Jewellery and Body Adornment from the NGV Collection

Through the lens of personal adornment, Jewellery and Body Adornment from the NGV Collection presents a selection of works ranging from classical antiquity to contemporary practice that celebrate the diversity and richness of the Collection. The works – organised around four thematics – speak to the broader ideas of identity and place, status and aspiration, ceremony and ritual and values and sentiment.

Identity and place

Jewellery and body adornment are defined by their relationship to the body. This fundamental connection imbues works with deeply held notions of identity and belonging. Often these meanings lie in the materials used and form of a piece that enables the wearer to identify with culture and community, while also signifying place and belonging.

Lola Greeno is a First Nations Tasmanian artist whose shell necklaces are part of a longstanding tradition practised by generations of women in her family. ‘It is the epitome of our women’s cultural heritage’, she states. The maireener shells in her Mapili rina (Lots of shells), 2006, necklace were harvested from particular seagrass beds that occur in just two locations off the coast of Flinders and Cape Barren Islands. Greeno harvests the shells once a year, sometimes only once every two years, waiting for the optimal weather conditions. The slightest ripple of water can make it difficult to see the shells with their outer brown coating, so the weather conditions are critical to a successful harvest. The brown coating is later removed by the women to reveal their pearly green irridescence. Greeno is careful not to over-harvest the shells to protect their sustainability. The NGV’s Mapili rina is one of only four necklaces by Greeno has made entirely of maireener shells.

In a different way jewellery by contemporary Dutch artist Lucy Sarneel carries her unmistakable imprint and sense of place. As author Lotte Menkman described it, ‘Lucy Sarneel’s jewellery bears a clear consistency in “signature”, as well as in the meanings it evokes’.¹Lotte Menkman, Mind Flights. Jewellery by Lucy Sarneel, Janssen Print, Nijmegen, 2003, p. 5. This signature is manifested in the bold, sculptural qualities of her pieces that, although expressing a frank openness also emit a gentle reserve. Sarneel’s use of zinc, which she translated into robust yet refined forms, became a signifying medium in her work. Its soft, grey matteness appealed to her for the honesty of its materialism, as well as its associations with European architecture, seen in rain pipes, towers and dormer windows – architectural ‘jewels’, as Sarneel described them. Many of Sarneel’s works also reflected her deep interest in flowers and the natural world around her. Like a butterfly, 2015, emerged from her awe of nature and the beauty of its forms; the painted zinc butterfly summed up her quiet, considered approach. As Sarneel said, ‘For me, a piece of jewellery is the pure reflection of a personal and individual world, in which you can see a piece of the universe, of today or of the past’.²Menkman, p. 11.

Status and aspiration

Jewellery and body adornment are powerful signifiers of status. Materials, size, complexity and placement on the body all communicate the social position, authority and power of the wearer, while also revealing personal aspirations, whether materially, culturally or socially.

Robert Baines is one of Australia’s leading contemporary jewellers whose intricate wire works are as complex in meaning as they are in construction. His Bracelet with fire car, 2001, comments on our obsession with status and social standing. The large, complex bracelet reveals Baines’s deep interest in the ancient goldsmithing techniques of filigree and granulation, metalworking techniques that were perfected by the ancient Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. Many ancient works were set with pearls, glittering gems and semi-precious stones and Baines’s bracelet emulates this practice although rather than using dazzling rubies, his bracelet is encrusted with plastic toy cars. This jarring juxtaposition prompts us to consider what we value and why. The red cars also reflect Baines’s longstanding interest in the emotional and symbolic power of red, but they may also refer to Ferrari sports cars and aspirations of social mobility, both literal and metaphorical.

For centuries archers have worn rings on their thumb that served as both symbols of status as well as having a practical purpose. Thumb rings were worn to ensure a smooth release of the bow and to protect the inside of the thumb while drawing the string. They survive from many cultures, including Chinese, Korean, Ottoman Turkish, Mughal Indian and Persian, and were in common use from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. A great variety of materials were used, including hard stones, amber and natural materials, such as bone, ivory and shell. Their forms varied, with Chinese rings tending to be wide and cylindrical while other cultures employed a broad shank with pointed form, as seen in the Indian and Ottoman Turkish rings in the NGV Collection. As much as they were functional items, archers’ rings were also worn as items of adornment and as symbols of status, even royalty. Chinese Manchu archers, regardless of their rank, favoured plain thumb rings of bone or antler horn for use in hunting or warfare, but at other times they wore ornamental archer rings made of more fragile and precious materials. Similarly, in Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey, archer rings that were elaborately set with gems and gold, as seen in the NGV’s rings, would not have been functional – as the gems would potentially snag the bowstring. Instead, these would have been worn as costume accessories to convey rank and social status or as emblems of royalty.

