May 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: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the name for email)
Artist: Yong Joo Kim
Retail price: US$4,095
Velcro® brand hook and loop fasteners are dyed, cut, and layered together by hand to create this sculptural statement necklace. At the core of Yong Joo Kim’s sculptural art practice lies her unique method of applying pressure and weight to her chosen material. This technique not only visualizes the invisible sense of pressure and weight she feels, but also becomes a transformative method of creation, shaping forms that are unpredictable, even to her.
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: Brooke Battles
Retail price: US$400
Bay Area artist Brooke Battles is inspired by nature, architecture, the feminine spirit, and the human form. She strives for each of her pieces to, she says, “seem like a dear friend who, for some special and perhaps indiscernible reason, captures a heart and lives on there.” Sterling silver frame around enameled copper. One long arced wire to hang the pin on your lapel, similar to a painting.
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: Svenja John
Retail price: €2,400, plus shipping
“I respond sensitively to my surrounding world and its changes,” states Svenja John. “I extended my formal alphabet…” Since 1994, the artist has worked with Makrofol® polycarbonate and computer-aided cutting techniques to produce individual parts for her creations. After manually re-working and coloring, the parts are transformed into complex, geometric pieces of jewelry. It’s a combination of high-tech and hand craftsmanship accomplished in a playful, natural manner, with computer designs and designs created using paper and pencil; additive production methods alongside paintbox and paintbrush; and the precision of industrial water-jet technology coupled with the precise use of hand files. This wonderful piece is part of John’s solo show, Tensor, on view at Galeria Tereza Seabra until May 17, 2024.
Gallery: Fingers Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
Contact: Lisa Higgins (click the name for email)
Artist: Octavia Cook
Retail price: NZ$4,250
“This neckpiece was made for my solo show, Accoutrements for the Entitled (2007),” states Olivia Cook, “in which I inserted myself (as Cook & Co) into the world of born royalty, questioning the need to ‘win’ such objects as trophies or mayoral chains when you could just buy [them]. Among these illusions/delusions of grandeur, A Vulgar Show of Wealth puts the classic solitaire engagement ring to shame by its scale. If [the] size of a stone (even a pure acrylic one) is proof of love, we have a winner—especially if you buy it for yourself!” Cook graduated with a bachelor’s in 3D design in jewellery from Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland in 1999. Since then, she’s exhibited extensively in both public and dealer galleries worldwide.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Hanna Liljenberg
Retail price: US$4,000
With a background as a painter, Hanna Liljenberg uses paper or blank metal sheets as a starting point for her artwork. As a jeweler, she folds the material—which demands attention—into voluminous ornamentation that adorns the body. The fragile sharpness necessitates adaptation to what you are wearing, thereby emphasizing the importance of being present. Her new body of work, with the title Flora Curiosa, is even more curious and mysterious. She portrays nature in complex form, as it should be and as art can describe it.
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: Ildikó Dánfalvi
Retail price: €995
Confetti—A Celebration of Life is the title of Ildikó Dánfalvi’s current exhibition at Galerie Door. This extraordinary artist, who lives and works in Budapest, Hungary, uses an exceptionally wide range of materials, techniques, and forms. In her wearable artworks, you can read stories about past and present, about tradition and individuality, about beauty and protection. With these brooches from the Jungle Series, Dánfalvi offers us protective amulets, her love of nature, and childhood memories in the appearance of soft fantasy creatures made of hand-sewn and decorated textiles—a feast for the eye and an ode to imagination.
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Kate Crankshaw (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Judith Hoyt
Retail price: US$440
Judith Hoyt studied at the State University of New York, New Paltz under the tutelage of Robert Ebendorf, an internationally recognized artist known for transforming discarded found materials into coveted objects and body adornment. For the past four decades, Hoyt has been rummaging and gathered old patinated metal, wood, damaged books, roadside debris—anything that speaks to her and whispers hints of a past life and purpose, markers of time.
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: Lauren Simeoni
Retail price: AUS$400
Count by Colours, in pinks, is from a series by Lauren Simeoni that was created in response to Zu design’s exhibition In Full Colour, and these pieces are super colorful! Simeoni has manipulated plastic paint pen cartridges, forming beads then threading them to form neckpieces that highlight the beauty that can be found in discarded objects. There is something intriguing in the maker’s combinations of colors and the lightness of these bold pieces. When they aren’t worn, they look fabulous displayed on the wall.
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York, New York, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Adrienn Banyai (click the name for email)
Artist: Margit Jäschke
Retail price: US$1,590
An exquisite example of Margit Jäschke’s work from a series of flower brooches dating to 2015. While Jäschke considers herself an artist, not a goldsmith, the stem of this “blossomed” amethyst druse and silver flower brooch is skillfully textured to mimic the ridges of a stalk. Jäschke is proficient in mixing nontraditional materials with metals, often using contrasting elements to create beautiful and soulful compositions. Based in Germany, Jäschke (born 1962), an educator herself, attended the Burg Giebechenstein Hochschule für Kunst und Design, in Halle, Germany, where she studied in the sculpture department’s famous jewelry program with masters Renate Heintze and Dorothea Prühl.
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: Mirei Takeuchi
Retail price: €2,100
In this necklace by Mirei Takeuchi, the delicacy of dragonfly wings is captured in laser-cut iron. This evocation of extreme fragility in a material referring to brute strength is a pleasing paradox that required great technical sophistication. Dragonfly wings are a symbol of beauty, lightness, and ephemerality. In jewelry, they become a frozen sign of our insecurities and the fragility of our times.
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: Victoria Bulgakova
Retail price: €5,400
Victoria Bulgakova grew up in Mariupol, Ukraine, and immigrated to the US at the age of 20. In the 80s, girls there were forced to wear school uniforms school adorned with white collars they had to sew on themselves. Both the uniform and collar felt like confinement, something to rebel against. However, many years later, memory treats them as objects of deep longing and nostalgia, associated with the most endearing experiences of school years. The Uniform body of work explores this shift in perspective. What is more real, our experience in the present or how we end up remembering it in the future?
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: Toni Mayner
Retail price: US$480
Jewelry artist Toni Mayner lives and works in the city of York, in the UK. She utilizes traditional hand-making skills and precious materials to develop thematically based collections of one-off pieces. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, China, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and digitally in Australia. Her 2024 activities include a mid-career artist residency at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, and her work was selected for the Empathy Galerie of Art Legnica exhibition in Poland.
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: Tore Svensson
Retail price: Each €550
“The letter T is a symbol I have worked with for many years,” says Tore Svensson. “With variation in shape and color it turns to something else. Orange, purple, and fuchsia are the colors of Galeria Reverso, in Lisbon. Together with green, I made four different combinations: four brooches in veneer for Reverso’s 25th anniversary.”
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