June 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: 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: Beate Klockmann
Retail price: From €7,320 to €10,980
Introducing the ring-objects collection by Beate Klockmann: One-of-a-Couple. The rings in this series feature pairs of rings that form unique couples. Each pair shares a connection yet maintains distinct differences. What sets these rings apart is their versatile design—they can be worn in either direction. With no defined bottoms, every end serves as a top.
Gallery: Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Ken Irish (click the name for email)
Artist: Adel Chefridi
Retail price: US$550
Here are four fine-quality diamonds set in gold, surrounded by sterling silver, bead set. Adel Chefridi is most captivated by dots and lines, the simplest forms. The brand’s signature mark includes four dots arranged similarly to the four cardinal directions on a compass. They symbolize balance and represent the harmony within and throughout nature and people. The vertical dots remind us that we can be grounded in reality while we strive to become ideal versions of ourselves, and the horizontal dots remind us to reach outward—to others and to nature—and to be open to receiving from the outside world.
Chefridi’s childhood playground, Tunisia, is a storied land that pulses with the energy of many cultures. The Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Andalusians, and Ottomans all imprinted their knowledge, legends, and artifacts, weaving a diverse tapestry of human experience. When Chefridi came to New York City in 1998 and first experienced the city’s rich diversity, he felt right at home. Inspired by his passion for gemstones, he was always on the hunt for color and light in the famed Diamond District. He taught himself the craft of jewelry-making before studying at both GIA and the Studio Jewelers School to fine-tune his metalsmithing skills. His first studio was located in the kitchen of a walk-up in Brooklyn before it moved to SoHo. Chefridi built a following by showcasing his work at “maker markets,” and in 2008 he expanded the business to partner with retailers. Around that same time, Chefridi and his wife decided to relocate to the Hudson Valley to raise their two daughters. They moved the jewelry studio to Woodstock, then later to Kingston, and finally to Rhinebeck, where together they maintain the gallery and studio today.
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: Barbara Paganin
Retail price: €990
Overlapping paper cuttings, colored in crayon and made on transparent transparent plastic: like the sense of time passing, layers of memory.
Gallery: Sienna Patti, Lennox, MA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sienna Patti (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Julia Maria Künnap
Retail price: US$7,400
Subtle, silent, and seductive, Estonian artist Julia Maria Künnap’s work is as familiar as it is foreign, as dark as it is light. Stones drip, balloon, and curve; blades of grass and swaths of paint become transparent and eternal. So often, a discussion of objects that exhibit clear technical ingenuity starts with the how: How was that made? How long did that take? The desire to understand the execution supersedes everything else. It is as if once you know how it is made, you will see and understand the truth of it.
Künnap asks us to put that conversation aside for a moment and revel in the fiction, in the poetry, all the while implicitly understanding that these are not ordinary things. There are no technical tricks or deceptions here, at least not any more than can be found in traditionally carved stones. The tools that a stone carver anywhere in the world would use are the same; it is the mind and hands that are unique. “The technical virtuosity is only a tool to express myself, never a goal by itself,” writes Künnap. “Like a ballerina’s jump—it’s beautiful if she jumps high, but it’s always just a tool to express the mood of a dance.” We, as wearers and viewers, bring something to the objects as well—a certain expectation for the beauty inherent in gemstones. Künnap skillfully brings us that beauty while simultaneously stopping to mark and measure time, to play with our expectations of the material and its tendency for stasis. The beauty becomes extravagantly distorted but remains intimate. Each drip, drop, or stroke belies the strength of the stone and begins to tell a story. “To light a candle is to cast a shadow,” wrote Ursula K. Le Guin, and Künnap takes this to heart, giving us the light and the shadow in one.
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: Biba Schutz
Retail price: US$4,395
Legendary artist Biba Schutz has an iconic style that is instantly recognizable. Drawing inspiration from her urban environment of New York City, the work has an industrial feel. “Through the structure of jewelry and adornment, I want to tease our senses, create awareness of our bodies, and encourage communication,” Schutz states. This statement bracelet is made with oxidized sterling silver and smoky quartz, featuring a magnetic closure with a safety.
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, NSW, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Leonie Westbrook
Retail price: AUS$580
Textas and Tomboys—Pasta Necklace for Mum is inspired by a penne pasta neckpiece that hangs in Leonie Westbrook’s studio, made by her child Neko. Westbrook has cut the casing of Neko’s old dried-up Texta markers, carefully finished each component to a penne’s proportions, and threaded them on a waxed cord. This colorful piece evokes happiness and love.
