“Inside the Jewelry Box” is a new AJF series that offers a glimpse into the jewelry collections of members of our community. Collectors, curators, gallerists, artists, and others will be featured. Suggest someone whose jewelry collection you’d like to see by emailing Jennifer Altmann, here.
Artist Helen Britton has collected jewelry since she was a child growing up in Australia. She still has many of the pieces she adored in her childhood, such as a tiny painted deer that she felt “was alive” when she was a girl.
“I’ve always been quite interested in the very naive, simple, mass-produced things that have a quirky design,” says Britton, who lives in Munich and spends part of each year in Australia.
An internationally renowned artist, Britton has won the Herbert Hofmann Prize—considered the highest honor in contemporary jewelry—and has had exhibitions all over the world. She was the subject of the 2021 film Hunter from Elsewhere.
When it comes to selecting jewelry for her own collection, Britton is particularly drawn to animals, and she loves jewelry that makes her laugh.
Britton attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Munich with New Zealand jewelry artist Lisa Walker, and they lived next door to each other for several years. Walker’s lobster brooch was part of a trade—Britton gave her friend one of her drawings.
“I think one of the great luxuries of being an artist is being able to swap for work with artists you like. I do it quite regularly,” Britton says.
The red-and-white plastic lobster is stitched over and attached to a piece of velvet. “It’s fantastic to wear—it’s bold and clear, and it molds to your body,” she says. Walker is known for using secondhand items and nontraditional techniques to challenge notions of what is precious.
“I love it because it’s not symmetrical,” says Britton. “Twenty-two years ago, people weren’t making jewelry like this. Lisa is a pioneer.”
This silver slug (at left in photo above) is one of the first in a long line of slugs made by David Bielander, Britton’s husband. “I wear it a lot,” says Britton. “People laugh, people scream, it has wonderful social interactions, which is often what jewelry does.”
The 2010 winner of the Herbert Hofmann Prize, Bielander is known for his visual puns and sleight of hand, such as making gold pieces that look like cardboard.
The silver brooch is the “offspring” of the slug prototype (at right in photo above), which is made of copper. Britton doesn’t wear that one “because it has historical significance. David was making this work at a time when figurative work wasn’t fashionable. It was fabulously funny.”
This brooch was part of a swap in 2006 between Britton and Octavia Cook, a New Zealand jewelry artist who frequently makes narrative work. The brooch, made of Perspex, acrylic, and silver, is signed “Cook & Co,” which is the fictitious family jewelry company that Cook invented as a vehicle for her work.
“It’s just hilarious to wear something that says $8,000,” Britton says. “It’s kind of random. If you wear it, you end up having lots of silly conversations.”
For almost 30 years, Britton kept a golden natural pearl from west Australia in a box: “It’s so precious, I’ve never known what to do with it,” she says. Then she met Japanese jewelry artist Shinji Nakaba, who is known for carving pearls, seashells, and gemstones using an ancient process called glyptic art. His exquisite carvings include a skull on a pearl stud earring and shells carved in the shape of the female body.
Britton gave Nakaba the pearl and asked him to carve “a little face, like a moony face” on it. The piece, completed in 2022 as a pendant, is named Moon Boy.
Britton was captivated when she spotted this brooch at The Jewelry Library during NYC Jewelry Week in 2023. As she admired it, Jewelry Library founder Karen Davidov said she had coveted a charm depicting a tin of tuna that Britton had made for an exhibition, and asked if Britton would make her one. “She pressed the horse into my hands—I was so touched,” Britton says.
The brooch is a beautifully made piece of costume jewelry with a tail composed of chains, a body of pressed brass, and colored glass stones for the horse’s head. It evokes the many depictions of horses in Britton’s own work, especially in her paintings and drawings.
Britton keeps the piece on the wall beside her bed. “It’s an incredible memory,” Britton says. “It encompasses so much—being back in America after the pandemic, which made me so happy, and Karen’s generosity and kindness, that gesture of, ‘I want you to have this.’”
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