Ceremony and ritual

Jewellery and body adornment are intimately associated with life events and rituals. These objects are symbols of our connectedness, signify deep emotional bonds and carry intensely personal meaning. They are also markers of spiritual, magical and religious beliefs, which represent complex cultural associations embedded in identity.

Pilgrimage, the act of making a long journey to reach a sacred place or undertaking a spiritual journey, is a rite of passage for many. It is often signified by the wearing of a pendant that fellow pilgrims would recognise. For centuries, people of various faiths have undertaken pilgrimages throughout India. Such journeys are signified by the wearing of small metal plaques that are embossed or incised with text or images reflecting the diversity of religions and ethnic communities across India and their associated gods, mythologies and folklore. The pendants were worn as devotional jewellery or as auspicious talismans for a person’s journey. They were produced by metalworkers who were attached to the workshops of temples located along pilgrimage routes.

Mourning jewellery, or jewellery that commemorates the death of a loved one is a public symbol of grief. Generally expressed as a ring, brooch or pendant, mourning jewellery has been produced since Roman times but is most associated with eighteenth and nineteenth-century England and in particular the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), when black glistening jewels became highly fashionable. The pathos of Mourning pendant, 1793, makes an interesting dialogue with Peter Tully’s Love me tender, necklace, 1977. Both commemorate the death of a loved one, the eighteenth-century pendant immersed in sentiment with the grieving widow weeping at her husband’s memorial and the phrase, ‘With mutual love our heart did burn, and now my tears bedews his urn’, while Tully’s homage to Elvis presents an irreverent, humorous commentary on the adulation of a modern-day popstar.

Values and sentiment

Values and sentiment explores ideas around jewellery and body adornment’s material value, symbolic meaning and emotional significance. Since the rise of the New Jewellery Movement in the 1960s, artists have questioned the traditional notions of jewellery’s worth, in particular its embedded associations with preciousness. Through their subversion of materials, techniques and form and their constant challenging of the status quo, jewellers have fundamentally reappraised our understanding of jewellery, its role and the values we place on it.

German jeweller Gerd Rothmann is one of the founders of the New Jewellery Movement and since the 1970s has explored jewellery’s relationship to the body through his body part forms cast directly from the body. Rothmann’s early work was focused on unconventional aspects of the body including the heel, inside the nose, armpits, ears and collar bones but during the 1980s his work began to incorporate the texture and surface of skin. From him to her, for Mo Stahr, bangle, 1990, was commissioned by the architect Jo Stahr for his wife, Mo. It is a cast of his wrist, capturing the texture, pores and veins in extraordinary detail and intended for his wife to wear, representing a highly personal connection between the two, in acknowledgement of their busy lives and time spent apart.

Melbourne-based jeweller, Manon van Kouswijk’s practice comes from a conceptual basis that takes conventional forms of jewellery as a template, in particular the beaded necklace, and translates them into contemporary iterations using unconventional materials and processes. Her use of non-precious materials coupled with hand-modelling techniques that celebrate the imperfect implicitly ask questions around a work’s value and preciousness. Van Kouswijk’s Trophées 1–4, 2011, are a series of necklaces made from white-glazed porcelain. Each necklace is made from hand-modelled clay elements, the first necklace with pieces equivalent to one finger width, the second necklace with pieces equivalent in length to two fingers wide, and so on. The delicate porcelain pieces bear the imprint of van Kouswijk’s fingers and give form to what is unseen. The necklaces also reflect her interest in the sensual and tactile qualities of jewellery, their weight and the sound her necklaces make when worn. She commented, ‘I like to think that it’s possible to reinvent jewellery, despite the fact that its archetypal forms and motifs haven’t fundamentally changed throughout its long history’.³Australian Design Centre, Manon van Kouswijk, <www.australiandesigncentre.com/madeworncontemporaryjewellery/manon-van-kouswijk/>, accessed 25 Aug. 2022.

Jewellery and Body Adornment from the NGV Collection brings together a diverse selection of works that explore broad-reaching ideas through the lens of personal adornment and prompt us to consider ideas of value, symbolism and preciousness.

Notes