November 2023, 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 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: Museum of Craft and Design Museum Store, San Francisco, CA (click the name to link to the website)
Contact: Ken Irish (click name for email)
Artist: Kat Cole
Retail price: US$1,500
This stunning neckpiece, by renowned enamelist Kat Cole, is from her Drawing Series and made of red porcelain vitreous enamel on steel. Cole’s work is internationally recognized and exhibited and has been published in many books and articles.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Despo Sophocleous
Retail price: CAN$2,850
Time, place, memory, and movement are important themes throughout Despo Sophocleous’s practice, and fundamental to these investigations is the body. Through a practice informed by walking, documenting, and working with found materials, the artist engages directly with her surroundings. After working with planed sheets of kiln-dried wood in her previous works, Sophocleous became invested in a desire to find tools and materials that could be portable and adaptable and thus came her investigation of wood carving from found damaged or discarded tree branches collected during her daily walks. Either storm-fallen or discarded at demolition sites, these branches find continuity to their story rather than being fixed at the point where their story ends. For each specimen, Sophocleous documents the date, tree type, and geographical location of her finding, and these coordinates become the title of each resulting jewelry object.
Gallery: Galeria Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Catarina Silva
Retail price: €1,100, plus shipping
“Memory through images and images that evoke memories,” says Catarina Silva, describing her work. “A collection of celebrations, memories in the shape of candy wrappers, carefully laid out and saved. Rituals. A collection of jewelry that evokes the perishable beauty of memories.” These new pieces by the Portuguese artist were made for her solo show at Galeria Tereza Seabra, Once Upon a Time… It’s on view until November 18, 2023, and speaks about the endless mysteries of love, desire, and memory. These jewels are a happy combination of traditional art nouveau-inspired jewelry, exquisitely crafted, and the ever-present sense of humor in this artist’s work.
Gallery: Fingers Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Lisa Higgins (click name for email)
Artist: Joanna Campbell
Retail price: NZ$1,670–NZ$2,670
Joanna Campbell is an award-winning jeweler who has been making since graduating with a bachelor’s degree in three-dimensional design (Jewellery Major) in 2001. Joanna’s jewelry is based on a love of design combined with an innovative craft-based practice. Underpinning her work is a fascination with textiles, and an “enthusiasm for making metal more fabric-like in all its iterations: the study of the drape of a grosgrain ribbon; the ability of anodized aluminum to absorb dye like silk; or making strings of sequins out of gold and silver…,” she says. Extending her investigation of color, Campbell is currently experimenting with anodized and dyed aluminum.
Gallery: Galerie Door, temporary pop-up in Heusden, Netherlands (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Doreen Timmers (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Maria Hees
Retail prince: €225
In recent years, there has been a transformation in Maria Hees’s work. Utility value is no longer paramount. The image and uniqueness are now more important. Stacks of thin colored layers of porcelain are rolled—and thus deformed, becoming more or less transparent—which produces a result that is not entirely predictable. Whether it becomes a brooch or a wall object, each object is unique. Maria Hees has reinvented herself, mille fois …
Gallery: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Caroline Broadhead
Retail price: €4,600
“(…) I have been concerned with objects that come into contact with and interact with the body,” states Caroline Broadhead. “Recurrent themes are the boundaries of an individual or object; be that between surface and interior, presence and absence, public and private, or the definition of a sense of territory and personal space. The work has also explored outer extents of the body as seen through light, shadows, reflections, and movement.”
Gallery: Zu design, Melbourne, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Angela Giuliani
Retail price: AUS$6,650
Angela Giuliani made this pair of Mismatched earrings for our exhibition Considered, which showcased and highlighted the unique skills of each maker. Giuliani creates architecturally inspired frameworks to hold the carefully selected gemstones. She builds frameworks to support the stones and to direct their color in different directions.
Gallery: Platina Stockholm AB, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Janna Syvänoja
Retail price: US$1,600
Janna Syvänoja is known for her jewelry made from recycled printed paper, such as newspapers, maps, catalogs, and old books. They are rich by their past, carrying along certain places and accidental meanings. This material also gives the pieces their individual exterior and interior decoration, their ornamentation. The artist decides how the results should be, but in the end each pieces take a shape of its own. When certain formed components start to follow each other and find their rhythm in the making, the miracle happens. It is a slow, a meditative, and a very natural process. Beyond the language of the material, there is an additional reality, the information that refers to communication between people—messages and expressions. A piece of jewelry is worn for the same purpose.
