Paper Jewelry
10.06.-23.08.23
When we imagine jewelry, one often thinks of artifacts made of precious stones - gold, silver, coral, and pearls. Objects made from valuable materials, handed down from generation to generation. One rarely imagines that jewelry can be made from paper.
Of all materials, both old and new, paper is supposedly not durable enough to be made into jewelry. How could a fragile piece of paper become something strong and long-lasting, a true jewel? This has actually been done for many years with surprising techniques and results.
In 19th-century England, for example, women gathered in groups to create beads from scraps of wallpaper and newspaper. They were rolled on knitting needles, pulled on yarn and polished with beeswax. These paper-pearls can still be seen in countless museums, having survived much wear and tear throughout the years.
Today, many artisans still challenge our understanding of jewelry by using paper in their artistic practice. Paper Jewelry presents two artisans who both create stunning paper jewelry: Lucie Houdková and Verde Alfieri.
Read more about the exhibiting artists
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Lucie Houdková (b. 1984, Brno, CZ) is educated at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Houdková creates jewelry that borders on art objects and often uses unconventional materials in combination with metal, including paper. Houdková considers the art of creating jewelry to be an experiment – she examines the material and goes to the limits of its possibilities. In recent years, her practice has mainly revolved around natural, organic forms in the search for harmony and balance.
In her work with the series "Deep", which is exhibited at the museum, she was influenced by the scientific illustrations by the philosopher and biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919), who in the 19th century turned our attention towards a whole world of magnificent creatures on the seabed. Houdková compares jewellery to the life that Haeckel found at the bottom of the sea. For example, jewelry has the ability to change the human body in the same way that corals alter the seabed
Haeckel searched for the essential in living matter, and in the same way, Houdková searches for the essential when she creates, in her artistic practice – something both functional and beautiful.
This series of jewelry is made of flexible paper slats, fastened on the inside of the structure, with the desire to create living jewelry that invites the wearer to participate in its life – discovering how its shape transforms from concave to convex, from enclosed to open, dynamic. A life and idiom mimicking corals as they as alter the seabed while their own form change with the movements of the underwater currents.
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Verde Alfieri (b. 1969, Venice, IT) is the daughter of the well-known publisher, Bruno Alfieri, who among other things organized the first solo exhibition with Jackson Pollock at the 25th Venice Biennale.
Verde Alfieri lives and works in Milan. After her studies, she mainly worked with marketing and communication for a number of well-known Italian companies and since 1996 at her family’s publishing house. However, her love for contemporary art - born from frequent visits to Italian artists' studios and growing up in Venice - led Verde to begin her artistic journey in the 90s, where she began creating digital art and participating in international competitions and exhibitions under the name "Melting Verde”.
With a strong interest in contemporary art, she was led to jewelry craft in 2013, where she began transforming her digital art projects into physical works; she introduced a physical, material aspect to her artistic practice based on her experiences from the digital world and the world of publishing. After Verde definitively left the role as an art director in 2014, she dedicated herself entirely to her artistic practice as a jewelry designer, where she experiments with materials, shapes and styles.
The first collection of jewelry was created from cotton and sailing rope. But in 2014, Verde changed her approach to jewellery by introducing colorful papers – small and precious works of art with a plastic dimension and soul. Verde combines precious paper and recycled paper from books and such into jewelry that passes and mixes the styles of ages. Modernity, timelessness, and originality are embodied in her collections with incredible shapes and colors.