Danni Schwaag
Jeweller
Published: 21.10.2021
dannischwaag.de
Danni Schwaag is a german based jewellery artist, living and working in Bremen. after being a trainee as a goldsmith she studied gemstone- and jewellery design at Campus Idar-Oberstein and did an Erasmus year in 2006 at the Escola Massana in Barcelona. Danni graduated in 2008. She participated in several group exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and Asia and had solo exhibitions in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and Germany. In 2008 her work was awarded from the Bertha Heraeus und Kathinka Platzhoff Stiftung; Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau and 2013 with the Bremen advancement award for applied art for her collection "l'art pour l'art".
“I am fascinated by materials, their properties and haptics, and how they change while I work. I love to puzzle to find compositions and explore many possibilities.”
Statement
The “personal” in making jewellery, which sometimes rises from an inner impulse, seems to be the most valuable characteristic, and that’s what I want to find for my work. The original idea for a piece of jewellery can transform during the work into something completely unexpected. the process should always stay open. Where does it come from what am I doing? where will it go?There is falling something into me, and that it can fall in, I have to be empty. Is it possible to be empty? Free from thoughts? from these factors and surprises during the work process, which I recognize as a gift, my work is developing.
About Foam
When i search for mother-of-pearl on the internet for my work, i enter words like mother-of-pearl shell, seashell, or pearl oyster into the search engine. The results then show mother-of-pearl shells as decorative objects, e.g. for soap (sometimes also for jewellery). This is how i got the idea to work the soap like the mother of pearl. I carefully begin to grind and mill the soft material. I place the mother-of-pearl bowl and the soap opposite each other and enhance the soap bar by working out the pearly haptics. Then after a few hand washes the “pearls” are washed away. During earlier travels i took the small hand soaps from the hotels and collected them. Then came corona, the end of travelling and the beginning of a lot of hand washing. That’s how the soap became a “cult object” for me. During munich jewellery week 2020 I offered it in the show at gallery door as “pay what you can”, so everyone could wash their hands with a foamy-pearly unique piece. The pearl shell that once functioned as a “soap dish” and “decorative object” is now elaborated with a pearly feel, pearls which originally grow inside the shell. now wearable as a necklace, it lies on the chest like an amulet. the surface structures look astonishingly similar, but the materiality with its characteristics is completely opposite.
About Organ
In the series “organ”, forms are shaped out of mother of pearl inspired by human organs. I mirrored a part of the piece, which is made out of Galalith, a milk stone, a material that has been used in the art deco era. I´m fascinated by the variety of the material; the mother of pearl with its luster, its hardness on one hand and its brittleness on the other; the Galalith with its sensitivity and softness; natural and artificial; complete and divided; healthy and destructed.
CV 
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