Thoughts on Disappointment

When your way is blocked, suddenly, and you find yourself in a puddle of broken expectations. Photograph by Nora Kovats. Corridor flanking the courtyard at Hildesheim’s oldest cathedral.

So this year’s international trade fair in Munich, including all its special shows like Handwerk & Design and the SCHMUCK and TALENTE competitions, has been cancelled due to the corona virus threat. I’ve dreamed about showing my work at Handwerk & Design for years.

 This year, I had forged my own opportunity to exhibit there by gathering a group of fellow artists from Berlin, envisioning and then organizing a group show that would have been more than just individual artists next to each other: it would have been a curated exhibition integrating eight different unique visual languages. For me, this was an ambitious project, one that has kept me increasingly busy since November, with the past six weeks becoming an organizational marathon. It was so wonderful to see this group of artists come together and give their time freely, discuss the most divergent ideas and reach conclusions and compromises, build tiny scale cardboard models of our display, render the display in 3D, then build the entire thing from scratch, even sawing the wood into pieces ourselves. Then, five days ago, this vision crumpled into sawdust as I received the news that the entire fair had been cancelled.

 I wasn’t entire unprepared, of course not, with other trade fairs and large gatherings being cancelled all over Europe. But the disappointment was acute and real and painful, even though, honestly, the entire project might have been a failure even if the fair had not been cancelled.

 So I’ve been thinking about disappointment all week. What exactly is this disappointment thing? How can we define it? It’s painful, yes, it has a lot to do with expectations that could not be met, but it’s not anger, it’s not really shame or guilt either. It’s sort of a hollow feeling, a space that would have held something glorious and sparkling and hopeful, and that is now empty. It’s a little paralysing, a melancholy type of inertia. It’s a vacuum that can now be filled - often with a squadron of negative emotions chasing each other into the ditch: frustration, self-flagellation, a crumbling self-esteem, disillusionment, bitterness and resentment.

The best place to observe your disappointment will always be nature. Going for long, aimless walks to fill empty spaces inside with simple grains of gratitude, watching nature grow and die and flower and crumble. Somewhere in Brandenburg. Photograph by Nora Kovats.

 I keep asking myself how we ought to deal with disappointment? And what’s the point of it? Typically, I tend to react to disappointment with denial; I justify to myself that the disappointing event wasn’t really that important, I charge on with a new mission, never looking back, in a crazy storm of self-preservation. While that’s a great survival mechanism that has served me well in the past, I am not entirely convinced anymore that it is useful in the long run. I feel this process of extricating yourself from disappointment has a lesson to teach that I haven’t been ready to learn yet. It seems that I should sit with this disappointment for a few days, examine it, experience and articulate what it feels like before the void gets filled either with angry frustration or manufactured hope.

 While it can feel like a curse, disappointment is in essence a resilience-building tool. It is a really vital part of our lives. To clarify, by that I don’t mean a tool to cultivate the ability to ignore disappointment, to readjust with superhuman speed and bounce back like a jack-in-the-box. Rather, what I mean is the capability to hold this disappointment, to embrace it, taste it, and then gingerly starting to re-fill the void with those first slithers of gold and dream dust. And bit by bit, you rebuild your vision, you make it better and stronger this time, the walls are more solid, the glue holding everything together is tougher because there’s a foundation cemented by the possibility of failure, and there’s a type of wisdom underneath that is heavier but also more real than your lighter, younger self’s view of life.

 Disappointment is the supreme editor of our life plans. It’s a builder of strength and mutual empathy. Those cyclical ups and downs of hope and expectation, shattered by disappointment, and rebuilt again, are a kind of energy generator, an engine keeping us in motion, our feet on the ground and our head in the clouds.

Spaces to Fill. 2019. Watercolour & ink painting on Hahnemühle watercolour paper.

The Imagination Gap

Nora Kovats. Tangled Phone Conversations. 2019-2020. Watercolour and ink painting on Hahnemühle aquarelle paper. This painting will be available as a postcard soon. Copyright © Nora Kovats.

As I delve into this imaginary botanical space I’m creating, I keep asking myself: “How much of this is a reflection of a reality I observed, and how much is purely invented? Is anything actually truly invented? Can anything be depicted as it is? How does the imagination actually work?” Part of the reason my tangled botanical explorations strike such a chord with people, I suspect, is precisely the fact that they are familiar, there’s a sense of a landscape, a framework, a setting. Those shapes I use are archetypical botanical echos that have been written into our Genes since hunter-gatherer days, and yet, my work is also strange, new, and re-composed in surprising ways.

Nora Kovats. Of Untamed Gardens & Thoughts. 2019-2020. Watercolour, graphite, wax and ink painting on Hahnemühle aquarelle paper. This painting will be available as a postcard soon. Copyright © Nora Kovats.

I recently read a biography of one of my favourite female scientific artists: Maria Sybilla Merian (1647-1717). Based in Frankfurt am Main, Nürnberg and later Amsterdam, was a an influential etymologist, botanist, copperplate artist and explorer of the 17th and early 18th century. She found her way into art in her (step-)father’s etching workshop, partly through stubborn determination and partly because no-one was better suited to take over the business once her stepfather passed away, although, as a woman in Southern Germany at that time, she had no business being independent in any way. She became particularly famous for her butterfly and moth studies, and later, when she lived in Amsterdam, for travelling to Suriname to study tropical butterflies. 

Jacob Marrel: Bildnis der Maria Sibylla Merian, 1679 (Kunstmuseum Basel).

I’ve always found the chaos of the 17th century particularly compelling. Political, scientific and religious ideas were turned completely upside down multiple times and interwoven in the most fascinating way. While ancient knowledge was still revered, society struggled to reconcile it with new scientific discoveries. Ideas we now consider to be scientific truths were ridiculed, while theological doctrines were hallowed as unquestionable, sacred knowledge. While half the Western world believed the ancient Greek postulation that ‘vermin’, critters like insects, worms and small reptiles, were the devil’s creatures born from poisonous mud, Merian observed caterpillars turning into butterflies and dared to suggest that worms were ‘God’s creatures’ too. While some supported her work, others suggested that her research was blasphemous and that she was associated with the devil.

My grandfather has a stunningly hand-coloured reprinted compilation of Merian’s Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. I remember being allowed to look, but never touch, although I yearned to run my eight-year-old fingers over those incredibly fine etched lines and the reds and oranges bleeding into one another. I also remember my grandfather remarking, with a somewhat regrettable shrug, that unfortunately, Merian’s work wasn’t that scientific at all, that she had used her imagination quite a bit (as if that was somehow inferior to copying something that was before your eye), that she had fused plants and animals into aesthetically pleasing compositions. While Maria Sybilla Merian meticulously observed her subjects and did render them faithfully, her plates are all very deliberately structured compositions that reflect a sort of artificial order, imposed on the world she saw. I was left a little crestfallen, since it sounded to me as if that somehow devalued her life’s work.

Title page of Maria Sybilla Merian’s most famous work Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium.

Maria Sybilla Merian. Illuminated copper-engraving from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Plate XXVII. Musa paradisiaca, 1705.

Maria Sybilla Merian. Illuminated copper-engraving from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Plate LX. 1705.

 Now, of course, I admire her work for exactly those reasons: Forging one’s own cross-disciplinary path somewhere between existing categories seems very appealing from a 21st century view. I love that idea of merging the outer and inner world to compile a new reality. It’s my own approach to my work.

