Jewellery - Bearer of Stories

JEWELLERY - BEARER OF STORIES

"Therefore I am inclined to regard the custom of adorning oneself with jewellery as a sign of the primitive nobility of the human soul. The races that our confused and distorted culture likes, with such utter conceit and self-glory, to look upon as wild, instinctively grasp, as the child also does, the high spirituality of dressing. Through their naive fondness for anything that glitters, colourful ornaments and lustrous clothes... the savage and the baby evince their dislike of the real, thus unintentionally attesting to the immateriality of their souls."

Charles Baudelaire

MAN AS AN OBJECT AMONG OTHER OBJECTS

Jewellery in the broad sense of the concept was one of the first means used by man to express both his aesthetic pursuits and his relationship to his community and to nature. From the viewpoint of western culture, the history of jewellery is estimated to have begun some 30,000 years ago. The oldest finds discovered in both women’s and men’s graves are necklaces and bracelets made of shells. What jewellery meant to prehistoric man has been studied by cultural anthropologists: originally these ornaments attached to the human body are thought to have served sacred purposes.

Endeavouring to comprehend his environment and the objects surrounding him, man has also sought to understand the innermost qualities of individual and community. With his hands man shapes his environment, striving to create space for his systematic culture in the midst of chaotic nature. From the human point of view, the world can be conceived as a texture of objects and events in which man, through his body, partakes, as an object among other objects. It is the visual aspects of this texture that are reflected and represented in the images (works) he makes.

According to comparative studies of religion, these textures are embedded in a body of myths, which indivíduals assimilate through tradition. Man builds his view of the world upon a foundation of tradition sifted through his individual character. Tradition is reflected in man’s behaviour, while mythical material, present in the background, remains inarticulate. Shaping the objects in his environment, man constantly rearranges tradition and gives life to mythical material. Jewellery, objects close to man, either constitutes part of a system of sacred mythic symbols or actualizes mythic tradition in profane, everyday uses.

Within comparative studies of religion it has been asserted that the proper realm of myths is in the rite, a religious ceremony upheld by external cultural signs, such as jewellery. Myths have traditionally been considered to take on the form of a narrative, but contemporary cultural studies have extended this view: myths are now understood to appear in a visual form in films, photography and various everyday phenomena.

1 © Petteri Ikonen

Actualized through language, image and form, mythical material thus provides a mental foundation existing at a preverbal stage. Tradition handed down from the past is represented in a perpetual structure, time, or, more specifically, current time, by means of symbols. They become associated with objects, stories and images as a result of man’s deliberate choices, or in the form of an unquestioned heritage. In conscious acts sign symbols are frequently used as extrinsic decorations attached to the surface of objects, mainly to convey preconceived chains of thought. Employing signs in this way, chance, which is pertinent to the expression of jewellery - and characteristic of all creative pursuits, is eliminated.

Aboriginal tribes have traditionally seen the human body as part of the material that their jewellery is made of. For them the most important objects falling within the scope of jewellery have been personal amulets, talismans, tattoos, piercings and various kinds of deformation. In addition to these, each tribe has had its own fetishes, idols and masks.

PRODUCT OR ARTEFACT?

When studying fetishes, or images of god, and jewellery, it is most interesting to look for parallels between their history and what we today conceive of as sculpture and jewellery art. These two art forms presumably shared the same long span of early history. Their divergence coincided with the differentiation of various trades and other tasks within communities. Orientated towards community and deity though they are, objects falling under the concept of jewellery have developed to fulfill various functions from an individual’s starting-points. Fetishes, on the other hand, have been collectively shared instruments used for upholding rituals. This accounts for the differences shown by the two groups of objects in their relationship to man’s mental and spiritual conception of space.

Fetishes have served as objects of worship shared by a family or community, acting also as charms to avert evil. In addition, they may have been adored as abodes of ancestors’ spirits. Amulets and talismans have been worn as protection against the unknown, and to strengthen one’s position in the community.

Personal jewellery has borne an individual’s “set of instructions”, or that part of mythical material which has been inscribed with tradition as well as a pictorial representation of his relationship to nature, power and the configuration of the world. The various significations are coded into culturally determined choices of material, form, colour and symbol.

Fetish-like objects serving collective functions constitute a part of a living heritage of myths that is shared by individuals in the same culture. Conveying the “pattern” of man’s mythical primary material, they unite the community behind the same unidentifiable narrative.

2 © Petteri Ikonen

Looking for present-day fetishes and amulets in contemporary sculpture and jewellery art, whatever shape they may have taken, we perceive a division of a new kind: in both art forms they fall into groups that are either product-like or have affinities with works of art.

Within both sculpture and jewellery art, product-like objects can be found that uphold their cultural context, its values, its image of god and man, its conception of time. They feature the basic physical element of “publicity”, which involves appearing in notable contexts the purpose of which is to strengthen unity in a community.

