This week, in Maastricht, the Netherlands, high jewelry, fine art and antiques collectors have been flocking to TEFAF is the annual, ultra-upmarket art and antiques fair. Named after The European Fine Art Foundation, TEFAF was established by art dealers in 1988 to showcase artistically and historically important fine art and antiques. While the fair is illuminated by an international mix of haute joaillerie (high jewelry), one of its most avant-garde, yet most historically important jewelers is Hemmerle, located at Stand 141 in the fair’s La Haute Joaillerie section. Here, inside an airy, wooden enclosure designed by Dutch architect Tom Postma, the 126-year-old, Munich-based, family-owned and operated house of Hemmerle presents fifty one-of-a-kind, profoundly beautiful, culturally meaningful and masterfully made jewels. In this, its 22nd year at Maastricht, Hemmerle, which typically produces about 200 pieces a year, demonstrates its iconoclastic and distinctly refined approach to high jewelry design, materials and fabrication.
A prime example of Hemmerle’s is the teal blue, anodized aluminum and aquamarine earrings. These embody sculpted layers of aluminum and circular negative spaces, within which glitter blue grottoes of pavé aquamarines. Reminiscent of the color-saturated, 1960s canvas cut-out textile sculptures of the late Italian artist Paolo Scheggi, who died in 1971, these earrings are strangely beautiful. What’s more, because Scheggi died at the age of 31, his limited but influential output has propelled some of his works to sell at auction in excess of GBP £1,000,000.
Although one wonders if, and how much, knowledge of Scheggi’s recent auction sales figures may elevate the perceived value of these earrings in the minds of collectors, Christian Hemmerle, the fourth generation in the family to work at the heritage house, is more focused on encouraging designing and creating jewels of artistic power that embody arresting beauty and ease of wear over the course of a lifetime, and for future generations.
“Aluminum’s malleability enables us to focus on innovation and create intricate works which are delicate in design, yet highly durable,” he explains. “Through a process of anodizing,” he continues, “we are able to create aluminum in hues that complement the natural colors of the gemstones we use. Aluminum’s myriad color possibilities excite us.” Although Hemmerle’s too discreet to say so, the aesthetic beauty, conceptual origins and technical savoir-faire of these earrings embody one key reason why his heritage firm reigns as the antithesis, and antidote, to mass-produced, global luxury jewelry brands.
Consider that Hemmerle pieces are all one-of-a-kind and some take a year or more to make, whereas global luxury brands pump out thousands of the same design and then sell them in shopping malls on all continents except Antarctica. While each and every Hemmerle family member knows his or her way through the winding narratives of fine art and applied art history, they also attend contemporary art exhibits throughout the year. In recognition of their contributions to the narrative of jewelry history, Hemmerle jewels dwell in the permanent collections of such cultural institutions as the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. Striving to create beloved jewels, family heirlooms and museum pieces, Hemmerle’s high jewelry, which by definition is an applied art form, somehow transcends the category by embodying some of the values, forms and functions of fine art. This critical point is one of the reasons why people return year after year to TEFAF to see Hemmerle’s latest creations.
“As one of the world’s most important art and antiques fairs,” Hemmerle says, “TEFAF continues to be guided by its commitment to quality and connoisseurship. I’ve always thought the idea of mixing different artistic disciplines in a fair is a very good one. Many visitors to TEFAF have a cross-collecting ethos,” he enthuses. “They tend to be diverse in their interests, cultured and curious.” According to Hemmerle, “The fair has become more global over the years with an increase in collectors from Asia and South America alongside its core European and American attendees. I’ve also noticed a younger generation of collectors drawn to the magnet that is TEFAF.”
The house of Hemmerle’s subtly sumptuous, sleek and chic jewelry style, standards and practices were invented in the 1990s by Christian’s father, Stefan Hemmerle. Stefan, assisted by his wife Sylveli, made luxury jewelry history by coupling their gemological, precious metal and design knowledge with their shared passion for fine art, antiques and architecture. In addition to creating unique alloys of gold and silver, Hemmerle designs incorporated materials that in the 1990s were new to high jewelry design, such as pebbles, titanium and wood.
Placing important, newly mined and/or antique diamonds in majestic yet minimalist settings of steel, aluminum and copper the Hemmerles and their artisans also honored colored stones, antique cameos, micro-mosaics and other treasures by placing them in low-key, yet luxurious, metal settings imbued with rich patinas. These resulted in distinctively styled jewels that established the house’s international reputation as an influential creator of avant-garde, high jewelry. (All Hemmerle family members, it is worth noting, are always quick to credit the master artisanship of the house’s stone setters, goldsmiths and lapidaries.)
Hemmerle jewels are admired and internationally sought after by collectors for their relevance to... [+]
While Christian Hemmerle and his wife Yasmin now work alongside Stefan and Sylveli, some other outstanding jewels that they are presenting at TEFAF pay homage to such artworks as Paul Klee’s 1927 painting Schwarzer Fürst. In these dramatically shaded earrings, each blackened silver disk houses a bejeweled face formed by a studded diamond eye and a dazzling strip of white gold that delineates a fine nose, and expressive mouth. Another pair of sterling silver earrings embodies discs of degradé, forest-green jade topped by spiky, reverse set green tsavorite garnets. The dramatic effect of the combination of jade and tsavorite garnets is nothing short of Imperial.
For jewelry lovers and others who can’t make it to Maastricht, TEFAF will be in New York this spring at the Park Avenue Armory, from Friday May 3rd until Tuesday May 7.
