Jewellery or jewelry consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western perspective, the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal such as gold often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as shells and other plant materials may be used.
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and serviceable utensils, and ceremonial or religious items.
A brooch is a decorative jewelry item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with gemstones and may be solely for ornament or serve a practical function as a clothes fastener. The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age. As fashions in brooches changed rather quickly, they are important chronological indicators. In archaeology, ancient European brooches are usually referred to by the Latin term fibula.
Wearable art, also known as Artwear or "art to wear", refers to individually designed pieces of (usually) handmade clothing or jewellery created as fine or expressive art. While the making of any article of clothing or other wearable object typically involves aesthetic considerations, the term wearable art implies that the work is intended to be accepted as a serious and unique artistic creation or statement. Wearable art is not intended to be worn as everyday clothing but one that is meant to draw attention while it is being displayed or modeled. Pieces may be sold and/or exhibited. The modern idea of wearable art seems to have surfaced more than once in various forms. Marbeth Schon's book on modernist jewellery refers to a "wearable art movement" spanning roughly the years 1930 to 1960. A 2003 The New York Times review of a book on knitting refers to "the 60s Art to Wear movement".
In modern Western body piercing, a wide variety of materials are used. Some cannot be autoclaved, and others may induce allergic reactions, or harbour bacteria. Certain countries, such as those belonging to the EU, have legal regulations specifying which materials can be used in new piercings.
Filigree is a form of intricate metalwork used in jewellery and other small forms of metalwork.
A parure is a set of various items of matching jewelry, which rose to popularity in early 19th-century Europe.
Art jewelry is one of the names given to jewelry created by studio craftspeople. As the name suggests, art jewelry emphasizes creative expression and design, and is characterized by the use of a variety of materials, often commonplace or of low economic value. In this sense, it forms a counterbalance to the use of "precious materials" in conventional or fine jewelry, where the value of the object is tied to the value of the materials from which it is made. Art jewelry is related to studio craft in other media such as glass, wood, plastics and clay; it shares beliefs and values, education and training, circumstances of production, and networks of distribution and publicity with the wider field of studio craft. Art jewelry also has links to fine art and design.
Blackamoor is a type of figure in European decorative art from the Early Modern period, depicting a black man. Common examples of items and objects decorated in the blackamoor style include sculpture, jewellery, and furniture. Typically the sculpted figures carried something, such as candles or a tray. They were thus an exotic and lightweight variant for the "atlas" in architecture and decorative arts, especially popular in the Rococo period.
Kiff Slemmons is a contemporary American metalsmith. She received her B.A. in Art and French at the University of Iowa, but is primarily known for her career in jewelry and metals. Slemmons currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Her work is collected by many notable museums and personalities, including the late Robin Williams.
John Donald is a British jeweller - designer whose work is strongly identified in the 1960s and 1970s in London. Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother purchased works by John Donald in the 1960s, having been introduced to him by Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon.
Linda MacNeil is an American abstract artist, sculptor, and jeweler. She works with glass and metal specializing in contemporary jewelry that combines metalwork with glass to create wearable sculpture. Her focus since 1975 has been sculptural objets d’art and jewelry, and she works in series. MacNeil’s jewelry is considered wearable sculpture and has been her main focus since 1996.
The Middle Ages was a period that spanned approximately 1000 years and is normally restricted to Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The material remains we have from that time, including jewelry, can vary greatly depending on the place and time of their creation, especially as Christianity discouraged the burial of jewellery as grave goods, except for royalty and important clerics, who were often buried in their best clothes and wearing jewels. The main material used for jewellery design in antiquity and leading into the Middle Ages was gold. Many different techniques were used to create working surfaces and add decoration to those surfaces to produce the jewellery, including soldering, plating and gilding, repoussé, chasing, inlay, enamelling, filigree and granulation, stamping, striking and casting. Major stylistic phases include barbarian, Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian, Viking, and the Late Middle Ages, when Western European styles became relatively similar.
Cindy Chao is a Chinese jewellery designer. She founded her company, Cindy Chao The Art Jewel, in 2004. She is known for her Black Label Masterpiece Collection and Annual Butterfly.
Lisa Gralnick is an American contemporary metalsmith, studio jeweler and academic. She works in the field of craft and art jewelry. Gralnick says: "I have chosen to make jewelry, which is traditionally considered 'craft', and I do enjoy the processes and techniques that allow me to execute my work without technical faults. But 'craft' is only a means to an end for me, as it is for many artists. My desire to push the limits of jewelry and expand on them, to comment on its traditions and associations, is more the concern of any artist."
Shaun Leane is a British jewellery designer best known for his sculptural pieces created for Alexander McQueen. His eponymous jewellery brand is a four-time winner of the UK Jewellery Designer of the Year award.
Marjorie Schick was an innovative American jewelry artist and academic who taught art for 50 years. Approaching sculptural creations, her avant-garde pieces have been widely collected. Her works form part of the permanent collections of many of the world's leading art museums, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; and the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.
Scottish jewellery is jewellery created in Scotland or in a style associated with Scotland, which today often takes the form of the Celtic style. It is often characterised by being inspired by nature, Scandinavian mythology, and Celtic knot patterns. Jewellery has a history in Scotland dating back to at least the Iron Age.
Azza Fahmy is an Egyptian jewellery designer, and the founder of the design house Azza Fahmy Jewellery. Fahmy was the first woman to train in Egypt’s jewellery quarter, Khan El Khalili. In 2013 Fahmy founded ‘The Design Studio by Azza Fahmy’, in partnership with Alchimia, Contemporary Design School in Florence.
Choo Yilin is a Singapore-based fine jewelry company founded in 2009. It first became known for its modern take on traditional jade jewelry, and has subsequently also created jewelry using other gemstones such as spinels and pearls. In October 2019, the brand announced that it would be going on an indefinite hiatus.
