Jewellery in Israel. Multicultural Diversity 1948 to the Present

Israel is a country where East meets West. It is a meeting point for diverse jewellery traditions and a fertile ground for innovative creation. In the 1930s, immigrants from Germany and other European countries brought the modernist spirit of the Bauhaus with them. Likewise, Oriental craftsmanship, which had prevailed in the region, was reinforced with the arrival of immigrants from Islamic lands to the young State of Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. Public companies took on the role of preserving traditional crafts while creating a novel and elegant style that would represent a new national identity.

In the 1970s, leading European and American jewellery artists visited Israel as guest lecturers at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. They made a great impact on the local scene, inspiring little-known Israeli jewellers to make a breakthrough from traditional jewellery to the new art jewellery of the 1980s. This paved the way for the emergence of internationally renowned artists, such as Bianca Eshel Gershuni, Vered Kaminski, Esther Knobel and Deganit Stern Schocken, whose work is presented in this publication in detail.

This encompassing overview of jewellery in Israel ends with a discussion of contemporary jewellery making, focusing on several outstanding artists like Attai Chen and Gregory Larin. While the work of these artists is very much part of the global scene, it also has a distinctly local flavour and often touches on sociopolitical issues.

Jewellery in Israel: Multicultural Diversity, 1948 to the Present is the first comprehensive study of the history and development of art jewellery in Israel. It tells the story of key figures in the field of jewellery, from the country’s early beginnings to the present day. This well-informed and fascinating overview is illustrated by 340 images that demonstrate the vibrant diversity of the art jewellery scene in Israel.


Contents
- Foreword
- Prelude: Jewellery in Pre-State Israel
- The Melting Pot: 1950s to 1970s
- From Isolation to Exposure: International Contacts and New Beginnings
- International Recognition: Bianca Eshel Gershuni, Vered Kaminski, Esther Knobel, Deganit Stern Schocken
- The Contemporary Scene: 1990s to the Present
- Reference List
- Index-2016-2016

About the author

Dr Iris Fishof is an Israeli art historian and curator. Before turning to the field of jewellery, Jewish art had been her main focus of interest for many years.

Since 2004 she has been a senior lecturer in jewellery at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel. She worked at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, from 1983 to 2003 in various capacities, among them as the chief curator of Judaica and Jewish Ethnography as well as head of the curatorial services wing. In 2012 she curated an exhibition by notable Israeli jewellery maker Shirly Bar- Amotz (“Happy Days,” Tel Aviv Museum of Art) and published an accompanying book.

In addition to her numerous publications on Jewish art, she published a catalogue in conjunction with the 2010 exhi- bition “No Problem(?)” of a contemporary group of Israeli jewellery makers called the Inyanim Group (Montclair, New Jersey: Gallery Loupe for Contemporary Art Jewelry) and the introductory text to Transit: Contemporary Jewellery from Israel, edited by Jürgen Eickhoff (Munich: Galerie Spektrum, 2012).