How to become an elephant

Sometimes a jewel can make you curious for its’ story, and sometimes a story can seduce you to love a jewel even more. The last is the case for me with this jewel ‘How to become an elephant’ by Portugese Manuel Vilhena. Of course now I’ll let you in on the story he wrote with the jewel:

And which flower is the most delicious? - asked the man. The one on the left, of course replied the elephant. How do you know that? First, you grow a long trunk. Then, you grow large ears like mine and a, hum, quite short tail. Ah!, and you forget nothing. Is that how one becomes an elephant? The elephant looked the man in the eye, then looked down, gently picked up the flower and said - You need patience...
in „How to become an Elephant“, M.V. 2009

A very sweet story, about how to become a jewel, by Manuel Vilhena. Starting by slowly growing all the trivial bits, without losing sensitivity towards certain areas, and not forgetting anything, to make a fully finished piece.

I can totally see the elephant in this brooch look people in the eye, while it is telling the most wonderful stories. It gets my fantasy going about great, story-telling jewels to keep you company.

Luckily there is more in the exhibition ‘How to become an elephant and other fabulous and curious stories’. Opening on the 5th of September until the 27th at galerie S O, in Solothurn, Switserland. More about the exhibit on Klimt02.

Summer has been great and now I am very happy to be blogging again!

Bright red cluster 2009

There is lots of ‘recycled’ jewelry around, and to continue with the previous garbage-theme, here is one piece that really stands out for me.

Bright red cluster 2009, a brooch by New Zealand/Australian jeweler Roseanne Bartley, incorporates some of our typical bits of waste in a great way.
The red plastic bottle caps are still very recognizable, even though they have been made to look worn. Keeping their round shape, they have been cut into pieces, to become something completely different, almost floral (which is good since garbage usually is not one of the nicest smelling things;). Also, a cluster of caps is used like the way we collect our waste, before it is discarded permanently. Silver settings have been made for the invaluable bottle caps, so they are treated as semi-precious stones. The silver has been patinated black, to really set off the bright red color of the plastic. It all has been incredibly well done and thought out!

Since blogging has been hard for me these last few weeks, you now have to hurry to catch a glimpse of this wonderful piece since it is part of the exhibition ‘Winter brooches’ at Studio 20/17 in Sidney, Australia until July 11th! There is more to read about the exhibition on Klimt02.

With summer holidays fully kicking in I won’t be posting for a while. But I will be totally refreshed and ready to blog beginning of September!

The garbage pin project

The wonderful Garbage pin project has made it to my hometown Antwerp! All the 90 jewelry-artists who contributed to the project, have their 5 tiny bags of waste on display. This means that a whole Silke&the Gallery-gallery-wall is covered with 450 little garbage bags. It looks beautiful and I never thought I would say that of so much rubbish, but I guess that is part of the plan. Ana Cardim did a great job there, not only on the display of the bags, but the entire project. It really raises awareness of what we do with our waste. By putting it on display it does not just show what waste means to those 90 people, it teaches you something about everyone, it feels like you get to know them a little. To illustrate this I have chosen to display the “garbage” of the two artists, Anna Fornari and Mari Ishikawa, that have been in former broesvitrine-posts, as I am happy to see them included in this exhibit as well. The statement that goes with their work can be found on Ana Cardims’ website under artists.

Ana Cardim does not just stick to adult gallery visitors, but also invites children to come to the exhibition. To get them to really take a good look at the project, she has made assignments appropriate for their age. Wow, not only has she managed to turn an important environmental issue into a large scaled jewelry project, she is attracting kids to a gallery with it!

The gabage pin project will stay in Antwerp, Belgium at Silke&the Gallery at least until the beginning of August. After that it travels to L.A., an update of where the project goes is shown on the website under news and on the klimt02 website.

Ivory pets

In a flash these beauties may look like they were mass-produced, but they are most certainly not! Made from quality materials such as mammoth ivory and red laquer, the brooches were carefully designed by German Christoph Straube. They look very sleek, with their 'faces' in off-white and an alarmingly bright red colour used for their eyes. Every pet has its own unique expression, some more obvious animal-like, some almost human, and all incredibly cute.

Straube himself states on Klimt02: there is no object that exists purely on its own, it is always a part of a complex system. He regards aesthetics as a product of convention and evolution - the meaning of every object we look at is processed by our culture and perception.
I surely agree with him, and it is the reason why I am not the only one who thinks that they are cute.

The Ivory pets are part of the exhibition “Rare animals are the missing link” to be seen at ‘Galery Metal’ in Copenhagen, Denmark until the 4th of July.

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!

When I first saw this brooch, it made me smile. ‘Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup’ is the start of so many jokes. At the moment my boys love to tell jokes, to anyone who’d like to hear them, over and over again. Then I started thinking: is this a really a soup spoon? No, it must be smaller, more like a teaspoon. And is that really a fly? Well…..Yes, it is!
The Finnish jeweller Eero Lintusaari cast a dead fly into acrylic to be on display in this brooch. In real life, the fly, along with the rest of the soup, would be discarded very quickly, but Eero Lintusaari became intrigued by it. He loves the delicacy and fragility of the fly, which normally would hardly tolerate to be touched without decomposing. The fly gets magnified by the acrylic and at the same time the artist uses a smaller spoon, so the proportions are a bit off and the fly gets even more emphasized. This way, the wearer is drawn to the fly to get a better look at it’s delicate beauty. It looks like a gigantic fly in a little bit of soup.
I love a joke, but I would have reservations to wearing this one, since there is still a dead fly in there!

Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!
Yes sir, this fly really knows good soup.

Eero Lintusaari is a member of Klimt02.