Articles

Françoise Vanderauwera opened Vander A Contemporary Art Jewellery in November 2011 in Brussels, Belgium. She is young and energetic and comes at jewelry from a design perspective and it will be interesting to watch the course she charts in the coming years. Her current show is Jewels Stories by Delphine Joly. It is a very curious and unique collection of jewelry – qualities that also apply to Delphine herself.

Susan Cummins: You are really new on the scene. Can you give me some background what lead you to decide to open a jewelry gallery?

Françoise Vanderauwera: Yes, I am very new on the scene. I knew four years ago that I wanted to open a gallery to show much more of these wonderful artworks to a wider public. The starting point for me was design. I grew up using cutlery by the architect-designer Arne Jacobsen, which my father, who was also an architect, received personally from him. A few years ago, when a Brussels design shop I used to visit closed I began looking for contemporary creators and was amazed by how many high profile gold- and silversmiths, object designers and new jewelers I could recognize. I learned and traveled a lot and now the gallery is up and running.

Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was established in 1978 by Libby and Joanne Cooper, a sister team. Since then, this dynamic duo has been featuring high quality decorative arts, sculpture, paintings and studio jewelry. Rachelle Thiewes has been showing with Mobilia since 1994 and this is her second solo show. Rachelle is a professor at UTEP and an articulate and unique maker. I was delighted by her responses to my questions. If you are interested in seeing more of her work you can purchase a recent publication about a collaborative project she recently completed.

Susan Cummins: What is your background and how did you come to be interested in art jewelry?

 Rachelle Thiewes: I grew up in a family that made things. My parents built our first house, kitchen cupboards and all, my mother designed and made most of my clothing (and hers) she made white feather Christmas trees in the 1950s (pre Target) and sold them in Dayton’s department stores, we invented, crafted and made most everything it seems. My mother felt quite strongly that everyday us kids needed to spend significant time playing and creating. The one TV was pretty much off limits except for Disney on Sunday night. It was a rich childhood.

In many ways I was destined to become a jeweler. My father was a hand engraver, freelancing for many jewelry stores, including Tiffany. I spent countless hours in the studio watching him engrave and often accompanied him to our local jewelry stores when delivering work. I have two older brothers that are artists so it seemed natural that I too would study art. I had no idea that ‘metals’ was an art subject until I saw the first student show at Western Illinois University. I was fascinated by the possibilities of the medium and quickly changed over my major from sculpture to metals.

This month Jewelers’Werk Galerie in Washington DC is showing the work of Iris Boedmer, the German jeweler from Pforzheim. Ellen Reiben has been in the jewelry business a long time. She has had the gallery since 1988 when she took it over from the founder, Dutch jeweler Joke van Ommen. I asked both Ellen and

Ivan and Allison Barnett, photo credit: Sergio Salvador Portrait of Ford and Forlano Steve Ford: David and I were assigned adjacent studio spaces at Tyler/Rome in 1984 and had similar work habits. We both liked to work until the building closed at midnight. We’d then walk back to our pensione, stopping at Giolliti’s near the