Crafting new spatial and sensorial relationships in contemporary jewellery

Crafting new spatial and sensorial relationships in contemporary jewellery
Sabine Pagan 

Sabine Pagan, Site #2, ring, 2009, 9k yellow gold cube (handmade), surgical steel mount (rapidprototyped), 35 x 35 x 12 mm

Photo: Emily Snadden

Abstract The body occupies a significant place in both contemporary jewellery and architectural practice. The wearable object is made for the body and, therefore, invites the presence of a wearer, even if only metaphorically. Similarly, our built environment is constructed in relation to the scale of the human body and to accommodate our actions as users of architecture. Yet, important to both practices is the relationship between the object — jewellery or architecture — and the body beyond its physicality.

This paper examines embodiment from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Drawing on Jack Cunningham’s model (2005) maker–wearer–viewer as a framework, I propose an extended schema that integrates the object within the relational dynamics, with the aim to investigate the embodied relationship between object and wearer.

Underpinning the research is a case study that I conducted on the sensorial qualities of Peter Zumthor’s architecture, in particular Therme Vals. The study demonstrates that the embodied experience of the architecture by the user contributes to the development of these qualities.

In this paper, I argue that the transposition and testing of this concept in jewellery generates new relational variables, from which a new methodology of practice in jewellery informed by architecture emerges. Read full paper

Abstract from: Crafting new spatial and sensorial relationships in contemporary jewellery

Full paper published in craft+design enquiry: issue 6 Issue 6 2014, Craft.Material.Memory

jewellery, architecture, cross-disciplinary, wearing, senses, Therme Vals

Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence

Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence
Jacqui Chan

Host A Brooch, making process, 2011.

Photography: Jacqui Chan craft+design enquiry Issue 5

Abstract: This paper traces a practice-led enquiry into the question of how jewellery — as a practice and an artefact — can engage the city in terms of emergence. While jewellery is often understood to have a decorative, symbolic or communicative function, this research explores jewellery’s immersion in and emergence from the urban context. Coming from a background in architecture, I am interested in approaching the city as an extended site for jewellery: both the lived situation within which jewellery is worn, and a rich material resource for its production; and, where jewellery is sited between mobile bodies and these urban surroundings.

This practice-led research adopts the analogy of the saprophyte — an organism that decomposes organic matter and recirculates nutrients through its ecosystem — as a logic for exploring how making and wearing can feed off and back into the material ecology of the city. This paper shares four projects that respond to specific urban situations — Melbourne, Ramallah (Palestine), Chinatown (Melbourne), and Christchurch — discussing what emerges within each situation, and what these projects offer for thinking about jewellery — as a practice and an artefact — and its relations with the city. Read complete paper

Abstract from, Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence  
Full paper published in craft+design enquiry ; Issue 5 A World in Making: Craft Design