Here at AJF we are very keen on the trend towards sustainability that seems to be sweeping the jewelry world. So we greeted this report from The Onion with a great deal of enthusiasm – and hope that in 2011 we might be able to attend Schmuck, SNAG, SOFA and Collect without encountering a single necklace of unsustainably harvested baby skulls.

Report: Baby Skull Jewelry May Be Linked To Violence

Renee Bevan, Blooming Big Brooch, 2009, cotton, stainless steel

Here at AJF we think a lot about the issue of audience in relation to contemporary jewelry. This covers a lot of territory: from the question of how contemporary jewelry positions itself in relation to fine art and design (click here and here to read previous posts), to the way jewelry objects are exhibited (the problem of the body), and even where (craft versus fine art galleries, for example).

Ilse Marie Erl, Bone Cameo, 2009, found bone, oxidised silver, cotton, stainless steel

We were very interested to learn about a novel initiative for connecting contemporary jewelry and its audience that is currently taking place in New Zealand. Organized by Kristin D’Agostino, a recent graduate of the Unitec jewelry program in Auckland, Broach of the Month Club was inspired by D’Agostino’s desire to find new ways to display contemporary jewelry, and to initiate contact between jewelers and wearers. One of her touchstones has been Liesbeth den Besten’s concept of borderline jewelry, which den Besten defines as ‘about borders, about going beyond borders, over the border. Borderline artist jewellers can’t live in the reality of showcases, galleries and museums. They need other ways to establish a bond with people, with people other than the usual jewellery audience.’

Sharon Fitness, Purple Floppy Poppies with a Blue Edge, 2009, silicon, pigments, sterling silver, 9 carat gold

Keen to know more, we asked D’Agnostino some questions about her project, which is now in its second year of operation.

Broach of the Month club (BOM) is a collaboration between twelve brooches, twelve makers and twelve wearers. It aims to reinstate the community aspect of traditional craft in contemporary jewelry culture. The 2010 club has collaborated with Masterworks craft gallery in Auckland to initiate a new BOM club.  The 2010 group includes six original BOM makers, six Masterworks makers and twelve regular Masterworks clients and friends of the gallery. The brooches will be worn, reflected upon and rotated each month, so that over the course of a year every wearer interacts with every brooch.

This is a non-profit project designed to broaden the contemporary jewellery wearer community. No money changes hands. Each party receives equal benefit.

Raewyn Walsh, Vessels, 2009, fine silver,oxidised silver, copper, paint, graphite powder, surgical steel

The BOM club concept provides a vital space for experimental work to be shown and  supplies valuable feedback to the makers. BOM club also creates a forum outside of the gallery where selling work is not a concern. Often, only public galleries provide a space where generating revenue isn’t the key component, but public galleries don’t always have the opportunity to show artists in the early stages of their careers. BOM club provides a living exhibition venue that isn’t beholden to the counters of hipness, fashion, and commodity.  It aims to present another way of tackling the Gert Staal/Ted Noten question regarding the dilemma of displaying jewellery in galleries as opposed to it being worn.

Gillian Deery, Untitled, 2009, sterling silver, stainless steel

The 2010 BOM club is a pre-emptive test-run for my DIY Broach of the Month Club manifesto, wherein I envision the possibility that BOM could “go viral” and be easily dispensed throughout the jewelry world. I am trying to determine whether the success of my initial experiment was a combination of circumstance and luck or if this idea can stand on its own two feet. Involving Masterworks gallery makes sense, because it solves the logistical issues of the swaps. I have much less control this year, which is exciting and scary.  I get to observe the project a bit more.  It is the first step in sending this project off into the big wide world.

On a more personal level, I am also a maker in this project, so I have specific questions regarding new aspects of work I’m creating.

To find out more about BOM, visit the website by clicking here.

Based on the evidence of this blog, you would be hard-pressed to imagine that we here at AJF do anything productive at all. At the risk of cementing such erroneous impressions, here’s a jewelry game that we stumbled upon while researching serious conceptual issues. Yes, we stopped and played it, but that was only so we could be informed in writing this post. It’s not a great game (unless you are a tween, or enjoy the saccarine sweetness of mainstream animation), and the jewelry is pretty awful. We can’t even talk about the music. But its jewelry, and so we boldly go where no member of AJF should ever have to.  (To play the game, click here.)

Taking time out from thinking profound thoughts about contemporary jewelry, we here at AJF recently found ourselves watching Disney-Pixar’s movie Up! (the one with the old man, the kid, the house and all those balloons). It is, along with many other things, a moving meditation on the powerful nature of jewelry, in this case badges. From the grape soda bottle top with safety pin which becomes a treasured memento of one man’s love for his wife and a souvenir of memories of their shared childhood adventures and dreams, to the badges that cover the sash of a Scouts-like wilderness adventure group, Up! is an excellent reminder that jewelry’s significance doesn’t have to come from either precious materials or artistic statements.

