Twelve Pieces, a Calder Original and Five Tears of Joy: Jewellery Stories Worth Knowing This Week
My latest jewellery news update ranges from a radical return to one-off making to a 70-year-old pair of artist-made earrings finding a new owner. Plus, Shaun Leane has launched a practice limited to 12 works a year, Kendall Jenner bought a rare pair of Alexander Calder earrings in Venice, and Bvlgari has transported more than 300 jewels to Shanghai. If that wasn’t enough, Jacqueline Rabun has revisited a collection first designed in 2002, and Hublot has announced Jeff Koons as its newest ambassador.
Shaun Leane: A Return to Making
Shaun Leane has launched 12, a new commission-based practice that will produce only 12 unique works per year. It is a considerable change of pace for the British jeweller, whose career began with a traditional Hatton Garden apprenticeship before his seventeen-year collaboration with Alexander McQueen and the growth of his own jewellery house.
The commissions are not restricted to conventional jewellery. One of the first is a headstone made for Leane’s late father, carved with flora and fauna and accompanied by a bronze cat. Another is a sterling silver couture collar for Daphne Guinness.
The limit of 12 works a year is equally telling. It gives Leane the time to push each commission properly, rather than force it into a collection cycle. After years of working at the edge of jewellery with McQueen, 12 feels like a return to a slower, more experimental way of making.
Shaun Leane begins a new chapter with 12, an independent venture dedicated to bespoke high jewellery and sculpture.
Daphne Guinness wearing a silver collar by Shaun Leane's label "12".
Shaun Leane Coil Corset, “The Overlook”, Alexander McQueen autumn/winter 1999, shot by Ann Ray.
Shaun Leane’s first work for 12 is a deeply personal memorial to his late father, transforming a stone headstone with sculpted flora, fauna and a bronze cat into an intimate object of art.
Collar necklace made by Shaun Leane for Daphne Guinness.
Kendall Jenner: A 1955 Calder Finds a New Owner
One of the best jewellery stories to come out of Venice this year involved no diamonds at all. Kendall Jenner wore a pair of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) earrings dating from 1955, made from hammered silver and steel wire. They came from Louisa Guinness Gallery in London, whose founder has spent decades collecting, commissioning and dealing in jewellery made by artists. Jenner did not borrow them for the appearance. She bought them.
Calder is better known for his mobiles, but jewellery formed a substantial part of his work. He made many of the pieces himself, often in brass and silver wire, and earrings are particularly scarce. The pair Jenner wore had passed through the Calder Foundation, a New York collector and her stylist, Dani Michelle, before reaching Louisa Guinness.
Peggy Guggenheim wearing Alexander Calder earrings beneath one of his sculptures, reflecting her role as both collector and champion of artist made jewellery.
There is also a lovely Venice connection. Peggy Guggenheim, one of Calder’s great supporters and an enthusiastic wearer of his jewellery, made the city her home. Jenner had already nodded to Guggenheim with a pair of pointed sunglasses during the festival, but the earrings were the subtler reference. More than 70 years after Calder made them, their hammered surfaces and irregular wire forms still look completely current.
Kendall Jenner wears rare Alexander Calder earrings from 1955, hand formed in hammered silver and steel wire and sourced through London gallerist Louisa Guinness.
Peggy Guggenheim’s famously unconventional eyewear finds a contemporary echo in Kendall Jenner’s sculptural spiked sunglasses.
By choosing Alexander Calder earrings in Venice, Kendall Jenner turns jewellery into a statement of taste, aligning contemporary style with one of the most influential artist jewellers of the 20th century.
Bvlgari: More Than 300 Jewels Arrive in Shanghai
Bvlgari has opened Kaleidos: Colors, Cultures and Crafts at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, bringing together more than 300 pieces of high jewellery, heritage jewels and works from private collections. The exhibition follows the Maison’s long history with colour, but the Shanghai edition introduces something specific to its setting: the traditional Chinese philosophy of the Five Elements and Five Colours.
That is the detail I find most interesting. Rather than simply transporting Bvlgari’s archive to another city, the curators have used Chinese ideas about colour to reconsider familiar Roman combinations. Contemporary works by two Chinese artists are also included, placing the jewellery alongside another way of thinking about colour and material.
The exhibition runs at the Power Station of Art until 31 October, giving visitors an unusually broad view of how consistently colour has shaped Bvlgari’s identity over more than a century.
