Jewelry In a Nutshell: both Personal and Universal

Breaking two exciting pieces of news here: first, it all happened pretty fast, so very few people in my network know that my husband, toddler and I moved back to Europe, after over a decade in the #USA. Since July, we have been living in beautiful and hot #Sevilla, Spain. In case you didn’t know, famous painter #DiegoVelázquez was born in Sevilla, and during his time in the early 17th century, this city was the richest and most cosmopolitan of Spain because it had the commercial monopoly with America. Apart from the Baroque architecture from that period, the city is filled with even older Moorish colorful tiles. You can see them in the background wall photo with my husband at dinner earlier this week, when we celebrated our wedding anniversary.?

For the occasion, I was wearing my latest acquisition, a #brass sculptural necklace by local jewelry artist Esther Govantes from Sevilla. What does the pendant look like to you? (more on that below, please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments, I love a good jewelry conversation) The question brings me to my second piece of news: this article is the first of my monthly newsletter titled Jewel Break. A curated newsletter on jewelry’s artistic, cultural and historical brilliance, without the bling. That's right, I’m committed to breaking with the widespread convention of regarding jewelry as bling and fashion accessory, since you’ve plenty of other posts to read out there. This newsletter is for you if you want to appreciate jewelry beyond body adornment, as an object of knowledge, with its material and technical qualities, #personal and #universal meanings, artistic and cultural relevance.?

Coming back to the contemporary pendant I’m wearing, the shape might remind you of a #seashell, right? Yes, that’s definitely it. For me though, even if I’m originally from the island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean sea, the first thing that came to mind was Gaudí's spiral staircases at the Sagrada Familia Basilica in #Barcelona, where I worked in my twenties teaching schools and tourists about the genius architect and designer. Interestingly, when I told the artist Esther about this connection, her response was that it had been her inspiration as well. It turns out that Esther learned to hammer metal in the Escola Massana Centre d'Art i Disseny , a well known jewelry design school in Barcelona. Of course we connected right away and I bought the piece.

The pendant’s shell shape is also an example of the #goldenratio, in Spanish “proporción áurea”: an irrational number that has been studied since Antiquity for its harmonic and aesthetically pleasing proportions. The golden ratio appears in some patterns in nature (like seashells of course) and artists have applied it to achieve beauty and balance in their creations. In fact, the architect #Gaudí continuously played with natural elements and harmonious proportions in his work, to the point that the inside of Sagrada Familia is a forest, where every column is a tree that is also architecturally stable thanks to the distribution of weight and height in parabolic arches. Here is what blows my mind about well-designed and crafted jewelry: in a portable and tiny object, you can connect to a shell, a staircase, a whole building, the golden ratio in art and nature... It's an example of how jewelry may encapsulate the universal within a very personal and small object.

Upon reflection, I was drawn to this piece on a personal level as well. The transition from the USA to Spain happened faster than we expected, so despite being my home country, it’s true what they say that you understand how much you have changed when you come back to a familiar place. Rather than coming full circle, my journey is best represented in the shape of this pendant: an open circle that, like Gaudí's staircase, shows an up and down #spiral movement (thanks to coach Murielle Marie for proposing this other image of moving up, not in circles). My path to jewelry hasn’t been a straight one at all: I started studying jewelry history at Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture in my early 30s, after two other careers in translation and museum education. That's why when I write about jewelry, I'm bringing in skills, knowledge and experiences from my multidisciplinary background. If you liked the #jewelryinsights in this article, please share and spread the word about my newsletter “Jewel Break.” It'll help me to stay connected with the jewelry community abroad, while I also find a new community here in Spain. Next newsletter will focus on two pendants in malachite and ivory, follow me if you want to know more about these two intriguing materials.