Conversing with jewellers
by Robyn Sassen
Apartheid brought creative sanctions as well as economic and political ones. One result was that artists received scant exposure. Another was that some discourses were omitted from the litany of western-derived expression.
One of these is jewellery. Bev Price of the Contemporary Jewellery Collective (CJC) quotes Anitra Nettleton, head of WITS School of Arts, saying that a discourse is never consciously written from scratch - it needs to be rewritten into the fabric of contemporary sensibilities.
Together with Price, Geraldine Fenn and Verna Jooste comprise the CJC. "It began as an energy", recalls Fenn, who is reading towards an MA in Fine Art, but has qualifications in Archaeology and Jewellery Design behind her, "Two years ago, we were all working in isolation. We work very differently, but the pieces speak to one other". Now working together, Price, Fenn and Jooste need to establish a modus operandi to move their operation into mainstream culture.
Only Stellenbosch University offers a degree in Jewellery design, and Technikon courses don't include theory or history, essentially reducing the practice to craft.
Since it is small enough to be worn, jewellery manufacture does not demand large facilities. For this reason, jewellers exist everywhere, unacknowledged and in isolation.
Jooste, a Jewellery Design graduate of Technikon Natal, bemoans this. "Cave-dwellers made their bodies beautiful before they made their caves beautiful. It's ironic that all the things that came after have been accepted as art, and the predecessor of all art has been relegated to a craft."
Price concurs referring to how the Art and Crafts Movement, under William Morris, was influential in the west, giving adornment and jewellery its place as serious design.
Jooste develops this, commenting on status and competitiveness, acquisition and possession as key. Contemporary jewellery is cognisant of these values for art, but it's also aware of prejudices that label jewellers not working with gold, quaint parochial manipulators of trinkets. This feeds directly into how feminist ideology confronts the mindset that colours women artists are self-indulgent hobbyists, with no real credibility.
The CJC must confront what preciousness, art and ritual mean. Jewellery has remained the 'poorer cousin' in spite of how it deals with the most expensive material the earth can offer.
CJC is a delegate in Jewellex, the showcase of South Africa's jewellery industry on July, 25 in Sandton. Under the aegis of the Craft Council of South Africa, this forces jewellery into a craft-based paradigm, but on such a mainstream platform, this move is already proactive.