Bvlgari brings more than 300 chromatic works to Shanghai for Kaleidos: Colors, Cultures and Crafts, spanning jewellery and contemporary Chinese art.
The exhibition’s first chapter, The Science of Colors, examines how colour is perceived and composed, using exceptional Bvlgari jewels to trace the journey from primary hues to complex chromatic harmonies.
In the exhibition’s second chapter, Color Symbolism, Bvlgari explores colour as a cultural language, linking gemstones and materials to the meanings, traditions and symbolism of Chinese culture.
The exhibition’s final chapter, The Power of Light, explores how light transforms colour, revealing the reflections, transparencies and metallic brilliance of Bvlgari’s gemstones and gold.
Archival jewels from the Bvlgari Heritage Collection sit alongside loans from private collections, tracing the Maison’s evolving use of colour across generations.
The exhibition was developed in close collaboration with Shanghai’s Power Station of Art, creating a meeting point between Bvlgari’s Roman heritage and Chinese contemporary culture.
Two contemporary Chinese artists are included in the exhibition, extending Bvlgari’s jewellery narrative into contemporary artistic practice.
Bvlgari deliberately moved away from the conventional jewellery exhibition format, treating the exhibition space itself as part of the chromatic experience.
Jacqueline Rabun: CAVE Returns After 24 Years
Jacqueline Rabun has brought back CAVE, a collection she first conceived for Georg Jensen in 2002, this time under her own name. The sixteen pieces retain the circular and oval concave forms of the original, but Rabun has changed the surface treatment, introducing satin finishes alongside eighteen carat yellow gold, sterling silver and selected pavé diamond settings.
The concavity is what gives the collection its character. Rather than adding detail to the surface, Rabun removes material from the centre, leaving smooth rounded forms with a hollow that catches light differently depending on the angle. In the pendants and statement rings especially, that inward curve does most of the work.
I also like that she has resisted simply reproducing the 2002 designs. The changes are subtle, but enough to make the collection feel considered rather than archival.
CAVE Oval Medium Pendant in sterling silver.
CAVE Oval Medium Ring in 18k yellow gold and diamonds.
CAVE Oval Medium Pendant in sterling silver.
CAVE Oval Medium Ring in 18k yellow gold.
CAVE Round Large Charm Ring in 18k yellow gold and diamonds.
CAVE Round Large Charm Ring in sterling silver.
CAVE Round 80mm Drop Earrings in 18k yellow gold and diamonds.
CAVE Round Lariat Necklace in 18k yellow gold and diamonds.
Hublot: Jeff Koons Joins the Art of Fusion
Hublot announced Jeff Koons as its newest ambassador on 9 September, continuing a programme of artist collaborations that the watchmaker has developed since 2011. The pairing makes immediate sense when you look at materials. Koons is known for taking familiar objects and remaking them through immaculate surfaces, industrial processes and extraordinary scale. Hublot has built much of its identity around experimenting with case materials, movements and unexpected combinations.
There is also a neat historical coincidence: both Hublot and Koons trace important beginnings to 1980. Hublot launched that year with its then radical combination of a gold case and rubber strap, while Koons was beginning the period that would establish his practice.
No watch was revealed with the announcement, which is probably wise. For now, the interesting part is the match itself, particularly Koons’s fascination with material transformation and Hublot’s willingness to push materials far beyond traditional watchmaking conventions.
Jeff Koons becomes Hublot’s newest ambassador, uniting contemporary art and watchmaking through a shared obsession with material innovation and transformation.
Known for transforming everyday forms into cultural icons, Koons brings the same obsession with scale, surface and execution to his partnership with Hublot.
For Hublot, the partnership is rooted in a shared tension between tradition and disruption, mechanics and emotion, innovation and craftsmanship.
Since 2011, Hublot has built a network of artist collaborations across architecture, painting, street art and contemporary art, with Jeff Koons now joining that creative lineage as its newest ambassador.
There seems to be a strong sense of history and returning to one’s roots in the news this week. I was especially taken by the idea that an archive is not something that lives in the past, but something that can be continually revisited and reworked at the artist’s discretion. People and the jewels they create can be born again, which is exactly the kind of optimistic outlook we need in these frenetic times.
WORDS
Bianca Blanari approaches jewellery as architecture in miniature, where form, structure, balance and elevation are distilled into objects of intimate scale. Bianca joined Katerina Perez as Club Editor and contributing writer in March.
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