July 2024, Part 1
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: Four Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Sofia Björkman
Retail price: US$1,600
Sofia Björkman got a 3D pen as a birthday gift, and that was the beginning of a new body of work. The three-dimensional drawings are about wilderness, about environmental impact—burnt landscapes, genetically modified plants, and affected animals. The human body is a landscape in which jewelry can be placed. From there the piece can travel, in space and in time, from one context to another.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click the name for email)
Artist: Elaine Zukowski
Retail price: US$355
An image of doughnuts discarded in the street and covered in snow, captured years ago, started the exploration of this simple form. Created by Elaine Zukowski, an artist and maker based in Baltimore, MD, US, these earrings are one-of-a-kind, made of a two-part epoxy resin that has been carved and hand dyed. Zukowski received her BFA in fiber art from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. Her work has been exhibited at New York City Jewelry Week and Milano Jewelry Week, and featured in the Museum of Art and Design’s MAD About Jewelry showcase. In 2024 she participated in Arrowmont School’s winter Pentaculum.
Gallery: Thereza Pedrosa Gallery, Asolo, Italy (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Thereza Pedrosa (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Mariko Sumioka
Retail price: €1,220
Tokyo-based artist Mariko Sumioka creates sculptural jewelry evocative of both East and West. Her inspiration is deeply rooted in architecture and her love of containers. She is fascinated by architectural elements, and she developed her unique abstract aesthetic by combining precious metals with bamboo, enamel, patina, and antique kimonos. This collaging approach is an essential part of her creative process, along with a love for beautifully crafted details. The stories told inside these miniature precious compositions are unfinished—it is up to you, the wearer, to invent the rest.
Gallery: Funaki, Melbourne, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Katie Scott (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Carlier Makigawa
Retail price: AUS$3,300
Carlier Makigawa is a renowned figure in Australian contemporary jewelry, with a practice spanning nearly 50 years. Her fine wire structures, for which she is best known, contain varied and complex evocations: the delicacy and intricacy of botanical specimens, the monumentality of rock formations, the microscopic wonder of crystal structures, even the planes and angles of modern architecture. Through the 1970s and 80s, Carlier’s jewelry used elegant framing devices to hold and feature stones, wood, lacquer work, and other found objects. This particular work combines some of those early elements of holding, highlighting the counterpoint between the found object and its frame, but here the held objects burst forth with a new dynamism.
Gallery: Galerie Door, Marienheide, Netherlands (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Doreen Timmers (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Moniek Schrijer
Retail price: €3,700
Some of New Zealand’s ancient caves are home to worms and beetles that tempt prey and/or partners with sticky threads and fluorescent colors. These ancient caves and woods inspired Moniek Schrijer for her latest series of highly seductive art jewelry, such as her Betelgeuse neckwear with its contrasting light and dark matte painted colors, shiny silver links, and glittering glass spheres.
Gallery: Galeria Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Helena Lethinen
Retail price: €1,000, plus shipping
Helena Lehtinen uses vintage textiles as a starting point for her pieces. She combines several different cross-stitch elements, mostly in floral motifs, to create big necklaces or brooches. Ornaments are highlighted with numerous glass beads sewn by hand. With these works she wants to point out the invisible work of women’s handcraft—the hours that they have used to create something beautiful to decorate their homes. Kitsch? Yes. But the time which has been used is important. The time for yourself. This brooch is part of the exhibition Gardens and Shelters, integrated into the second Lisbon jewelry biennial.
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Chloë Le Pichon (click the name for email)
Artist: Marjorie Simon
Retail price: US$880
Marjorie Simon is an expert at her craft, having made jewelry for over 40 years. This lovely brooch features blue enamel on the front and red enamel on the back. The amazing craftsmanship sets it apart.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the team name for email)
Artist: Nicole Schuster
Retail price: US$2,265
This breathtaking statement necklace has an unapologetic presence and a satisfying weight. Nicole Schuster’s attention to detail and impeccable craftsmanship truly shines here, as each element of the design is made by hand with oxidized sterling silver and acrylic.
