March 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 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.)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Zoe Jay Veness
Retail price: Each AUS$280
Zoe Jay Veness writes that her practice “focuses on aesthetics of time and interests in movement, materiality, and place through intricately detailed surfaces and forms in paper or metal.” This series of Ribbon brooches is created by layering varying combinations of white, yellow, and pink archival cotton rag paper, creating subtle color changes in each piece. This series is part of Zu design’s Adelaide Fringe Exhibition, Zu design – in full colour.
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: Tore Svensson
Retail price: €600
Tore Svensson is one of the pioneers of Swedish jewelry art and has a long, impressive career. Experience sits in his back, in his arms and hands. Paving the way for a new art genre requires perseverance, artistic strength, and perhaps also a bit of a playful mindset. These characteristics are also found in Svensson’s works: large iron bowls shaped by thousands of hammer strikes and strict, geometric shapes with surfaces that give the works warmth and sometimes offer a well-balanced amount of humor. This brooch belongs to a series of portraits with, to many art jewelers, well-known profiles. The color fields that make up hair, skin, and clothes are at the same time individual parts that balance each other in color and shape.
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: Noon Passama
Retail price: €1,145
Starting from the idea of familiar skull-inspired jewelry, this piece is constructed by sewing color-dyed leather pieces in the pattern of a skull. In this work, leather is the material that relates to the idea of using something that was once alive, resonating with what a skull represents.
Gallery: Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Camilla Prey
Retail price: Each €300, plus shipping
“Camilla Prey’s work delves into shared languages and heritage from jewelry and visual arts. The process she employs to achieve her results takes center stage in her work and represents a practice of language positioning. The objects that remain from this process are performative; they act as instruments one or more individuals activate to attain meaning or awareness. Though provocative in their departure from traditional expectations of materiality and wearability in jewelry, Prey’s pieces foster new connections to the body and between bodies through experimentation, thus creating meaning within this interaction. This aligns with the exhibition title Merging into Pieces, at Tereza Seabra Gallery.” —Pedro Sequeira, writing for this show
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: Lydia Elsa Martin
Retail price: US$500
Lydia Martin is a contemporary jeweler living, working, and teaching in Little Rock, AR, US. Her work, built upon the foundations of technical skill, is an exploration of material skill, surface, line, and movement. Martin received an MFA from State University of New York at New Paltz in 2017 and a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has taught at a variety of institutions including Baltimore Jewelry Center, Towson University, and Penland School of Crafts. Currently, she is the Windgate Artist in Residence in Metals at UA Little Rock, where she heads the jewelry and metalsmithing program.
Gallery: Viceversa, Lausanne, Switzerland (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: ilona Schwippel (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Karl Fritsch
Retail price: 4’500 CHF
The sentimental dimension of previously worn jewelry provides Karl Fritsch (New Zealand/Germany) with a basis for dialogue. Respecting the past without sanctifying it, he breathes new life into these rings, endowing them with irreverent attributes. He confronts his artistic gesture with nostalgia, joining forces rather than opposing them. This ring is part of Karl Fritsch’s solo exhibition Ringlein, Ringlein, Du Musst Wandern, his fifth solo exhibition at Viceversa.
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: Myung Urso
Retail price: US$1,695
Inspired by the traditional Korean folk songs known as Arirang, Myung Urso has created this unique statement necklace that has a sublime presence. Made with hand-dyed fabric that has been sewn together with tender care, this necklace is lightweight despite its large size.
Gallery: Funaki, Melbourne, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Katie Scott (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Jiro Kamata
Retail price: AUS$15,000
A magnificent example of Jiro Kamata’s work with camera lenses and PVD coatings, this necklace seems to soak up light and hold it within. It has references to a classical graded pearl necklace and showcases the artist’s technical mastery and understanding of balance, weight, and comfort. Truly a piece for multiple generations to treasure.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, bijoux et objets contemporains (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Helen Britton
Retail price: Between CAN$2,520 and CAN$3,650
“An invitation from Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h came to make something with pearls,” says Helen Britton. “Why not? I had some—small, precious, in the drawer for two decades. Broome pearls, naturally formed, singular, irreplicable. Drifting in my memory like clouds on a bright day, glossy and beaming bright, they now find themselves hovering over what could only be an industrial wasteland if magnified, floating unperturbed above a scene of fascinating recklessness.”
Gallery: Galerie Door, Mariaheide, Netherlands (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Doreen Timmers (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Doris Betz
Retail price: €1,100
This wonderful brooch by Doris Betz was created during the pandemic. “It was an oppressive and paralyzing time. The idea of people dancing wildly and expressively was liberating. I closed my eyes, imagined a dancing person in motion, and drew them on paper with my eyes closed. Soon a lot of drawings emerged. I turned a few of them into material. With a strip of coiled silver wire, I transformed the lines of the wild, dynamic drawings. The crossing points were soldered, the silver colored gray. On the back, almost invisibly, I attached two pins to fasten them to clothing. Then I painted everything transparent silver to give the figure more presence through the darkness and to create an artificial impression through the color. This resulted in figurative brooches of a dancing, expressive person.”
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Fumiki Taguchi
Retail price: US$2,900
Fumiki Taguchi’s works from The White Expression series sparkle as if the pieces were covered in diamonds. In fact, they are made solely of metal using an engraving technique called Wabori. The craftsman who masters this technique uses chisels and hammers to carve facets into the surface. Regular engraving is fine and delicate, while Wabori engraving is considered more strong and powerful. Fine craftsmanship of this traditional Japanese chasing technique continues to evolve in contemporary art jewelry.
Gallery: Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA, US (click the museum’s name to link to the website)
Contact: Ken Irish (click the name for email)
Artist: Shana Astrachan
Retail price: US$44
Jewelry handmade by Shana Astrachan of Fox & Doll in San Francisco. Materials include acrylic and sterling silver. Sparkly, lightweight, colorful, and fun to wear! Available in black, pink, and red.
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: Lydia Hirte
Retail price: €1,460
Selected for Schmuck 2024, Lydia Hirte’s work is striking in its morphological elegance and sculptural shapes, while still maintaining great lightness and wearability.
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York City, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noelle Wiegand (click the name for email)
Artist: Kazuhiro Itoh
Retail price: US$3,600
A very rare brooch from the Japanese master Kazuhiro Itoh (1948–2002). The artist enjoyed working with stone (especially marble) and created simple, elegant, sculpted forms. Itoh was one of the first Japanese artists to build an international reputation, exhibiting at Electrum Gallery in 1977, but also earned the respect of his peers and colleagues when he exhibited in Tokyo in the 1980s and securing a professorship at the Hiko-Mizuno College of Jewelry in Tokyo. Itoh’s work can be found in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh; and the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim.
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