A Well-measured Distance. On Volcanism in Therese Hilbert's Jewellery

 
In order to depict the inferno at close quarters, the phenomenon of hollowness has to first be reduced to clear and simple forms. This means that the complex spaces we connect with the volcano, such as mountains, holes, bubbles, craters and calderas have to be evened out to elementary geometric figures such as circles, ellipses and cones, functioning like the letters of an alphabet and capable of spelling out the volcanic experience. Starting out with such elementary geometric figures, Hilbert unfolds an elaborate phenomenology of the orifices, through which the inner fire of the earth breaks out. Almost unintentionally, the volcano becomes a metaphor of human expression.
 
The second step in the process of depicting the inferno is to break down the visible expression of volcanic energies – the erupting terrestrial fire, the luminous vapors of the fumaroles, the glow of molten rocks – to basic colors like red, black and yellow.
 
The outcome of these two steps are (1) a set of geometricized forms representing the orifices of eruption and (2) a set of basic colors representing the erupting energies. In a third step, these two sets can be synthesized to produce specifically “volcanic” objects.


7.
Such a combination of analysis, reduction and synthesis, which are the constitutive steps involved in Hilbert’s artistic activity, can be discerned in the brooches of the Nea Kameni (1996) group. The title of the group translates literally as the Newly Burned and refers to the youngest of the Kamenes islands in the Santorini archipelago. All these islands derive from the conic orifices of eruption asssociated with the intense volcanic activity in this part of the Aegean Sea. Accordingly, the works of this group, crafted from blackened and bent silver sheet, are a series of variations on the basic form of the cone. At times, the conic form ends in an apex, at other times we have a truncated cone with the apex sliced off along a conic section to reveal a crater from which occasionally the form of a silver ignition cord or an amorphous image of fire emerges.


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1996.
Silver blackened, coral. ø 6.9 x d 3 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli
Collection of Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1996.
Silver blackened, coral. 7.3 x d 4.2 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1996.
Silver blackened. ø 5.7 x d 3.7 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1996.
Silver blackened, coral. ø 6.1 x d 3.8 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1996.
Silver blackened. ø 5.3 x d 4 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli



In one of these objects, the crater is shaped like a gaping wound that extends across the apex to reveal an overflowing mass of red coral. Another object evokes the tongue-like flames of an erupting subterranean fire through a rippled mass of coral emerging from a slit on the conical surface. In a third piece, the curved surface of the cone is a network of holes shaped as flattened circles, swarming out from the crater downward and getting larger as they approach the base. In another piece, a broad, tapering strip is cut into the cone’s surface directly below the crater’s brim and bent into a spiral that winds its way upwards, encompassing thereby the overflowing mass of a coral. As one of the recurring colors constituting the phenomenon of volcanism, red indicates the energies of volcanic eruption.
 
Thus, what we experience in these works are, firstly, the twin entities of form and force. There is on the one hand the hollow form as a combination of a geometricized shell with the reduced color of blackened silver. And then there is on the other hand the dynamism of volcanic forces, represented by a combination of glowing colors and amorphous masses of materials like coral or vulcanite. The contrast between the precisely formed hollow shape and the colored, unformed material masses indicates the prior analytical distinction between form and color mentioned above. Secondly, elements such as the geometricized forms or the elementary colors red, blue and yellow derive from a prior reduction of the complexities of volcanic phenomena to rudimentary elements meant to combine like the letters of an evolving “alphabet” and provide the semiotic basis for an artistic articulation of the volcanic experience. Thirdly, the jewellery object itself emerges as a re-combination or synthesis of the “letters” of these two groups of previously distinguished and reduced elements to yield a jewellery object that can be read as a metaphor for the volcanic processes in the depth of its future individual wearer.


