October 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: Sienna Patti Contemporary, Lenox, MA, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Sienna Patti (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Bettina Speckner
Retail price: US$3,800
In the early 1950s, Bettina Speckner’s parents traveled from Germany to America, experiences that profoundly shaped their lives and later influenced Speckner’s artistic vision. Her mother’s journey with the American Field Service Program and her father’s hitchhiking adventures instilled in their family a love for the English language and American culture. Speckner’s childhood was filled with dreamlike stories of glamorous American film stars and the mysterious allure of her parents’ English conversations. This mix of imagination and reality permeates her artwork, which often features wistful, evocative scenes. In 2019, Speckner traveled to the U.S. to create American Diary, a project blending photography, narrative, and art. She explored the contrast between serene nature and vibrant urban life, a recurring theme in her work. Visit the gallery website for more information on this project.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, bijoux et objets contemporains, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Nils Hint
Retail price: CAN$1,175
Estonian artist Nils Hint is a blacksmith whose practice extends from contemporary jewelry to installation and sculpture. He sees iron in all its wonders. In his hands, iron leaves its functional and static world. The artist experiments with material in plastic forms outside the boundaries that it seems to impose on him. While retaining marks of the initial forged object, basic tools or everyday iron utensils, it offers a surprising new dimension which attenuates the massive effect of the material.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click the name for email)
Artist: Megan Kerr
Retail price: US$500
Megan Kerr is a metalsmith, contemporary jeweler, and artist. She creates work that disassembles familiar forms to portray vulnerability, impermanence, and repair. She received her BFA in Metal from SUNY New Paltz in December of 2023 and was awarded best in show at the Baltimore Jewelry Center’s inaugural 2024 Graduate Exhibition. Attached foregrounds the usually concealed hook and eye, exploring the intimate identity embedded in objects and clothing, revealing the significance of their vulnerability when functionality is disrupted. This work investigates how viewers might bridge gaps or dismantle pieces, revealing the ambiguity of fasteners as both connectors and obstructors, affecting their function and interaction with the wearer.
Gallery: Thereza Pedrosa Gallery, Asolo, Italy (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Thereza Pedrosa (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Barbara Paganin
Retail price: €17,000
The works in the series Memoria Aperta (Open Memory) are mind maps and miniature landscapes that tell stories in gold, silver, semiprecious stones, and new materials. They are inspired by the emotions of the artist’s past, but they open up to the world by exploring the memories of others.
Gallery: Aaron Faber Gallery, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Patricia Kiley Faber (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Peter Schmid of Atelier Zobel
Retail price: US$13,500
Atelier Zobel has in recent years turned to nature for inspiration, and this bracelet is a good example of Peter Schmid’s growing interest in the environment and the world around him. Still mostly abstract, the bracelet is set with a center solar quartz crystal, 69.37 cts, cut from stalactites, with its radiant frosty white inclusions. The solar quartz is surrounded by planetary images in gemstones and metals, completing the theme.
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: Diana Silva
Retail price: €2,400 plus shipping
“Tapio is the god and spirit of the forest,” says Diana Silva, “often represented as the green man, half man and half tree. Tapio has a beard of lichen and eyebrows of moss. When we were collecting reindeer antlers in the forest I noticed some very long lichens that were hanging from the trees and I picked some up. It was with the horse-hair lichens that I made half of the crown and the other half is leaves that I cut one by one from green latex fabric. The crown can also be used as a necklace.”
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, Australia (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Naomi Schwartz
Retail price: AUS$1,490
The Orb earrings, by Naomi Schwartz, were made for Zu me & JCB, Zu design’s recent exhibition celebrating the connections Zu design has to so many local makers. Schwartz worked as an access tenant in Zu design’s studio in 1999. She has perfected anticlastic forming, manipulating a variety of metals to create her signature pieces. Naomi Schwartz Jewellery Design, a gallery/workshop space, also represents many makers. “We are lucky to work in such a supportive and sharing community of creatives in Adelaide,” states gallerist Jane Bowden.
Gallery: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Junwon Jung
Retail price: €900
It was 2020 and we were in the middle of a pandemic crisis. The theme of Galeria Reverso’s Christmas exhibition was “Hope.” Among the many pieces made expressly for the theme, the gallery highlights this brooch by Junwon Jung, for the simplicity, restraint, and sobriety that touches us and that the word “hope” still evokes today, and always, in the uncertain and troubled times we live in.
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Chloe Le Pichon (click the name for email)
Artist: Eva Fernandez Martos
Retail price: US$770
Remember the handheld tilt ball games from childhoods? Well, here is an updated sophisticated version that also doubles as a necklace. How better to illustrate the Serious Fun Jewelry Exhibition at Gravers Lane Gallery than with Marge Simpson and her pearls? Eva Fernandez Martos’s expertly crafted necklace is made of acrylic, silver-plated brass, pearls, nylon cord, and silver, and it makes everyone at GLG giggle and smile.
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Bella Neyman (click the name for email)
Artist: Betty Cooke
Retail price: US$1,850
Betty Cooke once said that with “a circle and a line, you can make anything.” This 14-karat gold ring of two circles at an angle supports this statement beautifully and demonstrates how, in its minimalism, Cooke’s work was also incredibly powerful. Cooke, who passed away on August 13, 2024, at the age of 100, was the last great living mid-century jeweler. She blazed her path forward, first as a self-taught jeweler in her home studio, on Tyson Street, in Mount Vernon, Baltimore; then as an educator, at the Maryland Institute College of Art; and finally as a retailer at The Store, Ltd., in the Cross Keys section of the city. Certainly, the shop and her jewelry career are an equal part of her lasting legacy. A consummate problem-solver, she opened The Store, Ltd. because there were no other venues that sold the type of jewelry that she was making. Cooke’s work embodies timelessness, simplicity, and strength—qualities that mirror the artist behind them.
Gallery: Four Gallery, Goteborg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Takayoshi Terajima
Retail price: €1,000
During the pandemic, Takayoshi Terajima took interest in the information on the screens of video meetings: Two-dimensional images of people and their personal belongings that became almost like an extension of the person. The COVID restrictions were removed and life went back to normal, but the video calls with the family in Japan had made Terajima, who lives in Germany, more connected to his roots. As a reflection of his identity, he let AI use his name, birthday, religion, and nationality to make “self-portraits.” The images were then refined with engraving, a traditional technique with a long history, and the result is work with depth in time, space, and emotion.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the name for email)
Artist: Giovanna Torrico
Retail price: US$875
A sculptural statement, these earrings are unlike anything else in your collection. Made with antique sequins that are quite rare, this dramatic pair is airy and nearly weightless despite their large size.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Sébastien Carré
Retail price: US$2,000
Sébastien Carré’s jewelry is composed of small details that form larger organic volumes. Through crocheting and stringing tiny beads of glass and stones, he creates soft, wearable shapes reminiscent of colorful landscapes. By blending materials into these fantastic pieces, he invites us to reflect on the value of nature and how we relate to the surrounding environment.
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