Schmucksymposium: A jewellery gathering

2 Jun

After two years of social starvation, induced by the pandemic, we finally met again. We - that’s my tribe: a global community of jewellery makers, craftspeople, writers, curators, thinkers and art enthusiasts. At Haxthäuserhof Jewellery Symposium (formerly known as Zimmerhof), hidden away in the German countryside between apple orchards near Mainz, about one hundred creative souls gather each year to spend Ascenscion weekend together.

While the logistical organizing team is more or less fixed, the symposium’s theme and content is usually chosen by different team of established artists/practitioners in the field of (contemporary) jewellery each year. This year‘s Haxthäuserhof Schmucksymposium was centered around the theme BLISS - personal bliss, how creative practice can be bliss, what following one’s bliss can mean in different contexts, how to stay on the path searching for one’s bliss - despite all the distraction and horror crowding in from the outside world. Our team for this year - Claudia Hoppe and David Huycke - gathered together a group of remarkable speakers to feed our minds and souls in twelve lectures.

These lectures were interspersed with coffee-breaks and meals prepared by talented Berlin-based chef Christoph Esser (how he manages to create so much flavour in a simple lentil dish remains a mystery to me!), followed by a couple of drinks from the bar, great camp-fire conversation and dancing as the night progresses. Nights were short. Days were overflowing with stimulating creative input.

A sincerely moving lecture by jewellery artist Mirjam Hiller, describing her creative process of coaxing a 3D-object from a flat sheet of metal.

This year’s speakers highlighted the many different paths towards bliss. The gathering included perspectives on creative practices by

renowned Dutch designer Aldo Bakker,
artistic jewellery maker and researcher Lore Langendries, based in Hasselt, Belgium
German art and contemporary jewellery journalist Christel Trimborn
German jewellery maker Nicole Walger
Danish goldsmith and jewellery trailblazer Kim Buck
post-doctoral AI-researcher Anneleen Swillen, based based in Hasselt, Belgium
Eva Monnikhof, director of DIVA, diamond museum in Antwerp
German philosopher-poet and jewellery maker Mirjam Hiller
silversmith and course leader of PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt, Berlgium, Nedda El-Asmar
iconic Australian jewellery maker(-poet) Robert Baines
German art historian and maker Julia Wild, also teacher at Hochschule Trier
well-known Spanish jewellery designer Marc Monzo

Our chef de cuisine, Christoph, who kept everyone well-fed and happy with delicious, wholesome meals for the entire weekend.

Cooking for a hundred people is no easy task.

Ready for the guests. Haxthäuserhof is a beautiful and remote location with the added benefit of having no WIFI and atrocious cell signal.

Together, these lectures wove themselves into a bright and richly textured tapestry, a braid of diverse stories and experiences. The colourful narrative threads had a deeply personal tone in common. These glimpses into the intimacy of someone’s creative practice truly moved me, and left me with an almost-tangible kernel of something golden and solid and precious clutched in my fist, more valuable than money or status or power, a little piece of bliss to hunt for, or at least the certain knowledge that it exists somewhere on this meandering creative path. Not everywhere, not always, but definitely sometimes.

Escaping for a walk in nature between lectures to clear the mind.

Lecture by Danish goldsmith Kim Buck, featuring his well-known *Daisy Series* referring to the Danish Daisy brooch made in 1940 to commemorate the birth of queen Margarethe.

Many speakers brought examples of their work, allowing participants to have a close-up look, feel the textures, and ask questions about their pieces. Here are animal hide brooches and neckpieces by Lore Langendries.

Kim Buck, one of this year’s speakers, has kindly agreed to organize next year’s symposium together with a jewellery colleague Karin Johansson, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. We are looking forward to their choice of themes and speakers!