his work he rehearses every possible variation, uniting chance and calculation, intuition and method, all as if it were musical improvisation.
(...)

Mònica Gaspar