Imaginative and artistic jewelry was presented alongside some of the world’s most highly regarded art and antiques at the annual TEFAF Maastricht, the world-renowned art fair held from March 10 through 19 in the Netherlands. The event’s contingent of top-notch international haute joaillerie brands unveiled their most creative and lavish designs of the year, including Wallace Chan, Hemmerle, Reza, Chopard, Van Cleef & Arpels, Verdura and Otto Jakob. Chan, the only living Asian jeweller exhibiting at the fair, captivated visitors with his large-scale sculptural art made from lightweight colored titanium and precious gemstones. One of his wearable pieces, the Sea of Joy fish brooch, resembled a finely detailed sculpture sparkling with opal, yellow diamonds, citrines, lapis lazuli, pink sapphires, and tsavorite garnets.
Two German jewelers, Hemmerle and Otto Jacob, exemplified their unique approach to jewelry making through unusual material combinations. “The juxtaposition of materials such as everyday objects, artifacts, or antiquity that we use gives our creations a vivacity that lends them a different edge,” says Munich-based Christian Hemmerle. To that end, Hemmerle’s stand-out pieces included an aluminium, aquamarine and deep blue sapphire large-scale cuff featuring an ancient Egyptian architectural pattern. In the same Egyptian spirit, Hemmerle created a pair of jeweled rectangular earrings with a 19th century micro mosaic portrait of an Egyptian Pharoah. The big attraction at Otto Jakob’s presentation was the elaborate Nef necklace, which features a pair of pendants—made with oxidized gold, briolette-cut diamonds, and vitreous enamel—that each sport a flower-filled cornucopia with a macaw peeking its head out.
The New York–based Verdura collection caught the attention of visitors with a colorful new version of its signature X necklace made with peridots, yellow sapphires, and diamonds, as well as an impressive detachable oval peridot drop. Belperron presented a collection of its namesake designer’s early pieces that she made in the 1930s and ‘40s. And Olivier Reza, the creative mind behind Parisian jeweler Alexandra Reza, created a series around last year’s Dune cuff—an elaborate sculptural cuff sprinkled with diamonds—which became the catalyst for a series of new earrings and rings. (tefaf.com)