 I have become very interested in exactly that fusion of art and science, the interlocking of objective observation and subjective interpretation. Many people believe that, by definition, one of these viewpoints has to exclude the other to exist. I know people in both camps, but, because of my education in academic art, I know many who believe that everything is only a subjective experience and there is no actual truth that matters in life. I honestly think that’s quite problematic; I suppose I’m not a great fan of post-modernism because it strips our world of meaning.

 But both of these modalities exist in our world at the same time – actually, I believe that they have to coexist for us to explain reality in any satisfactory way. To me, that gap between these seemingly unreconcilable approaches to the search for knowledge is spanned by imagination. Scientists need imagination to think of possible solutions to physical problems, artists need imagination to articulate their inner experience of the world. Humans need imagination to empathize, to solve problems, to have hope in unbearable circumstances, to achieve goals. Imagination is fuel for desire, imagination is glue to harmonize paradoxes. Imagination breeds enthusiasm, and cultivates meaning. Imagination truly is a gift that needs to be cultivated.

 When I think of a way forward in this world of ours, a way to bridge squabbles and connect opposites and make space for crazy new ideas, imagination is key. We need to leave a little room for us to be surprised, to be awed. We need to make space for that inner garden to grow into something meaningful, hedged by meticulous questioning on one side and aesthetic meanderings on the other.

Nora Kovats. Expedition. 2020. Watercolour and ink painting on Hahnemühle aquarelle paper. This painting will be available as a postcard soon. Copyright © Nora Kovats.

Enamelling Workshop: A glimpse

Preparation: Each participant received all necessary copper and sterling silver parts to create their own Pearlcatcher pendant.

When I hosted an enamelling workshop in my Berlin studio last month, I allowed outsiders an intimate glimpse into my creative enamelling practice for the first time. Previous workshops were always at outside locations such as the University of Stellenbosch or Studio San W in Shanghai.

The workshop included demonstrations, ample time for experiments and trials, lunch, many stories, and the completion of a variation of my Pearlcatcher pendant design. The finished piece and all experiments were the participants’ to take home, of course.

I attempted to convey – apart from my own love for colour and an enthusiasm for playful experimentation – how I feel a sense of a physical space (the studio) and a process (the act of enamelling) merging, where the doing becomes a real space in time. It’s a capsule, an entity, a ritual even, a togetherness that is caught on that day between those exact hours in that exact human setup.

Fierce heat emanating from an open enamelling kiln.

I use a solid granite slab for the hot steel tripods coming out of the kiln to cool down.

Workshop setup in the studio’s front room.

We worked with prepared enamel powders - washed and sifted - as well as small glass ornaments, blobs, and splinters that can create fascinating speckled patterns as they melt into the enamel surface.

A participant working on her first outside layer in light forget-me-not blue.

A workshop participant setting her enamelled piece into its silver setting, with a large cream-coloured pearl caught inside.

A memory of this space will capture the mood in its entire complexity – the light on a grey January afternoon, the smell of roasted lemon-pepper brussel sprouts for lunch, the heat of the enamelling kiln, the texture of sand-like enamel powders, the subtle differences in colours, the stalling of time as it is swallowed by deep concentration and effort.

A glimpse of our studio kitchen almost ready for our communal lunch, which formed part of hosting the workshop.

A scattered display of different enamelling techniques, tools and a tea tray.

I am definitely planning on repeating this experience soon, so keep an eye out for news and dates on my calendar.

Shanghai: exhibiting, teaching & learning

Flower boxes on streets. Drawing by Nora Kovats.

Reflections in a mirror glass building.

Like in a dream that is both utterly familiar and strange at the same time, the city of Shanghai struck me as a parallel world where the foreign and the well-known are fused together in the most confusing way.

In October this year I visited Shanghai to take part in an exhibition titled “NOW-NOW” held at San W Gallery, together with nine other South African contemporary jewellers. The city-centre gallery is accompanied by a vast studio on the outskirts of the city, directly next to the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. With the gallery and the studio, owner Yiwei Wu single-handedly constructed a platform for contemporary jewellery in Shanghai – a city that, despite its contemporary feel and China’s rich and diverse applied arts traditions, does not offer too much in terms of art jewellery. It was a pleasure to see the potential of that immersive space, imagining exhibitions, artist residencies, lectures, workshops and all kinds of novel and interdisciplinary approaches to the field of contemporary jewellery.

Poster for “NOW-NOW” exhibition.

Preparing for the exhibition opening at San W Gallery.

Detail of one of the displays at “NOW-NOW”.

While there, I also gave an enamelling workshop at Studio San W. This was my first time teaching with a translator during a workshop, and I was almost a little apprehensive at first. However, since I was surrounded by helpful studio assistants and gracious hosts who were prepared to translate between the worlds, we managed quite well. On a side note, it is actually astonishing how much can be communicated without words, just with gestures, with demonstrations and body language and little pencil sketches. A new sense of confidence filled me after that experience – a realization that the magic of working with one’s hands can be understood universally, even without words.

The home of San W Studio in the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts complex.

Step one: washing your enamel powders, demonstrated by yours truly.

A multitude of enamel test plates.

In place that is completely foreign, I find that you experience a kind of profound freedom, as you detach yourself from all expectations and plunge into adventure and bare yourself to the unknown. While bewildering or scary at first, I find this sensation so liberating that it acts as a type of reset button. It’s what I look for in travel – it resets my curiosity levels in a way that allows me to see my own familiar city with newly-washed eyes on my return. I re-appreciate my treasures, receive the gift of a gilded church steeple in the sun or a beautifully paved street or the dynamism of a flock of birds in a pale sky for the second time.

Colourful bike-sharing rides.

A colourful street; pale polluted skies with a hidden sun.

In Shanghai, I was struck by the silence of the chaos. It really enhanced that dream-like quality of my experience. The bustling traffic at intersections was uncannily quiet, as if someone has simply turned the volume button down. Which is exactly what happened – almost all motorized vehicles have been replaced by electric ones by now. I kept thinking about this strange dissonance between the crowded streets and the muted traffic, and it became a metaphor for my entire experience there in that complex and strangely paradoxical composition of chaos and order.

Busy-busy commuters on the street.

I spotted many people taking naps in and on their vehicles, presumably on their lunch breaks.

 It’s a place where the most exclusive luxury brands are glamorously displayed in shop windows like statues of the new gods, where every public place is adorned with cascades of flowing greenery, while these flowers are constantly replaced in a continuous cycle of artificial renewal, never wilting. A place where beautiful and unfamiliar vegetables are piled next to sacks of live toads and glass aquariums full of squirming eels, where every leaf on the sidewalk is painstakingly swept up by never-resting street cleaners, while the air is so polluted that the inhabitants check the daily pollution forecast like people elsewhere check the weather report. It’s a place that is both unfree and freeing.

A bag of toads.

Stacked kebab at a Friday market in a muslim quarter of Shanghai.

Fabric market.

I found it thoroughly inspiring and loved how the daily experienced knotted themselves into a mesh of vivid dreams each night, although I found it everything but easy to grapple with the idea of life in a totalitarian consumer society.

I’ve seldomly felt so disconnected and alienated from my own world back in Berlin, obviously also due to the heavily censored internet traffic and communication channels, but at the same time, this allowed for a brief but deep immersion in a parallel world.

"Oustok - Jongstok" exhibition catalogue

I’ve created an online catalogue of my work currently displayed at “Oustok - Jongstok”. If you are interested in seeing any more detailed photographs, don’t hesitate to email me at info@norakovats.com.