Gallery: Gallery Loupe, Montclair, New Jersey (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Patti Bleicher (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Luci Jockel
Retail price: US$1,400
Most of the pieces in this series feature honeybee wings. To construct these works, Luci Jockel devised a new medium—an amalgam of jewelry and textile—which she terms “bee wing lace.” Made from actual honeybee wings, this innovative material references the patterns and structures used in fabric lace and quilts. The work in this series pays homage to the labor performed by honeybees.
Gallery: Ornamentum, Hudson, NY (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Stefan Friedemann (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Melanie Georgacopoulos
Retail prince: US$4,900
These stunning earrings by Melanie Georgacopoulos are a preview to the artist’s introductory exhibition at Ornamentum. In a refined twist on the classic gemstone, each facet is meticulously crafted of mother-of-pearl. Striking, precious, and refined. More images are available.
Gallery: Four Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Alexander Blank
Retail price: €925
Alexander Blank’s works are difficult to describe. They are funny, beautiful, scary, and often have a sting of irony. As the viewer, you feel uncertain, or maybe challenged. Or maybe both, since the two often follow each other. Well, you will just have to go for the ride—wherever it takes you.
Gallery: Jewelers’werk Galerie, Washington, DC (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Ellen Reiben or Brandy Norris (click names for email)
Artist: Jorge Castañón
Retail price: US$1,120
Endearing, whimsical, heartfelt, poetic, and powerful are some of the words that describe Jorge Castañón’s work. Castañón—a bricoleur of sorts—uses found wood and other materials to create his expressive, sculptural pieces. “In my work, I combine jewelry and carpentry techniques. I assemble with delicacy many materials which I find, especially wood, small discarded pieces. They come back to have a second chance, to tell a new minimal story. I give them a new voice,” he explains. Castañón communicates the fragility of his fellow humans and the world around them and makes an urgent plea for people to examine and mend themselves and take care of each other. Like his chosen materials, Castañón sees the value in things that are weathered, broken, used, and abandoned, and the need for rescue and rebirth.
Gallery: Thereza Pedrosa Gallery, Asolo, Italy (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Thereza Pedrosa (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Philip Sajet
Retail price: €3,660
Philip Sajet’s work is the result of his own pursuit of beauty. Each one of his creations is powerful and full-filled, with meaningful feelings for the artist, but at the same time it is open to fulfill new meanings from the wearer. This ring is an extraordinary example of Sajet’s mastery, and it is simply unique for the stunning shape and composition of the ambers.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click name for email)
Artist: Rachel Quinn
Retail price: US$1,595
With incredible attention to detail, this skull ring is adorned with a substantial amount of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. The high-polished band is made with solid 14-karat gold, as is the crown and the skull’s front tooth. This ring is truly museum-worthy, and is indicative of Rachel Quinn’s astounding craftsmanship.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click name for email)
Artist: Zhipeng Wang
Retail price: US$740
Zhipeng Wang is a Chinese jewelry artist currently based in Munich, Germany. He received his BFA in jewellery & metal from the China Academy of Art in 2019 and in 2020 he moved to Munich to begin postgraduate study under the guidance of Prof. Karen Pontoppidan, at the Academy of Fine Arts. Recently an artist-in-residence at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, Zhipeng draws inspiration from his rich cultural heritage and cross-cultural experiences. Zhipeng’s research revolves around the creation of contemporary art jewelry and objects, employing unique materials that are deeply rooted in Chinese culture, including Chinese tea and rice.
Gallery: Galerie Viceversa, Lausanne, Switzerland (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: ilona Schwippel (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Sigurd Bronger
Retail price: 2’600 CHF
“How do we experience the function of a box without a content?” asks Sigurd Bronger. “Is it a useless object you just throw away or is it something you keep? It triggers my curiosity to look for a new function of the boxes and bring them into a new context. I am especially interested in the void of the box. I want to visualize the void and let it be imaginary by the size, weight, and shape.” A retrospective exhibition of the talented Norwegian artist will be held at Munich’s famous Neue Sammlung next spring.
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