What Makes Jewellery Valuable? Spotlight Artworks by Klimt02

To address the big question, I turned to two books that offer solid ground for thinking about jewellery in all its dimensions: Habla Joya, Habla by Mar Juan Tortosa (2025), which attempts to articulate a system for reading and constructing the visual language of jewellery, and Jewellery in Context by Marjan Unger, first published in Dutch in 2010 and later in English in 2019, which approaches jewellery through its social life, its history, its cultural weight and its economic reality.

Why these two books? Because both attempt to answer the question of what jewellery is. Which leads to the others following: when does something become jewellery, and what makes it precious? Their aim is not just to describe objects, but to establish a framework and to understand the systems through which jewellery acquires meaning. By seeking to situate and identify the different levels of value within jewellery, both authors help clarify the foundations on which jewellery operates. These foundations matter because they allow contemporary jewellery to be understood not as a series of isolated experiments, but as a field with its own logics, languages and criteria.

Yet this desire to establish foundations is not restrictive, and I'm a believer in the to define is not to confine. Is to make visible the richness of the mechanisms that shape jewellery and the contexts in which it is activated. It is to make clear that jewellery cannot be understood only through its materiality or its appearance. Definition, in this sense, allows jewellery to stay in dialogue with visual arts, applied arts, craft, cultural heritage and human history, without losing its specificity. Both books share the common thread: the clearer the ground, the wider the possibilities.

Mar Juan Tortosa writes that jewellery is a precious object that claims to be necessary of its own accord, rather than through imposition. It is a particularly accurate definition, placing jewellery within that ambiguous space between necessity and desire. Jewellery is not essential in a functional sense; we can live without it. And yet it persists. It is made, worn, collected, exchanged, and kept across time. Because it acts. It acts on the body, on self-perception, on the gaze of others, and on how we position ourselves in the world. It produces a shift in scale, an extension of the self.

In Jewellery in Context, Marjan Unger shows, through a detailed nomenclature of terms and categories, that the value of jewellery cannot be reduced to economics alone. It is formed through overlapping layers that constantly interact. Value is not located solely in the object, but in the relationship between object and subject. Jewellery becomes at once material, social, historical, artistic and emotional.

Distinguishing between these forms of value is not about fixing jewellery into a definition, but about understanding the range of meanings it holds. This Spotlight by Klimt02 builds on these frameworks to further articulate the different value systems they outline. It therefore explores five dimensions of value, not to close meaning, but to keep it in motion.


The material and monetary value is perhaps the most immediately recognisable. It is based on the nature of the materials used, their rarity, weight and market value. Gold, silver, precious stones and pearls allow for a relatively stable market value to be established. This gives jewellery a function as investment, store of wealth or means of exchange, a role that dates back to the Neolithic period. From this early stage, jewellery already served to concentrate and transport wealth, acting as one of the first forms of exchangeable value within human societies.

Yet this seemingly tangible value also relies on a kind of collective agreement. It depends on trust placed in certain materials, but also on shared stories and conventions. Gold has value because we agree that it does. Diamonds carry value because a whole set of economic, cultural and symbolic systems sustains that belief. Monetary value is just something we have built.

Historic diamonds make this very clear. The Pink Star Diamond reaches extraordinary prices on the market because of its rarity, size and quality, but also because it has become an icon within the diamond world. The Crown Jewels, meanwhile, are priceless not only because of their material worth, but because they will never be sold. They hold history, authority and continuity. Their value lies as much in their material presence as in the trust we collectively place in what they represent.
Timothy Information Limited. Badge: Not for Sale, 2011. Copper, €20 banknote, stainless steel. From series: BLacK & bLUe & (yellow). Photo by Simon Armitt.


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This is where historical value comes into play: when a jewel moves beyond its materiality to become the carrier of a narrative that reinforces its legitimacy. History acts as an additional layer of value, transforming what we see into symbol.

Historical value emerges when a jewel enters a story. The Affair of the Diamond Necklace is an obvious example. A diamond necklace intended for Marie-Antoinette becomes a major political scandal, even though she never wore it. The object wasn't even worn, yet it disappeared, but its story remains active. Sometimes it is no longer the material that carries value, but the narrative attached to it.
In a similar, though less dramatic way, Les Bijoux de la Castafiore shows this dynamic. No real disappearance, but an accumulation of projections, tensions and misunderstandings in which the jewels become a narrative trigger.



A replica of the legendary Marie-Antoinette necklace worn by actress Viviane Romance in L'Affaire du collier de la Reine, directed by Marcel L'Herbier in 1946.