I will try to keep this post updated for the next two weeks as to which pieces are sold and which still are available. Prices are in South African Rand.

1.     Just before Waking.

Wall Art. Enamel on copper, nylon, pyrite, moss agate, freshwater pearls, labradorite, watercolour & ink on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 8 200 (SOLD)

Just before Waking.

2.     Sterretjies.

Earrings. Faceted garnet drops & 18 carat yellow gold. Watercolour & ink drawing. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 6 400 (SOLD)

Sterretjies.

3.     Pomegranate Fantasy.

Wall Art. Enamel on copper, pyrite, carnelian, nylon, black pearl, Datura Stramonium seed pods, paint, silk thread, watercolour & graphite on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 8 700

Pomegranate Fantasy.

4.     Bloekom.

Earrings. Enamel, copper, silver, pink freshwater pearls, quartz drops, nylon, ink, watercolour, print, paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 4 300

Bloekom.

5.     Noon Pomegranates.

Earrings. Red enamel, copper, silver, garnets, black silk string; watercolour, ink & wax on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 4 500

Noon Pomegranates.

6.     Agtergelos.

Wall Art. Enamel, copper, freshwater pearls, nylon, mixed gemstones; ink & watercolour on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 3 800 (SOLD)

Agtergelos.

 7.     Morning Pomegranates.

Earrings. Lime green enamel, sterling silver, 18 carat gold, miniature Keshi pearls, nylon; watercolour & ink on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 8 200

Morning Pomegranates.

8.     Leaf Eaters.

Earrings. Enamel, sterling silver, 18 carat gold, pyrite, nylon, gold-silver-doublé; watercolour & ink on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 6 200

Leaf Eaters.

9.     Spatter.

Earrings. Enamel, silver, garnet drops, peridot, citrine, carnelian, nylon, steel wire; watercolour & ink drawing on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 6 800

Spatter.

10.     Kloof.

Wall Art. Watercolour, ink & wax on paper. Size: 20 x 20 cm.

R 2 900 (SOLD)

Kloof.

11.     Saatstreuer I.

Earrings. Red enamel, copper, silver, white freshwater pearls, black nylon; ink drawing on hand-made paper. Size: 15 x 15 cm.

R 2 500 (SOLD)

Saatstreuer I.

12.  Saatstreuer II.

Earrings. Enamel, copper, oxidized sterling silver, nylon, citrine drops, garnets, rubies; ink drawing on hand-made paper. Size: 15 x 15 cm.

R 2 500 (SOLD)

Saatstreuer II.

13.  Pomegranate Skeletons.

Earrings. Oxidized silver, faceted prasiolite drops; watercolour & ink painting. Size: 15 x 15 cm.

R 2 800 (SOLD)

Pomegranate Skeletons.

 14.  Saatstreuer III.

Earrings. Enamel, copper, silver, pink and black freshwater pearls, peridot, carnelian, nylon; watercolour & ink drawing, paper collage. Size: 15 x 15 cm.

R 2 800

Saatstreuer III.

15.  Veld & Vuur.

Wall Art. Datura Stramonium seed pod cast in silver, oxidized copper, pearls, nylon; watercolour & ink on paper. Size: 30 x 40 cm.

R 12 500

Veld & Vuur.

 16.  The Density of your Dreams.

Bracelet. Enamel, copper, oxidized silver, steel wire, nylon, pyrite; watercolour on paper. Size: 30 x 30 cm.

R 8 700

The Density of your Dreams.

17.  Wintergarten.

Neckpiece. Green enamel, silver, oxidized silver chain, garnet, chrysoberyl, 18 carat gold wire, pink cultured pearl; watercolour & ink drawing. Size: 30 x 30 cm.

R 9 400

Wintergarten.

18.  Aninka’s Dreams.

Neckpiece. 18 carat white gold, blue sapphire, ruby, watercolour drawing on paper. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 21 600 (SOLD)

Aninka’s Dreams.

19.  Frost.

Neckpiece. Silver, garnets, black pearls, steel wire, nylon; watercolour & ink drawing on paper. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 10 300 (SOLD)

Frost.

 20.  Mottle.

Neckpiece. Citrine drops, freshwater pearls, rutile quartz, steel wire, sterling silver, nylon; ink & watercolour drawing on paper. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 7 600

21.  Verblüht.

Wall Art. Watercolour & ink drawing, enamel, copper, oxidized copper, Datura Stramonium seed pod. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 5 900

Verblüht.

22.  Midnight Pomegranates.

Earrings. Enamel, silver, iolite, black nylon; watercolour & ink drawing. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 5 000 (SOLD)

Midnight Pomegranates.

23.  Strelitzia Forest.

Wall Art. Watercolour & ink on paper. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 4 800

Strelitzia Forest.

 24.  Ashes.

Neckpiece. Oxidized sterling silver, grey and black freshwater pearls, nylon, steel wire; watercolour & ink drawing on paper. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 8 600 (SOLD)

Ashes.

25.  Goldflock.

Neckpiece. 18 carat yellow gold, yellow diamonds; watercolour & ink drawing on paper. Size: 28 x 20 cm.

R 34 800

Goldflock.

26.  Slangtak.

Earrings. Enamel, sterling silver (partially oxidized), iolite, black nylon; watercolour & ink on paper. Size: 10 x 24 cm.

R 4 900 (SOLD)

Slangtak.

 27.    Gogga.

Wall Art. Enamel, copper, sterling silver, iolite, carnelian, black pearls, quartz, amber, nylon; watercolour & ink drawing. Size: 30 x 34 cm.

R 9 800

Gogga.

The Power of Selective Storytelling: Avoiding the Dark

An evening view at “the lower dam” in late August.

Grandfather, being all grandfatherly. Slanted evening sunlight.

After the winter rains, the dams are (hopefully) all filled to the brim. My garndparents’ dog, Titania, splashing through waterblommetjies.

The worst was the smell, and the unidentifiable, chunky slime.

 I have this profound childhood memory of walking with my grandfather on the farm, when we found an ewe lying on the ground, on one of those broad granite boulders surfacing from the grass. It was almost evening. She was groaning and struggling, clearly in labour and in considerable pain. My grandfather knelt down to examine her and I tried to calm the poor animal by holding her head and covering her eyes. I must have been about ten years old, maybe a bit younger.

We found that she was battling to give birth to twins, both of them dead. The first one, gently freed by my grandfather, had cream-coloured short wool and was covered in a thin, bloody film, and it looked like it was asleep. I remember that face, scrunched up but perfect in its smallness. The second lamb had been dead for longer, it was half decayed already and came apart in my grandfather’s hands. The smell was horrible. I remember thinking that the least I could do to honour this creature’s suffering, was to endure the nauseating smell unflinchingly. I remember how black the blood looked, lumpy bits of bloody tissue and pale limbs wrapped in slime. And I remember feeling a great sadness for something that could never be, never become.

That must have been the first significant encounter with the gruesomeness of death in my life, although I had seen dead and dying animals before – pets that had died or been run over by cars, and slaughtered animals of course – and the concept of death, animal and human, had always been part of my world in stories, as far as I can think back. But this was different. I was filled with a kind of awe at the power of life and death and their cycles. I intuitively understood, perhaps at that very moment, that life will give and take, that resistance is a waste of energy, and that one way of finding contentment is to surrender to this power and willingly accept its gifts and bear its losses with a kind of earnest grace. I have been able to deal with loss in my life so far, experiencing a type of unhurried grief while knowing that it must be part of the human experience.