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Julie Blyfield
Retail price: AUS$4,500
Segmented is a series of works made by hand-chasing sheet metal, and it is inspired by Julie Blyfield’s studies of marine algae. The vivid blue is a patination of the copper layer in this striking bi-metal copper and sterling silver neckpiece. Blyfield is a very well-known and prolific contemporary jewelry and object maker from Adelaide, in South Australia. This year the JamFactory has selected her to be their “icon” artist, which involves a large solo show and a book—keep your eyes peeled! She has created a new body of work which showcases her signature technique of hand chasing.
Gallery: Brooklyn Metal Works, Brooklyn, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Aminata Conteh (click the name for email)
Artist: Sulo Bee
Retail price: US$1,850
iRiD3SC3NC3_____ comes out of Sulo Bee’s exploration of the relationships between queer subtleties in the world around them and the binaries of organic elements, such as rocks, minerals, sticks, and stones. This necklace is made using techniques such as wax carving, fabrication, hand sawing, electroforming, and casting. iRiD3SC3NC3_____ is presented as a part of Makeshift [Gardenz], Sulo Bee’s solo exhibition at Brooklyn Metal Works, on view July 12–August 25, 2024.
Gallery: Galleria Antonella Villanova, Florence, Italy (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Antonella Villanova (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Daniel Kruger
Retail price: €7,000
“The meanings are taken from old and new folklore,” says Daniel Kruger of this work, “and I include them to be able to tell something. People always want a story. It is not really what I believe in. I use these objects in a subjective way and their meaning to me I cannot explain. People should make their own associations. In some pieces the reference to relics in churches is obvious. In others the references are obscure.”
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, bijoux et objets contemporains, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Mélanie Denis
Retail price: CAN$4,000
Using a wide variety of materials, Mélanie Denis’s work expresses different themes such as human complexity, memory, and identity. Through ingenious composition, she creates graphic effects using transparent Plexiglas, revealing images printed on acetate that contrast with textured, colorful elements such as earthenware and grosgrain ribbon.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Bjorkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Melanie Georgacopoulos
Retail price: US$4,500
In Melanie Georgacopoulos’s work, the paradoxical, intriguing nature of pearls and mother-of-pearl is at the core of every piece, while the aesthetic remains simple, structured, and timeless. Georgacopoulos continually strives to challenge the existing preconceptions of these organic materials and that of traditional jewelry design itself. This unique approach has given her the opportunity to showcase her pieces regularly at fairs, exhibitions, and galleries worldwide.
Gallery: Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA, US (click the museum name to link to the website)
Contact: Ken Irish (click the name for email)
Artist: Corey Moranis
Retail price: US$200
Corey Moranis is a Canadian designer who handcrafts Lucite jewelry and accessories from her Toronto studio. She’s drawn to Lucite for its ethereal nature; it seems to float but has a solid presence, and its luminous effect changes with the light from day to night. Crystalline and prismatic, the playful loops, knots, and twists of her elemental pieces are informed by the medium itself, making a modern statement with a whisper. Each Moranis piece is one-of-a-kind—a hand-bent, wearable work of art.
Gallery: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Patrícia Domingues
Retail price: €4,500
“(…) In returning to materials that are increasingly mined to sustain digital societies, such as silica, my aspiration was that the work should highlight and call attention to our ever-larger consumption of the mineral world,” says Patrícia Domingues. “I specifically concentrate on drilling, faceting, fragmenting, and then reconstructing a piece of monocrystalline silicon, a silica-based and grown lab material with semiconductor properties. Since it is used worldwide in discrete components and integrated circuits in modern, digital, and electronic equipment, my intention was to bring the hidden reality of computers to the front line of the human [body], exploring jewelry as [a] medium capable of conducting new ways of acknowledging human extractive enforcements toward the non-human world of stones and minerals.”
Gallery: Aaron Faber Gallery, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Patricia Kiley Faber (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Arata Fuchi
Retail price: US$495
Arata Fuchi’s singular, mysterious jewelry works are inspired by natural forms seen through the artist’s vision, executed in oxidized sterling silver, pure 24-karat gold granules, and oxidized silver powder in the maker’s signature technique.
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