October 2024, Part 2
There are so many reasons to purchase art jewelry…
- Celebrate that hard-earned promotion
- Honor a once-in-a-lifetime occasion
- Pay tribute to a major accomplishment
- Commemorate the beginning of a new relationship or the end of one
- Pounce on the perfect piece to round out an aspect of your collection
- Or invest in a treat for yourself—just because
Art Jewelry Forum’s international gallery supporters celebrate and exhibit art jewelry. Our bi-monthly On Offer series allows this extensive network of international galleries to showcase extraordinary pieces personally selected to tempt and inspire you. Take a look. You’re bound to find a fantastic piece you simply can’t live without! (Please contact the gallery directly for inquiries.)
Gallery: Sienna Patti Contemporary, Lenox, MA, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Sienna Patti (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Bettina Speckner
Retail price: US$4,200
In the early 1950s, Bettina Speckner’s parents traveled from Germany to America, experiences that profoundly shaped their lives and later influenced Speckner’s artistic vision. Her mother’s journey with the American Field Service Program and her father’s hitchhiking adventures instilled in their family a love for the English language and American culture. Speckner’s childhood was filled with dreamlike stories of glamorous American film stars and the mysterious allure of her parents’ English conversations. This mix of imagination and reality permeates her artwork, which often features wistful, evocative scenes. In 2019, Speckner traveled to the U.S. to create American Diary, a project blending photography, narrative, and art. She explored the contrast between serene nature and vibrant urban life, a recurring theme in her work. Visit the gallery website for more information on this project.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm. Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Sofia Bjorkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Sébastien Carré
Retail price: US$1,000
Sébastien Carré’s jewelry is composed of small details that form larger organic volumes. Through crocheting and stringing tiny beads of glass and stones, he creates soft, wearable shapes reminiscent of colorful landscapes. By blending materials into these fantastic pieces, he invites us to reflect on the value of nature and how we relate to the surrounding environment.
Gallery: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Pedro Proença, Reverso’s edition
Retail price: €700
The title of the exhibition Hope—A Ruler of Blue, which also gives the name to this brooch, was coined by Paula Crespo after a painting by Pedro Proença, a Portuguese visual artist and writer. From the text that the artist wrote for this exhibition, the gallery highlights his quote from Heraclitus: “Those who do not expect the unexpected will not find it, for they close themselves off to its pursuit, and that will lead them to no path.” This is valid when applied to contemporary jewelry!
Gallery: Four Gallery, Goteborg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Takayoshi Terajima
Retail price: €6,000
During the pandemic, Takayoshi Terajima took interest in the information on the screens of video meetings: Two-dimensional images of people and their personal belongings that became almost like an extension of the person. The COVID restrictions were removed and life went back to normal, but the video calls with the family in Japan had made Terajima, who lives in Germany, more connected to his roots. As a reflection of his identity, he let AI use his name, birthday, religion, and nationality to make “self-portraits.” The images were then refined with engraving, a traditional technique with a long history, and the result is work with depth in time, space, and emotion.
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Bella Neyman (click the name for email)
Artist: Helfried Kodre
Retail price: US$3,900
A unique silver, gold, and dalmatian jasper ring by Helfried Kodre, one of the great masters of contemporary jewelry in Austria. Since retiring from his teaching career in the late 1990s, Kodre has devoted himself entirely to his artistic practice, which shifts between jewelry and sculpture. The artist has established clear boundaries for his jewelry work, focusing primarily on form, materials, and craftsmanship. Kodre believes that his jewels belong on the body, and while the shapes might resemble his free-standing sculptures, they should be appreciated as objects of adornment. Kodre’s rings, predominantly made in oxidized sterling silver, have geometric shanks topped with semiprecious stones such as jasper, chrysoprase, lapis lazuli, or travertine, for example—hard stones rich in color and tonality.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click the name for email)
Artist: Sara Bautista
Retail price: US$4,000
Newly based in Baltimore and currently a three-month resident with the Baltimore Jewelry Center, Sara Bautista creates funky fine jewelry, made for the wise and foolish. She uses her designs as a medium to explore the paradoxes of duality. Bautista’s jewelry is recognizable by her use of asymmetry, mixed metals, incorporation of mouth, eye, and hand motifs, and unique utilization of precious materials. This incredibly unique ring style features a hand carved clear quartz and onyx googly eye set in 14-karat yellow gold with mismatched diamond accents. The googly eye is kinetic and the pupil moves with the wearer.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the name for email)
Artist: Amit Mangal
Retail price: US$1,295
This statement ring features a field of diamonds, set in 18-karat gold vermeil, that sparkle as bright as can be. Geometry and organic shapes are seamlessly intertwined to create one stunning piece of wearable art.
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, Australia (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Naomi Schwartz
Retail price: AUS$380
The Mismatched Orb earrings, by Naomi Schwartz, were made for Zu me & JCB, Zu design’s recent exhibition celebrating the connections Zu design has to so many local makers. Schwartz worked as an access tenant in Zu design’s studio in 1999. She has perfected anticlastic forming, manipulating a variety of metals to create her signature pieces. Naomi Schwartz Jewellery Design, a gallery/workshop space, also represents many makers. “We are lucky to work in such a supportive and sharing community of creatives in Adelaide,” states gallerist Jane Bowden.
Gallery: Galeria Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Diana Silva
Retail price: €600 plus shipping
Diana Silva’s work explores organic forms from nature with a wide range of materials, from natural ones to industrial leftovers. Her work connects us to ancestral myths and our animal memories. They are tribute jewelry, ritual pieces that transport us to an Olympus of ancient deities and romantic stories.
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Chloe Le Pichon (click the name for email)
Artist: Margo Csipö
Retail price: US$3,720
Margo Csipö is doing many things well. This beautiful brooch molds comfortably to the body because of its chainmail-like linked silver rings. It jingles a little, too. Csipö works with two engraving tools on mother-of-pearl and bone with extraordinary precision to carve out the front and back of the elements, making narrative and symbolic scenes that are then pigmented with ink. The expert engraving and metalsmithing makes her work stand out in Graver’s Lane Gallery’s Serious Fun Group Jewelry Exhibition.
Gallery: Thereza Pedrosa Gallery, Asolo, Italy (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Thereza Pedrosa (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Barbara Paganin
Retail price: €17,000
The works in the series Memoria Aperta (Open Memory) are mind maps and miniature landscapes that tell stories in gold, silver, semiprecious stones, and new materials. They are inspired by the emotions of the artist’s past, but they open up to the world by exploring the memories of others.
Gallery: Aaron Faber Gallery, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Patricia Kiley Faber (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Majoral
Retail price: US$675
This ring is from Majoral’s series titled Pluja, which means “rain” in Catalan. The movement of the tendrils is meant to evoke the soft sound of rain. Majoral—founder Enric and second generation Roc—are influenced by their studio environment, the rocky island of Formentera, and the simple shapes that exist there.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, bijoux et objets contemporains, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Ketli Tiitsar
Retail price: CAN$4,225
This meticulous and slow work by Ketli Tiitsar results from memories of places, of moments engraved in her memory. The wood, which reminds her of her childhood, when she was responsible for taking care of firewood for the household, is transformed into a talisman full of stories.
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