Hand Medal Project. Jewelers Making Medals in Gratitude to Healthcare Workers

The overall purpose of our Hand Medal Project: we want to express gratitude, we want the medals to say thank you. Ex-votos are not like other jewels: they are made and offered to express gratitude and devotion. This is what we want our hand medals to be and do.


Introduction of the Hand Medal Project.


The quality of the medals is important because we want to show that our craft is exceptionally adept at expressing and representing gratitude in three-dimensional, material form. Each medal represents us, collectively. The work needs to be austere, to not be about the maker, but about the receiver, the frontline workers they are devoted to. We ask you to engage everybody in your network in this collaborative effort: every hand counts, whether you can make one or a hundred. 


Template for the Hand Medals.


Both the making, collecting, and distribution of the medals will take time. The health workers will also need to recover their breath when the worst of this will be over. We, therefore, ask the hand keepers to collect until the end of October 2020. The medals will be handed out on 08.11.2020. Please establish contact with a Hand Giver of your choice. We trust Hand Keepers to know where to find this special nurse or doctor and that they will share this moment of handing out the medals with those who have been in difficult times with them. 


Map with location of the Hand Keepers.


Every hand and its maker will be registered on the website so that recipients may trace their medal’s origins if they wish to do so. The registration process will further allow us to build a progressive graph of gratitude. We invite everybody to send us an image of their hands making. After having been reading pandemic graphics for months - of numbers of deaths, of the global distribution of deaths, daily new cases of contagion, our graphics will draw a different picture - one of thankfulness and devotion.

When a Jeweler signs up for the project, they are assigned a registration code. This code will be engraved onto their medals and will serve to identify them to the receiver. Once the jeweler has finished making the medals, they will send them to the Hand Keeper who will check the quality, make sure they are correctly coded, as well as properly tied with the string and safety pin, as shown in the video. 

When the medals are ready, Hand Keepers can download and print the envelope. Finally, when the medals are packed, Hand Keepers will update a spreadsheet with the number of medals each jeweler has delivered, identifying them with their code.


Template for the Hand Medals envelopes.


While we are all watching caregivers, nurses, and doctors giving all they can to our communities, risking their lives for us, we want to find a way to honor them. They should all get a medal, a votive offering given in gratitude or devotion. At some point, this crisis will end and there will be a moment when we can thank them for all they do. We propose to present as many health workers as we can with a medal based on a traditional ex-voto, also to mark the moment when we can see a future.


Finished Hand Medals, ready to send.


Finished Hand Medals, ready to send.
 

>>Join this ongoing project and download the complete instructions and the template here.
>>For more work and updates follow the Hand Medal Project on Instagram. 
 

About the author

Jimena Ríos, Jewelry maker, studied at the Escola Massana School of Art and Design in Barcelona, Spain. Her final degree project tutor was Manfred Bischoff at Alchimia Contemporary Jewelry School in Florence, Italy. She furthered her education attending workshops by Dorothea Prühl, Ted Noten, Pilar Cotter, and Iris Eichenberg. Her work has been exhibited at specialized galleries such as Marzee in the Netherlands, Pieces of Eight in Australia, and museums such as MAD in the USA. It has also been featured in Collares (2016, Promopress, Barcelona), Anillos (2010, Promopress, Barcelona), Jewellery Using Textiles Techniques: Methods and Techniques: Design and Make (2009, Paperback, London). In 2013 she founded Taller Eloi in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to teach jewelry and organize workshops. She has given lectures about contemporary jewelry history and seminars on narrative jewelry in Argentina and abroad.

After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 1994, Iris Eichenberg worked as an independent artist, art educator, part-time curator, and co-organizer of art-related events. She began teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 1996, where she became Head of the Jewelry Department in 2000. Eichenberg held this position until 2007. In 2006 she accepted an appointment as Artist in Residence and Head of the Metalsmithing Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and began teaching full time there since. She is regularly invited to lecture, act as visiting critic, and give workshops at various art academies in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America.