Therese Hilbert. Brocches: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened and painted. ø 5.8 x 2.3 cm, ø 5.8 x 2 cm, ø 5.8 x d 2 cm.
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened and painted. ø 5.8 x d 1.7 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli
Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened, lacquer. ø 5.8 x d 1.8 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli
Collection of the mudac, Musée de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains



Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened and painted. ø 4.8 x d 2 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened and painted. 3.8 x 4.4 x 6 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened and painted. ø 5.8 x d 3.5 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2004.
Silver blackened and painted. ø 6.0 x d 3.4 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli



8.
Nonetheless, the concrete relationship between form and color in these early works remains pretty simple: as color bursting out of the hollow space of a grey conic form, indicating a subterranean fire. In Hilbert’s later works, this relationship is subjected to a complex variation. A few objects from the series Glut (Embers) (2004) can be taken to illustrate the point. In these pieces, the material vehicle of color is no longer an amorphous substance, but rather a two-dimensional, varnished silver sheet, cut out into clear shapes. The central question at this stage of Hilbert’s artistic research is, whether there can be specific forms inherent to phenomena like fire, force, color – a form of color for instance, depicted by a flickering red disc perforated by holes and slits, placed on the broad brim or base of a silver receptacle; or a circular, ocher-colored disc with a hole in the middle, forming a kind of chaplet around the crater opening; or a yellow rectangle protruding out of a slit cut laterally across the cone’s curved flank; or the straight line of a lacquered red silver strip jutting out of the flank, extending from below the tip to almost as far as the base.


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2007
Iron, silver blackened, silver painted. ø 6.8 x d 3.6 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Another connection between form and color yields the later “Glowing Ember” brooches of the group Yali (2009). Each of the pieces has the form of a silver hemisphere, the curved surface of which is a mesh of elongated holes, while the inner face of the base is lacquered with volcanic colors to produce the visible effect of a subterranean luminescence through the mesh.
 
In these pieces, the volcanic energy is revealed through a second distance, hitting the eye as an Apollonian glow. For there is on the one hand a first distance, which is the lateral distance between a human eye and the distant glow of a crater. And there is on the other hand a second distance, which is the vertical distance of a technically created depth, reminiscent of the fiery deeps of the earth. It is the intersection of these two distances that engenders the possible existence of these pieces, each of which presents a hollow form with a net-like hemispherical surface and a lacquered glow in its entrails. The cross of the two distances functions as a rudimentary Apollonian machine, structuring the materiality of the brooch and fashioning it into a wearable image of the original volcanic inferno.

 
9.
Another tendency of Hilbert’s work is to radicalize the analytical distinction between form and color by augmenting their difference till they become materially autonomous objects. Such a tendency is in a sense built into Hilbert’s artistic endeavor throughout, which consists in plumbing the limits of a well-measured distance, dissociating form from color and recombining both to new types of objects. Continuing the process a step further leads us to a threshold, beyond which form and color are incarnated in their own specific materialities and do not need each other any longer. Such a zone, in which the colorful forces of glow and the conical orifices of eruption no longer connect, is manifested repeatedly in Hilbert’s later works.


Therese Hilbert. Pendant: Untitled, 2007.
Silver, lacquer. Approx. Ø 9 to 10 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli
Private Collection



Therese Hilbert. Pendant: Untitled, 2006.
Silver blackened. 6.8 x 13.8 x 0.5 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Pendant: Untitled, 2006.
Silver blackened. 16 x 7 x 0.05 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli



One example is a pendant with two component parts, dating from 2007. Each of the two parts, both in close contact and capable of hanging parallelly, is a round, silver disc with manifold perforations, lacquered red and furnished with an irregular, wavy rim. As the two discs lie against each other, they not only generate the effect of a more complex network of perforations, but also unfold a new kind of depth: the layered depth of a flaming, latticed surface or, better, of color that has become form, capable of evoking volcanic energies without alluding to the orifices or the events of their eruption. Two further works of blackened silver, created earlier in 2006, can in a sense be regarded as the negatives of the said pendant. These are also pendants, made of a single piece each and consisting in a perforated, flame-shaped disc. But their main difference from the 2007 piece is that all color seems to have drained from them, leaving behind what looks like the charred remnant of an igneous substance, coagulated to pure form. The relentless arc of abstraction ends with the withdrawal of all color, retaining only the flickering flame-form of energy.