Indeed, what is so notable about this movie is the way it reveals that one of the deep veins of meaning and significance for jewelry has nothing to do with the work of the jeweler – skill or questions of art – at all. Meaning is generated around the badge through personal and social relationships that can be attached to any object. It is an example of the talisman, which has a rich history in jewelry. Unlike the amulet, in which power comes from what the object is (a tooth or claw to ward off dangerous animals, for example), the talisman’s meaning is invested in the object through ritual. A talisman can be made of anything, even a discarded bottle top. After watching Up! we found ourselves wondering why contemporary jewelry seldom seems to achieve such significance. And how interesting it is that such potential remains alive in jewelry, waiting to be activated.

We were reminded of this while watching the 2010 Oscars award ceremony (research, we told ourselves, since it is important to know what kinds of jewelry is being worn on the red carpet). Along with an Edition Soir Yves Saint Laurent by Stefano Pilati titanium gown, Best Director winner Kathryn Bigelow wore a red Wounded EOD Warrior bracelet, made of silicon and costing about $1. The Wounded EOD Warrior Foundation is a not-for-profit organization which gives financial and other assistance to Explosive Ordinance Disposal technicians who are wounded in the line of duty. (You can visit their website by clicking here.) The bracelets are given to anyone who donates a small amount of money to the organization, and are an awareness raising exercise. (In case you didn’t know, Bigelow’s movie, The Hurt Locker, is about EOD technicians in Iraq.) Bigelow shunned the usual diamonds and platinum and managed to make jewelry say something – lots of bang without any bling.

It seems to us at AJF that all of this amounts to something important for contemporary jewelry to consider. Luckily, Australian writer Kevin Murray has already started to do just that. (You can visit Murray’s website by clicking here.) In an essay called ‘Value in rarity? Think again!’, he writes:

Once preciousness was tied to rarity. The less available a good, the greater its value. Modern jewellery was founded on this principle. Behind the romance of the diamond was a strategy to reduce its supply so that they would be associated with elite status. In the information age, this logic is reversed. In the case of computer software, the more available it is, the greater its value. The ubiquity of Microsoft is its greatest asset – owning a Microsoft product enables you to communicate freely with the vast majority of computer users currently working with compatible software. How might jewellery respond to this radical reversal of value?

It’s already there, all around us. So many people are walking along the street wearing that phosphorescent coloured wrist band which says “Make Poverty History”. This bracelet is not worn to distinguish the wearer from others, as a mark of distinction. Regardless of the particular cause, this band identifies its user with the people – those who stand in solidarity to support the suffering peoples of the world against the interests of moneyed elites. We wear it to belong to the crowd, not to stand out from it.

There are many reasons why this kind of street-wear fits uncomfortably with contemporary jewellery practice. It is anonymous, cheap, generically designed and industrially produced. Yet, maybe we glimpse within it the potential for jewellery to engage with a world where the commoner is King (and Queen).

Contemporary jewelry prides itself on its difference to the mindless bling that gets paraded on the red carpet every year at the Oscars. Yet if we are honest, doesn’t the glamour jewelry actually speak to more people than the art jewelry we care about? And what does it mean when a mass-produced bracelet is more engaging than either, without having value or art to rely on?

One of the biggest problem with diamonds is the way they are cut to maximize sparkle and brilliance. Faceting, which is all about substance being displayed on the surface, is antithetical to contemporary jewelry. Anything that gives itself up too easily is automatically an object of suspicion within a practice that is desperate to assert its art credentials, its commitment to seriousness and conceptual depth. When you add the conventional design of most settings to the emphasis on glitter, you can easily see why diamonds are a dead-end for most contemporary jewelers, and certainly not objects of desire.

Our season of Blame It On The Bling continues here at AJF with this example of a diamond in the raw, submitted by Seb Hamamjian from the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design. It proves that fresh is often best, and the hardest thing is always knowing when not to act at all.

Sue Ann Dorman, Ring, 2007, white gold, 6.7 carat octahedron raw Australian diamond,  1 1/8 x 1 x 1/2 inches

I’ve never been a fan of diamonds . . . in a sense their intrinsic value has been compromised by the fact that they’re over exposed and commercialized,  often poorly presented, and in my opinion, over-valued. Ordinarily I would look the other way when it comes to diamond related jewelry. Then I met a very special woman whose birthstone was the diamond and her 50th was coming up.  I had to think creatively and Sue Anne Dorman had the answer for me . . . a raw diamond. She came up with a wonderful setting design (in my opinion) for a raw octahedron diamond (from Australia) that my partner ended up loving. It’s 6.7 carats - bling bling with a surprisingly low ka-ching ka-ching.

