May 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: 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: 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: €1,000
In this brooch 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: 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: Owen McInerney
Retail price: US$450
This handmade necklace, by San Francisco artist Owen McInerney, is made of various concave, textured ovals in various sizes, using 18-karat yellow gold, oxidized sterling silver, and bright sterling silver.
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: Margo Csipo
Retail price: US$1,050
A finalist for AJF’s 2024 Young Artist Award, Margo Csipö is a community member and a former emerging artist resident of the Baltimore Jewelry Center. Csipö has a BFA in industrial design from the Massachusetts College of Art and is heavily influenced by narrative-based art forms like film, animation, and graphic novels. Tapping into her lived experience as a queer artist and first-generation Hungarian immigrant, Csipö creates layered compositions with discerning material combinations.
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: Karin Seufert
Retail price: Each €660
This piece by Karin Seufert is the result of the skillful work that she has been carrying out, which consists in exploring materials that are not normally seen as valuable in jewelry. It consists of hundreds of small PVC circles that are repeated and agglomerated together, creating a new object. Each small circle can manifest subtle differences in cut and angle which, when interacting with light, manifest themselves in slight reflections, giving this material greater elegance and value.
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 blues, 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: 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: Jennifer Merchant
Retail price: US$365
Inspired by pop art, Jennifer Merchant is best known for her innovative artistic practice in which images and prints are layered between solid acrylic. Her work is graphic with clean lines and modern aesthetic. Pieces confound viewers, appearing transparent from one angle of view while showcasing bold patterns and colors from another.
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: Seth Michael Carlson
Retail price: US$15,290
Seth Michael Carlson’s jewelry and sculpture career began in his father’s stained-glass studio, where he fashioned jewelry and art pieces from scraps of discarded glass and began to experiment with metalsmithing. It is very important to Carlson that each piece be handcrafted using ethically sourced gold, silver, and gemstones. Every piece of jewelry is a celebration of the natural world, and he believes that the materials he chooses should reflect the value of life that he seeks to convey. He visualizes each piece being passed from one generation to the next. With a focus on environmental preservation, each piece is a snapshot in time meant to bring awareness and appreciation to the lesser-known species that surround our world.
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: Each €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: 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$500
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: Fingers Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
Contact: Lisa Higgins (click the name for email)
Artist: Peter McKay
Retail price: Each NZ$780–$900
Peter McKay is one of New Zealand’s best-known and best-loved jewelry artists. He began his career as an apprentice to Kobi Bosshard, on Banks Peninsula in the late 1960s, training in the techniques and aesthetics of European goldsmithing. Armed with those early skills, McKay’s interest turned to European Modernism and medieval and Renaissance art before developing the strong and very distinctive New Zealand voice which imbues his work today. McKay is a storytelling jeweler, with one eye focused on the artistic heritage of Europe and the other trained on the mythic potential of his local landscape. His work was the subject of a 2007 book by Damian Skinner, Metaphysical Heart, Jewellery by Peter McKay.
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: €520, 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 handcraftsmanship 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 bracelet was part of John’s solo show, Tensor, on view at Galeria Tereza Seabra until May 17, 2024.
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: Arline Fisch
Retail price: US$3,750
Arline Fisch is one of the leading studio jewelers of the 20th century. Her ability to weave, knit, braid, and crochet, initially by hand, gold and silver wire to create patterns and textures has altered the field and influenced generations of makers both through her teaching and writing. Fisch has used these techniques to create objects for the body as well as a sculptural installation that have filled entire rooms. Fisch’s interest in textiles comes from her studies of Egyptian and Pre-Columbian art and jewelry. This parallelogram brooch, from 1988, is made of woven, flattened 18-karat gold wire. It is lightweight and flexible, with a “springy” woven ribbon topped with sugilite.
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