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Schwarze Berge, 2016.
MDF, steel. 6.2 x 5.7 x 2.2 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli

Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Schwarze Berge, 2016.
MDF, steel. Various sizes.
Photo by: Otto Künzli



However: not only color, but also form can be affected by the power of abstraction, as evidenced in the brooches of the group Schwarze Berge (Black Mountains, 2015/16) made of MDF. The pieces in question are small, black sculptures, marking a departure from the pure geometry of the conical form and returning to the irregularities of natural volcanic shapes, evoking things like domes, towers, huts, cone-shaped hills, occasionally with veins carved out on their surfaces. Nonetheless, the conical form, categorically disconnected from the colored materials of earlier works, remains the formal base of these small jewellery objects that seem to present themselves with their irregular shapes as variations of a single basic form. Devoid of all color, devoid of the opposition between colored materials and conically formed silver sheet as in the earlier pieces, these objects are characterised by a complete lack of orifices, bubbles and crater openings. With their windowless solidity and their unbroken black, they seem to have completely soaked up the enigma of a force-filled cavity and the vagaries of eruption. What remains is the charred core of the volcanic form: the quasi conical mountain, disassociated from the fire and force of eruption.
 

10.
Thus, two paths of abstraction emerge in the course of Hilbert’s artistic explorations: turning away from color and turning away from the hollow form. A prefiguration of these two options can be discerned in the early objects of the Nea-Kameni group with their dualism of color and form. The eruption of color and colored material requires an incision, an opening, an interruption on the curved surface of a blackened, conical silver sheet, manifesting the relationship between form and color as a sharp contrast and anticipating their later material autonomy as a radicalization of abstraction. Materialized color is the fruit of turning away from form, as exemplified in an object like the flaming red pendant (2007). Materialized form is the fruit of turning away from color, as exemplified in the Black Mountain series (2015/16).
 
In these early works, one can also detect the beginnings of another trend that comes to fruition in the later works. In the Nea-Kameni objects, the material vehicle of the colors of fire is either coral or vulcanite. In geological terms, corals have no connection to the world of volcanoes. They are neither stone, nor do they stem from an eruption. According to Darwinian theory, they can at most be said to occasionally “cooperate” with volcanoes to produce riffs, by growing on the peaks of volcanoes as these sink towards the ocean floor. Vulcanite, by contrast, is a material that stems from the actual volcanic process. Accordingly, it can be employed as a metonymy of eruption. The implication is, that vulcanite represents the overall activity of the volcano in a fundamentally different manner than coral. The shift from coral to vulcanite thus documents a transition from the symbolism of color to the metonymy of a material.
 

11.
The trend towards the metonymy of a material is fully developed in Hilbert’s later works, in which we witness an unequivocal and abundant use of other volcanic materials such as obsidian or lava. The old dualism of form and color has transitioned to a contrast between the conic cavity as a form and solid bodies of volcanic stone as a metonymic reference.


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 2009.
Silver blackened, obsidian. ø 6.4 x d 4.4 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli



One example is a conical silver brooch from 2009 with several spherical bulges on the cone’s surface. Beside one of the bulges, indicating escaping steam, the curved surface of the cone is studded with a large irregular dome of obsidian, the flat base evoking the instant when the stone breaks through the curvature of the hollow conical form, indicating not only continuous volcanic activity, but also continued discharge of subterranean matter. The brooch thus appears as a frozen image of the volcanic process, marking the moment, in which which the interiority of the earth begins to break through into the open and functioning henceforth as a sculpted metaphor of expression.


Therese Hilbert. Pendant: Untitled, 2008.
Silver, obsidian. ø 4.7 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Pendant: Untitled, 2008.
Silver, obsidian. ø 4.8 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Pendant: Untitled, 2009.
Silver blackened, lava stone. ø 4.8 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli



Another example for the metonymy of the material is a series of pendants from 2008 to 2010. These are all hollow spheres of silver or blackened silver with the top sliced off through diverse latitudinal cuts, revealing to the eye circular openings and directing the gaze into the interior of the hollow form. In addition, the inner or outer surfaces of these objects are studded with obsidian or lava beads. In some of the pieces, a swarm of obsidian beads are stuck to the inner surface, which, owing to their density and emplacement, create the impression of lying low and waiting and being on the verge of breaking through the surface to fly out into the open. Such objects function as volcanological metaphors of the earth, because they indicate matter in motion within the hollow of the planet, and interpret the volcanic process as a swarm of subterranean centrifugal forces thrusting out beads of volcanic stone like a geodermic rash.
 

