In the best of cases, it can be hard to know where a well-made piece of jewelry ends and an art object begins. Designers increasingly seek not just to answer this question, but to play in the space it creates, the tension between intimacy and distance adding new dimension to their craft. Blurring the line betwen wearable heirlooms and everyday objects, five creators reveal their findings.
Charlotte Chesnais
Charlotte Chesnais blurs the line between jewelry and sculpture: Designs anticipate aesthetic enjoyment whether on the body or in the home. Organic forms take on new life as freestanding artworks, shifting from a personal pleasure to a communal one.
“Jewelry-making felt like a natural extension of my design inclination, a creative epiphany of sorts. I found that immersing myself in the atelier, sculpting metal and molding wax, provided the best means to define my artistic language.” - Charlotte Chesnais
Sophie Buhai
Mixing surrealist flair with humorous aplomb, Sophie Buhai reconceives personal keepsakes as covetable treasures. A joint holder and a flask become artful adornments as worthy of an evening out as being passed down.
"There was a time when it was common to have beautiful everyday objects—a well-made silver pen, a lighter, a cigarette case. We can still do that today, in a modern way.” - Sophie Buhai
Alighieri
Objects become offerings in the hands of Alighieri's Rosh Mahtani, evoking life’s arc through carefully crafted metals. A silver skeleton barrette is the delicacy of mortality made manifest, and an homage to the beauty of precarity.
“Ritual plays a big part in my life, and jewelry is very ritualistic. We wear certain pieces to remind us of a person, to make us feel brave, to symbolize a relationship or a time in our life." - Rosh Mahtani
Tiffany & Co.
One of the last century’s most iconic an denduring It-girls, Elsa Peretti’s designs for Tiffany & Co.—homages to the humility and purity of life’s origins—are sculptural works in their own right. With a simple bean-inspired pillbox, Peretti mastered the jewelry-object divide, creating a piece at once intimate and functional.
"I am jewelry and objects together. This is the Elsa Peretti name to me." - Elsa Peretti, TIME, 2013
Cartier
Cartier Libre crafts embodiments of the unexpected. A carabiner undergoes a glowing metamorphosis, becoming a watch dappled in snow-set diamonds—at once beautiful and functional.
“Each creation could easily stand on its own as a beautiful piece of jewelry, but we’ve fit movements where they don’t necessarily ‘belong.’ The watch’s presence is part of the surprise.” - Marie Laure Cérède