The stories I have been telling about the farm I grew up on, specifically in light of our upcoming exhibition there, are stories of springtime and wildflowers, of imaginative childhood games, running barefoot, more summer fruit than anyone could ever stomach, stories of grape harvests and eating watermelon and horse-riding and achingly beautiful landscapes. “What an idyllic childhood you must have had!” people say to me, sometimes with an accusing undertone in their voices.

Jim, a bit of a whirlwind at times.

But it isn’t the only truth. Sometimes I tend to display the brightest of memories like polished pebbles in a row. We are all sentimental beings. Perhaps it’s true that I am guilty of hiding dark moments in dark imaginary closets. I have been thinking about this lately, and I am most certainly guilty of selective storytelling, illuminating the positive aspects of a narrative to gather strength and positive energy. And perhaps I’m guilty of accidentally ignoring darker aspects in an attempt to stay optimistic and joyful. Maybe there are emotions I am not yet able to articulate, but I think I should try. It’s also true that I often don’t judge experiences as “good” or “bad” immediately; I simply try to live them, which isn’t an easy notion to convey in a world that constantly judges and pressures to be better and shinier every day.

 I want to try and be more mindful of all kinds of events and viewpoints in my storytelling. Stories are nothing but fragments, chained together by time, often in archetypal patterns that move us precisely because they are timeless and universal. In my mind, there is no such thing as “the whole story” or “the only correct version” of a story, but I want to be more articulate, delve deeper and explore darker fragments and memories that may be painful to write and read about, alongside the bright stories that buoy us up.

 My childhood wasn’t idyllic. It wasn’t bad either. It was my reality. It was rich and filled with creativity and inquisitiveness and meaning. I was fascinated with all kinds of bizarre experiences. There were nasty thorns on that farm, and our feet had to be de-thorned with a needle on an almost bi-weekly basis by my patient mother. That never stopped us from running around barefoot. That feeling of lightness and freedom outweighed the short stab of pain caused by a thorn. Besides, our feet grew callous and immune to thorns eventually.

Woven into that story of a childhood on a wine farm near Cape Town are complex stories of my heritage. Stories of wars and hiding in bomb shelters and life in WWII Germany that were never really talked about in our family. Stories of growing up in Soviet Hungary, yearning for personal freedom, stories littered with rejection and judgement and regret and pain and helplessness. Stories of experiencing reality on the easy side of Apartheid. And in between, chicken running across a yard strewn with purple Jacaranda blossoms, and us hunting guinea fowl as they flock home to their sleeping trees by the hundreds, pretending to be Indian warriors, and climbing trees to the very top. It’s really a thick, complicated narrative with thousands of threads, our grandparents’ fears suddenly bearing their teeth and ancient societal norms resurfacing from god knows where. I hope to delve into this narrative in a more articulate way as I get older and more capable of untangling and reframing these images with my personal lens. I hope to show the darkness and the callousness and the scars interlaced with new life and light and relentless love. And above all, I wish to show that each individual carries a meaningful web of stories inside, like a glowing gem.

More waterblommetjies, a whole pond. These are edible and make a delicious traditional Cape lamb stew ingredient.

Walking down to a grassy part at the lower end of the farm.

Oustok - Jongstok: A contemporary craft exhibition

You are cordially invited to “Oustok- Jongstok”, a visual dialogue between a ceramicist grandmother and a contemporary jeweller granddaughter. Find out more details about the exhibition here.

After two years abroad, I am returning to exhibit in and visit a place that has played a significant role in shaping who I am today: Brandwag (not to be confused with the other Brandwag, even closer to Stellenbosch), a little farm nestled between the vineyards on the exact spot where the sandy dunes of the Cape Flats meet the first boulders of the Cape Granite Suite (of which Paarl Mountain is the most well-known example). My grandparents bought this place in the 1980’s when they relocated from the Free State.

A glimpse of my beloved Brandwag.

Although tiny compared to its neighbours, Brandwag offered enough space to serve as a diverse learning ground for myself and my brother. We only lived on the farm itself for about six years, but frequent visits allowed us to stay intimately acquainted with the farm environment and its natural cycles. Now, it harbours the memories of countless childhood and adolescent adventures, stories of discovering and becoming, of watching things grow and nurturing them and watching them fade again.

 Here, we watched my grandmother throw pots in her workshop and followed her around the house to observe the daily tasks of an experienced farm manager. We played in the garden under the large oaks, picked fruit, hid in the reeds, watched the sheep with their adorable, feeble-legged new-born lambs, gave new, made-up names to the wildflowers. We watched everything dance in unison as the seasons faded into each other, we became part of that rhythm. Above all, it is here on this farm and in that time of my life, I believe, that I learned the importance of two things: of making with our hands, and of acquiescing to the power of nature.

Time passing.

The vineyards there serve as the most prominent markers of time passing – rusted leaves slowly corroding into nakedness in winter, then an explosion of lime green in spring, followed by a darkening of greens everywhere and mutating of leaves into large, weathered things, and finally those ripe grapes, stickiness on sultry summer afternoons.

I will be showing contemporary jewellery accompanied by watercolour and ink paintings that attempt to capture a dream-like, paradisiacal space within nature.

One hill of cabernet sauvignon was planted when I was born, and in vineyard terms, it is quite old. Many farmers will rip an almost thirty-year-old vineyard out to make space for younger vines that can perhaps yield a more profitable harvest. But what does more profitable really mean? More grapes, more money? Perhaps yes, but not better quality. It is often the oldest vineyards that produce grapes of the most outstanding quality, though they may gradually become fewer each year. I always feel a pang of sadness when I see yet another pile of torn-out, twisted roots on the side of a ploughed and bare vineyard, just good enough for fire wood now.  

The vineyard is not just a thing to be used, harvested, depleted. It is an environment, an eco-system that shelters whole life cycles, short ones and immeasurably long ones, cycles in field-mouse-time and cycles in geological time. When I stand there, in the middle of the vineyard, I myself feel part of a large and moving and circular force, I feel sheltered. I feel energised by this life force that gives and takes and moves.

Our 1990 vineyard of cabernet sauvignon turning the colour of rust and amber and rubies in autumn.

To celebrate our living and our making, I am showing my newest collection of contemporary jewellery and watercolour paintings alongside my grandmother, Konstanze Harms’, timeless ceramics. Both our work reflects a deep respect for nature, a love of organic forms and a devotion to meticulous, time-consuming craftsmanship.

A kiln packed to the brim with unglazed ceramics by Konstanze Harms.

Large ceramic bowls by Konstanze Harms in the slanted evening sun.

You are invited to join us for a glass of wine and a talk by Rosa Krüger at the opening on September 14th at 16:00. You are of course welcome to bring friends and partners, just please let us know if you are planning to come so we can accommodate everyone in terms of parking and beverages (info@norakovats.com).

The exhibition will run from the 15th to the 21st of September, be opened daily between 11:00 and 18:00, and end with a Finissage coffee and tea gathering – for all those that couldn’t make it to the opening – on the 21st at 16:00.

Looking forward to your visit!

Spring Explosion. Wall art/painting. Enamel on copper, black freshwater pearls, nylon, mixed gemstones, watercolour, ink, Fabriono paper.

The Enamel Dance

More thoughts on what it means to be enamelling.

Imaginary self-portrait as enamel dancer.

