Modern Jewellery Design

This publication is a first, documenting the development of modern design in mass-produced jewelry from the post-war years to the present. An autonomous trend in jewelry – albeit related to modern art, architecture and design – it has become established mainly in the German-speaking countries. Nowadays jewelry designed in Germany in medium-sized factories and studios represents a major countertrend to conventional luxury jewelry. Since the 1990s, interest in this kind of jewelry has been growing outside Germany as well, in the US, in Europe and Asia. The author begins with a brief retrospective of the origins of modern jewelry: Art Nouveau, Art Déco, Bauhaus and New Objectivity. The revival of goldsmithing from the mid-1960s provided the formal and intellectual foundation for what is now happening in modern mass-produced jewelry design. A large illustrated section gives an historical overview of those developments as shown by the most important classic modern jewelry design and leading current exponents with their exceptional designer pieces.