Blossom by Iris Eichenberg. A Future Classic in Contemporary Jewellery

I still don’t know what this piece is made of, but I know it is a sum of moments. For more than twenty years, I have looked at it and returned to it. It continues to speak to me, and I keep listening carefully.

What I do know is that it marks a moment in contemporary jewelry, a moment that began with this piece and introduced a new way of working with material that is still unfolding.

Through this piece, I understood the idea of body-related objects.” This brooch by Iris Eichenberg addresses the body even when it is not in use, it evokes it. It is made by hand, knitted, marked by time, and charged by the maker through the act of making. In that sense, I feel her body through it, while at the same time it holds its own physicality.

I can imagine it on a jacket, where it makes sense and at the same time feels slightly out of place. I can also see it as a relic—holding that intimacy and power we sometimes attribute to something physical that comes from a visceral place. Something from the body, on the body. It carries corporality without being a body. What stays with me is the tension between materials and form, the way they remain in conversation with each other. What I am trying to understand is that conversation.

That quiet persistence is what allows it to remain present. That is why it can be thought of as a classic of the future: its time is both before and now, as in Dickinson’s poem. It moves beyond known temporality and continues to be revisited by later generations of makers, even those who haven't seen the piece in person.

My choice of the Brooch from the Blossom series (1998) by Iris Eichenberg is perhaps not so original, it is already part of the collection at the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, a place where classics live. But its status as a classic is not about the museum; it is about its ability to keep whispering.

Forever – is composed of Nows
‘Tis not a different time
Except for Infiniteness
And Latitude of Home
From this – experienced Here
Remove the Dates – to These
Let Months dissolve in further Months
And Years – exhale in Years
/ Emily Dickinson



Why Future Classics?
What Makes a Contemporary Jewellery Piece Become a Classic? Our aim is not to define academic criteria or impose any form of conservatism, but to collect subjective perspectives that help us understand the values and expectations shaping our field, without reducing them to fixed rules or hierarchies. By sharing these voices, we invite you to think together and open a conversation about durability, relevance, and the ways particular works contain certain patterns or enigmas that make them continue to speak over time.

 

About the author

Jimena Ríos, lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied jewelry at the Escola Massana (Barcelona, Spain) and Alchimia (Florence, Italy). She is finishing a MA in Curatorial Studies at UNTREF (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In 2013 she founded Taller Eloi, a jewelry school in Buenos Aires. She works as an educator, curator, and editor, contributing texts on jewelry to various specialized media. Together with Iris Eichenberg, she organized the Hand Medal Project.