On Offer – Art Jewelry Forum

January 2024, Part 1

Happy new year! 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.)

Gallery: Gallery Loupe, Montclair, New Jersey (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Patti Bleicher (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist:  Barbara Seidenath
Retail price: US$840
German-born Barbara Seidenath fabricates deceptively complex jewels from precious metals, quartz crystal, and enamel. Geometrically based, the forms often alter as the viewer’s angle of vision changes. She attended the State School for Glass and Jewelry in Neugablonz, Germany, and received her MFA from Academie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, where she studied with master jeweler Hermann Jünger. Seidenath was on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, for the past 30 years. She has exhibited at some of the most important museums internationally, including Die Neue Sammlung, Munich; Museum of Art and Design, Helsinki; Museum Het Kruithuis, s’Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; and Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Her work can be found in the collections of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts; the Los Angeles County Museum; and the Enamel Arts Foundation, in Los Angeles, CA.

Gallery: Fingers Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Lisa Higgins (click the name for email)
Artist:  Manon van Kouswijk
Retail price: Each NZ$700
These porcelain clay shapes are from the series titled Iaskedthependantdoyouwanttobeabroochordoyouthinkthebroochpreferstobecomeabracelet? After being hand-shaped and then bisque fired, they are sanded back to create a flat surface like a line drawing that is then colored black with a ceramic pencil, re-fired, glazed, and again fired at high temperature. ”I’m not someone who uses a lot of tools and equipment,” says Manon van Kouswijk. “The restrictions and rules, I think, are also ways of working out what to make and if to make anything at all—defining the working space. (As in, what can I add to everything that’s already been done.) Moving in a limited space means you have to be inventive, consequently everything is possible …”

Gallery: Archivio Negroni, Milan, Italy (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Eliana Negroni (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist:  Fluxis Contemporary Forms
Retail price: €250, including overseas shipment
This cutting-edge body ornament is by Fluxis, a couple of designers, an engineer and an architect, who dedicate their technical skills to research jewelry. The Fluxis collection are not prototypes, but rather an excellent body of works that bridges art and design. Last but not least … they’re so comfortable to wear!

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:  Jenny Jansson
Retail price: €605
Jewelry art is often characterized by time-consuming craftsmanship, slow creation processes, and details that require one to stop and study the objects closely. This contrasts enormously with contemporary phenomena such as TikTok and Instagram. Short, effective clips of humor, beauty, nastiness, and surprise flow straight into us from our screens like a spring flood of quick kicks. Jenny Jansson’s work deals with how this flow impacts us, whether it is how we can project an almost perfect façade online, or how easy it is to disengage with the world around us and engage in digital escapism.

Gallery: Viceversa, Lausanne, Switzerland (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: ilona Schwippel (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Kiko Gianocca
Retail price: 3’100 CHF
“Goldsmith Graziano Gianocca creates items of jewelry from wood veneer. Each piece is unique, resulting from the grain of the balsa. ‘Veneer Theory’ is a term coined by the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal, who believes that our civilization is only a thin layer hiding true human nature, which is cruel, bestial, even monstrous. The black silhouette is also reminiscent of the Rorschach test, used in psychology to evaluate the psychological state of a patient.” A piece of this body of work by the Swiss artist is currently in the exhibition Dialogue entre Une Pieuvre et Un Presse-Agrumes, at Mudac Lausanne. This text is taken from the catalog for the exhibition.

Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, Illinois (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the name for email)
Artist:  Jillian Vang
Retail price: US$995
Emerging artist Jillian Vang has meticulously powder-coated stainless steel to create each floral link on this colorful statement necklace. Sparkly dark purple adorns the reverse side of the orchids, making this necklace as versatile as it is charming. With a sterling silver chain extender, this cheerful piece can be worn at varying lengths.

Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Jane (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist:  Mary Hackett
Retail price: Each AUS$300
These pieces are a great use of found materials. Mary Hackett uses everyday steel vegetable cans, transforming them into bold bangles. The cans are methodically crushed to create the desired form and then heat colored black. The title, I Have a Crush on You, perfectly evokes whimsy but also points to the recycling and to the importance and preciousness of metals.

Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York City (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noelle Wiegand (click the name for email)
Artist: Pat Pruitt + Jamie Okuma
Retail price: US$1,800
You might recognize these blackened zirconium Dentalium earrings, by Jamie Okuma and Pat Pruitt, from the cover of British Vogue (October 2023), on which Lily Gladstone wore them in support of her film Killers of the Flower Moon. We are fortunate to carry the work of Pat Pruitt, a Laguna Pueblo-based metalsmith known for his use of modern materials steel and zirconium who maintains links to his traditions through the iconography and design of the jewelry. Pruitt often partners with other important Native American designers, in this case the fashion designer Jamie Okuma. We have several styles of these earrings available, both double and triple and in ultra-light weight titanium. Prices range from US$400 to $1,800.

Gallery: Platina Stockholm (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Karin Roy Andersson
Retail price: US$3,550
Karin Roy Andersson’s new body of work refers to nature in many ways. Trees, plants, and animals give her pleasure, recovery, energy, and perspectives. A handkerchief tree is unusual, with flowers that look like real handkerchiefs, and the maker is lucky to have one in her backyard. The series with reindeer leather began when she collaborated with a Sami woman from north Sweden. The two artists have shared materials, experiences, and sources of inspiration, knowledge, and techniques. A constant search for new materials to recycle challenges and motivates the artist, as does the interplay between her and the qualities of the materials.

Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, Maryland (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: J Diamond (click the name for email)
Artist:  Pallavi Verma
Retail price: US$225
Pallavi Verma, who comes from a background of traditional Indian goldsmiths, moved to Europe at the age of 19 to pursue a BA and MA degree in jewelry design and gold and silversmithing from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Her first jewelry collection, The Marks of Maturity, was inspired by nature and shortlisted for the Masters in Creativity 2017 International Jewelry Design Contest. It celebrates maturity through visual reference to the concentric circles which indicate the ages of trees.

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:  Monica Cecchi
Retail price: €5,500
Monica Cecchi made this necklace, in the colors of Reverso catalogs, expressly for the exhibition commemorating the gallery’s 25th anniversary. She used her favorite material, old tin cans. “I like their graphics because they represent a certain type of history of society of the last century where the packaging was not junk, it was reusable,” she says. She has childhood memories of her grandmother, who preserved boxes of cookies, “objects that can be used as a palette for a painter and still possess a charm which doesn’t seek an explanation.”

Gallery: Museum of Craft and Design Museum Store, San Francisco, California (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Ken Irish (click the name for email)
Artist:  Ruth Tamura
Retail price: US$200
Using a 16^th-century Japanese firing technique, Ruth Tamura makes raku-fired ceramic beads to turn into necklaces. Each bead is removed from the kiln while still glowing hot and is placed in a flammable material, such as sawdust or newspaper. The resulting fire deprives the surface of oxygen, creating unique colors and patterns. The beads are hollow, which makes the necklace lighter and easy to wear.

Gallery: Sienna Patti, Lenox, Massachusetts (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sienna Patti (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist:  Helen Britton
Retail price: US$8,000
Step into the captivating world of Helen Britton, who is well-known for her vivid, fantastical, and exquisitely made jewelry and objects. This brooch is from her most recent body of work, Crazed Slobbering Monster, a gloriously mad and absurd menagerie. Britton is a multidisciplinary Australian artist based in Munich, Germany. Her practice encompasses jewelry, sculpture, paintings, drawings, and installations informed by popular culture, folk art, environmental concerns, and human anxiety. She was recently honored as Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft. The Visions of Australia program will support research and development as Britton works with the Australian Design Center to develop an exhibition to be presented in Sydney in 2025, with a multi-state national tour to follow.

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