Hoogeboom’s jewelry often operates cross-culturally: Through its title and the appearance of the repeated ceramic elements, Show Your Teeth makes reference to the teeth necklaces that are found throughout the Pacific. A quick scan through Roger Neich and Fuli Pereira’s book Pacific Jewellery and Adornment (David Bateman, 2004) reveals necklaces using teeth from whales, sharks, […]
Peter Hoogeboom, Show Your Teeth Read More »
Suzanne Ramljak is the curator of Protective Ornament: Contemporary Armor to Amulets, currently on view at the Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Suzanne is a writer, art historian, and curator, and best known as the editor of Metalsmith magazine. Her interest in jewelry as a protective device led to her organize this exhibition, as well as the book called On Body and Soul: Contemporary Armor to Amulets, just published by Schiffer Publishing. The show will travel to the Tacoma Art Museum in October of this year. Suzanne has assembled a strong exhibition and has some fascinating thoughts about the role of protective jewelry. It’s powerful stuff.
Susan Cummins: Please tell the story of how this exhibition and the related publication, On Body and Soul: Contemporary Armor to Amulets, came into being.
Suzanne Ramljak: In studying jewelry’s functions over the years, I have come to view its protective role as perhaps its most compelling. This ancient and universal dimension of jewelry addresses our essential vulnerability and attempts to overcome fear and uncertainty through wearable ornament. The ability of adornment to empower and safeguard wearers also stands in opposition to common notions of jewelry as merely decorative; jewelry in this context becomes a necessity, not an accessory.
Protective Ornament: Curated by Suzanne Ramljak Read More »
Amber has a long and storied past as a material used in jewelry. From being called “the Baltic gold” to rarely being used in contemporary jewelry, today amber is experiencing a renaissance. This renewed interest in the material is the subject of an important exhibition at Gallery Putti in Riga, Latvia. Called Amber in Contemporary Jewelry and running from May 22–August 2, 2014, this exhibit demonstrates the possible range of application of amber in contemporary art jewelry as created by 20 artists from Latvia and Italy, as well as from countries along the ancient Amber Road (Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary). It not only links the Amber Road geographically but also historically by connecting ancient times with the present, and by demonstrating the richness of amber jewelry creation today. Here Bonnie Levine speaks with Gallery Putti’s Eva Melnika, who is interning with the gallery this year.
Bonnie Levine: Amber has been around for 40 to 60 million years and there’s a real mystique to it—it’s been traded, worshipped, and used for healing and protective purposes going back in time. Can you elaborate on the history of amber and why it’s important today?
Eva Melnika: Amber has always been known as the Baltic Gold—it can feel warm and fragrant, and the Etruscans valued amber even more than gold for its beauty and the healing properties they believed it held.
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Cartier, Juste un Clou, bracelet, 2012, yellow gold, outside diameter approx. 65mm, photo: Vincent Wulveryck, copyright: Cartier 2012 The camera makes sure that we see this piece of jewelry, and at the end of the scene, when luckily Alba decides not to jump, we meet her again on the street, where she is being arrested
Juste un Clou: Cartier’s Nail, or The Domestication of Revolt Read More »
In the past week, I witnessed Che Guevara’s face on a hand-painted locker at my son’s middle school, stenciled on a derelict building, printed on a wine bottle label, and silkscreened on organic cotton onesies. Unmoored from its original context, Alberto Korda’s original black-and-white photograph of Che Guevara is obscured in a morass of commercialism:
Kerianne Quick’s Fob Read More »
The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk October 25, 2013–February 23, 2014, Brooklyn, New York, USA Brooklyn Museum, curated by Thierry-Maxime Loriot of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with Maison Jean Paul Gaultier, Paris Body corset worn by Madonna for the Blond Ambition World Tour, 1990,
Benjamin Lignel and Namita Wiggers, Art Jewelry Forum Speakers Tour, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, 22nd October 2013 In the fall of 2013, several contributors to the AJF book Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective toured North America to present the publication. Editor Damian Skinner spoke at Pratt and at the Renwick Gallery. Museum of Contemporary Craft
I am an Authentic Maker Read More »
After 35-years experience working as an artist, I realize in preparing this talk that I can now be an anthropologist—a cultural and material anthropologist of my world of work. I have the opportunity to examine it, analyze it, and give it some sense that might not have been apparent at the time of making. I
More Than One to Make One Read More »
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15 Best Things Not Happening in Munich Read More »
If you want an article about how the 3D printer will change our world and usher in a New Industrial Revolution go elsewhere. There is no dearth—on the web, in the news, or in print—of literature that compares 3D printing to the second coming. As for me, I’m not sure whether we have really got
3-D Printing: Hot Air? Read More »
Sutopa Parrab, Banjara, 2012, necklace, salvaged traditional Rajasthani silver pendants, hand-dyed cotton twine (twined by Madan Mohan Patva), photo: unknown To us in the West, Sufism offers a kind of “Islam-lite.” The Qawwali music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a regular on the playlist of “world culture.” Western Sufism provides us with a mystical
The DIT (Do It Themselves) Movement in Indian Contemporary Jewelry Read More »
Cover, Vanity Fair On Jewellery, August 2013, Elizabeth Saltzman (ed.), London: Condé Nast, cover photographer: David Slijper Every August, the British edition of Vanity Fair magazine publishes a supplement or bonus issue called Vanity Fair On Jewellery. Mimicking the look and feel of the original, Vanity Fair On Jewellery is, as the name suggests, dedicated
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