Jewellery by the contemporary jewellery designer JANE ADAM

JANE ADAM

Jane Adam is a leading figure in British contemporary crafts, with an international reputation for her jewellery in dyed aluminium, a field in which she revolutionised contemporary practice. Her recent work in precious metals is now gaining her even greater recognition. Her work can be seen in some twenty major public collections, including those of the Goldsmiths’ Company; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Crafts Council, London; and the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, New York, as well as being worn by her many collectors in Britain and abroad.

About Jane

Her jewellery is made in aluminium and, increasingly, in precious metals, semi-precious stones and pearls. It is made by hand, mostly by Jane herself, in her studio in central London. Her work is the result of twenty five years of ongoing innovation and experimentation with a modern industrial material: dyed anodised aluminium. With this everyday material, she creates something new and unexpected, pieces where soft marks in subtle colours exist on a shimmery, iridescent surface. She has created a repertoire of new processes of dyeing, mark-making, texturing and colouration which have inspired many other jewellers, though her work stands alone for its quality and originality. She is now also moving into new work in precious metals (fine silver and high carat gold) and stones, applying her own techniques of texturing and forming. She delights in the difference these pieces have from her aluminium work: their weight and substance, the inherent beauty and richness of a metal such as fine silver or 22 carat gold, and the colours, forms, and textures of semi-precious stones and pearls. Her approach is always to work with her materials to find out what they will do, and to push them to find new qualities within them. She then sets out conditions in which they will behave in a certain way, and so explores and exploits their particular properties, rather imposing her own preconceptions upon them. This approach gives her work an organic quality, which relates to natural forms and to the way they change and grow. Jane Adam creates pieces that extend traditional jewellery values: those of beauty, femininity and preciousness. Her work explores female sensuality, both in the nature of the forms themselves and in the way they feel when worn. Therefore, her most profound relationship as a maker of jewellery is with the wearers of her work. They enjoy the way her work creates empathy with them and enhances them, to say something about who they are. By thus becoming part of the wearer's experience and expression of her self, Jane Adam's jewellery is transformed and completed.