My thoughts keep returning to the process of enamelling and the complete devotion it demands of its practitioner. This creative process, with its vivid possibilities of colour, its laborious ritualistic method and its ties to alchemical practices, inspires a creative drive in me that compels me to make. The making, in its quality of searching, almost becomes more important than the finished work. Making becomes a rhythmic ritual, demanding respect and reverie, as well as the need to be patiently observed, step by step, without rush. To me, the enamels are governed by their own rules, almost taking on a life of their own.

As I make, I am concerned with growing something from nothing, and with controlling that created something to a certain extent. A contradiction exists between the tight control imposed on the contained microcosm of my work, or on the enamel kiln as closed environment, and the spontaneity, impulsiveness and freedom required to permit a truly successful result – one that lives. This duality intrigues me – a constant balance between tight control and letting go. A dance. It has allowed a particular style to emerge in my work: with an emphasis placed on intuition and playfulness, I focus on growing, twisting, branching botanical shapes and vivid, unexpected colour combinations. The garden underpins my work in every respect; however, this mythic garden in my jewellery art is vastly different from the sunny vegetable patch people grow in their back yards. The enamelled garden is dark and twisted as well as vibrant and playful.

The studio, as a small universe that is removed from ordinary space and time and severed from the ‘real’, mundane world like a magnificent imaginary garden behind walls, becomes metaphorical for the process of making. As the site for the manifestation of my own jewelled garden fantasy, the studio is transformed into a somewhat sacred space.

Somewhere in the German Outback

A little impression of the beautifully rustic location of the symposium, Haxthäuser Hof.

“Did you see Helen DJ-ing on the dance floor last night?” Brigitte asks. “I have a video,” she grins.

She is driving, her face hidden behind giant sunglasses against the slanted Sunday evening sun. Clemens is fast asleep in the back seat after having driven the first stretch of the trip, his head nodding, totally exhausted.

We are gliding through a lush, hilly landscape of forests and green fields, with the odd bright yellow canola field speeding past.

“What I really loved about these past few days,” I say, “was how people I admire, people that seemed way out of reach just a few years ago when I was still a student, are so real now, so human.”

Brigitte agrees: “Putting people on a pedestal is no use because, in order to learn from them, you need to realize they were once like you. Besides, what makes people really special is their ability to absorb and pass on emotion.”

I couldn’t agree more. Much of what we do as contemporary jewellers has to do with emotions, with the stories we tell ourselves, the feelings we want the wearers of our work to experience.

I’m lost in thought. The green hills are a blur, there’s a medieval castle ruin on the horizon. There, in this unknown future, is a life waiting for me, a colourful career that might not only fulfil me, if I truly follow my heart, but allow me to pass this burning light that I can feel inside of me (on good days) on to others one day.

I’m catching a lift back to Berlin with these two happy souls after having spent a long weekend at the Zimmerhof Schmucksymposium held somewhere in Germany’s apple country for the 50th time (!). There, a hundred jewellery enthusiasts had gathered for four days to listen to artist talks, inspire others and be inspired, feed off each other’s energy, eat and drink and camp together and generally reinforce the foundations of the international contemporary jewellery community.

The programme of distinguished guest speakers that included artists, gallerists, curators, publishers, educators and musicians.

At the symposium, the introductory question to others wasn’t “So, what do you do…?” but rather “So what’s your relationship to jewellery?”, trying to establish whether someone was a jewellery maker, a publisher, a gallerist, a writer, a curator or an educator, or any combination of these. There were experienced artists in the middle of successful careers and there were youngsters, still studying or just having started out in the “real world”, like myself. In fact, blurring the boundaries between different artistic disciplines and professions seemed to be a prevalent theme for several reasons: While many of the people I met came to jewellery much later in life after a winding and multi-faceted path, others felt the need to express themselves in several disciplines simultaneously. There also seems to be a converging trend within the arts, narrowing the gulf between fine art and crafts, as well as merging different applied arts - something I personally encourage and celebrate.

 The symposium’s programme was put together by Helen Britton and David Bielander, who obviously have a vast network of extraordinary artist acquaintances to draw upon, and delivered a most wonderful assemblage of speakers. But the magic went far beyond the artist talks – the real magic was in the sense of community that existed in this space, a sense of creative freedom and generous mutual support and room for experimentation and general acceptance.

Essential ingredients for this magic potion were camp fires, a dance floor, a well-stocked bar with very affordable beverages, delicious meals at long tables, large quantities of caffeine, very little sleep, splendid summer weather, and many, many stories from all kinds of people (I met attendants from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Japan, Mexico, the USA, Portugal, England, Korea, Ireland and Thailand). 

What all participants had in common, no matter their backgrounds, was a burning enthusiasm, a passion that lit them from within. Out there in the everyday world it seems to be the norm to hate your job or at least to be caught in a life you are not happy with. Then, diving into this bubble of excitement in the middle of nowhere on a farm with barely any running water, meeting a community of people who have dedicated their lives to a field of enquiry that seems to grant them meaning in a most fundamental way, was absolutely intoxicating.

Schmucktisch - Jewellery Table. One night all participants were invited to display and discuss their work on a very long table. The informal format und generous atmosphere resulted in a wonderful spirit of mutual support and interest rather than criticism and pressure.

Notes:

You can find more information about this symposium here.

Brigitte & Clemens are fictional characters, as are all the people in the illustration above (data protection laws etc.).

Heliotrope

I’m not just fascinated by colour in a general way; colours are actually of central importance in my life, because I’m semi-synesthetic, meaning I associate all letters and cyphers with certain colours. In my brain, every letter of the alphabet has its own fixed colour, concepts have colours, dates, numbers and words are colour sequences. Some people also “see” sounds and smells in this way, which isn’t the case with me though.

These colours have been more or less the same for me ever since I learned to count and spell, which definitely explains my constant obsession with colour in my work and my resulting love for enamels and watercolours. The first letter of my name, N, has always been a particular shade of purple-pink, a mixture of magenta and heliotrope, as I later learned when I started researching the history of colours, their names and cultural significance.

Enamels can be bought in glass chunks of different sizes to grind down yourself with a mortar and pestle, or conveniently pulverized for immediate use.

Heliotrope is a colour that perhaps sounds more sumptuous than its history would suggest. It is named after a flower that will always turn its head towards the sun, even more so than other plants. The word is made up of the Greek words helios, ‘sun’, and tropaios, ‘to turn’. This colour was particularly fashionable in the late 19th century, when a pervasive cult of mourning evolved that reached ever more complex rules regarding dress code and social behaviour. Since the flower was associated with devotion in the Victorian ‘language of flowers’, it was one of the few colours permitted when in mourning, following the matte black of the strictest mourning period.

As I create new work, I am mindful of all kinds of historical and cultural associations, layered over one another, creating a dialogue between my personal visual language and a general Western cultural history and its mythological connotations.

As the chain of meaning and meta-meaning expands, this enamelled pomegranate becomes a complex mesh of desire, devotion, Paradise, the myth of Persephone and Hades, ripeness, abundance, motherhood, bursting open, scattering seeds, sexuality, royalty, indecency, virginity and the loss thereof, pain, blood, love, grief, longing and death.

The newest enamelled fragment from the studio.

Sources:

St Clair, Kassia: Die Welt der Farben. 2018. Hoffmann and Campe Publishers, Hamburg.

Finlay, Victoria: Das Geheimnis der Farben – Eine Kulturgeschichte. 2016. Ullstein Publishers, Berlin.

An Insignificant Story about a Letter

At the market.

