Esther Brinkmann

Book / Arnoldsche Catalogues Collecting Monograph

Published: 30.09.2022

Editor:: Esther Brinkmann, Philippe Solms

Text by:: Elizabeth Fischer, Fabienne X. Strum, Philippe Solms, Ward Schrijver

Edited by:: Arnoldsche Art Publishers

Edited at:: Stuttgart

Edited on:: 2022

Technical data:: 192 pages, 165 ills. 23.3 x 28.7 cm English / French

ISBN / ISSN:: 978-3-89790-666-2

Price:: from 38 €

Order:: 20% Discount for Klimt02 members
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Still life from Esther Brinkmann's Studio.

The work of Esther Brinkmann is characterized by the meaning she bestows on the ring, its relationship to the hand and, perhaps most surprisingly, to its case. The Swiss artist prefers processed and textured materials, which now also include new component forms, techniques, and substances since her time living in China and India.

Esther Brinkman established a further education training program in jewelry design — an unique undertaking in Switzerland — at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) in Geneva. Here, her knowledge and autonomy in her work have already shaped several other artistic careers.

This publication presents Esther Brinkman’s oeuvre from the past thirty years and highlights for the first time the remarkable strength and the freedom that distinguish the artist’s rich career.

'Creator, teacher and ambassador for jewellery – these three roles have made Esther Brinkmann a key figure in jewellery design not only in her native Switzerland, but also in China and India, where she lived and worked for almost ten years. Thanks to her contact with master artisans in both countries she has explored new horizons with her work. Indian enamel and Chinese jade carving have made their way into her favourite piece of jewellery, the ring. The recognition of her expertise has resulted in invitations from all over the world to give lectures and to pass on her knowledge in jewellery design. In fact, my calling as an “ambassador” came about without any real thought on my part.' - Elizabeth Fischer in Jewellery as an Embodied Experience

'It would not be possible to give an account of the dynamics of Esther Brinkmann’s creativity without addressing what she develops around her pieces with the aim of creating a more intense, more enjoyable or more understandable experience of them. What was at the outset a form of packaging thus became a creation per se meeting broader needs. Similarly, the mechanics of presentation and mediation, just as the exhibition spaces, have increasingly yielded to site-specific conceptual works. There, too, what arose from practical exigencies – for instance, the need to resort to a display to present a certain type of objects to a given public – has been transformed into a layout that is a vector for emotions and meanings, even into an artwork in its own right. Alongside jewellery but always related to it, Esther Brinkmann is thus at the source of a complementary production, arising entirely from her personal universe, and is enriching it with supplementary perspectives.

This “other” production, which has only gradually become more apparent, bears eloquent witness to the artist’s own approach to the creative process. A process that gives pride of place to intuition, to experimentation, to chance, to appropriation, to operations entailing construction deconstruction and reconstruction. This approach proceeds from encounters and confrontations between materials, techniques, images and ideas. It draws on opportunities, contingencies and new beginnings while allowing conceptual elements to organise themselves at the whim of the “making process”

PHILIPPE SOLMS Packaging seems to have played a special role in the development of this production in parallel to jewellery. How did that start?

ESTHER BRINKMANN Packaging, the container, which was a constraining element, has in fact assumed an increasingly important place in my creative work. Initially, I had resorted to using small existing boxes for aluminium earrings produced serially in 1985 and 1986. At that time, for lack of standard packaging in which my “Alumettes” brooches could fit, a graphic designer, a friend of mine, had designed cardboard packaging specifically adapted to this design. On the strength of those two experiences I started, on the one hand, to systematically invent packaging specific to the pieces of jewellery it would contain and, on the other, to make almost all of my packaging myself. Indeed, I no longer really know why or how I embarked on this venture, but I can say it has actually been very energising for me, especially in inducing me to experiment with an ever-widening range of materials.'

- Philippe Solm in Boxes and Displays: A Conversation