karin Seufert
Brooch : 2006, 5 x 8,5 cm
Today the definition of jewellery is quite open. Meanings are becoming blurred,
and with them the boundaries between what is jewellery and what is not.
What hasn’t changed is the function of wearing jewellery on the body or on clothing
or in clothing. But there are no longer any limits to the kinds of material used.
On the contrary, jewellery can be made of anything which is considered worthy
of being turned into jewellery.
In my most recent pieces of work the significance of a very specific material
takes the foreground: a material whose previous use evokes a certain story.
The source of this can vary. It could be figures who appeared in a fairy-tale or
in a story or who are part of history, it could be the previous function of the
material or the environment the object originates from and how one has come by it.
An interesting aspect in employing this used material – aside from the history
already mentioned – is the alienation which arises from its being arranged in a
new context. An alienation which comes from a familiar material being given an
unusual shape, or a familiar shape being made in an unusual material, or even by
the simple combination of used and new material.
Thus, by transposing material with visible traces of use, which describe that material’s
past, into a different context, new pieces of jewellery come into being. And so it is that
out of the past, on the foundation of jewellery in all its many aspects, at the very moment
of wearing new future stories are born.