CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Jewelry by Painters and Sculptors
Rings, brooches and necklaces designed by artists better known for painting and sculpture, often made with goldsmiths in small editions.
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About
Many 20th-century artists found in jewellery a way to carry their forms onto the body. Alexander Calder hammered brass, silver and wire into brooches and necklaces from the late 1920s onwards, making most of them himself. Salvador Dalí designed jewels with gems set as lips, eyes and melting clocks, including the Ruby Lips brooch (1949). The goldsmith François Hugo made gold pieces after designs by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst and Jean Arp, and in his last years Georges Braque worked with Heger de Löwenfeld on jewels based on his birds and mythological heads. From the late 1960s the Milan goldsmith GEM Montebello produced pieces by Lucio Fontana, Man Ray and the brothers Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro. Look for how an artist's signature style survives at small scale, and for edition numbers and the goldsmith's marks.