I had just moved to a new flat in the Schöneberg district of Berlin and was exploring my new neighbourhood. It was Saturday, market day, and I had some grocery shopping to do and a letter to mail (I’m old school like that, I write letters).

 One of my favourite things about Berlin is the fresh produce market culture here. Every single day of the week you can find some market somewhere, although the largest ones happen on Saturdays. The smells and colours and vendors’ shouts are overwhelming. Heaps of fresh vegetables, tomatoes strung from tent roofs, coffee stalls with immense queues, flowers, mountains of olives, capers, ricotta-stuffed peperoni. Huge wheels of cheese with little tasters in baskets to catch passers-by, fresh fish with glossy eyes staring back at you, quail eggs and artisanal gin and strange potatoes. Freshly baked organic bread, peculiar fruit I don’t know what to call, hot falafel and woollen socks. I love walking in that throng of market-goers, smelling, tasting, breathing the different flavours. Sometimes I just observe and don’t buy anything, other times I indulge.

That day I had bought a bag of tomatoes for some ridiculous 1,49 € per kilo, a bunch of fresh parsley and the first apricots of the season. As I got back to my bike parked at a lamp post a few metres away, I realized that somehow, probably in the process of taking my purse out of my backpack, I had lost the letter to my cousin in Holland that I was planning on posting. I looked for it back at the market and on my way home but couldn’t find it anywhere on the road or pavement. I imagined it lying in some gutter, rained wet and lonely, forgotten and covered in tyre tracks. It was gone.

A week or so later I got a message from my cousin with a photo of the letter, thanking me. Someone had apparently found my letter and posted it for me, even adding a brightly coloured postage stamp with a panda bear on it. It was marvellous. Some person out there had cared enough to help me out.

It’s difficult for me to read the news without feeling utterly helpless. Both internationally and locally, people are delineating their differences, drawing lines, demarcating territories. So much hate out there, them and us, so much othering, so much distrust and purposeful destruction and tearing anything good to shreds on the internet.

 And I feel even more helpless when that constant nagging question keeps returning to my mind: What can I do? What should I do?

What will I say in my defence when our children’s generation will ask of us: “And what did you do when all of that happened? What was your contribution?” It’s an uncomfortable question. How should we take responsibility for actions and their consequences that are so large and interconnected that the very thought paralyses us? I’m not an activist.

But perhaps I can tell stories. Stories like this one, real stories, small and insignificant stories, but nevertheless a story about a person who picked up a lost letter and spent money to put a stamp on it and took the time to mail it, without knowing who I was, without knowing my age or my political persuasion or my skin colour or my social background or my nationality or my intentions or my economic status. A story about a person who had simply been kind.

I think that somewhere between naïve hope and cynical despair there’s a sweet spot, a space of kindness and action and looking out for one another. A space where we can absorb the dreadful happenings in the world to keep us grounded and make us wiser and propel us into action, yet use the good inside ourselves to uplift one another and counter the helplessness. In many ways, that is the role of art.

Performing the Craft Show

Multitasking me.

It’s almost time. The display is fully put together, the lights connected, the jewellery packed out, but I’m still fidgeting with individual pieces, shifting and swapping them. Taking a couple of steps back, rounding a corner, assessing my display from a distance. What’s the first thing you see? What will captivate unsuspecting visitors and draw them in? I check my watch, just twenty more minutes and I haven’t finished adding price tags. Or should I just leave them to make the display less cluttered? Are potential customers scared of asking for prices? Pricing my work is actually one of the most difficult aspects of what I do… but that’s another entire story.

 I’ve done quite a few fairs, exhibitions and craft shows by now, and yet, I’m always still nervous. That’s because every single experience really is completely unique. Some are run by big corporations that have to coordinate hundreds of exhibitors, construction workers, electricians, security personnel, caterers, models for the fashion shows, press representatives and thousands of visitors… basically a crazy logistic feat. But even the smaller exhibitions must be organizational challenges for the hosts, especially since smaller craft shows are usually run by local arts and crafts societies, with most of the organizers working in their personal spare time without getting paid – all in the name of supporting the arts. I can honestly say that I prefer the smaller, more intimate shows, precisely because everything is much more personal. The sparkly international trade fairs might be more professional, more glamorous and prestigious with fancy awards to win and lots of VIPs attending, but also much more stressful. Usually they cost about ten times as much as smaller shows, and free perks are rare, not even free Wi-Fi or a glass of champagne during the opening night.

EchT Modern Craft show in April 2019.

I check my watch again. Time to perform. It’s not that I’m not myself during craft shows, not at all, I’m just an amplified, condensed and intensified version of myself. It’s all the positive energy I can muster thrown at you all at once.

I draw back my shoulders and imagine my head held up straight by an invisible golden thread. I’m powerful. I’m wearing a very flattering black linen open-back dress with short sleeves, emphasising and hiding strategic areas of my body in an ingenious way. No cleavage, but open collar bones. Mezmerizing earrings. Black stockings and stunning coral-coloured leather dancing shoes with small heels (the beauty of dancing shoes: they’re comfortable enough to stand for eight hours straight, but still very elegant). Most importantly, a whiff of sparkling fairy-dust-like confidence, invisible like a perfume. If you break that aura up into individual notes, it contains a good chunk of open friendliness, a pinch of humour, a heap of confident assertion (believing that my work is good and worth the price I’m asking for it) and a healthy portion of I-don’t-care-what-you-think-ness to deal with the occasional silly comment. This is my armour.

But like a protective spell in the world of Harry Potter, this energy field around myself is utterly exhausting to keep up, depending on my mental state and personal energy levels.

Imagining a show as an invisible stage that I actively get on and off again is a strategy to help me deal with the disparity of the worlds that collide in this sphere. Many visitors live a kind of life that is inconceivably foreign to my own semi-frugal lifestyle (I mean, I have what I need, I eat well, but I simply don’t buy a lot of stuff). Here, on this platform, I can move with ease amongst people who spend hundreds of Euros on a single dinner out, who can buy anything they please without checking their bank account first, and who expect me to exude an air of luxury, a golden, gleaming fairy-tale-like quality. So how to stay genuine through the pretence? It’s like doing the splits: very difficult, constant hard work, but possible (it’s a metaphor, I can’t actually do the splits). The invisible stage enables me to be an active storyteller, to be truly me, telling jokes and stories, all the while casting a kind of intriguing magical haze over the entire display that speaks both to those immersed in their luxury lifestyles and those who don’t own much but simply visit to look at beautiful things.

Two pins and a black silver necklace with grey pearls.

In many ways, it’s an uncomfortable collision of worlds for me. I am undeniably participating in a luxury industry, but a large part of who I have become has to do with finding joy in the surrounding world without a lot of money or material possessions. And one of the most important ways of finding meaning, joy and belonging in my life is precisely that creative process I engage in to make my art: the making by hand, the storytelling, the creation of something imaginary that is more than simply the sum of its parts. Not making art is simply not an option for me. My work will inevitably shift and evolve in an attempt to reconcile these contradictory ambitions.

After a craft show, the process of stepping down from the invisible stage is equally deliberate. Stepping down into normality from this world of easily unsheathed credit cards, of buying each other 5-Euro-coffees and celebratory glasses of champagne with a generous flourish, stepping down from the high, the euphoria, the intensity to a state of tired contentment. Here, I can acknowledge my hard work, my exhaustion, and assess my successes and my mistakes with a level-headed sense of realism. I believe that without this imaginary stage, it’s easy to get stuck in the intensity of a make-belief lifestyle steeped in a desperate search for approval. Addictive as it is, it could swallow me whole, financially and emotionally.