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: Mary Raivel
Retail price: US$425
Mary Raivel took a nontraditional path to becoming a metalsmith and jewelry artist. A maker from a young age, she received a degree in psychology and a Juris Doctor degree. After a career practicing environmental law at the state and federal level, she returned to making with an introductory metals and jewelry class at MICA, which became the Baltimore Jewelry Center. Raivel created the Puffy series to be “comfort jewelry,” with squishy pillow-like elements, in response to the increasing anxiety she felt with the onset of the pandemic. This piece is one of only three in the series that combines puffy elements with anodized titanium and niobium.
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Bella Neyman (click the name for email)
Artist: Miye Matsukata
Retail price: US$5,500
The Japanese-American studio jeweler Miye Matsukata spent her formative years studying in Japan and Sweden, places which influenced the clean and simple lines of her modernist jewelry. Yet her unique artistic style really emerged after a trip to Egypt, in the mid-1960s, when she began working with high-karat gold. This brooch speaks directly to her time there, the ancient Egyptian reverence for (imported) lapis lazuli as representing the night sky and the heavens, and Matsukata’s own fascination with ancient jewelry. Using a large piece of fine lapis, an emerald, and 18- and 24-karat gold, the brooch is sculptural, raw, and asymmetrical in composition—a beautiful example of Matsukata’s work.
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: Mirjam Hiller
Retail price: CAN$1,350
The quest for “intensity and enchantment” is one of Mirjam Hiller’s central themes. “I explore nature and architecture. I observe and absorb the world around me. Indulging my curiosity and sensation, I discover chaos and order, beauty and bizarreness, unexpected and familiar things. I see compelling colors, shapes, and structures.” To make her jewelry, she first saws a piece of sheet or copper steel by hand, and then bends or folds it into the desired shape. For Hiller, limiting herself to only one material is a challenge, but one that inspires her. Her goal is to create pieces of jewelry which, when worn, exude a charming vividness. “The finished piece should surprise, fascinate, and amaze me. Like a maelstrom, the piece of jewelry has to catch my eye and take me into its world, touch my senses. It should be something unique, curious, something beautiful, exotic, but also something familiar. It should invite people to explore it, collect it, and wear it.”
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: Anna Rikkinen
Retail price: €1,300
Anna Rikkinen collects impressions from the past and present, and thoughts about the future. Her works mix Dutch portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries, her childhood in a small Finnish village, and ornaments from traditional African clothing. The works take us on a journey through history, across the world and perhaps beyond the horizon. In her newest series of work, Draped, Rikkinen investigated the nature of ribbons. Ribbons and bows carry many connotations. “I wanted to find out what kind of power ribbons and bows hold,” states the maker. “I wanted to explore not only their decorative nature but also the links to femininity and masculinity in fashion and in art.”
Gallery: In The Gallery at Brooklyn Metal Works, Brooklyn, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Aminata Conteh (click the name for email)
Artist: Jessica Andersen
Retail price: US$800
Jessica Andersen’s heritage of collecting can be traced back to her grandmother, who encouraged all of her children to collect because “it could be worth something someday.” The collection of Oneida spoons which make up Other Half were gifted to the artist by her Aunt Carol as a continuation of this family tradition. The necklace bears the impression of Andersen’s hand, as well as its components’ previous life, with the aspiration of enhancing the value that her grandmother and aunt envisioned these spoons would one day accumulate.
Gallery: Funaki, Melbourne, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Katie Scott (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Peter Bauhuis
Retail price: AUS$2,800
Peter Bauhuis combines wit and understatement in this clever work, which shifts between a simple rock form and a face. His use of yellow bronze is particular to his practice. Known for his immense skill in casting with unusual alloys, Bauhuis makes work that is always surprising, always inquiring, and always wonderful to wear.
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: Tom Herman/Seven Fingers
Retail price: US$495
From a private estate, circa 2000s, this spotted agate, druzy quartz, and 18-karat gold brooch is a notable example of Tom Herman’s legendary skills as a stone carver and goldsmith. There is a lively contrast between the smooth agate and the textured, dimensional druzy quartz.
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: Seth Michael Carlson
Retail price: US$365
This pair of earrings is expertly crafted with sustainable and ethically sourced materials. They are a beautiful abstraction of a swallowtail butterfly, and they celebrate the diversity and beauty of the natural world.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Bjorkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Åsa Lockner
Retail price: US$2,500
This necklace belongs to the series Crown Jewels, which Åsa Lockner has been working on for several years. The work of the Swedish artist is often a collage in which she picks up traces and uses parts from earlier projects, layered and applied, to test her reasoning. Ovals, drops, stones, and pierced metal serve as components of a puzzle used to achieve a balance between the discordant, asymmetrical, and twisted. Discovering harmony and beauty in a piece of contemporary jewelry demands a broad palette of material samples.
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