Recently the jewelry designer Édéenne has been spending more time in an art-production facility in Madrid than her high-jewelry workshop in Paris.
At Factum Arte, a facility that caters to artists, she has been overseeing the creation of sculptures designed to complement her high-jewelry pieces. “We just finished a branch for my Wisteria necklace,” Édéenne said in a phone interview from Paris. “It is based on a real piece of driftwood I found on a beach in Brittany.”
The driftwood was scanned, a 3-D version was printed and a mold was created to cast the 4.2-foot-long bronze branch sculpture, which had gold-color bronze leaves and hidden hooks attached. The hooks allow removable parts of the necklace, made of 18-karat white gold, 300 carats of sculpted amethysts and 30.75 carats of diamonds, to be hung from the branch.
“This is not a prop to display jewelry,” Édéenne said. “The branch combines with the necklace to become a stand-alone wall sculpture.” And it took two years, she said, to perfect the branch and obtain the right shade of patinated brown for the wood and the shiny gold color of the leaves (price on application).
The term sculptural is often used in jewelry to describe the look of large pieces. But jewelry also can be actually sculpted or crafted by skilled artisans with the same precision and artistry of a sculptor carving stone or casting bronze. Recently, such sculpted pieces have appeared in collections from independent jewelry designers and several major heritage houses.
Édéenne’s creation and a selection of her other sculpted pieces are scheduled to be shown from May 15 to 18 at a selling exhibition at the Château de Beloeil in western Belgium. The displays will include a carved rock-crystal column that complements a gold and diamond-set cuff bracelet; a foot-high olive tree sculpted of bronze from which hang a pair of olive-shaped earrings and a diamond-encrusted pendant; and a wall sculpture of butterfly brooches in the trembleuse, or trembling, style.
“My pieces create an inseparable link between art and high jewelry,” Édéenne said. “Jewelry must beautify your life, not just your body.”
Other jewelry designers, including Sabine Roemer in London and Annelise Michelson in Paris, both of whom are skilled sculptors, are also exploring what sculpture could bring to their craft.
In January, Ms. Roemer will start a monthlong guest appearance at the New York department store Bergdorf Goodman to showcase her work, including her signature horse and camel rings, figurative designs made in 18-karat gold and set with gemstones and diamonds, and an interpretive bronze portrait of Nelson Mandela titled “Long Walk to Freedom.” She made eight of the Mandela portraits, each priced at 40,000 pounds ($51,775), with half of the proceeds going to the Participate for Good program in Africa.
“Working in fine jewelry is an extension of sculpture,” Ms. Roemer wrote in an email. “It’s about refining the same skills on a smaller scale. One doesn’t replace the other, they complement and enrich each other.”
Ms. Michelson designs limited series, such as her Drapée and Vertigo lines, in curved, body-hugging shapes that are available in vermilion, silver and gold- or silver-plated finishes. In her boutique, which she has styled as a gallery, jewelry is displayed alongside sculpted onyx pieces in rounded, organic forms about 30 centimeters tall (about 12 inches) that echo the same fluid contours.
“When sculpting stone, I dig into the block to reveal what I see inside,” Ms. Michelson said in an interview in Paris. “I work directly with the material. I see how it reacts, I try to find a rhythm, a tension, and a sensuality in the curves.
“For jewelry, I start with material that can be molded and I explore volumes and textures,” she said. “I let myself be guided by what I feel at the moment.”
For those who sculpt stone, inspiration usually comes from the material itself. This year, a number of jewelry houses demonstrated how they sculpted stone to experiment with volume, scale and shape in wearable creations that merged craftsmanship with an artistic vision.
In May, Cartier presented a green jasper cuff carved in the shape of a crocodile with diamond-set scales on its back, part of Cartier’s Nature Sauvage collection introduced in Vienna.
“One artisan worked for nearly two years on this piece, from initial sketch to final execution,” said Emilie Marques, the head of Cartier’s glyptics workshop (glyptics is the art of engraving or sculpting gems). “We whip up a quick mold in the right shape and volume to capture the spontaneity of the piece. Then we make a plaster model to refine the details. Finally, we move to the stone, and carve it carefully just as a sculptor would, knowing that any mistake means starting from scratch.”
At Dior Joaillerie, the creative director Victoire de Castellane turned to gemstone engraving to create a menagerie of animals set in a bejeweled pastoral landscape for her high-jewelry collection, Diorama & Diorigami, unveiled in May in Florence, Italy.
A necklace called La Forêt Enchantée, along with its matching rings and earrings, included delicate figures of deer, squirrels, rabbits and foxes carved from green chrysoprase and nestled among pearl bushes and engraved gold branches. “What was important for me was to place the animals inside a naturalistic landscape, as if truly immersed in vegetation,” Ms. de Castellane said in an interview. “That is where you see the sophisticated craftsmanship of jewelry making.”
But incorporating sculpture within jewelry also demands attention to comfort, something that Lucia Silvestri, the creative director of jewelry for Bulgari, knows well given that she frequently wears her own designs. “I want to create something that you can wear easily, and you can feel comfortable in anytime,” she said in an interview. “That is my idea of high jewelry.”
Included in Bulgari’s Aeterna high-jewelry collection — introduced in May to mark the jeweler’s 140th anniversary — was its hallmark Serpenti motif in an 18-karat white gold necklace, designed with a 77.78-carat rubellite suspended from its mouth. “The necklace is the work of a goldsmith trained in classical Roman sculpture,” Ms. Silvestri said. “The serpent is perfectly flexible, with links connected to one another in an invisible, secret way.”
And the Taiwanese designer Anna Hu carved titanium and white gold to create her Rose d’Éternité brooch, a lifelike piece topped with a 0.98-carat spinel.
“The rose was sculpted in green wax in 3-D to ensure beauty from every angle, then hollowed out and sculpted on all sides,” Ms. Hu wrote in an email. “Then, titanium was poured to replace the wax.”
“Its dimensions and weight are perfectly balanced, so it sits comfortably without pulling on the fabric when worn.”
But ultimately, Ms. Hu used the art of sculpture to infuse the rose with a kind of realism. “The rose appears as if it is on the verge of falling, with its petals and leaves bending,” she wrote. “It is still upright, but it also conveys a sense of movement that suggests there is life within it.”
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