12.
One can thus see Hilbert’s objects as terminal points of the trajectories of her manifold volcanic experiences. They can each be taken as an incarnation of a well-measured distance, appearing in their diversity as variations on a singular and complex response to a primal encounter with the sublime.
 
Knowledge, as Walter Benjamin once formulated, comes “only in flashes of lightning. The text is the long roll of thunder that follows.”[4] Such an imagery can be applied to experience in general and, more specifically, to encounters with the sublime, occurring as flashes of lightning that constitute experience and stimulate expression. The long roll of thunder unfolds as a discourse on the sublime: as words or images, or as combinations of both. Hilbert’s objects can in a sense be listened to as Benjamin’s roll of thunder: as a variety of responses to the lightning flashes of encounters with volcanoes.
 

13.
But what has all of this got to do with jewellery? Certainly, there is no denying that Hilbert’s objects demonstrate great technical precision and craftswomanship. They are also an expression of her passionate interest in a natural phenomenon that is all too hesitant in disclosing its secret. The thought process that engenders these objects, is certainly of an extraordinary, unbroken consistency. Considering them as recurrent responses to the experience of encountering the sublime, one still senses in them the impact of such encounters. Yet the question remains: To what extent is this jewellery at all, and not miniature sculpture for instance, reframed as jewellery?
 
 
14.
Unlike other genres of art such as painting, sculpture or photography, jewellery has a dual relationship to the human body, which is simultaneously a surface of display and an object of adornment. As an expression of a primordial human drive to modify one’s own surface, the common trait that jewellery shares with the skin and the surface is the ambivalence of a limit. To the extent that it consists of materials traditionally originating in the earth and that its making involves physical force and technical skill, jewellery belongs to the external world. But to the extent that it nestles on the body, skin, dress, and can barely be distinguished from the adorned individual, jewellery is an expression of the inner life of the individual. And yet, jewellery is neither the one nor the other, but rather a signifier, pointing at the same time in two opposing directions: towards the distant, unknown reality outside us and towards the distant, unknown reality within us.
 
One also encounters such a dualism in the volcanic experience, which generates metaphors, not unlike other types of intense experience. For a volcano is not only the distant peril with the potential of devastating all human accomplishment, but also a metaphor for human nature itself and therefore capable of mirroring us. Thus a mountain of fire, shaped as a vault on the surface of the earth with a hole in its middle, is reminiscent of a wound as the seat of human agony, in which we habitually experience ourselves and bond with ourselves. Likewise, the sudden and unpredictable nature of a volcanic eruption is reminiscent of the suddenness of human passions. For, as Sophocles has his choir sing in Antigone, there is so much around us that fills us with awe, but nothing is more awe-striking than humans, who tame nature and set up the laws of human coexistence, and yet are themselves capable of violating these.[5]
 
In a sense, therefore, human existence is placed between two volcanoes. The one can erupt beneath our feet and destroy our physical existence. The other can erupt from within us and destroy our social existence.
 
 
15.
Such a connection involves two different kinds of dualism. On the one hand, there is the two-pronged reference mentioned above, attributable to jewellery as a signifier. On the other hand, there is the metaphorical reduplication of the volcano as a geological and an anthropological reality. Hilbert’s jewellery objects involve both kinds of dualism, evoking volcanic explosions as well as eruptions in the depth of their human wearer. Such dual dualism derives from the volcanic form of these objects, which functions both as a signifier, due to its dual reference to reality outside and within us, and a metaphor, which combines the physical volcano outside with the anthropological volcano within us. With her choice of form, color and material inspired by the intensity of her own volcanic experiences, Hilbert fashions objects, in which jewellery as a signifier and jewellery as a metaphor are both presented in full bloom. Put it in Hegelian terms, jewellery comes into its own in them. It is as if the sheer, dual mode of existence of jewellery worked its way through a material to ultimately end up as these objects. The catalyst for such a process remains the volcanic encounter.
 