Both art forms also provide works that serve an individual’s needs by acting as an intermediary element, fulfilling a transferential function. As vehicles of an individual relationship to tradition, such objects enable the spectator-user to experience mind, body and environment as one proportionate whole.

JEWELLERY AS AN EXTENSION TO THE BODY

When attempting to define the concept of jewellery, we are faced with difficulties pertaining to both cultural differences and artistic currents peculiar to each age or period. At present, all objects and visual items that are presented by an artist under the heading of jewellery art can be classified as such in the broadest sense of the term. In a more rigorous sense, jewellery art consists of objects which are attached to the body and through which an artist seeks to express mental impressions.

Perhaps more directly than other art forms, jewellery art combines structures of the outer world and the unconscious realms of human thought. By means of jewellery an individual organizes and defines his personal relationship to religion and power. As a medium of expression, jewellery also influences the mind of anyone interpreting it by opening and closing doors to our mythical heritage.

Pieces of jewellery act as vehicles between man’s external and internal selves. In Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s words: “Objects are a supplement or an extension to my body; they are attached to its flesh, therefore they are to be included in any full definition of it. The world is made out of a substance, the very substance of the body... Visual experiences take place in the midst of objects: wherever anything visible begins to see and becomes visible unto itself by seeing all objects.”

Since the entirety of the world involves continuous interaction between the body and environment, the starting-points of jewellery art can be outlined by modifying a definition given by the art theorist and researcher Tom Sandqvist: “The content of each piece of jewellery is not embodied in its form but in its presence within itself, in space, in my body and in the space between me and the piece of jewellery, in a movement that may change at once and all of a sudden.”

3 © Petteri Ikonen

JEWELLERY AS ART

Present-day Western jewellery art emerged after World War II. It originated with design current across Central Europe and Scandinavia in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The new conception has thrived especially in Germany, Holland, England and the Nordic countries. What made this approach so radically different from former ideas was viewing jewellery as art. The long predominance of precious metal was broken, and particular importance was placed on personal expression. Jewellery was regarded as an artistic medium, thus attention was also paid to the choice of materials.

Informalism, abstract expressionism, new forms of constructivism and other artistic currents of the 1950s and ´60s had a major influence on the inchoative stages of jewellery art. The materials were strongly wrought, the designs forcefully expressive, the structures comprehensive. It was now possible to trangress outdated boundaries between the various trades, to break loose from such restraints as the idea of technical orthodoxy.

At this stage, non-figurative motifs were also introduced, which led to the disappearance of the conventional (i.e. Victorian) frame of reference. Value-laden emblems typical of traditional jewellery, such as coats of arms and guild signs, as well as precious-metal nature imitations with strong overtones of Christian ethics gave way to the technoromantic trends of the ´60s, ready-mades and body art. Artists worked hard to rid their works of the unwanted status of products. Instead they sought to establish themselves and their designs within the domain of pure art, and to go even further than that - to enter the sphere of modern art. The First International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery held in London in 1961 served as a springboard for the art form. It was now entitled to feature in its own right in galleries and museums.

ORNAMENT TO THE BODY AND DECORATION TO THE MIND

After modernist experiments, jewellery art has entered a most interesting phase, where new perspectives open up. Man may now be viewed as a psychophysical fairy tale wrapped in time and equipped with an expressive and changeable heart that bears stories.

It has been characteristic of modernist jewellery art to value the stylistic purity of the medium, to emphasize it as a tool requiring special and effective skills of its user. This led to hermetic reflection upon the inner form of art especially in the 80's. In present-day jewellery art the imaginary and universal qualities of each person's individual memory are more widely recognised. Each individual is understood to carry a story, a verse, a poetic heart of his or her own. In writer Leena Krohn's words:"... as the chalice is passed from one pair of lips to another, so do universal meanings pass from one human being to another".

Thanks to its fresh approach to body and object, jewellery art today features a wide-ranging, multifield medium. At an earlier stage it focused on the classical primary unit of the talisman or the amulet, building upon the direct relationship of mutual dependence between body and object. However, modernism at its effectual stage deliberately sought to dispose of such correlations, emphasizing instead the independence and heroic qualities of objects of art.

As an aftermath of the modernist era, more attention is again being paid to other functional aspects of jewellery: deformation (altering shape of body), transference (acting as intermediary between man and deity or creating networks), and the function of a relic as well as an indicator of status. Now that these aspects inherent in jewellery art have become prominent, it has been possible for artists to widen their scope, either concentrating on the media pertaining to a specific field or mixing a variety of areas together. As a result, the boundaries of conventional jewellery have dissolved, and new media including tattoos, mascots and body building have been adopted.

Jewellery art enables the physical and spiritual closeness of art. Pieces of jewellery are part of the human body, the bodily scale and space. As a means of expression jewellery art obliges us to identify imagery of man's outer and inner world. It enables an intimate meeting between the world beyond words and thinking. Jewellery is an ornament to the body and a decoration to the mind.

PETTERI IKONEN