Jewelry That Makes You Think.
REVIEW
The Exhibitions Werke und Tage and Danish Jewellery Box
By Liesbeth den Besten

Much jewelry, historical and contemporary, is stored away in depots or sentenced to a static stay in a permanent display. Of course, museums offer advantages: the jewelry is kept safe, documented, and restored if necessary, and when on display visitors can see it and learn more about jewelry. But jewelry needs life, adventure, interaction, and movement to come fully into its own. And that’s exactly what the Danish Arts Foundation's jewelry collection accomplished when it traveled to Germany. Both host museums looked at their own collections of antique art or contemporary international jewelry with different eyes. This resulted in two entirely different exhibitions based on the same collection of jewelry funded by public Danish money. And it shows jewelry at work in the best way.

Caption: (Left) Staatliche Antikensammlung museum employee wearing Mette Saabye, Necklace Drops of Dew, photo: Klaus Haag, (right) Gabriele Spangenberg, racer of historic sports cars, wearing Pernille Mouritzen, Bush-Jet, necklace, photo arranged by MAKK, copyright TobiasVollmer.de
Wednesday, September 29, 12 p.m. EST

Enjoy a preview of some of the rare art jewelry collected over a lifetime by Byron and Jill Crawford. Their collection of 300+ pieces of wearable sculpture, representing a cross-section of important and beautiful 20th-century art jewelry, will be auctioned next month by Bonhams, one of the world's largest and most renowned auctioneers. 

The Crawfords assembled an array of highly sought-after, museum-quality jewelry pieces, many of which have been featured in important books and exhibitions. They collected in categories that include jewelry by fine artists, American modernist jewelry, Native American jewelry, Scandinavian jewelry, and Taxco jewelry. Their collection includes work by more than 30 master makers from around the globe; highlights include Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Jean Arp, Charles Loloma, Art Smith, Betty Cooke, William Spratling, Margaret De Patta, Georg Jensen, Elsa Peretti, Ettore Sottsass, Tod Pardon, Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro, Bruno Martinazzi, Jesse Monongya, and many more.

Emily Waterfall, Bonhams’s director of jewelry for Los Angeles, will walk us through the work. We’ll talk about collecting and the growing secondary market for art jewelry.

This event is free and open to members and non-members alike. To register, follow this link.

What time?
9 a.m. PST: San Francisco
10 a.m. MST: Denver
11 a.m. CST: San Antonio, Mexico City, Bogotá
12 p.m. EST: Toronto, NYC
1 p.m.: Santiago, Buenos Aires
5 p.m.: Lisbon, London
6 p.m.: Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Cape Town, Oslo
7 p.m.: Bucharest, Athens, Tel Aviv, Tallinn
11 p.m.: Bangkok
1 a.m. on September 30: Seoul, Tokyo
2 a.m. on September 30: Sydney
4 a.m. on September 30: Auckland

Caption: (Left) a Modernist necklace by Art Smith; (right) Art Smith, Baker Cuff, photo courtesy of Bonhams
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