Our season of Blame It On The Bling continues with this diamond brooch submitted by AJF member Rachel Carren, who loves her diamonds natural, but not too rough. Now this is a vision of landscape that we here at at AJF could happily gaze at for hours.

Steven Ford and David Forlano, Diamond Pin #6, 2006, 18k gold, sterling polymer clay, 1.25 x 2.25 x .5″, diamonds. Photo: Robert Diamante

Diamond Pin #6 by Ford and Forlano would be great to wear to an Art Jewelry Forum event. The four diamonds bring a bit of bling into a piece of art jewelry through a play on the idea of diamonds and a series of contrasts. The roughness, both apparent and real of the polymer surfaces and less finished quality of the metals, contrast with the physical and conceptual refinement of the gemstones. The sparkle of the diamonds offsets the visual textures and earthy hues of the polymer and non-lustrous metals. Ford and Forlano also tweak the idea of diamond another way through the use of round details in the surface patterning that echo the round shape of the actual diamonds and is inset into diamond shaped forms. For me, all of this makes for a pin that is engaging and eminently wearable. It is definitely not the status quo for what one would envision of diamond jewelry.

Here at AJF we have a secret love of diamonds. While reading Vanity Fair in public we are always very vocal in our condemnation of the precious materials and conventional jewelry that fill the pages at the front of the magazine, and yet we guiltily confess to gazing long and lovingly at those same pages when we’re alone. When we found ourselves hiding pictures of diamonds in the pages of Metalsmith magazine so we would be able to get a quick fix at contemporary jewelry openings and conferences, we knew something had to change. While we could try and give up our addiction to all that glitters and shimmers, we felt that a more interesting strategy would be to confess our diamond mania and try and entice others who also love the stone of champions to reveal themselves.

The response to our ‘Facet? Let’s Face It!’ appeal has been excellent, with many AJF members coming forward in what we are calling our season of Blame It On The Bling. The first sorry but sparkly jewelry-loving and diamond-wearing individual to share their shame is AJF board member Ron Porter. Here are some diamonds he just can’t stop thinking about.

Keith Lewis, Salt Lick, 1996, sterling silver, vermeil, diamonds, 4 x 2.25 x .5 inches

Even though Salt Lick is taken out of context from Keith Lewis’s early body of work, it expresses his desire to question the preciousness of jewelry. This body of work dealt with his experiences as a gay man, particularly how HIV came to effect the open sexuality of the gay movement of the last quarter of the twentieth century. He used animal imagery in the majority of these pieces.

Salt Lick was completed after his pieces dealing with HIV and began to present the re-awakening of sexuality in the gay community in the late 1990s. The figure is lone and experiencing sexual pleasure without a partner. It is also significant that the figure was a gilded stag, suggesting a return to Pre-AIDS gay iconography.

This is the only piece in which Keith used diamonds. Their particular use in this setting questions all sorts of significance and lore attributed to the stone as well as enters into the devine/profane debate regarding the function of contemporary jewelry.

Marthe Le Van

Nina Dinoff, Martin Luther King Day 2010

Here at AJF we know that contemporary jewelry is addictive – or as we like to euphemistically say, habit-forming. What about making jewelry? Recently AJF member Marthe Le Van sent us this report of an internet-based project that proves good things can emerge from the daily grind, and that necessity – in this case to make one piece of jewelry every day – really is the mother of invention.

Malador, Nose ring

Setting ambitious goals at the start of a new year is quite common. Having your new year’s resolution become a booming Internet phenomenon with more than 200 jewelers participating in the first month is an extraordinary event.

Chris Irick, Ring

New York jeweler Nina Dinoff first heard about making a ring a day for an entire year while attending a workshop at the Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine. Though the idea wasn’t new, it nevertheless stuck with her. As someone who felt ‘relentlessly challenged by any sort of day-to-day routine’, Dinoff was inspired to take up the challenge herself. She posted images of her daily creations on Flickr, a photo-sharing website, and encouraged other artists to take part. Just one month into the New Year, there were more than 3000 images at the Ring A Day Project. By December 2010, that number could easily grow to 36,000! (To visit the Ring A Day website, click here.)

