HOW MANY REASONS TO WEAR JEWELRY DO YOU NEED?
June 01,2022
How many opportunities in our lifetimes do we have to explore contemporary art jewelry through little stories we write ourselves? I love reading, but I find academic articles a bit tedious. When Barbara Schmidt's book 25 Reasons for Wearing Jewelry was published, it caught my attention immediately.
This short, novel-style collection of short stories illustrates 25 reasons why people wear jewelry. The objects that inspired this landmark book are 75,000 decorative elements discovered by archaeologists in the 1990s at bloombos Cave in South Africa. After studying these ancient ornaments, Marian Vanhaeren sorted out 14 reasons why people needed to wear jewelry, including having jewelry as amulet, easy goods, social markers, and functional objects as counting objects. After that, the authors added 13 more nuanced reasons to their research: jewelry is also a humorous language and social tool. Schmidt tells us through 27 stories about why people wear jewelry.
In the preface, Marian Vanhaeren explains how, from an anthropologist's point of view, these reasons for wearing jewelry are closely related to how we wear jewelry today. Interestingly, she does not devote much of her writing to describing ancient objects. In contrast, the author Schmidt shares pictures of works related to contemporary art jewelry throughout it. Some may prefer to see the author describe ancient objects here, but replacing them with contemporary art jewelry will be refreshing to the reader, especially given the book's obviously non-historical and experimental thrust.
As you can see in the image above, some contemporary art jewelry only appears as a typography embellishment on the catalog or acknowledgment page. Another 27 works, throughout the book in a creative way, connect the logical design of the entire book and the development of the short story structure.
In this book, the layout of the section "Jewelry is a Gift of Love" is very special. Dorothea Förster's distinctive green necklace echoes each other on the front and back pages, and serves as the title page of the story "Green Shiver" that is unforgettable. This repetitive design philosophy is reflected throughout the book: the previous work in the 25 Reasons will serve as the title of the next part, starting the subsequent text journey with a stunning full-page picture. One color in the jewelry will echo each other at the end of each copy. The various colors in the jewelry make the pages of color saturation burst with joy, make the process of reading this book full of surprises and surprises, and clearly demarcate the boundaries of each chapter. Each story ends with an image-matching caption that draws the reader to read it and revisit the jewelry with new identifying messages. The description of the images in the book also contains a link to the artist's personal website, allowing the reader to explore further - I have to say that this is a very careful detail.
The second way contemporary art jewelry is presented in this book is as a source of inspiration for short stories. In the seventh book, Amber for Beginners, Gisbert Stach's brooch DE-Schnitzel (2015) is a famous example of the unconventional use of amber that defines the visual expression benchmark of Healing Objects. The story itself is not directly about the work—about the amber schnitzel brooch (the title of the work is Schnitzel, which means pork chops), but rather, here our story is about a man's interaction with the little amber he carries in his pocket, about the soothing effect of the soul brought by this small stone, and the beautiful love life that comes with it.
What I want to express is that in this book the reader is able to experience a great deal of uncompromising human primitive consciousness. These emotions are either subtle or dignified. Without the living human body that carries it, jewelry is nothing, which is their extraordinary significance. I've found a shift in academic terminology that tries to link jewelry to the body and bodily behavior— a shift that is popular (and sometimes humorous) to readers. In this book, all the trembling bodies, the swirling hips, the bare throat ... These body languages are meant to tell their intimate affairs to the pearls they wear.
In this book, some stories are inspired by the material or color of the jewelry in question, while others are inextricably linked to the theme of the jewelry object itself. The 25th story, The Princess of the Sea, is like this: it's based on the water-themed work in Helen Noakes' ring, Come In, The Water Is Lovely (2016). The story tells the story of an ordinary schoolgirl who receives a special ring one day, which accidentally makes her a water god on high, stepping on the boundaries of reality. The ring became a symbol of the division of different statuses and classes in society. The whole article is filled with references to water, Poseidon (the sea god in Greek mythology) and the appearance of mermaids, as well as classism and ideas about ancient royalty, among others. And of course there's the issue of climate change, and what we're talking about here is more about the oceans! The story contains a lot of delicate and subtle emotional details. In real life, the connection between jewelry objects, the reasons for wearing jewelry, and the storyline is not subtle. But in this book, many times the flow of the story seems superficial, but in fact, it makes it easier for people to be familiar with the development and connotation of the story.
The clever combination of all the elements within these stories is one of the book's success points. These stories are originally saddled with heavy metaphors and descriptive phrases, and the author strives to integrate all the elements together to create a coherent story. It's very difficult for any short story to carry so much information and still be compelling. As a keen reader of short stories, I know that completing a story with very little text requires very high narrative skills. It is often said that this is the most difficult genre of fiction to master.
In the last story, "Small World", in one of the sections, "Jewelry is also a sign of humor", the language expression habits of the story in the book have changed significantly. This story was written by the author's son and is the only story in the entire series that was completed by someone else. Even if it can be read that the young author tries to be in line with his mother's writing style, the language rhythm of the story is still very different from other stories.
In this book, there are three stories dedicated to the makers of the jewelry objects in the work, which are slightly different in form from other pages. The three producers are Friedrich Becker, Carl Dau and Giovanni Corvaja. The story describes their objects in detail, deconstructing their craftsmanship, color use, and materials in turn. At the end of the book, there is also a story that pays tribute to the industrious Indian jewelry making assembly line worker, dedicated to the story of his labor and technique.
The idea of creating a collection of short stories within the framework of contemporary art jewelry is commendable, and regardless of the literary nature of the story, books born from this innovative perspective can be a visual feast. The 25 reasons to wear jewelry are written by people of insight in the field of art jewelry. It tells the story of the various reasons why people wear and continue to wear jewelry in an intriguing way. Beneath its exquisite layout packaging is the author's thoughtful selection of contemporary art jewelry, as well as the incisive conception of using novels to deepen the topic of jewelry. I am grateful to Barbara Schmidt for being able to go beyond the traditional form of academic papers and create this unique book for everyone to enjoy.
The stories in this book seem magical, accurately capturing the inexplicable, sensual, and deeply human side of our desire for ornaments. What we art jewellers have always wanted is to strive for a larger audience, and often through academia to seek the feasibility of spiritual extension beyond artistic creation. Perhaps another way to expand the appeal of contemporary art jewelry is to let the magic and creativity of jewelry unleash imagination like this book, and let the stories contained in each work make their unique voices.