Drawing table at EchT Modern Craft.

Enamelling in Circles

A collection of enamelled tidbits on my jewellery bench.

I’m enamelling. The kiln has heated up properly by now, and I start unpacking my enamels – little multi-coloured medicine bottles filled with glass powders in rows at the edge of my working surface. For a few moments, I simply hover over the colours, compare the different hues, delight in the subtle differences. Colours govern my life. With enamels, each one has a different personality – it is either transparent, so you can see the metal underneath after firing it, or opaque; it can be smooth or grainy, some have a high melting temperature, some a low one, some break up into bits and dissolve into other colours, some get miniature green cracks around the edges when heated a few times.

If you don’t treat them according to their personalities, they misbehave: they splinter after firing while cooling down, flake off the metal surface, become cloudy, or burn into an ugly colourless dead-looking surface.

Every action of this process of firing glass onto metal has become a strange ritual. Mixing glue for concave surfaces. Laying out brushes, spatulas, small ceramic bowls. Sifting powders onto metal. The careful, deliberate lifting and placing of the powdered pieces onto metal tripods, rickety with use and coated with stray enamel blobs. And then, opening that furnace of a kiln at 800 degrees Celsius, being bathed in a heat wave that leaves my face tingling and hot. Opening, closing, sifting, waiting, cleaning off firescale, sifting. Balancing, opening, closing, waiting, sifting, opening closing. It’s like a dance and I become entranced in it. After some time, my face becomes glowing hot and it must be bright scarlet by now. I forget about my surroundings, surrender myself willingly to the power of the enamels. Then, and only then, can they unfold their true beauty – the moment I stop trying to master them, and let them lead me. They fuse, run, melt, burn, shimmer into spectacular patterns that no-one could have foreseen. And I am left deeply satisfied by the thought that this individual pattern that just happened, right there, can never ever be reproduced again. If this is not magic, I wonder what is. To me, enamelling really isn’t a science, even though it’s a scientific process.

A kiln, glowing hot.

First layer done - one of many.

It’s no surprise that enamelling has become my favourite jewellery-making technique, considering the significance of colour in my life. Colours have their own designated meaning in my world, every cypher and every letter has its own colour in my mind, large numbers become colour sequences. However, my fascination with enamels lies deeper than just its appearance. The ancient history of the enamelling process, almost alchemical in nature before the advent of electricity, intrigues me just as much. Jewellers have used enamel for its intrinsic qualities of brightness, hardness and durability, also taking advantage of its elusiveness and mutability to suggest, among other things, precious stones, filigree inlay work, stained glass and even painting.

Although it is unclear how long enamels have existed, it is likely that they were developed in Egypt. Masters of working with fire, the Egyptians invented glass. Around the third millennium BCE they perfected the fabrication of the earliest known synthetic pigment, a double silicate of copper and calcium that compensated for the lack of affordable natural blue pigments. This new blue pigment, called Alexandrian blue, could be used in paints, inks, glass and, mixed with sodic alkaline salts, form a variety of spectacular blue faience glazes.

The development of early enamelling techniques is documented by two major sources: the Benedictine monk Theophilus whose 12th century treatise on Medieval art techniques explained some of the contemporary enamelling processes, as well as the notorious 16th century Italian jeweller Benvenuto Cellini, whose Trattato dell’Oreficeria includes detailed, step-by-step instructions on enamelling. Cellini describes the preparation of enamels as a laborious process of hand-grinding chunks of coloured, transparent glass and then washing the powder with filtered water to remove dust and impurities. Both authors describe the same kind of furnace – a type of upside-down earthenware vessel inside a protective perforated iron container, placed into a roaring fire and completely covered with hot coals. This challenging and time-consuming process can only be marvelled at, since each enamelled piece required numerous firings and timing thereof had to be impeccable.

Since enamelling was depended on pigments for its vivid colours, it is also clearly linked to alchemical practices. Much of the medieval research in chemistry was carried out by alchemists, whose laboratories and methods were described in an arcane language, often laden with metaphor. Their reluctantly and cryptically published discoveries show a wealth of experimentation focused on the transmutation of substances. Because of this interest in the mutable properties of metals, as well as their work with processes of extraction and distillation of solids and liquids, alchemists stimulated a renaissance in the production of colour pigments: they created vermilion red from sulphur and mercury, yellow by adding sulphur to arsenic, and a gold pigment by mixing sulphur, tin and mercury.

Cloisonné enamel: little pockets of colour, framed by silver or gold borders. These are cuff links I made in enamel and white gold.

Apart from this obvious, historical link, enamelling also evokes the language of alchemy: born from fire, the pale powders transform into brilliant, vitreous colour; the process is technical yet also deeply intuitive, experimental and somehow mysterious. The exact moment of perfect, glossy fusion relies on timing – in my case never governed by a neat and orderly time scale, but rather an enigmatic internal clock that relies on ‘gut feeling’ to gauge when a piece is ready. This gloriously ‘messy’, spontaneous side of the enamelling process subverts the scientific, grid-like standards that are superimposed on almost every part of modern routine.

Pale powders transform into bright, glossy glazes.

Sources:

Delamare, F & Guineau, B. 2006. Colour – Making and Using Dyes and Pigments.London: Thames & Hudson.

Strosahl, J. P. 1981. A Manual of Cloisonné & Champlevé Enamelling. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Photographs: Nicola Fouché and Nora Kovats.

Sifting pink enamel powder onto a copper earring segment.

Munich Jewellery Week 2019

Current Obsession map of all the different locations at Munich Jewellery Week, and my constant companion. It’s really quite impossible to see everything.

The contemporary jewellery scene is a type of parallel world, and being part of Munich Jewellery Week makes you feel as if you’ve just slipped into the land of Harry Potter. As an initiate, you are privy to a bright world that puts wearable art at the centre of every thought and action. Having just returned from this immersive experience, my mind is still radiant with ideas.

 As you walk around in this parallel Munich, you notice bright orange markers designating every one of the 90+ jewellery related events taking place all over the city during this week and marked on a corresponding map. You can easily spot your fellow MJW-initiates, clearly recognizable by the conspicuous brooches and neckpieces they wear, usually their own creations. No-one else wears brooches like that.

 Moving around in this strange world, on the outskirts of pragmatic life but filled with boundless excitement, I was constantly oscillating between extreme, almost euphoric inspiration, and the most humbling, crushing sense of inadequacy. This is emotionally exhausting. Between gawking over my personal jewellery idols’ work, meeting friends, travelling all over the city, and feverishly planning my own next collection, there wasn’t much time for sleep either.

Below are some of the exhibitions, collectives and individual contemporary jewellers whose work spoke to me the most, in no particular order. Apart from the obvious grandeur of the SCHMUCK (the oldest contemporary jewellery contest of its kind) and TALENTE competitions, and the dazzling array of prestigious galleries featuring the stars of the jewellery world, I was particularly impressed by a Korean display done by the Korean Craft & Design Foundation. Their work was wildly experimental and colourful and daring, and at the same time meticulously executed with truly superior craftsmanship. I was in awe.

A colour catalogue of the Korea Craft & Design Foundation display at Munich Jewellery Week 2019.

