Ornament as Art. Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The word ‘jewellery’ immediately invokes notions of valuable objects made of gold or silver and set with precious stones – ornamental objects that are also status symbols for their owners. Since the 1960s, however, things have profoundly changed in jewellery: artists have broken with the conventions of traditional jewellery to view their work in the wider context of movements in contemporary painting, sculpture and architecture. What has mattered since then is artistic intention rather than the market value of the materials used.

The Drutt Collection, encompassing 800 jewellery objects and drawings by more than 170 world-famous artists from 1963 to the present, documents the profound changes that have taken place since the 1960s in the way jewellery is perceived. At that time artists broke with the conventional jewellery tradition to view their works in the broader context of overall movements in painting, sculpture and architecture. By then what counted was artistic intention rather than the market value of the materials used.

Helen Williams Drutt founded the celebrated Helen Drutt Gallery in Philadelphia, which specialised in contemporary jewellery and ceramics. She lectures worldwide, has received several awards and is the author of numerous publications. She is indeed an important mediatrix of culture. This publication sets standards for measuring the importance of contemporary jewellery as a global art form.

This publication shows the collection as a whole, with each piece illustrated, and a selection of over 200 objects presented in large-scale illustrations and extensively analysed by Cindi Strauss, curator of contemporary applied arts and design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In addition, the author demonstrates the linkage of contemporary jewellery and modern art in an essay on the subject. Further, a detailed chronological history of contemporary jewellery and artist biographies provide invaluable information.


Artists (a selection):

Gijs Bakker | Manfred Bischoff | Claus Bury | Peter Chang | Arline Fisch | William Harper | Yasuki Hiramatsu | Hermann Jünger | Otto Künzli | Stanley Lechtzin | Fritz Maierhofer | Bruno Martinazzi | Breon O'Casey | Pavel Opočenský | Albert Paley | Wendy Ramshaw | Marjorie Schick | Bernhard Schobinger | Olaf Skoogfors | Peter Skubic | Robert Smit | Emmy van Leersum | Tone Vigeland | David Watkins...