August 2026, Part 1
Right now, we all could use a treat. It feels so good to get a wonderful piece of art jewelry for ourselves—all while celebrating and supporting artists and the galleries who show them!
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 its website)
Contact: Meg Nash (click the name for email)
Artist: Yong Joo Kim
Retail price: US$2,175
Meticulously made by cutting individual strips of hand-dyed Velcro®, layering them, and hand sewing it all together, this incredible one-of-a-kind brooch by Yong Joo Kim is simply remarkable. “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 captures her personal sense of pressure and burden, but also becomes a transformative method of creation.”
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Mia Chen (click the name for email)
Artist: Cheri Dunnigan
Retail price: US$6,160
Metal lace, traditionally made by twisting thin strips of metal over thread, has a long history. Cheri Dunnigan has spent the last several years developing a different approach: lace built entirely from precious metal, without a thread core. A master goldsmith trained under John Paul Miller, she works sterling silver wire—milled with a twist so it reads like fiber—into a knitted, chain-based structure where the open spaces matter as much as the stitches. The result balances the intricacy of lace against the working properties of metal, honoring the tradition within a contemporary form. Selected as juried work for Fiber Reimagined IV, now showing at Gravers Lane Gallery.
Gallery: Galeria Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Catarina Silva
Retail price: 2,500€ plus shipping
Catarina Silva, restless and playful, takes this lineage into a dreamlike and surreal dimension. Her pieces often assemble unexpected materials into amulets that hover between the archaic and the contemporary. Love tokens, glass beads, and everyday symbols are recomposed into objects that recall the rhythms of ancient chants, the repetitions of spells, and the intimacy of secret offerings.
Gallery: Espace Borax, Vevey, Switzerland (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Melane Baumgartner (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Nicolas Christol
Retail price: 600€
The extreme geopolitical tensions we are currently witnessing once again highlight the central role of the oil industry within the global economic system. Military infrastructures, highly dependent on fossil fuels and themselves polluting, are deployed where energy and strategic resources remain decisive, pushing ecological priorities into the background. According to the World Gold Council, a significant share of global gold demand is linked to jewelry, often 40–50%. This extraction has major environmental impacts, particularly in artisanal mining using mercury, causing long-lasting contamination of soils and water.
“I have addressed these issues in previous works,” states Nicolas Christol, “through an amalgam of gold and mercury in a glass bracelet, and brooches of silver blasted with black powder, exposing links between extraction, colonial expansion, and repression. Rather than treating gold and oil as separate material worlds, they form a shared logic of extraction and accumulation. This piece extends this research through petroleum quartz: natural crystals containing oil, bitumen, and gas. Here, as a constructed intervention, heavy Texan crude oil fills the hollow crystal without refinement, as if a leak could occur.”
Gallery: Four Gallery, Umeå, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Herman Hermsen
Retail price: 250€ (excluding VAT)
Herman Hermsen looks at the world in a special way. He sees stories, jokes, and possible innovations in all thinkable places. Through his work he reveals these discoveries—we get a glimpse of what happens behind his glasses. Welcome to a sexy, beautiful, and intelligent world filled with humor!
Gallery: Fingers Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Lisa Higgins (click the name for email)
Artist: Tom Mason
Retail price: NZ$460–$480
“My work is my words,” states Tom Mason. “A conversation between the materials and hopefully with the person wearing the work, I’m just the facilitator of that conversation. What I am doing is giving the materials a new life and letting them interact with one another in the forms I make from them. I grew up in a family where art and design were part of everyday life, guided by a philosophy that valued both handmade craftsmanship and industrial design, grounded in simplicity and refinement. Being submersed in this way of thinking from an early age has undoubtedly influenced what I design and make in my own practice.” Despite Mason being a relatively young jeweler, the quality of these pieces is second to none. He is a considered and meticulous maker who works alongside his father on Waiheke Island, Auckland, New Zealand.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Sofia Bjorkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Mari Ishikawa
Retail price: US$7,000
Mari Ishikawa envisions parallel worlds where created objects are perceived in different ways, momentarily interrupting the flow of transience. Born in Kyoto, Japan, the artist lives and works in Munich, Germany. Her choice of materials and techniques reflects the meeting of these two cultures. Since 2020, she has served as a visiting professor at Kobe Design University in Japan. Her work is featured in exhibitions and collections worldwide, and she has received several awards, including the Herbert Hofmann Prize in Munich.
Gallery: Objects Beautiful, London, UK (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Yael Reisner (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Isabelle Azaïs
Retail price: £440 (without VAT)
Isabelle Azaïs elevates and so successfully ennobles recycled plastic waste through her art jewelry. An artistic process that culminates in a beautiful, fanciful and serious, optimistic, and critical body of work. Azaïs, a French lady who lives in Brussels, is a joyful activist—a wonderful combination of character that leads to her original and attractive very light brooches and earrings, that shine and project light, along a cheerful expression.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: J Diamond (click the name for email)
Artist: Jina Seo
Retail price: US$350
Jina Seo is an artist and educator based in the US. Originally from South Korea, her work navigates the intersection of materials, form, and cultural narratives, with a focus on combining metal and fiber materials. The Mow the Lawn series explores her interpretation of the human body as a landscape, using a green shower cloth commonly found in Korean households.
Gallery: Wearable Art Museum (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Lisa M. Berman (click the director’s name for email)
Artist: Lucie Popelka Houdkova
Retail price: US$350
For the Deep series, established artist Lucie Houdkova was influenced by the scientific illustrations of Ernst Heinrich, who in the 19th century turned the attention of Western civilization to the world of the magnificent and tiny creatures of the seabed. This series is made from paper lamellae and can be articulated to move with tides of expression by the wearer. Houdkova wants to create jewelry that is alive—thus the shapes resemble waves of coral polyps that change with the movement of imaginary underwater currents. The series received notes from the Alliages Choice Awards and a public award from Studio WearHouse during Munich Jewellery Week 2026.
Gallery: In the Gallery at Brooklyn Metalworks, Brooklyn, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Zoe Ariyama (click the name for email)
Artist: Samuel Guillen
Retail price: US$4,500
Samuel Guillen seeks to transform the structures of the city found all around us—often a mixture of rough and sleek technical elements—into a visual vocabulary for his designs. Modernity, as understood through architecture and industrial design, is the basis of Guillen’s discerning style. Guillen employs hollow construction and cold connection techniques in creating his jewelry collections. Crafted of sterling silver and vitreous enameled copper, this necklace is currently featured in the exhibition Here, There, and Everywhere, at Brooklyn Metal Works through August 30, 2026.
The opinions stated here do not necessarily express those of AJF.
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