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The clumsy set of nylon bubbles forming the neck of statements made by Nora Focked is one of the prominent exhibitions at a recent show at the Goldsmiths center in London, Intertwined: Jewelery meet textiles. The part is made of the nylon monophilament woven, in other words the fishing line, and is a great example of how both textile creation techniques and fibers themselves have been used by jewelers over the centuries and through cultures.
The part, called the “Bubble Bath”, shows how an agile idea can add an extra dimension to the jeweler and what it can achieve. In this case tenderness, vibrancy and beauty.
Was done in 2001 and is in the collection of the Craft Council. Focus says about the material she used: “Nylon monophilament is lightweight and can easily be colored, polite with skin and a great catalyst for light. Techniques like knitting, knot and weaving are ideal for this material, they fit the imaginary world that is the essence of my work.”
The interest of the jeweler began while studying at Brighton Polytechnic in the 1980s, where Caroline Broahead was one of her tutors. Broadhead is a renowned artist whose work has traversed a variety of disciplines, including jewelery. She was the director of the jewelery and textile program and director of the BA jewelery design course at the Central Saint Martins Art College in London, where she is now Professor Emerita.
Broahead is a finalist at this year’s Loewe craft award, worth € 50,000, with a chain of beads using thousands of small, vivid Japanese glass beads, threaded together using Stitch Peyote, an ancient off-loom technique. Wrapped paper is used as a guide to form tubular connections, and each connection is made of 1,500 beads, taking a day to create.
Broadhead refers to this process as “meditative”, a timely reflection, work and ways in which simple acts of repetition can be used to create complexity “. The connections are formed by vertical and horizontal tubes that operate perpendicular to one another, “creating endless possibilities for movement and interaction with the body of the clothing”.
“I first used textiles in my jewelers in the 1970s,” she says. “I began to use embroidery strands, which were easily available and with a wide range of colors. At the time, the use of non -precious materials seemed to give more opportunities to explore what ornament could be. Woven shows.
There is an echo in the work of Broadhead with that of South African jewelery and academic Khanya Mtetwa, whose jeweler, displayed in a solo exhibition in Johannesburg earlier this year, is a celebration of the widespread cleansing of her country’s heritage and culture. Bead’s works are essential for its parts, combining this heritage with the aesthetics of contemporary jewelery of South Africa art.
Methetwa says: “As artists and stylists, we have a responsibility to recover our narrative and resist the deletion of our heritage. Heritage is not just the inspiration of the future.”
Daniel Kruger, one of the leading figures of art jewelery, also born and raised in South Africa and is now based in Munich. His African influences can be seen in his work. But there are other impacts. One of its latest parts, displaying beautiful techniques of vertebrae and weaving, is a necklace made of lazuli lazuli beads, turquoise beads, bronze, copper, colored bone, bronze and silk. At its center is the symbol of peace, created in the 1950s for the United Kingdom campaign for nuclear disarmament and which was approved in the 1960s by the movement of anti-Vietnam war.
Seeing this symbol in Kruger’s necklace is not only a political message, but also an indicator for a time when the jewelery design was part of this anti -culture and its experiments with a wide range of non -precious materials and craft and handmade crafts.
This was also a time when there was a renewable interest, especially among the artist women, in the hands of intertwining, and this resurrection worked in contemporary jewelers. An example of how hand weaving techniques today are used in excellent jewelery was on display in another prominent part in the Goldsmiths exhibition-a gold-based Nina Bukvic jeweler, made using good gold wires.
The cuff is woven by hand using only sewing needles and a mandrel of a jewelery. “It is a meditative and useful practice,” says Bukvic, “which translates beautifully into the finished product. Gold becomes a cloth, taking it back to ancient techniques while giving it new aesthetics.
“I intend to create a body that belongs to the past and the present, something visually unknown but immediately attractive.”
Exhibition ‘Intertwined: Jewelery meets Textile’ is at the Goldsmiths Center by April 3