16.
A typical function of a metaphor is to link together two images. Hilbert’s jewellery objects are metaphors that have become tangible: thing-metaphors combining the external and the internal volcano into a single image. As the distant image of an external calamity and an equally distant image of an inner peril, they incorporate two distinct and independent strategies of distancing, to emerge as variations of a duplicated distance: a well-measured distance with regard to latent human passions and a well-measured distance with regard to the explosive forces populating a human environment.


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1993.
Silver. 7.5 x 4.8 x 4.5 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1994.
Silver. 7.5 x 4.5 x 3.3 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1993.
Silver. 4.4 x 3.6 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1994.
Silver. 7.3 x 4.2 x 3.7 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1991.
Silver. 8.5 x 6.4 x 2.5 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1991.
Silver. 8.2 x 4.1 x 4.3 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli


Therese Hilbert. Brooch: Untitled, 1991.
Silver. 5.5 x 2.8 cm
Photo by: Otto Künzli



17.
It is therefore not surprising, that in Hilbert’s artistic biography the exploration of the inner world, more specifically the inner world of woman, precedes her encounter with the volcano. An example of the former are the pieces belonging to the series Emotionen (Emotions) (1991–1994). Almost all of these works, which are older than the objects of the Nea-Kameni group, are hollow forms of silver sheet with elliptical or circular openings, from which pointed, jagged or tongue-shaped forms protrude. Just as with the Nea-Kameni pieces, the starting point of these works is the hollow form and the explosive forces erupting from within. Through a discernible aesthetics of eruption, they evoke the volcano as a metaphor for the inner forces and seem to function as a preparatory stage for a later, more explicit reflection on the world of volcanoes.

When the volcano functions as a metaphor for passion, it signifies passion as a metaphor for the volcano.
 

18.
In mythical societies the world often is often experienced in different forms. The snake can be a rope, a root or a jagged streak of lightning. Such a plural perception of the world as an open series of parallel visual universes can only be organized through a metaphorological practice. The young Nietzsche attempted to reclaim such a metaphorology for modern thought[6] by demonstrating that metaphors are by no means restricted to the sphere of language – as suggested by conventional rhetoric – but that they permeate our entire sensory awareness. Such a connection explains how an initial chaos of visible, audible, tactile impressions can ultimately appear as a metaphorological order of images mounted together within the bounds of a well-measured distance.
 
To sum up the thought figure at the root of Hilbert’s jewellery pieces: The volcano is not only to be taken as the sublime external to us, rendering the ground beneath our feet unsafe and revealing the limits of a finite human existence, but also as the sublime internal to us, that we cannot rein in, that is capable of breaking out of us at any instant. The latter is comparable with the tremendum proclaimed by the mystics of old, rising from our own depths in a specific phase of the mystical process and threatening to blow us apart: as something that is within us and yet remains unknown to us and surpasses us. Consequently, Hilbert’s jewellery objects – with their chiseled perfection and the logic of their successive emergence – result from an intellectual process, in which the dual status of the sublime, fluctuating between an external and an internal reality, is taken apart and reassembled.
 
It is in this sense, that Hilbert’s studio can be said to function as a workshop for metaphors, fashioning a whole spectrum of modalities of a well-measured distance and enabling the creation of a jewellery that functions as a metaphor of expression.




Notes:

About the author

Pravu Mazumdar studied physics in New Delhi and Munich and has a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Stuttgart. He writes in German and English, and his books, which use themes like migration and consumerism to unfold a diagnosis of modernity, are closely connected to French Postmodernism, in particular, the philosophy of Michel Foucault. His book on jewellery was published in 2015 under the title: "Gold und Geist: Prolegomena zu einer Philosophie des Schmucks" (“Gold and Mind: Prolegomena towards a Philosophy of Jewellery”), Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.