Social value, or jewellery as a means of identity marking, operates as a system of signs.
A sign: something perceived that refers to something else, allowing us to infer meaning or existence. Jewellery then says something about the person who wears it. A wedding ring, a slogan pin, a religious pendant, an earring worn on one side only, a ring signalling commitment or belonging… all these elements indicate a position, a belief or an identity.

But these signs never function in isolation. Their reading always depends on a shared context. And this is where social value meets, in a way, historical value: a sign never exists outside its field. It is always situated within a culture, an era, and a set of parameters that make its reading possible.
These signs make complex social processes legible. Their strength lies precisely in their format: portable, close to the body, reduced in scale. Jewellery becomes a tool for reading the social, not by simplifying reality, but by condensing it.

Médailles merdeuses by Sophie Hanagarth reuse the codes of recognition in order to subvert them. It no longer simply signals a position within a system but exposes its internal logic, revealing the artist's critical intent.



Sophie Hanagarth. Brooch: Médailles merdeuses, 1999. Tinplate steel (tin can) or steel sheet (tin can), leather and steel.



The artistic value, already explored in the Klimt02 article How and When a Piece Becomes a Classic?, lies in a jewel’s ability to create a strong visual presence, a coherent language, and a lasting dialogue between form, material, intention and wearer. It also emerges through the way materials are explored and used in direct relation to the piece’s conceptual direction. Artistic value is built through resonance with broader histories of forms and narratives, and through a work’s capacity to continue producing meaning over time. A piece gains artistic value not only through innovation but through its ability to generate interpretations, engaging viewers across contexts and generations.



Manfred Bischoff. Brooch. Pas quale, 1995. Fine gold, glass (found object).


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Gilles Jonemann. Pendant: Spanner and diamond, 1975. 5-carat diamond, steel.



Finally, the personal and emotional value is perhaps the strongest, but also the most difficult to grasp. It is formed within an intimate relationship between object and person. A jewel becomes memory, connection, trace. It can be transmitted, given and/or associated with a moment in life. From that point, its value has nothing to do with price. It becomes entirely subjective, and yet extremely meaningful. 

These values escape systems of measurement without being any less important. There is something deeply romantic in this idea. Jewellery can stand for what we never fully possess, and it is precisely this distance that makes it desirable. Like a memento, it keeps alive things.

The works of Lin Cheung, with their narrative devices, illustrate this capacity of jewellery to hold the ungraspable. The jewel becomes the material trace of a moment impossible to preserve otherwise. A frozen memory, a held presence or a rendered emotion.

Florian Clemens Meier’s Zahnkette pushes this idea of memory and intimate traces further into a more uneasy territory. Gold teeth taken from the artist’s family are threaded onto dental floss, a material that contrasts with the apparent value of what it holds, yet is itself made from historically rich materials such as silk and beeswax. The piece navigates between personal history and a more unsettling collective imagery, where value shifts between inheritance and what remains.



Lin Cheung. Pendant: Through and through, 2005. Silver, gold.



Florian Clemens Meier. Zahnkette, 2025. Human teeth (from relatives of the artist), dental gold, natural silk & beeswax (dental floss). Photo by: Mirei Takeuchi.



These exposed values are never separate. They overlap, intersect and contaminate one another. A single jewel can embody all these values at once, and it is perhaps here that its true complexity lies. Jewellery becomes a system of values held in constant tension between matter, narrative, body, gaze and context. Perhaps the question is therefore no longer simply where the preciousness is, but why we, humans, continue, across centuries and cultures, to invest objects with meaning in the first place and why it matters. Why do certain objects become carriers of memory, desire, identity or power, while others remain silent? Jewellery does not only reflect value(s). It reveals the systems through which value itself is constructed.



Philip Sajet. Francis Bacon Necklace, 1992. Gold, diamonds. Man now realizes that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason. He thinks of life as meaningless; he creates certain attitudes which give it a meaning while he exists, though they in themselves are meaningless.


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About the author

Cécile Maes graduated from ENSA Limoges in design, specialising in Contemporary Jewellery. Her interest in jewellery grows from the human relationships games it involves. Social object, jewellery creates narratives and becomes a sign. Investigating classical typologies, her work is a re-interpretation where historical references and everyday exploration connect ideas to speak about jewellery, the reasons why we wear it and the meanings we give to it. Since 2023, she's been Content Editor at Klitm02. 

Mail: cecile@klimt02.net
Instagram: cilce_maes