The origins of jewellery went hand in hand with the emergence of the earliest civilizations one hundred thousand years ago. In this context, jewellery was an indication of individual positions within the society and at the same time it represented a marker of a specific group belonging toward other communities. By wearing jewellery an individual person marks a position within the setting of a social system, also in present times. Jewellery is not about individuality; jewellery is about an individual’s relations to others. Enhancing this thought, makes it easy to identify the strong relation between jewellery and society, and therefore also to recognize the political potential of jewellery. The lecture shows the usage of jewellery in past and present societies, in order to examine to which extend jewellery is and always has been political!
Karen Pontoppidan: JEWELLERY, A SOCIO-POLITICAL STATEMENT
About Lecture
Karen Pontoppidan
Karen Pontoppidan (Denmark, 1968) is a contemporary jeweller and professor. She currently runs the jewellery studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and previously worked for several years at the Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Sweden. In her work, she changes attitudes and styles taking into account the connection between the personal and the public. Her jewellery has social and political interconnection. She graduated from the Berufskolleg für Formgebung, Schmuck und Gerät, Schwäbisch Gmünd in Germany and later undertook further studies in Munich with Prof. Otto Künzli. She lives and works in Germany and Denmark and is an active part of the art jewellery scene – exhibiting, giving lectures and conducting workshops internationally.
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