Other exhibitions that almost bewildered me with their sheer volume of ideas and different experimental jewellery approaches were 21 Grams, held at Galerie Handwerk, Schmuckismus at the Pinakothek der Moderne, and Interiores, an exhibition by Chilean jewellery collective Joya Brava. I particularly love how Joya Brava, as a group, displays a visual language that manages to marry ancient traditions and organic materials (such as weaving and felting techniques; materials like textiles, wool, straw, horse hair) with refreshingly experimental designs and new interpretations.

A brooch by Kira Fritsch. Actually a picture of a brooch.

Individual artists whose work made my heart beat faster than it should, were, amongst many others:

• Kira Fritsch (unfortunately none of her recent work which I loved so much is shown anywhere online, but luckily I have a card of a black twig-like brooch),

• Liana Pattihis, whose enamelled chain work is breathtaking,

• Carina Shoshtary, with her meticulously assembled graffiti-scaled organic forms,

• Jilian Moore, with her deliciously glossy, brightly coloured acrylic creatures,

• Andrea Wippermann, with her delicate imaginary compositions,

• Vera Siemund, a long time favourite of mine, and

• Sanna Wallgren, who must be one of the youngest people ever to participate in SCHMUCK.

China and silver chain brooch by Liana Pattihis.

Of course, there were many more whose work I found inspiring, but those above definitely touched me on a very personal, subjective level.

See you next year, Munich Jewellery Week!

Vlamlek

Vlamlek. 2019. Enamel, copper, sterling silver, nylon, silk, lapis lazuli, agate.

Vlamlek starts with a story about an old Cape Dutch farmhouse surrounded by Strelitzias, planted there to symbolize a protective ring of fire that was meant to shield its inhabitants from ‘foreign’ and harmful influences. This thought of barriers, of keeping out and letting in selectively, the urge to delineate the homestead, is immensely powerful and can be traced back eons in different cultures. I found myself playing with the shape and symbolism of the Strelitzia, half flame, half flower.

The Strelitzia is a peculiar flower, indigenous to South Africa yet ‘discovered’ by a British botanist and named in 1773 by Sir Joseph Banks (curator of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew) somewhat randomly in honour of Queen Charlotte, the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. To me, this flower epitomizes how South Africans – human, animal and botanical - have become a tangle of complex influences: the Western influence is palpable everywhere, European laws and societal norms and lately a newer but equally visible American influence, yet in between so distinctly African too, with uniquely developed customs and values, a flavour of flame and the primordial power of the earth.

Fire – heating metal and enamelling – is my language of creating. I’m becoming more experimental in my technique, savouring the burns and scars of this haphazard process. Enamel dust thrown at the metal almost violently, layer upon layer, then ground off again, scraped, colours bleeding into one another, bruised, fired over again until I achieve that mottled brightness fringed with burn. I love the immediacy of this process; I breathe it when I work. Yet it cannot be completely impulsive, there are natural laws to be obeyed, melting temperatures and properties of metals to consider, the language of the colours to respect. Enamelling is the marriage of something wild and untameable with an ordered, measured, law-abiding other.

Vlamlek is my attempt to show how, in my mind, seemingly contradictory elements have to be embraced, danced with and smelted around each other, in order to stay sane in a world where my European-South-African identity seems to tear itself apart at times.

Vlamlek (Detail).

Savouring the last dregs of winter

It’s no secret that I’m a big food lover. I’m obsessed with plants, so how could I not be intrigued by the possibilities of growing, harvesting and cooking food plants. But food is more than sustenance - it’s a meal, a feast even, best shared with others.

I know there are thousands of phenomenal cook books and food blogs out there, yet, I itch to try my hand at some recipe illustration that doesn’t just decorate a recipe with images but actually conveys an inherent mood, that sketches an ambiance that reveals the stark difference between a solitary meal on the couch and a shared dinner with many people, interwoven with human stories and emotions and wine and gratitude.

Here’s a Cape brandy tart recipe I made the other night for dessert after serving a hearty Italian bean stew:

Thoughts on Making

There is this phrase of “putting a piece of your soul” into something you are making. Sounds a little vague and clichéd to me, to be honest. So let me explore what might be meant by that a little more.

Sometimes when I create something I reach a state of existence where I am so strongly present that the importance of making transcends any other purpose of making that object. At that moment, when my gestures become precise and measured, my breathing quietens down and my thoughts become silent, when I’m focused with a deep concentration and a peculiar effortlessness at the same time, when I am uniquely present, then I know. I know that I have reached a sort of harmony that in itself is such a gift that the outcome or the finished products matter much less than the making of. Sometimes it even becomes the only thing that matters in the world, if only for an instant.

When I’m really immersed in this transcendent state, a strange feeling will start to spread, starting somewhere behind my belly button in my middle and slowly filling my entire body with a warm sense of complete and utter contentment. It’s a state so peaceful that I can literally feel the stress and anger accumulated over the day evaporate from my body.

It’s not always easy to reach this state. Usually I’m too distracted or frustrated or scattered in my mind. Thoughts of the email I forgot to write this morning or the trash that I should take out or the online shop I need to curate (never mind make stock for it) keep crowding my mind. But occasionally I do manage to hover in that strange combination of deep concentration and letting go: A focus on my gestures and the tactility of my making and the inherent laws of the material I am working with, while simultaneously letting go of the nitty-gritty worries of my life. It’s like zooming out and bringing the world into perspective – a kind of bird’s view where it becomes clear that I as an individual human being really don’t matter so much, but that I am part of a system that is wonderfully mysterious and complex and that matters a great deal. And I feel a sense of peace at not having to understand everything about this.

So making, in other words, is not so much an action taking place, it’s a state of being. A condition that reconciles seemingly paradox aspects of life (and I believe that the human mind is perfectly capable of holding several contradicting ideas simultaneously): I as an individual am so present, so focused, so important, at the centre of this process of making, and I am also dissolving into it completely, melting into my surroundings, giving myself up to breathing creativity. My personal borders become porous to let inspiration in while some part of me, some essence, can leak out into the world.

This happens especially when materials/ingredients are transformed into something more in quite a rapid way or at least at an observable pace – when you can see the making as it happens. Like drawing or painting. Enamelling. Cooking. Sawing and smithing metal. Sewing and embroidery. Writing. Making music. Even gardening. You name it. These creative endeavours all have some characteristics in common:

They are tactile and sensual experiences, where touch is extremely important – feeling the texture and surface of materials beneath your skin. Which is why writing with a pen on paper is still so fundamentally satisfying in a way that typing on a computer never can be, although there are other benefits to that.

They are immediate and transformative: With some patience you can observe how the materials you are working with change into something else you are making. You can see it grow and evolve, watch paint dry and bread dough rise deliciously and sauce thicken.

They all have one component that is mechanical and one component that is spontaneous and unpredictable; the recipe based on the maker’s knowledge and the inspiration from thin air. When I enamel, for example, I have a basic idea what I am doing and what I want to achieve, there are laws of physics I have to obey, for example melting points of enamels and metals. But some part of the process is almost magical in its unpredictability. You have no idea how the patterns will melt into each other, how the speckles of powder will form unique textures. This is the alchemy of it, the everyday mystery I choose to live with.

Without exception, creating something in this way has a positive effect on both the creator and their environment; it cleanses the world from anger and hatred, and adds self-worth, value and joy.

So yes, when you buy something hand-crafted by me, it will be an object that is steeped in my existence, in my constant state of marvel at the world and my gratitude for being alive here and now. If I could, I wouldn’t want to put a monetary price on my work. But the thought of doing anything else with my time, of earning my living in a way where I have to deny myself this creative process, is unthinkable to me.