Maria Apostalou, Ring

Dinoff’s challenge, to ‘make a ring a day no matter where you are, what materials are at your disposal, or how much time you have available’, is yielding some spectacular results. Of equal importance, the Ring A Day Project is building a community of makers that are communicating about and through jewelry every single day. In this virtual workshop setting, all are welcome to explore ideas and techniques and give and receive immediate feedback.

Sarah McCurdie, Coconut ring

The Ring A Day project is an example of the internet at its best. Bookmark the site, check back often, and prepare to be inspired day after day after day after day.

(Don’t adjust your monitor – this sparkle isn’t just in the eye of the beholder.) Mr T, an AJF style icon, shows how you can never wear too much jewelry.

Here at AJF we are fans of the bold and blunt question. We also see ourselves as amateur anthropologists, studying the human tribe that loves and wears jewelry, whether contemporary or not. So we were tickled when we came across the following exchanges on Blurt It, a website dedicated to answering all your questions, no matter how intelligent or inane. (To visit Blurt It, click here.) The spelling and grammar might not be all one could wish for, but the candor and revelation of jewelry’s fascination certainly left us wanting more.

Loxey-Loia: Why do wear jewellery?

Madmacstew: To attract mate.

Guest: Why do people wear jewellery?

Annagrowth: Now-a-Days jewelry has become a style statement. It enhances the looks of the wearer and symbolizes love, delight and fashion sense.

Guest: To sometimes feel sexier or feel important or to just look good.

Guest: To express who they really are or to tell people “this is me”.

Guest: Because it makes them feel unique.

Guest: Some people can wear jewellery as an accessory, as others where it as culture, religin or medical reasons. Not all people wear Jewellery as a statement.

Guest: Why do people like to wear jewellery?

Alexaus: Jewelry is a form of human expression, of wealth, personality, wanting to cheer yourself up, an art form all sorts of reasons why people wear jewelry and as old as time. In modern terminologies, jewelry is one such accessory that completes your outfit, especially diamond jewelry. They make us look more beautiful and like a real woman.

Itsonlyme: Personally I Think That Jewellery Tells A Small Story About YourSelf For Example; You Wear Wedding Rings To Show Other People You Are Married … Or just To Show Your Love For One And Other .. You Take That Ring Of And People Think Your Single And so on. On The Other Hand.. People Wear Pearls and Diamond To Show Wealth, Upper class And They Look Very Lady like. Also I Like To Wear Bright And Vibrant Coloured Jewellery To Show Personality.

Bek-David: Apart from self-adornment, for what reasons do people wear jewellery?

Wilbert: Some is to show wealth and social stature, some because they are symbols of love like a ring, for marriage, or a heart necklace from a loved one, and for myself, when I worked, wore earings to match my outfit. As well, used to wear pearls a lot for some reason. Always found them elegant.

Guest: Why do women love to wear jewellery?

Researcher: The use of jewellery for both men and women goes back thousands of years. Archaeological excavations show us that people were wearing some forms of  primitive jewellery before people lived in houses. It’s a form of human expression, of wealth, personality, wanting to cheer yourself up, an artform all sorts of reasons why people wear jewellery and as old as time. In what they call the Bronze Age about 2000BC in the area not far from Stonehenge some of the most beautiful gold work in Europe was found in graves. These were mens graves! The men had been buried with their jewellery including earrings. The biggest piece of goldwork ever found in Britain was the Gold Cape found in Mold, North Wales and that belonged to a man. So perhaps the question should be why do people like wearing jewellery?!

Susie93552: I am a huge fan of jewelry. It makes your outfit complete. I wear earrings everyday. If I’m wearing short sleeves I wear a bracelet. Most of the times I wear a necklace. I sell Avon and love their jewelry since the have sets wear it all matches. It seems to be heredity since my grandma always wore jewelry.

Kaleh: I love jewellery. Especially the gold type of jewellery. In fact i can’t do without wearing them. They make me look more beautiful and like a real woman. I can spend any amount on my jewellery.

This just in from Tokyo, Japan. Lee Byung Hun, an actor from South Korea, and Miyuki Hatoyama, Japan’s first Lady, have won the ‘Best Jewelry Wearer’ Award at International Jewelry Tokyo 2010. Receiving a trophy and platinum necklace, the winners were selected not just for their interest in wearing jewelry but also for their great fashion sense. (You can read more about the award by clicking here.)

Lee Byung Hun, a beloved Hallyu actor (the term refers to the Korean Wave, in which South Korean culture is being embraced by the rest of the world) is the first non-Japanese person to receive the award. He noted, ‘This is the second time in my life that I’ve received jewelry. The first time was on my first birthday, it’s a Korean Tradition to give a golden ring on the first birthday. I will try my best and try to be a jewel of an actor.’