Lecture by Florence Lehmann at the Koru2 International Contemporary Jewellery Symposium

Since 1998, I has been working on the theme of birth: my work revolves around the analogy between the birth of forms and the birth of human beings, between creation and procreation. Pictures A, B, C. At Koru 2, my lecture/diaporama with 120 slides shows my work from 1986 to 2006.

For Klimt02, to give a good English summary of these twenty years, I choose to present the text by Michèle Heuzé-Joanno for the catalogue of the exhibition, The flesh of words. A common thread in contemporary French jewellery... and the pictures, that she describes.
- Florence Lehmann
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Fl. Lehmann ‘bejewels’ her life, dresses her jewellery. Once, as a young girl, head in the clouds, she transformed part of the sky into a brooch, a cut between two roofs. She shared this dream energy, this softness of the blue sky against the blues of the soul, that of metal as a mirror reflecting life. Then, she fell in love, and her work, with humour, puns, constantly narrated this link. From her happiness was born a little girl, Rosa-Lou. The thought process was once again moved; with maturity, the analysis is more subtle, blending maternity with the questioning of the creative process. Her artistic quests are those of all women, all mothers. Her jewellery touches because each one can find in them his or her own story. They are complicit jewellery, without a sophisticated image. Her assets do not change, she knows the communicative strength of colour, words and symbols.
Her colour is white, her penchant red. White is neutral and red acts as a contrast, with words giving the spirit. In this way, a large bracelet takes on consistency with its title: The empty is full (Le vide est plein) picture 1. The interior, the empty, is red, cut out in the form of a heart. Profiles of faces serve to describe human relationships, uncertainties. Tu me fais tourner la tête, a ring to turn people’s heads- picture 2 . The waltz, another to be balanced where two profiles face one other in a sceptical dilemma- picture 3. On a bracelet, the profiles are linked by a red thread: the secret is in the look picture 4 . The title sometime serves as a riddle or as a link between two elements: Maintenant is a ring where the finger is placed between the inscription “tomorrow” and an old Egyptian medallion, for “yesterday”. The wearer becomes active, you oscillate Between, wisdom and passion, two earrings or pendant- picture 5. The body is active, gestures participating in unveiling the sometimes hidden message. In this way, a ring where “yes” is written on one side and on the other “no”, reflecting the difficulty of speech or the desire of the day- picture 6 … Pushing the involvement of the body and the designer’s taste for words, one earring can only be read when reflected in a mirror.
pictures 1- 6

From the first to all appearances
Why do we wear jewellery? To go out into the world as for the first time, to make us suitable to appear. From the link between this first appearance and the wearing of jewellery to appear, Florence Lehmann studies the mysteries of this.
Think of a ring, a bracelet, a necklace. To put it on, to make it exist, you put it on: and so it is born. Think of yourself, your arrival in this world, this first arrival, this first outing: and so you are born. The journey stops when the child's head appears, stopped at the nose. Fl. Lehmann freezes time to take advantage of the moment and better understand the jewellery and its significance. The necklace, externally, round like an egg, carries within the silhouette of the wearer- picture 7. Through necklaces of large pearls- that can barely be put on, she translates the sensation of this – picture 8, 8’, 8’’. Certain pearls remind us of stylised bones, others round and particularly voluminous, like a belly, bear on a flat side the Mysteries of life: cellular divisions from the first three days in fresh and joyous colours- picture 9, 9’,9’’. On others, the face is covered by the face of a child, masked by gold leaf, which fades with time- picture 10,10’,11. The mystery remains, you can never know everything about somebody, it is through contacts that the veil is lifted.


The internal drawing of the face is taken up again on a gold thread or silver chain, with the faces passing by one another, from one birth to another, between ancestors and children, the jewellery is a chain, a human chain, a genealogical chain- picture 12. In this way, Fl. Lehmann goes back to our roots. On the bracelet, Noah- picture 13, the descendants of the latter are enumerated. Its formal complexity takes up the symbolism again: the calligraphic link, in white latex, holds two shells, the mould for objects to come. Since 1998, Fl. Lehmann has been reflecting on the analogy between the plastic birth of shapes and that of men, between creation and procreation. Her colour, white, is participative here.
“White, on our soul, acts as an absolute silence… it is not a dead silence but one pregnant with possibilities… it is a nothingness full of youthful joy, or to put it better, a nothingness that precedes birth, before all beginnings.”
W. Kandinsky

With the genealogical series of rings- picture 14, 14’, she is pursuing her research on the meaning of the transmission and the mould as a matrix. The imprint is thought of as a complete technique and system for procreation. (...) These notions of a journey, chain, matrix and their analogies to the body have rarely achieved such a subtle reminiscence in jewellery.


by Michèle Heuzé-Joanno
for the catalogue of the exhibition in Cagnes-sur-Mer, summer 2005,
The flesh of words. A common thread in contemporary French jewellery-2016-2016