Long live the ring!

Artist list

Karl Fritsch

Karl Fritsch is one of the post New Jewellery generation of jewellery makers, the revolution which brought a new perspective and élan to jewellery design between the nineteen sixties and eighties. His generation does not rebel against the history of jewellery or disregard it, but explores and reinterprets what had gone on before. Fritsch doesn’t do anything else but this – and with evident pleasure. A classic ring or brooch is some-times literally reused but with unexpected additions like small, kneaded gold balls or heaps of coloured stones. Sometimes a piece of jewellery is blackened so that it only reveals its secrets when actually worn… In his recent collection Fritsch gives a new look to the conventional gemstone ring, for instance by drilling one or more holes into the stone. Here, the ring, often the main feature of a ritual, is now, in its turn, part of a ritual and thus draws all the attention to itself.

Paul Derrez