Price winners 2006: THEME: NEW TRADITIONAL JEWELLERY This year jewellery designers from all over the world have been invited to select a traditional ornament from a national or regional costume tradition and to come up with a new form and/or application for it. Over two hundred jewellery designers from all over the world have drawn inspiration from the “New Traditional Jewellery” theme. This has resulted in an absolutely impressive collection of pectoral ornaments, necklaces, caps, rings, clasps, arm ornaments, and a lot more. All designers have one thing in common: they add a new and contemporary chapter to the long history of jewellery in an age-old costume tradition. Ornaments that, from time immemorial, have served as symbol bearers and that are now disappearing from the street scene all over the world. New Traditional Jewellery wants to keep this cultural heritage alive by lending it a new form. From more than 200 anonymous entries the jury has selected fifty which are to be exhibited at home and abroad. The first showing will be at the international SIERAAD, jewellery and silver design fair. Subsequently, four winners have been selected and a student prize will be awarded as well. Each of the five winners has proved to be capable of providing an ancient theme with a modern content, presenting the result in an, as to quality, equally superior but contemporary form. It is the combination of emotion, story, past and craftsmanship that moves and impresses the jury. STUDENT PRIZE This prize was awarded to Claudia Schmedding from Germany, a student at the Düsseldorf academy. Her entry is called Seiltänzerin, tightrope dancer. Her starting point was the rich traditional costume of German farmers’ wives, a costume tradition in which lace and lace-like finished materials, and refined silverware, worked in repoussé, stand out. Her acrylic rings varying in size and enclosed in silver beads or pearls border on an intriguing edge, according to the jury. Her work is rendered fragile as well as refined by the transparent rings. Not only do the beads form the connecting link between the rings, but they also serve as a historical reference to the manifold folkloristic applications of granules in both ornaments and textiles. Schmedding’s work can be as opulent as the way in which farmers’ wives display their wealth by wearing strings of necklaces simultaneously. The accumulation of her necklaces creates a monumental image. The jury feels that Schmedding has found an intriguing balance between theme, idea and execution. WINNERS Christina Karababa from Greece went to work on a 19th century gilded-silver double clasp from the collection of the National Historic Museum in Athens. The original clasps are decorated with detailed and complex floral patterns in engraving, granulating and casting techniques. For these closed, compact shapes Karababa has worked out a contemporary counterbalance. For her Porpi 2 design she used a state-of-the-art computer programme – anything but a technical gimmick, according to the jury. Karababa counters the brilliant drudgery of the original with the achievements of digital technology: Rapid Prototyping, meaning the industrial manufacture of single parts (such as the new clasps) straight from 3D-data. Her Porpi 2 has been executed in cast aluminium. Openwork forms reminiscent of a 3D reproduction of the hilly landscape around the village of Porpi in northern Greece. Karababa brings together technique, origin and tradition of great sculptural value, according to the jury. German jewellery artist Sabine Lang has provided her entry with a poetic motto: “Against vanishing into thin air” – “Schmuck gegen das sich in Luft auflösen alter Traditionen”. She breathes new life into the disappearing costume of farmers’ wives in the German North Frisian isle of Föhr. Eyecatcher is the monumental silver “breast-plate” consisting of various wrought chains which are pinned to the top part of the costume, just below the collarbones - monumental linked ornaments made of silver filigree, resembling a collection of chains of office, if anything. The jury is captivated by Lang’s approach, relativistic as well as powerful. She made a replica of a breast-plate in a transparent vacuum-pressed synthetic material. In this way a contemporary lightweight breast-plate is created breathing the delicacy of soap bubbles, an airy artefact which may enhance any simple garment, be it a T-shirt or a “little black dress”. With her “Against vanishing into thin air” Lang puts the breast-plate back into everyday life, the jury states. The increasingly personal interpretation of coping with the death of a loved one is also reflected in the work of jewellery designers. Mourning jewellery is as old as mankind and working on a comeback. “Necklace in C Amorphous” is a creation of Carla Nuis. This year she scored with another necklace made by her which won her the Dutch Design Award for Free Design and Fashion. “Necklace in C Amorphous” is made of compact charcoal beads. The ‘C’ stands for the chemical element of carbon, the amorphous variety of diamond. The beads have facets, just like the jets (also made of carbon) of 19th century mourning chains which are part of the Zeeland traditional costume. The jury is impressed by the simple as well as effective treatment of the material and the way in which Nuis plays with its light effects. Entirely in keeping with the tradition of a mourning ornament, the beads are opaque and dark. The extraordinary silky reflection displays a range of gradations in greys and blacks. This is in reference to the strict rules of old for gradations in mourning. With this almost minimalist necklace Nuis has added a new chapter to the tradition of mourning jewellery, says the jury. The second prize-winning mourning ornament was made by Joke Dubbeldam: a pendant with two “faces”. One side is made of corroded steel with a pattern, cut in openwork, of died back honeysuckle. This part is connected to its counterpart by means of a crisscross of riveted, small silver rods; blackened steel with a silver inlay in a pattern of flowering honeysuckle. The pendant is attached to forty black silk threads. Concrete poetry, according to the jury. It is not just her imagery – the jury praises the great craftsmanship with which all segments of this pendant have been made. “In this pendant Dubbeldam immortalizes mortality”. newtraditionaljewellery/cms/?page_id=439&lang=en
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:51:00 +0000
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