350 Words for Jewellery isn’t the kind of a book you’d bring on vacation. Instead, jewelry designer and researcher Barbara Schmidt’s deliberate prose leads the reader on an intellectually stimulating journey that roams broadly through the expansive world of jewelry.[i] Referencing 75 different languages, Schmidt follows the deep connection of jewelry to all aspects of […]
Réka Fekete, A Dance of Light and Shadow, self-published, 2021. Réka Fekete doesn’t have much time left. There is a time in our lives when things fall apart and we feel unable to control the slow collapse. It happens to all of us. Réka doesn’t want to have a recurring cancer at age 39. She
Deganit Stern Schocken: How Many Is One: Jewellery/Objects/Installations, Stuttgart: arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2021. Like her jewelry, the title of Deganit Stern Schocken’s monograph, How Many Is One, is intriguing, stimulating, not easily unraveled, but rewarding when you pry deeper. Even the first word “How” in the unpunctuated title is challenging as it can be read
Form, Function, Expression Read More »
Quiet Elegance: The Jewelry of Eleanor Moty, ed. Matthew Drutt, with contributions by Bruce W. Pepich, Matthew Drutt, and Helen W. Drutt English. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2020. It is a well-established fact that European contemporary jewelers are better represented with beautifully designed, fully illustrated, scholarly monographs than their American counterparts, regardless of the latters’
A Tasteful Tribute to an Exquisite Aesthetic Read More »
Susan Cummins, Damian Skinner, and Cindi Strauss, In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2020 The cover of the book In Flux, image courtesy Arnoldsche Art Publishers In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture traces the figures, aesthetics, and techniques that blur distinctions between cultural turmoil and studio jewelry. Authors
The Making of a (Counterculture) Jeweler Read More »
Barbara Schmidt, 25 Reasons Why to Wear Jewellery. Munich, Germany: Druckerei Vogl GmbH&Co, 2016. How often do we have the opportunity to explore contemporary art jewelry[1] through short stories written by one of our own? I enjoy reading, but I find academic writing tedious, so Barbara Schmidt’s book 25 Reasons Why to Wear Jewellery grabbed my
How Many Reasons to Wear Jewelry Do You Need? Read More »
Cristina Filipe, Contemporary Jewellery in Portugal: From the Avant-Garde of the 1960s to the Early 21st Century. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2019. Published in 2019 in both a Portuguese and an English version, this book offers a historical and critical approach to contemporary jewelry in Portugal. With a very clear organization, the work consists of
The Book Contemporary Jewellery in Portugal Read More »
Lyle Reimer, Lyle XOX: Head of Design. New York: Rizzoli, 2019. Let’s push the conversation about art jewelry by looking at a makeup artist from the drag and fashion world who photographs himself while wearing trash on his head, shall we? Lyle Reimer’s fantastic assemblages, captured with formal portrait photography, are collected in Rizzoli’s stunning
Fabulously Ordinary Read More »
Jen Townsend and Renée Zettle-Sterling, Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity’s Most Transformational Process. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2017. ISBN: 9780764353383 Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity’s Most Transformational Process, the book by Jen Townsend and Renée Zettle-Sterling, is an impressive achievement—not only through its sheer physical appearance, big and thick, with more than
Elisabeth Holder and Gabi Schillig (eds.), Schmuck als urbaner Prozess. Artistic Interventions in Urban Space. Documentation of a Research Project (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 2015). Bilingual German / English. ISBN 978 3 8030 0784 1 With texts and contributions by: Susanne Anna, Jacqui Chan, Willi Dorner, Karsten M. Drohsel, Elisabeth Holder, Barbara Maas, Yuka Oyama,
Can it Walk? Jewelry as Spatial Process gets tested Read More »
Dushko Petrovich and Roger White, eds., Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment. New York: Paper Monument, 2012. ISBN: 978-0979757549 Dushko Petrovich and Roger White, eds., Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment (New York: Paper Monument, 2012). Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art
Permission to Fail, Think, Experiment, and Maybe Do Some Art Read More »
Tanel Veenre, Handful. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2015. ISBN: 978-3-89790-436-1 Book cover: Handful, Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2015, photo: Benjamin Lignel. It must be brave for an artist to author a book about their work. Writing seems ancillary to the core occupation of producing work. The act might appear self-congratulatory, unfair on the reader who cannot access, touch, much
